Well, I was pinging the other side of my ISP’s network connection. The Tel-Co side. I thought that if anything would go down it would be the connection between my ISP and theirs. Nope. Pings were just fine.

Now I’m pinging the DNS servers. Now when my ISP goes down, it just drops that gateway and uses my other ISP.

I haven’t had to use my third option. Connecting to any random open WiFi.

I’m working on KBB and DealerTrend data file imports right now. This should be done in the next few weeks. I only work on this code on the weekends.

One of the reasons I’m doing a DT import is to speed up the inventory listings for my DT customers. Right now it downloads the inventory from their servers on every request. That really slows things down. It used to cache, but it doesn’t seem to be doing that anymore. I’m getting a lot of complaints about the slowness.

To fix the slow problem I will download the inventory from DT and import it into WP. Then it’s served straight from WP. The import can be run nightly also.

I’m also replacing the widgets that come with the WP DealerTrend plugin. The thumbs display is really, really slow and has no way to target pages anymore. So I’m fixing that up along with making it better.

My auto dealer customers are going to be pretty happy soon.

if ( !is_admin() ) add_filter( 'posts_clauses', 'ors_rental_query' );
function ors_rental_query($clauses) {
if ( !strstr($clauses['where'], 'rental') ) return $clauses;
global $wpdb, $ors_rental_cookies;
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'price') as decimal) as price";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'home_size') as decimal) as home_size";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'bedrooms') as decimal) as bedrooms";
$clauses['fields'] .= ", CAST((select {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_value from {$wpdb->postmeta} where {$wpdb->postmeta}.post_id = {$wpdb->posts}.ID and {$wpdb->postmeta}.meta_key = 'bathrooms') as decimal) as bathrooms";
$clauses['having'] = array();
$clauses['orderby'] = '';
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies['text_search']) and $ors_rental_cookies['text_search'] != '' ) {
$clauses['where'] .= " and ({$wpdb->posts}.post_title like '%{$ors_rental_cookies['text_search']}%'";
$clauses['where'] .= " or {$wpdb->posts}.post_content like '%{$ors_rental_cookies['text_search']}%')";
}
$search_params = array('bedrooms', 'bathrooms');
foreach ($search_params as $param) {
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies[$param]) and $ors_rental_cookies[$param] != '' ) {
$clauses['having'][] = "$param = '$ors_rental_cookies[$param]'";
}
}
if ( !empty($clauses['having']) ) {
$clauses['where'] .= ' HAVING ' . implode(' and ', $clauses['having']);
}
$order_params = array('price' => 'price_near', 'home_size' => 'size_near');
foreach ($order_params as $field => $param) {
if ( isset($ors_rental_cookies[$param]) and $ors_rental_cookies[$param] != '' ) {
$clauses['orderby'] .= ", ABS({$ors_rental_cookies[$param]} - $field)";
}
}
if ( $clauses['orderby'] == '' ) $clauses['orderby'] = 'price ASC';
else $clauses['orderby'] = substr($clauses['orderby'], 2);
return $clauses;
}

New in WordPress 3.1 is the posts_clauses filter. There is no documentation page on it, so I had to Google for the usage. But it works awesome for what I needed.

I use the $clauses['fields'] to subquery in the meta data. Then I’m able to do sort orders on it. I can order by price or whatever from the aliased subqueries. In my case I use special “near” method to find the prices that are near the search param.

To find an exact match like in my bathrooms and bedrooms, I use a HAVING clause to get access to my aliases. I just tack it to the end of the $clauses['where'] and it works like a charm.

I make sure to use CAST to cast my strings to integers for sorting by price and size. No buggy string number sorts here.

The above code does a lot and it might be more than you need but it should point you in the right direction. For more check out the source code Rental Post Type Line 293

Jane is doing awesome at launching sites.  TheJane, We Race Against Hunger, and a few others.  She is also converting all my old sites from HTML to WordPress.  I’ll soon be able to turn off that old Slicehost server.

I might have to hire someone to do my back burner Rails projects.  I have two that could be pretty good.  I don’t have the money to hire anyone though, so that will be hard.  Can’t find anyone to work for free.  If they weren’t automotive related I could probably get my friend Dave to help me, but he is looking for something outside of that realm as a side project.

Anyway, gotta get back to work.  I’ll be in SF tomorrow at the Heroku Waza.

And I don’t like the new icon.

But, maybe things will change next year.

Got new parts for my bike on monday and haven’t had time until today to get into the garage.  New jets for the carb are in and the bike is now running awesome!

I just need to finish up the wiring and fender struts so I can ride it!

The Honda would have been a pretty cool little bike, but it has no title. Can’t register it and when I went to DMV they just gave me the run-a-round. Looks like it will be a PITA to get a title for it, so I’m going to dump that idea.

So there are these cool sites. http://xs650chopper.com and http://chopcult.com

I’ve been checking out all the photos and stuff and I’ve decided that I want a Yamaha XS650. Fixed up they are really sweet bikes. So I’ve been scouring Craig’s List for one. I really didn’t want to spend over $1000, but I’ve found a few that are mostly built already and just need to be finished up. Most of them are in AZ and TX.

Found one in Vacaville area that looks like a really sweet deal. Getting more info right now on it.

I better not break any axles after this all gets setup.  I sure hope I’m wheeling next weekend too.  Takes forever to get this stuff done.

I’ve also put the rig up for sale.  !!OH NOES!!

Yep.  Just getting tired of sinking money into it I guess.  We are talking about moving also.  So if we move back to the Bay Area it will be a PITA to go wheeling.

My plans are to buy a Santa Cruz Blur TR Carbon mountain bike and get back into that.  I used to have a lot of fun riding.  I’m also way, way out of shape from sitting around for the past 10 years.  The last 3 being the worst.  No exercise at all.

So the rig is up for sale for $14,000.  That’s about half of what I have into it.  No hits yet, and probably won’t get any for a long time.  I’ll just keep wheeling it until it gets sold.