I thought the problems had been fixed, but no: the errors the server log just compound. I don’t even know whether this entry will publish — with or without errors. Help from LivingDot has dried up, or they’ve given up.

I’ve spent over thirty hours since this began just trying to get the thing working:

First, a slow and tedious process of visiting plugin homepages, looking for updates; installing updates to them or deleting other plugins. Revising templates when necessary to reflect the change in plugins in use.

Things seemed to work — but alas, no, they didn’t.

So now I’ve revised templates to remove some more plugin use. I’ve also deleted category and monthly archiving; those archives were rarely used, in any case, by anyone. The new 3.3x tagging system has been implemented in the templates, which would prove to be a much better method for aiding visitors’ searches of relevant data — if, that is, MT 3.34 under FastCGI worked as well as the selling shtick would have everyone believe. I’ve thought that these changes, at least, would cut down on server load.

Yes, a few references around the Blogosphere about how MT 3.34 under FastCGI! works on Site A or Site B; and, yes, my host claims my installation is the only one experiencing problems, of all they host using MT 3.34 and FastCGI; but a few others have had problems as well. Anyway, the MT forums and the SixApart site as well are even barer in offering help or aid.

What happens when Firefox upgrades their browser? Ah, incompatible plugins are disabled, but the browser keeps on working. Heck, Firefox even searches for upgrades to plugins! What happens when MT upgrades? Crashes, errors, and a resounding silence from Sixapart: no lists of known incompatibilities (save the big BigPAPI plugin incompatibility), no FAQs addressing anything like the errors now constantly appearing in my server logs, nada.

Of course, I didn’t install FastCGI and Movable Type 3.34 on my server. That was LivingDot. One day, I arrive home from work (because, despite the fact that I’ve spent over 30 hours trying to fix these problems over the last few days, I do have to work for a living. And sleep, when I can. Etc.) — I log in, and the site’s down. No email from LivingDot telling me why. So I think some sort of error has occurred, or perhaps some hacking. An error caused the last service outage, many months ago, after all. I create a service ticket w/ LivingDot, asking them why the site is down.

Aha! The site was suspended, due to too much server hogging. I’ve been w/ Living Dot for almost two years, have never had this problem before, and am shocked. What can I do? I ask.

I’m told that the site will be unsuspended, and they’ll install FastCGI, which helps Movable Type operate up to 15x faster! I say, okay. They also upgrade MT from v. 3.2x to v. 3.34; 3.34 is built to run on FastCGI, after all.

For nearly two years, the only thing keeping me from blogging: my occasional boredom with blogging.

My installation of MT is upgraded by my host: and now, blogging’s a hit-or-miss enterprise. I could actually blog about conversations occurring in our slim neck of the Blogospheric woods — heck, I saw one post at Global Guerrillas that I thought deserved a post here at D5GW — but why bother spending the hours to create an entry if the MT installation locks up during the save, spits out an error — or, if visitors will be unable to comment on it? (And where would I find the time to give to writing the entry, studying the Blogospheric finds, etc., when I’m spending 7, 8, or 9 hours a day just trying to fix the installation?)

In any case….sorry, this has turned into a rant. I appear to have three options before me:

1. I can delete every damned plugin from the system. Sure, MT 3.34 comes loaded with a few basic plugins, so maybe I should not touch those. But otherwise, I could delete everything and be satisfied with a fairly generic set-up. The automatically created cross-post links would disappear. Other things would disappear from the site. But generic is good, right? I also understand that Movable Type has made a selling point about being able to personalize an installation via plugins — there’s even a very very very special page in the MT interface for doing just that — but no. I can’t delete one plugin, wait 4-12 hours for MTunderFastCGI to recognize its disappearance, and see if that fixes the problem. And then, re-add the plugin while deleting the next plugin in my list, wait 4 -12 hours for MT to recognize these changes, and see if that works. Why? Because each and every cycle would require changes to the templates or how the site is designed. And I’d be looking at having the site down for the better part of the month of March if I took such a route — there could, after all, be conflicts between plugins rather than merely a single bad plugin; so I’d have to try all combinations, in 4-12 hour cycles, while trying to earn a living/sleep/etc. Nope. Best to get rid of them all and go generic.
2. Alternatively, if I’m going to have a rather standard blog, with little personalization possible, I sure as hell don’t need to keep dishing out the $68 every three months I’m now paying to a host that upgrades installations into nightmarish time-eaters. Google’s Blogger would serve as well, and is free.
3. And last — but not at all least, I think — I could give up blogging altogether. So much smoke and hot air, for what purpose? Two years of it is enough, for any stretch. This would not only save me money, but it would save me time. As for “5GW” — well, if that concept as we’ve explored it here is anywhere near what the truth will be, then perhaps it’s way past time for others to spend their lives exploring it. Hands in the field, and all that. If it’s accurate, it will develop anyway, and others will observe it anyway. So to hell with it, maybe.

I’ve been hoping for a magic pill from LivingDot, SixApart, and the ‘Net in general to clear up these problems with the installations, but have been unable to find info. Searches which include text from the errors in the logs, when combined with “MT” turn up either absolutely no results or only a handful of useless results. This is probably because SixApart rushed the damn thing to press — announcing 3.34 in January of this year. And, as my host has written to me, LivingDot is not in the business of developing the blogging engine. That, my friends and perhaps soon-to-be-past visitors, is a lesson for the Open-Source-Warfare advocates:

So many people feeding into the process, and every one of them falling into one of two groups:

• The In-Bred: who talk to themselves and amongst themselves and are primarily concerned with making their own uses of a process work. (SixApart.) Others just have to suffer through the addition of so many miscellaneous inclusions of data. But the In-Bred will make money off those others by continuing to hype the “open-source” and “personalizable” aspects of their hierarchical central-node. They won’t even pay much attention to what gets added to their code, or what plugins are available, or to conflicts in code — especially, if it’s not code they’ve also added to their God System — although they’ll occasionally make a show of it.
• The Lost: Dependent on the In-Bred, The Lost are deceived by dreams of uniqueness and specialization and personal distinction and achievement. In order to operate, they will usually go Generic every time, because that’s simplest; but this doesn’t make them less lost. Those who would move beyond the Generic will find that there’s just too much data, too much conflict, and too much chaos; and they will be lost in another way.

But combine the two groups to see the encompassing generalization: In such an environment, there can be no adepts nor experts. Only the insular and self-sustaining (the ignorati) or the finally lost and helpless. Everyone becomes a perpetual novice.