I finally made my hotel reservation for PHPCon East in New York. Amusingly, I called their 1-800 number a few hours ago to find that their reservations desk was closed and that I'd have to call back on Monday. WTF?! Worse yet, their automated message never suggested their sucky web site.
So I went there anyway and made a reservation. And guess what... I got a better price. They're offering $124/night on-line. The conference discount is supposed to be $169/night.
Now I know why their phone message doesn't drive you to their web site. They can make more money off you on the phone. I'm sure this isn't news to Rudy Maxa but it's the first time I've run into this.
I recently bought the Garmin MapSource TOPO CDs from Amazon. Why? So I could add maps to my GPS and manipulate paths, waypoints, and other cool stuff on my computer. But the installer is really stupid
First, check out this picture. I'm being asked to choose from a list of exactly one. Why? That's retarded.
Second, there's no way to say "I have a big hard disk, so please put all 3 CDs worth of data on my laptop instead of making me carry 'em around with me." Granted, Garmin isn't the only who doesn't get it. But this isn't rocket science. Garmin builds portable navigation devices. Don't you think that someone interested in portable navigation might like the option of not dragging CDs around with 'em?
I think so.
I couldn't agree more with Sterling when he says I want my web back. He's sooo right. This stuff is getting too hard. Have we lost sight of what the web is supposed to be about and how it has managed to grow this quickly?
I used to love putting stuff on the web. Now it's a pain. I seek out tools to make the job easier. Not because I'm lazy but because the barriers to publishing seem to have gone up. I have to worry about so many more stupid things. Granted, some of it comes from the increased expectations. I could keep publishing like it's 1994, but I suspect that would cause its own problems.
Thank god for MovableType, huh? Have you paid for your copy? (I have. And it was some of the best money I ever spent.)
Hmm.
I hadn't intended this to be an advertisement for MovableType. Sorry about that. But I have no problem chatting about my favorite tools and why they're great.
MT is easy to use (it Just Works) but is also very hackable at the same time. Witness the growing repository of MT plug-ins.
Now that the standard 3 month delay has passed the MySQL 4.x article I wrote for the January 2003 issue of Linux Magazine is on-line.
Here's a the intro...
MySQL has a lot in common with the Macintosh: both products grew out of their creators' early vision and passion to become the great products they are today; both have begun to fill very visible roles in the Open Source world; both have been popping up more and more in corporate settings; and both have managed to generate communities of vocal and loyal supporters -- communities that continue to grow and thrive.
But the most important and striking similarity between MySQL and the Mac boils down to the emotional response each product evokes. Few people who have used a Macintosh come away unimpressed -- they either love the Mac or hate it. People have a similar reaction to MySQL. And recently, there has been more to love and less to hate about both of them (and with the advent of the Unix-based Mac OS X you can run MySQL on a Mac for the first time).
...and so on.
After flying yesterday, Adam called and asked if I was hungry. So we met at the fish place. Then decided a movie was in order. I called Movie Phone only to find that, no, Old School wasn't available. (Last showing had already started.) The Real Cancun hadn't opened yet. Damn.
So we headed up to the theater to see what they had to offer. Not much. Adam suggested House of 1000 Corpses and I didn't care too much. The other options were Anger Management and Phone Booth.
Despite what jwz says, the move was bad. Very bad. Very very bad. I have never ever seen a worse movie. Ever.
The only way I can think to possibly make up for the 2 hours wasted is to tell all my friends how great it was, in the hopes that they'll waste 2 hours and I can laugh at them.
In summary, don't see it.
Phil Windley has recently gave a talk titled Programming the Internet and it looks quite good. There are PDF slides up on his site. It looks like he did a nice job of presenting an overview of what it means to build services on an Internet infrastructure and how it's different than more traditional LAN-based systems.
Good stuff, as always.
I just stepped outside to take out the trash. It's 68 degrees, sunny, and there's a light breeze. Damn, I love northern California at this time of year.
The forecast for tomorrow (err, today actually) looks great and some friends from work want glider rides. So I'm taking the day off to fly!
After the rides in the late morning and early afternoon, I'll fly with my instructor a bit to hopefully complete my sign-off for the BASA Grob 103 (no, not the one in that picture but one just like it).
It should be a fun day. What a way to start the weekend.
I've always wanted to do this. Well, except the part about being arrested.
"But the fact is, with an initial investment of only $800, in two weeks' time he had a portfolio valued at over $350 million. Every trade he made capitalized on unexpected business developments, which simply can't be pure luck.
Heh.
(Thanks to Andy for the link.)
I've just posted version 1.3 of mytop.
What's new? Here's what the Changes file lists...
Added a "c" command to switch between the thread view and "command summary" view. The command summary pulls the Com_* values from SHOW STATUS and summarizes them. The UI needs work and I welcome feedback on how to improve it.
Fixed various bugs. Added regex support for filters. Added the ability to [K]ill all threads owned by a particular user. Fixed query cache hit rate computation.
Use the value of Com_select rather than Questions to calculate the Qcache ratio. Only SELECT queries are candidates for the cache, so this is far more accurate.
Bug reports, patches, and feature suggestions always welcome. :-)
(Oh, there are likely a few things missing from the docs... Let me know. From now on, I'll try to update the docs sooner after changing the code.)
MySQL super-smack is a great little benchmarking tool. Using it, you can generate a load on your MySQL server to highlight bottlenecks in your configuration or MySQL itself. Heck, one of these days maybe I'll provide a little tutorial about how I've used it.
The trouble is that it doesn't build out-of-the-box on FreeBSD (minor library conflicts). It works great on Linux. I managed to make it work about 1.5 years ago but never bothered with a patch. So, it is with much delay that I present super-smack-bsd.patch.gz
The usual disclaimers apply. It seems to work for me and may or may not work for you. I'm sending it to MySQL AB so they can better include it in the standard super-smack release.
From Mark:
As you may have noticed, I haven't really thought about this very hard, so no doubt some issues will arise.
I've felt like that a lot recently. But I wasn't cool enough to be that succinct.
I just realized that the most interesting (to me, at least) things going on in my life right are are things I cannot really discuss on-line. Not now, at least. And much if it maybe never. In some ways it's really cool, but it's also rather frustrating. In the 9 months or so since I began blogging, I've grown accustomed to tossing stuff out here so that others knew what I'm up to.
Amazingly, some people are interested and even care.
It's a strange little world we create.
On a related note, I just discovered that I really ought to do laundry tomorrow. I'm in need of clean whites.
Oh, I long for the day when I have this much spare time again.
I've been bad. My inbox at work was over 800 messages this morning. I've spent most of the day removing, sorting, and responding. It's exhausting in a way, but it feels good. I'm down to 31.
Of course, the last 20 are always the ones that seem to require 1-2 hours effort each to deal with. You know, it's the last 10% taking 90% of the time...
In summary: please don't send me anymore e-mail. Well, not until I'm caught up, at least.
My goal is to keep it below 20 messages for the next few weeks. Let's see how well I really do.
I'm catching up on my blog reading while I eat lunch. I just ran across Scott's e-commerce rant from a few days ago. I couldn't agree more. I don't always go for lowest price. I often job with a vendors reputation in mind and don't take kindly to being jerked around.
The few pictures I took came out like crap. So I have nothing to share. But thanks to "the other Jeremy" there are lots of pics on-line to see. (Oddly, he's not in any of his pictures--not that I saw, at least.)
When you find the pics that I'm in, you're free to laugh. In fact, you'll probably be wondering "what the... was going on?!"
I'll I have to say is this. Beware of MySQL salespeople bearing alcoholic beverages. They may not look evil or sound evil, but they sure can be. :-)
I had a blast. I hope everyone else did too.
Well, I'm still digging myself out of a pile of stuff to do. I haven't updated my MySQL page *yet*, but my presentations are available in HTML and PDF format.
Warning: they're still a bit rough, but I've had enough requests that I figured I should get something on-line for now. Lots of other stuff has taken priority for a bit. More on that later.
As always, they're better in person. You should have been at the conference. :-)
Well, after a few crazy days at the MySQL Conference, I'm mostly back to normal. I'd have been back sooner, but those MySQL guys sure know how to throw an after-conference party. Wow.
Let's just say I wasn't functioning at full capacity this morning.
