So.... Google made a mess of your AdWords profile?

Google makes a mess of accounts, pretty regularly. With a reliability that comes with extensive automation, Google also ignores any and all appeals for intervention to fix busted accounts.

My problem: My Google account can do all kinds of stuff on Google, except manage the ads on my blog. I had to create a new account, exclusively to manage ads on my account.

Salvation came in the form of fiddling about in the AdWords/AdSense console. I poked about here, on the basis of "follow the money". While publishers provide content, which is nice; advertisers provide cash money; which is life itself, for Google. In a not-at-all-surprising twist, the console for placing ads (rather than hosting) has heaps of functions, is beautiful, and actually works! One of the AdWords functions is to allow multiple users for a given AdWords account, and additional users can be administrators! Woo!

To re-enable my account with AdSense/AdWords, I followed the following steps.:

1. If you haven't already, go make a new Google account.
2. If you haven't already, go make a blog. It may need a published post, but the content doesn't matter.
3. Login to http://adwords.google.com/ using your new account.
4. Go to the settings menu (under that little cog thing in the top-right corner of the screen).
5. Go to the "Access and Authorization" menu (listed down the left side of the screen).
6. Go to the "User Management" menu (listed down the left side of the screen).
7. Add the Email address for your broken GMail account. DO NOT check the "Administrator" checkbox, yet.
8. In your GMail account, open the email, and accept the invitation.
9. Back in the "User Management" menu (for the new Google account), you can now tick the "Administrator" checkbox new to your older, previously broken, Google account.

You'll need to have two browsers (not just windows, but separate browsers, like IE and Chrome) to make this easier, one for each Google account. You can do this with one browser, but there'll be a crazy amount of logout/login processes, and that gets boring, and can cause weird problems.

I hope this works for you. After this, I now have One Google account managing all of my blog stuff, including AdWords/AdSense; which is nice.

Adventures in Ruby and Capistrano

My my current project has seen a revisit of an old role - automating the deployment of distributed systems. Owing to the vagaries of consultancy, I found myself the developer and maintainer of a Ruby-themed deployment environment designed by someone else. I was thrown in the deep end, which is ok - the water was warm, and the current, gentle.

The (non-Ruby) components:
GitLab - centralised git repository management.
Jenkins - schedules, catalogues, and organises builds, and test runs.
Puppet - setup infrastructure and install underlying software. I'm aware that Puppet is built using Ruby, but as a user, this is well-hidden.

The Ruby bits:
rvm - The Ruby Version Manager. Installs and maintains the Ruby environment.
gem - a packaged up Ruby library. Analogous to a lightweight rpm, or (more of a stretch) msi file.
geminabox - server and caching proxy for gems built, and used.
bundle - a tool for managing gems.
rake - make in Ruby, can use gems.
Capistrano - a set of tools to do stuff (mostly rake) on other machines (via ssh).