• Channel your inner geek

    The more elements of the unknown a given project contains, the more your brain is begging for a bruising. I have a passing acquaintance with the Movable Type publishing platform – whose software powers this blog. I have less experience with MySQL, an open source database environment. I have even less experience with Perl, the programming language utilized by the Movable Type publishing platform. DBD and DBI, which are necessary modules for Perl (and the Movable Type publishing platform) to interface with a MySQL database, might as well be written in an early Incan dialect. Of those things I mentioned above, only Perl comes as a standard install on Mac OS X, and it requires a special install from the Developer’s Tools CD in order to get add-on modules to properly install (with the particular flavor of OS X installed on my makeshift, home server). All of the above requires tinkering with a text editor and the command line (don’t get me started on UNIX).

    Why do I mention any of this? I thought it would be a good idea to convert my blog database to MySQL.

    How many of you have a burning desire to dive into some UNIX, Perl, MySQL, and database interfaces for web based applications? Those in the know (myself not included) are out there scoffing at the notion. “Piece of cake,” they’re thinking. For me… it’s a bitter pill washed down with vinegar. I am nowhere near the geek I aspire to be.

    Don’t pity me though, dear reader. The real victim in all of this, as always, is my wife. And don’t get her started on Halo…

  • The right tool for the job

    The raison d’etre for childhood is learning. Much of that learning is done by trial and error. Sometimes it feels like the raison d’etre for parents is to point out the error in childhood trials. Take yesterday evening (please?). Twenty minutes before bedtime our kids voiced unanimous desire for an apple. They spent the better part of that twenty minutes sitting in the hallway with their apples, quietly collaborating on a block tower of epic proportions. After their twenty minutes were up I took our son in for his final diaper change. When I returned I saw Beth in the kitchen from the rear, working on something intently on the counter. Based on extensive medical drama experience, this looked much like a surgeon working on his or her patient in the O.R.

    On final approach I asked her what she was doing, but it was a rhetorical question. I could plainly see what she was doing… she was snipping at her apple with a pair of kitchen scissors. This paved the way for the non-rhetorical portion of my questioning… “Why are you cutting your apple with a pair of scissors Beth?”

    “I’m trying to get the seeds out without cutting the rest of the apple.”

    I must admit that on some levels I was impressed. I had no idea my kitchen scissors were such a precision instrument. I’d be hard pressed to do a better job without a drill and some kind of penetrating imaging equipment.

  • The long walk

    Can you believe it’s almost October already? I can. I can believe 2006 is three quarters done too. I can believe it’s fall. I can believe the federal fiscal year is over. I can believe lots of things when I wake up on the couch after midnight, discovering that it’s been two hours since I decided I should get up and go to bed.

    This could be one of the more difficult times to find the motivation to get off the couch; ranking right up there with back spasms and the buzzer going off on the dryer. It’s a good thing I had my computer handy. I might have never mustered the strength to sit up. Now that my head has gained a little altitude I feel half the battle is won.

    Now if I could just stand up…

    I just want to go to bed…

    Why is it so hard to stand up?