Damn hot that you're here my friend.
A story about Dirk, Ralph and Fantomas:
Here I am, about 6 years ago, moving off Windoz crap, a web server called, cleverly, "Website" by O'Reilly and I had not done a thing with Apache, Regex or any of it. I had just gotten buttraped by an SEO company claiming that I'd "be in the top 10 in 90 days guaranteed" and 10K and 180 days later I was NOWHERE. I began researching and figured out quickly that my issue was a highly dynamic site, complicated parameter based URLS and at the time, most engines did not like that.
I came across the notion of cloaking, researched a bunch and found "Industrial Strength Cloaking by Fantomas." I began using the database but had built my own systems for cloaking since I now knew WTF I was doing (a bit).
But then I had troubles - I wanted to do a particular thing with Apache and had no idea how to do it. Well, Ralph and Dirk had been great so far, why not? So I called Ralph and told him what I wanted - he said he'd be right back. 10 minutes later, he says that Dirk can do it for $150USD, but I had to pay first. I was curious, but agreed.
In about 15 seconds later, I received a 3 line mod_rewrite condition and rule (hell, the first line was "RewriteEngine on"
) and it worked BRILLIANTLY. I called Ralph back who was a bit sheepish on the phone at first, not knowing if I was going to lambast him for scoffing so much for so little.
I was laughing my ass off. Flipping Europeans had out-capitalized an American, and even been a perfect living example of the "Knowing Exactly Where To Kick" analogy.
In the weeks following that I spent a more time with Dirk on regexs and mod_rewrite and he really demonstrated his generosity with information, patience (
whooboy did he need it at times) and capability. Since then we've gotten together a few times (Ralph as well) and they have both become dear friends as well as profound assets as compatriots. Although it will be difficult to entice Ralph to join a coder's board, he is one to know as well, if you ever get the privilege.
Thanks Dirk for being here and moderating!
/p
