On Dorkiness

Or why sitting around listening to Nirvana doesn't make me depressed

I couldn't get the .cgi script that counts visitors to a page to work with the entrance page to the Paperwork. The script has worked with all my other web pages -- obviously, the problem had something to do with the fact that the Paperwork is in a separate folder.

I did what I always do: I studied how CJ did it on her pages. I steal all web-related stuff from CJ. My .cgi visitor-counting-script sprang full-blown from her directory. My index page was based on a copy of her index page. Any day I expect her to say, "No, Diane, you can't come out with me and my friends, you're too little."

I digress.

Her pages seemed to be fine, dammit. No weird "../../" UNIX directory prefixes. Her .counts file counted the files in the subdirectories just as easily as they did the ones in the same directory. I tried this, I tried that. I looked at previous instructions she'd given me on using .cgi scripts (and, in fact, found an error that needed to be fixing, but it wasn't the one keeping me from using the .cgi script).

I hollered for help when I couldn't take it any more.

When CJ told me what I should do, something became immediately clear. I had looked at her files -- but not her directories. Like, you know, half the story?

Look. Read. Weep.

The counter works fine now. I understand this >_< much more about UNIX directories and how UNIX looks up files. And listening to Kurt Cobain wailing about how he likes himself, better than you...well, somehow it just seems appropriate, not depressing.

This little cgi script incident -- mostly precipitated by my having little to no initiative and "spunk" -- made me think about a subject that seems to have flown in my face very often recently, and not even in regards to me. The subject of lameness, of not trying very hard, of thinking that "good enough" is.

A student in my German class put up a web page for the Deutschklub, a German-language-themed student club. When he showed a copy of it to the teacher, she was horrified: misspelling, misinformation, incompleteness. She said that no German student would ever think to hand in
There was an essay in Newsweek -- this week? last week? -- in which a teacher at a university was appalled to find students trying to bargain their grades with him, even after the final grades were posted. As if the work they had done in class was irrelevant to the grade.
My film lighting teacher went off on a rant (who knows why -- the man just loves to rant) about how students don't invest themselves fully in their film projects because "it's just a student film." He wondered why people were so glib about doing their second-best. If you can't do your utmost best right now, what makes you can in the real world?

I have nowhere to go on this. Just horking up a furball.

I've gotten a few reviews back of the Paperwork so far, and I'm glad to say that they've been positive.