For some reason related to my encroaching Google-paranoia, I have decided that my IM system will be Jabber; and the server will be one I run and pay for myself. This is not merely paranoia; it borders on disassociative psychosis. But nothing stupid and pointless ventured, no holes punched in drywall gained.

Software: it all really, really, really sucks. I decided that I’d use “Prosody“, because hey why not, it’s less monstrous than installing Erlang just to fucking chat. But, never one to do things easily, I maintain a separate build root that’s not /usr/local (which for reasons that are lost to me in the dim mists of time, I hate). But! In order to install “Prosody” one has to install Lua — NOTE TO SELF: INSTALLING A LANGUAGE INTERPRETER WHO’S DOCUMENTATION IS IN PORTUGESE IS THE FIRST SIGN THAT YOU’VE MADE A GRIEVOUS MISTAKE — and then a whole giant whack of dependencies, like sockets (apparently, Brazilians don’t care for their sockets) and, more depressingly, expat. Yes, this process involves XML.

There are many things I hate, most if not all of them software related, but there is little I detest quite so pointedly as XML. And now I have to go find a stupid goddamn XML library so this IM system can talk to other people? Is this protocol not self-describing? Are we not men? Have we fallen to the level of dumb beasts? And then, as if I hadn’t been worked over enough by the preceeding, I have patch Makefiles to get the fucking Lua expat wrappers to build.

Why? Why? Why?

Usually at this point I give up, but I had some strong Oolong before bed so I powered through it. I even went to a certificate authority and got a signed XMPP certificate! Yes, I am part of this oily web of XML based trust.

sigh

The strict aceticism of the world of Dijkstra becomes more attractive with each passing softwaer-related blow these days. Those of you interested, however, can reach me here.