the corner office

Here's a little something I've just learned. By default, the MySQL JDBC driver doesn't allow you to execute multiple statements in a single SQL uh, query string. This is ostensibly for security reasons, to protect against SQL injection attacks. You can, however, flip the switch on your DataSource and allow it with allowMultiQueries(boolean).

A bit of a blog world huffy is surfacing over the announcement of plans to rename Johannesburg International Airport to Oliver Tambo International Airport. (Mzansi Afrika, Fodder, Commentary, Fodder again, all with lots of interesting comments and discussion).

My opinion, simply, is that in the greater scheme of things, naming an airport after a recognised and esteemed anti-apartheid icon isn't really that incendiary, although you'd think that our politicians had more important things to worry about than renaming bloody airports.

I had to deal with a hard drive going clackety-clack bzzzz this week. Unlike the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2004, this event shall be known as the Lesser Spotted Hard Drive Fizzle of 2005. I learned my lesson last year, and it paid off now.

The drive in question was a 5 year old 20 gig hard drive, so it was hardly unexpected. I used this old drive for my Gentoo and Windows installations, and kept all my 'real' data on a 200GB data drive. I regularly rsynced my entire Gentoo operating system onto the 200 gig drive as well, and then backed all of that up to another external USB 200 gig drive, which spends most of its time hidden away in the back of a cupboard, where burglars and lightning are less likely to get to it.

So thankfully, all I needed to do this time around was boot up with a Linux liveCD, convert an unused FAT32 partition into a boot, swap and root partition on the 200 gig drive, copy across my entire Gentoo system, set up the bootloader on the new drive, and I was back up and running.

What I didn't even try to restore, because I hadn't had much joy with it in the past, was my Windows system. I've now moved from dual-boot-but-never-touch-Windows, to being 100% Windows-free. When I finally get around to investing in a new PC I'll probably set it up as a dual-boot, but right now, being Linux-only will do me just fine.

Ohgoshlookatthetime. I haven't made much progress with that last assignment this weekend, I must admit. Friday night was spent tinkering on the PC, before crashing early. I'm not sure why, but Friday nights seem to be the one night of the week where I run out of steam ridiculously early. I think I'm getting old, and 8 hours of sleep just doesn't happen for me during the weeks. Nor 7, and sometimes not 6, for that matter. So I think I'm just buggered by Fridays.

Yesterday would have been my mom's 56th birthday. Being the first birthday after she passed away, I knew it was approaching, and wasn't looking forward to it, but I guess it's one of those things you have to go through. It wasn't too bad in the end, but still a bit of a gloomy day.

For the first time in months, we went to Cresta for breakfast yesterday morning. I spent the rest of the day doodling around with my blog app, and watching tons of Jeeves & Wooster. Today's followed pretty much the same pattern. As I mentioned, I should've spent the weekend doing my final assignment for the year, but considering that a fairly earnest and draconian study programme needs to be embarked upon pronto if I don't want a miserable January exam stretch, it's been a real treat having a totally lazy and self-indulgent weekend. I might not have another of these in a while.

I was given the credits I needed, so freedom reigned supreme this week. (I was asked to do the final assignment anyway, so that'll be this weekend's job).

I started fiddling with my new blog app again. First step was to convert everything from PostgreSQL to MySQL. That was supposed to be a quick 'tweak-some-SQL-here-n-there' sort of affair. Yeerrrrssss.

To be honest, SQL-wise, it wasn't too bad. I learned that PostgreSQL is a touch more forgiving of sloppy SQL than MySQL is (oddly enough). The real schlep came with upgrading from MySQL 4.0 to 4.1. It sparked all sorts of fix-reverse-dependency rebuilding and whatnot, coinciding with the monthly emerge world. Bugzilla broke, all sorts of apps rely on mysql object files, and a Perl module or two needed prodding to the ways of virtue.

Thankfully though, it seems (mostly) done, and I can now import from Notes into MySQL and click through just about everything. I felt a bit guilty leaving PostgreSQL, which is something of the underdog compared to MySQL, but since I have quite a few things relying on MySQL already, it makes sense to stick with one DB server. Also, it's completely unscientific, but I could swear that the new blog feels just a wee bit zippier with MySQL. That doesn't really make sense and there shouldn't be any difference with a single user, but I'll take it as a good omen anyway.

Feeewoooow. The assignment Death March is over, or close-as-dammit to over. This weekend was the final deadline for the year's assignments, and I just handed in my last AI assignment.

I say close-as-dammit, because there's the small matter of the Formal Program Verification assignment I might need to do over the next few nights. Some delicate negotiations are needed between myself and the lecturer who wants to chat to me about it but whom I can't get hold of; technically I've met the credit requirements with the first two assignments I did, but I suspect I'm going to be asked to do the final assignment anyway, just-because. My policy in these things is to just shut the hell up and do the assignment if I have to, in the hope that these gestures of goodwill will be meet with suitable reciprocity in the goodwill department when exams loom closer.

The downside is that the sheer, unholy jubilation I should be feeling at having completed this year's assignment run just isn't there. I had high hopes for doing, y'know, sweet bugger all this week, so here's hoping.

Reported a few weeks back; the first pictures of a live giant squid, taken by Japanese scientists in the Pacific. An 8 metre long squid is a big-ass critter, and dead specimens up to 18 metres in length have been found.

It's incredible that despite how much of this planet we've charted, measured, studied and Google-mapped, the deepest recesses of our oceans are still unreachable, and we have absolutely no idea what's down there.

I haven't posted anything political in a while. I couldn't resist this though. Apparently, Dubya had a live video conference chatting to the troops about Iraq. Obviously, they just warbled out everything that confirms the BS he normally spouts, nothing like 'well, sir, I'm sure glad to be here 'cause it means I don't have to be out there getting shot at'. No, none of that.

Perhaps it's a sign of Bush's freefalling popularity ratings, because instead of blindly accepting and foisting it on the masses like the 'liberal' media did before, they picked up that the entire thing was a scripted farce. In fact, so much of a farce that one of the soldiers interviewed wasn't an I-get-shot-at-for-a-living real soldier, she was a PR person. And Bush, the ever-proud military man, couldn't even get her rank straight.

Obviously, this kind of stuff happens all the time in all governments and you'd expect that people would be cynical enough to not buy into this crap. Except that you have to conclude that a significant number of people do actually buy into it, else they wouldn't bother doing it.

In the chaos of the past few weeks I overlooked that I've been blogging (publically) now for 2 years. I won't get into the navel-gazing like I did last year, because not much has changed from a metablogging perspective: I still don't post much technical stuff and I still find myself wanting to treat my blog as more of a day-to-day diary and personal history, and still feel a bit guilty/weird when I do. Somewhere between those extremes I still manage to spew out content and people still seem to read it, occasionally. If you're one of 'em, thanks for your patronage!

The one thing I'd hoped to do by now is migrate my blog to The Corner Office version 2, but that pile of code hasn't been touched in about 2 months now. Soon, I hope...

I see Neil also got an invite. I won't be able to make it, but Oracle's 3rd DevDay is happening on the 7th November, and Oracle have invited local tech bloggers to attend, do some networking and blog from the proceedings. I think it's cool that Oracle took the time to find local bloggers and invite them personally.

The event is open to all developers and DBAs.

The details are:
Date: Monday 07 November
Time: 08h30 - 17h00
Venue: Vodaworld, Midrand.
Register at devdays [at] activecapture.co.za or call 011 781 8608