These Things Matter To Me

Though I’m a Linux a system administrator, I find myself interacting with Windows more often lately, usually because it touches the virtualization workflow in some environments I work with.  Lately I’ve been working on a bunch of Windows XP Professional hosts…. because they all run VMware Workstation 6.5, with Linux guests.

There are a couple of things about the installation I’m looking to script, so I’ve had to look up what: What’s a scripting language available on all Windows XP systems?

Answer: VBScript and Jscript  (Found out via this helpful  Stackoverflow.com post where somebody already asked this, so I didn’t have to.)

Windows does have another environment, Powershell, which looks great and quite Linux-like.  It can be installed on XP, but does not come stock.  It should come stock in Windows 7.

In my fresh WordPress 2.7 install, the Plugins nav had a “1″ next to it that would not go away. I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was trying to notify me about.

Here’s what I’ve been trained to think it means:

• 1 plugin needs attention
  (As in, “you’re not quite done installing a plugin, you need an API key or something.”)
  or
• 1 plugin just got installed. Or enabled. Or disabled.
  (And this notification will soon fade away.)

Sometimes it was red.

Sometimes it was grey.

Here’s what it actually meant:

An inactive plugin that came with my install, WP-Super-Cache,was eligible for an upgrade. This was installed via Dreamhost who may have packaged some dormant plugins. I have no idea at the moment whether non-Dreamhost installs will run into this.

I guess it’s a variation of the “needs attention” design pattern, but given that it was an inactive plugin, and the status of the available upgrade wasn’t particularly prominent or connected or linked-to from the Plugin (1), I know I’m not the only one who’s been stumped by this. I won’t name names, but a WP vet I asked didn’t know either.

GUESS WHO’S NOT CRAZY.

The more you know.