I’ve been living in a pod of one since the end of March 2020. At first I was okay with it. I’m an introvert with social anxiety. I don’t like being around a lot of people normally. With everything shut down, I didn’t have to come up with excuses as to why I didn’t want to leave my house. Everyone was staying home.

But most people have at least one other person (be it an adult or a child) that lives with them … or they have at least one pet. I have nothing. It’s just me in my pod.

And no one was really checking in on me, at least not regularly or in-depth. My Mom was, but she’s legally obligated to. LOL

Even before the pandemic started, I felt like I was a “bother” when I reached out to people.

Wanna go out for supper?

Wanna go shopping?

Wanna save me from myself?

I felt like I was always the one asking them to do something. They only agreed because they felt sorry for me, right?

So I didn’t really reach out to anyone during the pandemic. I did text the person who I consider to be my best friend a few times at the outset to touch base and make sure that she was alright. When she asked back how I was doing, I just said “fine” or “at least I’m still alive”. In other words, I deflected because I figured she wouldn’t want to know that I was falling apart.

Now that everything is opening back up, I’m feeling even more lonely. I’m seeing people out and about … mask or no mask. I’m watching stupid reality tv where groups of friends are going on trips to catch up after not seeing each other for more than a year. What am I doing? Sitting at home — alone — watching stupid reality tv shows.

I want to reach out. I WANT to catch up. But I feel like I’m forcing people to hang out with me because they feel sorry for me.

I want people to WANT to hang out with me. I want them to reach out to me … to initiate things.

I also want people to understand if I’m too overwhelmed rejoining society to actually do something out in public. I might only want to hang out on my porch. I might not be all that talkative (but then again, have I ever been?).

I’ve been a loner for most of my life. That’s why I don’t have many friends. I feel like I’ve been a shitty friend to those few people who have considered me a friend at any point in the past. There’s another reason I don’t reach out.

I’m better off keeping to myself. But that’s lonely. And thus is the circle of my life.

Side Note: I wasn’t going to post this. I was just going to type it up to get it out of my brain in the hopes that my brain would leave me alone — at least for a little bit. But my mental health isn’t going to get any better if I keep bottling this shit up. This is my reality after all. So I decided to click the “Publish” button to put this out there for the whole world to see. I disabled comments so no one could respond (not that anyone would anyway). I’m on the fence about posting this to Facebook or Twitter. But if I don’t, no one will probably ever read this. I haven’t posted anything in like 2 years (burnout & depression doesn’t make one want to sit in front of the computer and do anything, let alone write blog posts), and I never really had much traffic around here. Do I really want people to know how messed up I really am? Then again, they probably already know (especially if they’ve seen some of my posts on Twitter).

The post Pod of One appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

I have my Homestead box set up so that one box runs multiple projects. I do this because sometimes I have to jump between projects. It’s more convenient to have all of my projects on one box than to have to fire up multiple boxes.

Almost every one of my projects requires a database. That means that I have quite a few databases set up on my Homestead box. So when it comes time to destroy the box — for example when it’s time to update to the latest version, I have to fire up Sequel Pro and export each of the databases individually. Then once I’ve spawned a new box, I need to import those databases individually — the structure and content — so I can continue working on my projects. That is quite time consuming and cumbersome when you have multiple databases.

I did a little research yesterday to see if I could find a way to automate (or partially automate) this process so that it isn’t such a pain in the ass to destroy and re-spawn a box. I found some code that will export databases and more code that will import databases.   So I created a couple of bash scripts with the code so that I could test things out. They worked great. So I wanted to share in case these scripts — and my process — could help someone else out (and so I can come back to this post when I forget what I did but need to do it again LOL).

First up … the script to export the databases. I called it dumpdbs.sh. Don’t forget to modify the script to set your own database username and password.

#!/bin/bash
 
USER="dbusername"
PASSWORD="dbpassword"

databases=`mysql -u $USER -p$PASSWORD -e "SHOW DATABASES;" | tr -d "| " | grep -v Database`
 
for db in $databases; do
    if [[ "$db" != "information_schema" ]] && [[ "$db" != "performance_schema" ]] && [[ "$db" != "sys" ]] && [[ "$db" != "mysql" ]] && [[ "$db" != _* ]] ; then
        echo "Dumping database: $db"
        mysqldump -u $USER -p$PASSWORD --databases $db > backup.$db.sql
    fi
done

Next up … the script to import the databases. I called it restoredbs.sh. Again, modify the database username and password!

#!/bin/bash
 
USER="dbusername"
PASSWORD="dbpassword"
 
databases=`ls -1 backup.*.sql`
 
for db in $databases; do
    echo "Importing $db ..."
    mysql -u $USER -p$PASSWORD < $db
done

And I just want to make a note … “-p$PASSWORD” in both scripts is not a typo. I had to look this up myself since I don’t interact with MySQL at the command line. When you use the -p flag for the password, there can be no space between the flag and the password itself.

Okay. That’s great. I have a couple scripts to export and import my databases. But how the hell do I use them? Well, let me tell you what I did.

BEFORE you destroy your box, SSH into the box  and run the script to export the databases.

vagrant ssh
cd /path/to/where/you/saved/the/files
bash dumpdbs.sh
exit

Then you can destroy your box and spawn a new one.

vagrant destroy
vagrant up

Once the new box is up and running, SSH into the new box and run the script to import the databases.

vagrant ssh
cd /path/to/where/you/saved/the/files
bash restoredbs.sh
exit

No more having to open up Sequel Pro to manually export and import a bunch of databases individually.

My next task is to figure out how to incorporate these scripts into the destroy / spawn process within my Homestead setup so that it is automatic. The article where I found the code for the bash scripts also includes some code that you can add to your Vagrantfile to trigger the running of these scripts. It looks like it requires some Vagrant plugins, so I still need to do some research to figure everything out and then figure out where to put the necessary code in my Homestead setup.

But for now, I’m okay with the process being manual. This way I know that the database exporting was successful before destroying the box. I just have to remember to run the script before I destroy the box. That’s what sticky notes are for.

I found the code for the 2 bash scripts here.

The post Preserving Databases When Destroying a Vagrant Box appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

I started doing some research related to Gutenberg in January of this year. This testing got sidelined because of a project that I started in February that involved Laravel. This project took up my full attention through early fall. Now that the project has been completed, I have some time to return to my Gutenberg testing. I don’t have a lot of time left to test things out. WordPress 5.0 is scheduled for release on November 19th, and this is the version that is going to have Gutenberg as part of core.

I spent some time last week and again this week reading various articles about the issues surrounding Gutenberg. I’ve also looked over the issues in the GitHub repository for the plugin. I am extremely concerned, especially since we manage over 50 websites for our clients.

In my local development environment (a Homestead virtual machine set up on my work laptop), I have a WordPress installation set up that has the Gutenberg plugin installed and activated so that I can test things. I decided to write a post using the new editor. I didn’t have a topic in mind. I just started typing and let my experience determine what I wrote.

The full content of that rambling post can be found below. I do not have Gutenberg installed on this site, so some of the formatting is missing. If you’re curious, here is a screenshot of how the post looks on my test site.

The post contains my raw thoughts as I was writing it. I did not go back and edit it before I decided to post it here. It only pertains to the editing experience. I have even more concerns when it comes to extending WordPress while developing sites for clients. But that’s a post for another day.

This is a test post that I am writing in an effort to give Gutenberg a real try. At first glance, I am not all that impressed with Gutenberg. All of the drama surrounding it has turned me off. It feels like the “powers that be” have decided that they want it for whatever reasons, and they don’t give a damn what regular users want.

I can see some good things about Gutenberg.

• Provides some additional content layout options.
• Makes including some elements easier to add than it was with TinyMCE.

But there are issues too. I just ran into one myself while putting together the previous list. First, half of the text that I wrote for the 2nd bullet point disappeared when I hit enter to move to the next item. Second … how the hell do you get out of a list without using your mouse? In any word processing program I’ve ever used, including Google docs, when you hit enter twice without entering content, it breaks you out of the list. But Gutenberg doesn’t do that. It just keeps adding blank list items. And then when I went to delete them using the backspace key, nothing happened. My cursor was in a weird place too. Totally NOT cool.

What the hell? My cursor just disappeared. I hit the down arrow key to move out of the previous paragraph and nothing happened. I then hit enter to create a new paragraph. That appeared to have happened, but my cursor stayed at the end of the previous paragraph. I was able to tab into this paragraph, but that definitely isn’t intuitive.

I’m a someone technologically savvy person. I mean I build websites for a living. If I’m having issues doing these simple things within Gutenberg, how is someone who isn’t as well versed in technology supposed to figure this stuff out? A person who has figured out Microsoft Word and/or Google docs can use the classic editor without any learning curves. But put that same person in front of Gutenberg, and he/she is going to end up walking away.

Another issue that I’m encountering is really bothering me. And maybe this is just me, but I think there might be others. As I continue to add content to this post, I reach the bottom of my browser window. There is no padding below this block that I am typing in. I have to reach over to my mouse to scroll down to get a little breathing room. Why should I have to do that? I don’t remember having this issue with the classic editor. Here is a screenshot showing what I’m experiencing.

I wish there was a way out-of-the-box to put a border around that image. Without that, you can’t see what I’m talking about regarding the lack of breathing room at the bottom of my browser window. And if I want to add inline styles, I lose my “image block”. I guess I need to make sure that my theme includes a class to add a damn border when I want one. Also, what if I don’t want a <figure /> tag around my image? What if I only want an image tag? I guess I can remove the <figure /> tag if I convert the block to HTML. But what if I don’t know HTML and I just want to add a border around an image? I’m screwed! But then again, I don’t know if that was something I could do with the classic editor or not. I don’t remember.

I just replaced the image above with one showing the block highlighted. Why did the “alternative text” that I had for the previous image disappear when I replaced the image? I didn’t add it directly to the image. I added it to the block settings. The “additional css class” that I had added to the block stayed. Why did the “alternative text” disappear?

Okay … another thing that I just ran into. Why can’t I select some text within a paragraph and change it to “code” styling? I could do that with the classic editor. In fact, it appears that the only styling I can put on text within a paragraph is bold, italic, and strikethrough. Why can’t I insert special characters? Or add superscripts or subscripts? Are they not valid within a paragraph? Do I need to change my paragraph to some “special” type of block? It doesn’t appear that I can “transform” a paragraph into a block that allows advanced text formatting. Well that’s not cool WordPress.

Apparently I can add a “classic editor” block to my post. This has the normal TinyMCE interface. But what if I already have some text written and I need extra formatting and I didn’t know that I needed this “special” block to apply it? And where are the subscript and superscript options? Do I need to install TinyMCE Advanced to get them?

And why does the “post updated” message not go away on its own? It hides part of the UI. That isn’t cool. I have to reach for my mouse again and go up and click the little x

And what if I want to add an inline link? Is it easy to do? Let’s find out. It is, but why does it require me extra clicks to specify that I want the link to open in a new window? And clicking on the little pencil icon doesn’t show that. You have to click on the kabob icon in order to see that option. Why can’t you include it in the “edit” modal? Isn’t that a more logical place for it?

How about a button? How easy is it to add a button? Normally, I would just add a link and add a class to it since I have that in my theme. But there isn’t an option to add a class to a link as far as I can see … at least not an inline link.

Before I add that button, let me tell you the problems I just ran into. I had hit enter to leave my previous paragraph, and Gutenberg automatically gave me a new paragraph block. I didn’t want that. And I couldn’t convert it to to a “button block”, which I am assuming I need in order to add a button. I clicked on the little “plus” icon at the top of the empty paragraph block but nothing happened. I had to click on the damn kabob icon to remove the block. Then I had to go back into the paragraph block and hit enter in order to have an option to add another block. Why is it so hard to so something so simple? Let’s see if Gutenberg lets me add a button block after this paragraph without jumping through hoops first.

Okay … I got my button added, but it looks goofy. Probably because I added the button classes from my theme to the settings for it (in the sidebar). So now it looks like there are 2 overlapping buttons. I wonder what it looks like on the frontend.

So let me get this straight … in order to float an image next to my paragraph, I need to move the image to before the paragraph … and I can’t drag it there … and then align it?

Anyway … I’m going to save this at this point so that I can see what my button looks like on the front end.

Not good. That’s how the button looks on the front end. This is how it ended up looking …

And this is how it is SUPPOSED to look …

Why is my button wrapped in a div? The classes I put in the block settings in the sidebar went on the div and not on the <a> like I wanted them to.

I have clear styles in my theme to make a link look like a button. I shouldn’t have to change my styles to work with Gutenberg’s stupid extra markup.

I think I’m done testing out Gutenberg. I haven’t done any crazy layout things in this post. I’ve just done normal things that anyone might want to do … whether they have HTML knowledge or not.

I can tell you that I will not be using Gutenberg on my personal WordPress website. I will keep the Classic Editor installed and active for as long as it is supported. In fact, I might end up replacing my WordPress website with one that I develop using Laravel. That way I’m not forced to use a new “editing experience” that I don’t want.

But as for the websites that we develop at work for clients … my hands might be tied there. We have installed the Classic Editor on all sites we currently manage. If I have my way, we’ll include it on new sites as well unless there is a good reason why a particular site might benefit from Gutenberg. As of right now, I can’t think of any.

In my mind, Gutenberg is definitely not ready for prime time. I’ve seen many many others say the same thing. Hopefully the powers-that-be realize this and decide to either delay the release of WordPress 5.0 or wait to incorporate Gutenberg into core. Leave it as a plugin for now and those that want to use it can. Don’t force it on the rest of us that it is causing issues for.

</rant>

The post Testing Gutenberg appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

I started watching NASCAR during the 2000 season, which was Dale Jr’s rookie season. My roommate at the time was a Dale Earnhardt Sr fan, so I would watch a race now and then. One weekend I saw an interview with Dale Jr. I thought that he was a good looking guy. So I decided to start watching more often. I eventually got hooked.

Dale Jr quickly became my favorite driver … and not just because of his looks. He is a down to earth guy who can really wheel a car.  

These days, I plan my weekends around the race schedule. My Mother knows to not call during a race unless it is an emergency. LOL I’ve even made the trek to see a couple races in person (bucket list item).

I went to the fall race at Chicagoland Speedway last year. I didn’t get to see Dale Jr race because that was when he was healing from his concussion. But I got to see him race last month at Kansas Speedway. Not only did I get to see him on the racetrack, I also got to meet him in person … well, sort of. We were walking around the displays outside of the track Sunday morning and heard that he was doing an appearance at the Chevy Racing booth that morning. We stood waiting for about 3 hours. It was worth the wait. He spoke for about 15 minutes or so and then signed autographs. Because we had gotten there so early, we were in a prime spot for the autographs. I was THIS CLOSE (and no that’s not zoomed in at all) …

There have been so many tribute videos online over the season. Each one has brought tears to my eyes. I’m sure there will be more today that will bring more tears, but those tears are happy tears. NASCAR is one of my escapes, and I can thank Dale Jr for that. 

At one of the displays at Kansas Speedway, they had a banner that you could sign that they were going to be giving to Dale Jr (it’s the banner in the featured image for this post). I got to leave him a message. He probably gets one of these at every track, but knowing that I was able to leave him a message makes me smile. It’s the little things.

I’m still going to watch NASCAR next year, and I definitely want to go to more races. Dale Jr isn’t the only driver that I follow (I’m cheering on Martin Truex Jr for the Cup championship today). But it’s going to be weird not seeing him in a car on the track. He’s been in the sport and I’ve been following him for as long as I’ve followed NASCAR.

I’m proud to say that I am a member of Junior Nation. 

The post The End of an Era appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

The biggest issue that I’ve had with WordPress development since I started is that themes and plugins are mostly made up of random functions in a single file. That can get really messy REALLY quickly. Sure … WordPress itself has been moving to more modern development practices (i.e. object oriented programming) in recent years, but there are still a lot of themes and plugins out there doing the “random functions in a file” thing.

I had already started creating classes to encapsulate functionality, in both my theme and my plugin development. But I found myself forgetting to include new classes in the main plugin file so that WordPress knew about them and thus blowing things up. Oops. So the main thing that I wanted to bring into my WordPress development routine was autoloading.

I have also gotten used to using namespacing after working with the Laravel framework and with Composer over the past couple of years. Namespacing isn’t something that I see much in WordPress, but it just feels natural to me.

My first attempt at bringing both namespacing and autoloading into my WordPress development routine involved using Composer. But using Composer simply to set up the autoloading (and not pull in any packages) was kind of silly (and overkill). So I did some more research (and ended up on StackOverflow a LOT) and figured out a better (more simple)  way to be able to bring both into my WordPress development. I’m not saying that this is the best way to do things, but it has been working for me for the past few months. I wanted to share in the hopes that it might help someone else out.

The first thing that I did was change up the file structure for my plugins. Instead of throwing all of the files into the plugin directory, I started grouping things in a similar way to how I have grouped files in the packages that I’ve developed for my Laravel CMS. Here’s an example for a fake plugin called Foobar. Foobar is a very simple plugin that creates a custom post type (foobar) and a custom taxonomy (foobar-group).

•   foobar
  •   src
    •   Core.php
    •   Groups.php
  •   templates
    •   archive-foobar.php
    •   single-foobar.php
    •   taxonomy-foobar-group.php
  •   foobar.php

The src folder contains the bulk of the functionality for the plugin. For a simple plugin or a plugin that only creates a custom post type, I tend to include everything in the Core.php file. For more complex plugins, like those that include custom taxonomies, I create a file for each taxonomy that contains the functions related to registering, managing, and displaying the taxonomy (Groups.php in the above file structure).

Since I develop a lot of plugins that set up custom post types and custom taxonomies, I usually have a templates folder that contains the templates needed to set things up like the post type archive page, the taxonomy archive pages, and the single post page for the post type. If I need any custom styles or javascript, I throw those into an assets folder.

Now that I have all of my files set up, I need to make sure WordPress knows where to find them. I decided on the following for the autoloading functionality. I put this function in the main plugin file (i.e. foobar.php).

/**
 * Register the autoload functionality for the plugin.
 */
function foobar_autoload($class_name)
{
	// trim off any opening slashes
	$class_name = ltrim($class_name, '\\');

	// if this isn't for our plugin, do nothing
	if(strpos($class_name, 'BECKY\Foobar') !== 0)
		return;

	// determine the file to load
	// - strip off the plugin namespace to get just the filename
	// - classes are in the 'src' directory
	$class_directory    = realpath(plugin_dir_path(__FILE__)).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'src'.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
	$class_name         = str_replace('BECKY\Foobar\\', '', $class_name);
	$class_file         = str_replace('\\', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $class_name).'.php';
	$path               = $class_directory.$class_file;

	// make sure the file exists
	if(file_exists($path))
		require_once $path;
}
spl_autoload_register('foobar_autoload');

The BECKY\Foobar in the function is the namespace base for this plugin. Foobar because that is the name of the plugin. BECKY is the “client code” in this example. You see, at work we have 5 character codes for each of our clients. I use that client code as the namespace base for the plugins that I develop for the projects.

The last thing that I have to do is get the core functionality for my plugin all set up. I don’t have to include the individual class files anymore. WordPress already knows where to find them because of the above autoloading functionality.

I include a function similar to the following example in the main file of my plugin to get the plugin going.

/**
 * Gets the plugin going.
 */
function becky_foobar_init()
{
	$core = new BECKY\Foobar\Core();
	$core->initialize();
}
becky_foobar_init();

I can now use namespacing in all of the classes that I need to implement the functionality needed by the plugin and WordPress will know where to look for those files.

That’s it. Easy peasy.

The post How I Modernized My WordPress Development appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a textbook case for introversion. I prefer to spend time alone. After spending too much time with people I need to hibernate to recharge. Sometimes I only need a couple hours to recharge while others I need several days.

To compound my introversion, I have social anxiety. It is the worst when I need to go to some event or conference where I don’t really know anyone. I’m mostly okay when I go out with friends, but when they aren’t with me, I tend to hide in corners. LOL 

I also suffer from FOMO. While I’m hiding in those corners, I’m observing everything around me. While I might not be comfortable interacting, I still want to feel like I’m part of whatever event I’m at.

There are times where I get so pissed at myself for hiding on the sidelines. My internal monolog is screaming at me to go talk to people or to just let loose. 

There’s a conference in Minneapolis that I have gone to for the past 3 years. The people who attend (and put it on) are smart and friendly. I want so badly to just jump into conversations and hang out at the social gathering that is part of the conference. It is the perfect opportunity to make new friends with the same career that I have and to network for potential job opportunities. But no matter how much I’m [internally] screaming at myself, I always find myself hiding in proverbial corners (if not physical corners).

I said that I’m “mostly okay” when I go out with friends. I’m definitely more comfortable in those situations, but I still find myself wishing I could just let loose. Like last night. I went with my best friend to a street dance a little over an hour away because my favorite band was playing. We were in a town where nobody knew us (other than the band). Again, my inner monolog was telling me to dance like I do when I’m alone at home. Who’s gonna make fun of me if I look like an idiot? I’ll most likely never see these people again (other than my friend and the band). Why can’t I just let loose for a fucking change and stop worrying what people think about me?

Like I started out saying … most of the time I’m okay with being an introvert. But in situations like the two that I just described, I wish there was an off switch or a pill I could take for my introversion. I wish I could find some way to be comfortable enough in my own skin to actually enjoy myself without giving a damn what other people thought of me.

The post Musings from an Introvert appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

Earlier this year, I was working out on a regular basis and eating right. I was actually starting to feel good. Not necessarily happy, but good nonetheless.

At some point, something happened and I stopped working out as much, and then not at all. I stopped cooking meals and just started heating up something in the microwave. My jeans are now feeling tighter again. I hate how I look. I never have any energy to do anything, let alone work out. I hate going to work. I barely even touch my computer in the evenings or on the weekends. I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy.  I don’t know what triggered things, but I’m right back where I started.

AND I DON’T LIKE IT!

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to commit to myself. To get back to where I was at the end of this summer and keep moving toward my end goal … to surpass it. Despite what my asshole brain tells me, I FRICKIN’ DESERVE IT DAMMIT!

1. I deserve to be happy.
2. I deserve to be healthy.
3. I deserve to enjoy developing websites again.
4. I deserve to not dread going to work.
5. I deserve to be appreciated.
6. I deserve to go out of the house and DO THINGS IN PUBLIC.
7. I deserve to have friends.
8. I deserve a man who accepts me for who I am.
9. I deserve to LIVE my life!

It’s time to tell my asshole brain to “fuck off”. It’s time to believe in myself again. It’s time to be my own best friend.

The post Becky: You Deserve It, Dammit! appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

That has me thinking about the power of music. How music can make you happy or sad. How music can help you celebrate. How music can bring back memories (good and bad). How music can feed your soul.

My genre of choice is country music. It’s what I grew up listening to. From classic country to now, that’s what I listen to when I control the radio dial (or the mp3 player). I admit, some of the newer country music doesn’t really feel like country, but I still like most of it.

My current favorite (national) artists are Dustin Lynch, Old Dominion, Parmalee, Thomas Rhett, Brett Eldredge, Love and Theft, and Brantley Gilbert. That’s who’s in the playlist I mentioned. But every now and then, I crave “classic” country. I put classic in quotes because some of what I crave was what was on the radio when I was in college and when I first moved to Fargo. Calling that classic makes me feel old. I’m talking about Terri Clark, Jo Dee Messina, Rhett Akins, John Michael Montgomery, Alan Jackson, Alabama, Garth Brooks, Martina McBride … I could go on and on.

When I first moved to Fargo, my friends and I went out almost every weekend (oh to be young again LOL). Our (or at least my) favorite night out was Thursdays at Pistol Pete’s Saloon. Thursday was ladies night, which meant all you could drink tap beer and well drinks for $6. Back then … when we were living paycheck to paycheck … that was a deal. Pistol Pete’s had live country bands on the weekends too … Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. While the bathrooms left something to be desired, the size of dance floor and the live bands made it a go-to place for country fans. I have so many memories from the original Pistol Pete’s. 

Pistol Pete’s did move over the years, and I went out at all of them, except for the north Moorhead location (which I think was less country), because I LOVE live country music. The doors closed for good what seems like forever ago (I think it was 2009). Ever since then, Fargo hasn’t really had a country bar … at least not a real country bar. There was Cadillac Ranch, but that was a bar that played country music, not a country bar. The Windbreak and Shotgun Sally’s do have country bands on stage from time to time, but they’re not real country bars either. When you play everything but country music during set breaks, you’re not country. I’m left with no favorite hangout, and it makes me sad.

So what’s my definition of a country bar? It’s a bar that has live country bands every weekend (preferably the same band playing for a full weekend). It’s a bar that has a BIG dance floor that has enough room for 2-steppers to circle the outside and line dancers to dance in the middle with room left over for the free-stylers. It’s a bar with a stage big enough for a band to move around (and maybe bring people up on stage). It’s a bar that plays country music during set breaks (for crying out loud). That’s a real country bar. But it’s more than just that. It’s the way that the bar feels. I’m not sure how to explain that. But if you’ve ever been a “regular” at a country bar, you know what I mean.

One of the biggest things I miss about Fargo not having a real country bar is live country music. I’ve seen so many bands over the years. I’ve even helped some bands sell CDs and was the “WebMistress” for a band for a few years.

Some bands aren’t around anymore (Avalanche, The Plowboys, Catch 22 [they went by another name at one point too, but I can’t remember it now]). Some bands have completely different members (32 Below). Some bands I just never see any more either because I never know when they play or they don’t play around here on the weekends (The Roosters, The Great Outdoors).

The local bands that I see the most often these days are October Road and Redline. Every now and then, a band from Minneapolis comes to town (the Shane Martin Band, Hitchville, Copperhead Creek). I think (or at least I hope) they would come to town more often if we had a real country bar for them to play at.

For the past several years, I’ve had a dream that if I win the lottery, I’m going to build Fargo the country bar that it needs … that it deserves. A real country bar. A bar that has live bands every weekend, a huge dance floor, and dance lessons during the week. I’ve got a name and tagline picked out and people in mind that I’d hire for various positions. Oh yeah … I’m serious about this dream. I even had a location picked out, but some developer decided to put a strip mall there. So now I have to find another location. Oh … and I should probably start buying lottery tickets too, huh? LOL

I’d like to think that if I had a country bar to go to on a more regular basis that maybe I’d be able to keep these damn “funks” at bay. If I had a crappy week at work, I’d have somewhere to go hang out and forget about things for a few hours. Somewhere to dance and talk with friends or just listen to music. Somewhere to recharge my soul.

I talked earlier about some of the bands from Minneapolis that have come into town. One of those bands has become my favorite (and is in that playlist I mentioned), the Shane Martin Band. I’ve even gotten to be friends with the band (at least I hope they see me as a friend and not as a groupie). I wanted to share the music video for their song “Whatever Floats Your Boat”. It’s a fun summer song with a fun video. So check it out. And if you ever get a chance to check ’em out live, DO IT!!! I promise you that they’ll become one of your favorite bands too.

The post Music Feeds the Soul appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

The purpose of the trip was to attend WordCamp Minneapolis. It was my first WordCamp, 2nd conference in Minneapolis this year, and 4th trip to Minneapolis in the past year and a half. But it was the first time I really felt comfortable being there.

I attended the MidwestPHP conference both last year and earlier this year. The conference was in downtown Minneapolis. Both times, I headed straight to the hotel and didn’t leave until the conference was over (other than to walk to the conference venue or to get food). Driving in Minneapolis … especially in downtown … scared the hell out of me. I also hid in my hotel room when the conference wasn’t going on. I was there by myself, and I’m not comfortable in situations where I don’t know anyone.

This time around, I went (to WordCamp) with a couple co-workers, so I had a safety net, so to speak. I got a chance to talk to someone that I met at the MidwestPHP conference and have chatted with on Twitter. Even though we’ve only talked briefly on a couple of occasions, I actually felt comfortable talking to him this time around (which is quite a big step for me ). He made a comment that he liked the fact that I was getting more extroverted. Now … me being extroverted is a bit of a stretch. But I do find myself being a tad bit more outgoing, outspoken (at work), and a little bit more comfortable in situations where I don’t know anyone.

The conference was great. I learned a lot and have some ideas to make our WordPress websites even better (not only the public facing side but also the admin side for the clients). But the conference wasn’t the only (or even the best) part of the weekend.

My favorite regional band, the Shane Martin Band, is from Minneapolis. They happened to have shows in the Minneapolis area both Friday and Saturday. They don’t get a chance to come to the Fargo area very often, so I wanted to take advantage of my trip and catch at least one of their shows. I made plans to go to the Saturday show and drag my co-worker with me.

I knew that we wouldn’t get to the hotel until around 6:30pm or 7pm on Friday, so I wasn’t planning on going to see them that night. But after arguing with myself and some encouragement from my co-worker, I decided to go. That’s right … I decided to leave the hotel in my car, drive to Maple Grove, and go to a bar by MYSELF to see them play. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

I was a tad bit nervous about the drive, but it turned out to be really easy to get to the bar (mostly thanks to turn-by-turn navigation on my phone). Once I got inside, my anxiety reared its ugly head. The bar was small and PACKED. I walked to the back of the bar, not seeing any place to sit. Oh shit! I headed back the way I came, stopped at the bar to get a beer (liquid courage), and then happened to notice a table on the edge of the dance floor and right up by the stage. So I snagged it. I’m really glad I went. I got to talk to the guys in the band during set break and hear them play my favorite of their original songs.

This little side trip proved 2 BIG things to me … (1) I can drive in Minneapolis, and (2) I can go to a bar by myself if I really want to (even though it’s more fun to go with friends).

Saturday night was the best part of the entire trip. My co-worker went with me (even though for a while I didn’t think she was going to). I was worried that she wouldn’t have fun since she doesn’t listen to country music, but I could tell that she had fun. She was the one who got me on the dance floor first. It was a lot less busy than Friday night, so I had more of an opportunity to talk to the guys in the band, which is something I always look forward to.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, this trip was just what the doctor ordered. I haven’t been in the best of head spaces lately (for a while actually). I think getting out of town really helped. The live country music Friday and Saturday nights was long overdue. Conversations with new friends was the cherry on top.  

There’s a part of me that is sad that I’m back in Fargo rather than in Minneapolis. I need to visit again soon. Or maybe even make the visit permanent.

Is this a brand new Becky? I don’t know. But whoever this is, I hope she sticks around for a while. I kinda like her.

The post A Brand New Becky? appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.

This is my first time working with Amazon S3. Luckily, this project is using the CMS that I built using Laravel. I say luckily because there are packages that other people have already created that make working with Amazon S3 insanely easy. I believe the Laravel core also works with S3 out of the box (or almost out of the box). I decided to use the GrahamCampbell/Laravel-Flysystem package in my project.

I had no issues finding documentation regarding how to upload files to S3. Where I ran into trouble was figuring out how to set things up within Amazon S3 itself. I never did find a definitive guide as to how to set things up, so I ended up using trial and error (lots of trial, several errors, and some cursing under my breath). I figured that I couldn’t be the only person who was having these sorts of issues, so I wanted to share how I did things in the hopes that it might help someone else (and [more importantly] so I can come back and see how I did things if I have to do this for another project down the road. ).

The first obvious step is that you need an AWS account (or Amazon Web Services). So if you don’t already have one, head over to Amazon and create one.

Once you have your AWS account set up, log into your console and go to the S3 service section for the following steps.

1) Create a bucket. See the Amazon documentation if you have any questions. This is where you will upload your files to.

2) View the Properties for your bucket and add a new Permission.

• Grantee: Any Authenticated AWS User
• Permissions: List, Upload/Delete

3) Add a policy for the bucket that will make your files publicly available. Click on the “Add bucket policy” and add the following code to set up the policy. Make sure you replace BUCKET.NAME with the name of the bucket that you created. If you don’t do this, then your file will not be viewable on your website (or in my case the audio won’t play).

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowPublicRead",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET.NAME/*"
        }
    ]
}

Switch to the IAM service section for the remaining steps.

4) Create a Policy that will allow files to be uploaded, deleted, and read from the bucket that you created. Amazon has a policy generator to help you set things up. The final product should look similar to the following. Again, make sure you replace BUCKET.NAME with the name of the bucket that you created. You can change the Sid to something else, but it needs to be unique for your account (I believe).

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowFileReadUploadDelete”,
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:DeleteObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:PutObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET.NAME"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

5) Create a Group and apply your policy to that group.

6) Create a User and add the user to the group that you created. This user will inherit the permissions from the policy that was assigned to the group.

7) Record the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key for the user that Amazon gives you. You will not be able to view the secret access key at a later date, so make sure that you record it now. Otherwise you will have to reset it later and update any applications that are utilizing the user.

You should now be able to upload files to your Amazon S3 account from your website. As for how to do that … that’s a post for a later date.

The post Configuring Amazon S3 for File Uploads appeared first on High Tech Redneck Woman.