Garrick van Buren

Note: this post (like many of my others) is a record for me to track re-occurances or anomalies.

I woke up Saturday not feeling well – and it went downhill from there. Aching joints, extraordinarily tired, mild nausea, waves of chills, a strange metallic taste in my mouth, and a sharp pain in my left armpit. No cough, fever, or sore throat.

All highly unusual – none of it conducive to parenting. Especially odd as no one else in the household had any recent symptoms. Nor had I been anywhere unusual in the past couple of days. I made it through the day and went to bed when the kids did after dinner.

After sleeping fourteen hours – I was back to normal again.

This was so quick, debilitating, and out-of-nowhere – I needed to write it down.

“All of our stories that do well on Hacker News share one thing: they are written. By written, I mean that someone took the time and effort to examine individual sentences, to think about word choices, to create transitions between grafs, to describe things precisely. You know, writing! But a lot of what gets posted in the tech blogosphere doesn’t fit this definition of writing. It’s more in the tradition of the wire services, where speed rules over creativity.” – alexismadrigal

I was browsing Amazon this afternoon looking for some speakers for my office. Obviously – these Ultron Sonic‘s stood out.

They even look like they’d be great for when I’m on the go.

While I jest – I think this page is an excellent example of how integral getting both the product info & images correct is within Amazon.com. Oh sure – there’s a little bit of confusion on our (the human) end. A quick look around the rest of the page shows Amazon’s robots aren’t sure what to recommend or cross-sell.

“I’d also argue that Apple is breaking an implicit promise it made with buyers of the first 150 million plus number of iPhones, iPod Touchs and iPads. We wanted the next great personal computing platform, not Disney World in our pocket.”

Plus, just thinking about iOS’s hub-and-spoke-UI makes me tired.

Turns out MySQL’s InnoDB engine isn’t (by default) very enthusiastic to give back disk space if after mass deletions (say, a DELETE * or a TRUNCATE TABLE).

The fix is a little unsettling, but it’s also simple (and with a modestly size db – fast).

1. Back up the db (you should doing this anyway, but now is a nice time to do it again.)
mysqldump -uroot -p --opt --skip-lock-tables -f --quote-names --databases yourDB > yourDB.sql

2. Confirm you made a backup. Then drop the databases you just backed up (I told you there was an un-nerving part).
3. Shutdown the MySQL server – whatever your preferred method is. I like to click ‘stop’ in Webmin, maybe you like the command line.
4. Remove all innodb files (it’s pretty obvious which ones they are)
5. Restart the MySQL server
6. Reimport your database
   mysql -uroot -p < yourDB.sql

While you’re here – hop over to my.cnf and add innodb_file_per_table so next time OPTIMIZE TABLE will actually do what you expect it to do.

“No matter how crappy a library’s relationship with a print publisher might be, the publisher couldn’t force them to destroy the books in their collections after 26 checkouts.” – Cory Docotorw

Today’s meeting free. I’ve blocked off the entire day to work on 1 thing. A little voice told me to hit play on my All Too Much Joy playlist. Perfect.

If I hit the milestone early, I think I’ll pull UHF off the Netflix.

My favorite lyric from today’s TMJ all discography listening session comes from “You Can’t Die from a Broken Heart” off the “The Its” album.

“You might even forgive me some day / But some day’s too far away / To hold us together today”

“Developers are familiar with the idea of bugs that never get fixed. They’re called features.” – Dave Winer

Oh sure – I’ve 3 Large Strongspaces backing up all my websites and working files nightly. I’ve also got a 2TB Western Digital drive pulling nightly backups from all the computers in the house. Plus, a couple portable drives for the road.

To that mix, I’ve added a SentrySafe Fire-Safe Waterproof Data Storage Chest with a 1TB Western Digital portable drive.

The interior of the SentrySafe is about 5″ square – perfect size for the Western Digital drive. Actually – it should fit about 6 of these drives as time goes on.

A couple quick edits to my backup script and the new safe drive is part of the mix.

I feel safer already.

“Martin Van Buren was a big part of OK’s initial takeoff”

“Van Buren’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in 1840 is regarded by etymologists as instrumental in the popularization of the word ‘OK’. In the context of the campaign, the initialism was used as a nickname for Van Buren and stood for ‘Old Kinderhook,’ which was a reference to Van Buren’s birthplace.”

Despite the reminders when my sideburns get to long – the 8th president and I are not related.

Oh sure – he lost his 2nd term – but his campaign lives on in everyday speech? I’d count that as a success.

Too bad about the successors. :/

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