For any of you updating from 12.04 to 14.04 with roundcube and having constant “Error 500” when you log in, you need to enable libcrypt on php5:
add to /etc/php5/apache/php.ini file:
extension=mcrypt.so
or
php5enmod crypt
So, many of us have come to love the stodgy old PERC5 RAID controller – this SATA 3G/s and SAS 1.5G/s controller is generally a reliable little beast.
Until it meets Intel’s VT-d on a system running esxi 5.5. Then.. not so much.
Now, if you don’t happen to need passthrough, you can disable VT-d. However, if you happen to have a Dell 710 that has no ability to disable VT-d without disabling VT-x, you might find yourself needing the ‘noiommu’ boot option.
Problem: that option no longer lurks under the advanced setting menu.
However, the good news is, you can still set it, either by passing it in on the kernel boot options line, or by setting it in the CLI:
esxcfg-advcfg –set-kernel “TRUE” noiommu
And I’m entirely open to discovering I’m wrong about this, but there is a inherent problem I keep running into and can’t get away from.
The basic tenant, or one of them, is that you are so bad and wrong and awful that someone else had to die for your mistakes.
This really doesn’t sound true to me. I don’t think any of my mistakes – and I will grant I’ve made many, from huge to tiny – are something anyone should have to die for.
People say, well, it HAS to be this way because God is a just God who requires that a debt be paid.
My response is you’re making God sound like a computer with free will and no ability to change his mind and just decide to wipe the slate clean without killing anyone or making anyone suffer. And that just doesn’t sound right to me, at all. I believe God is the best of all of us, and therefore I believe in a VERY powerful and flexible God. I don’t believe in a God that would get so trapped in his own ruleset that he had to make someone hang from a cross in incredible amounts of pain before he could forgive anyone.
However, this is where the concept of infinity and infinite sets of strings comes in. There is by definition a infinite set of strings which represent people dying on crosses, the things other people would see, the pain they would feel, etc. Infinity, well, one flavor of infinity, contains all possible experiences, all possible strings which could then become experiences. So it did “happen” in the sense that everything has happened. But was there anyone connected to the many pure virtual bodies that had this experience? That I can’t say. The whole thing smacks of a particular flavor of mental illness / cognitive distortion to me.. black and white thinking.
On the other thing, I’ve very much noticed that I’m not the only crazy one hanging out down here. Another interesting explanation, and indeed a compelling explanation to me for a bunch of the old testament, is as follows.
What you believe controls what you experience, by programming the neural networks between your senses and your mind to highlight certain experiences and minimize or not record others. If you program yourself to fear God – and I’m pretty sure somewhere in the OT they do say you should fear God – you will experience a God that’s scary. That’s in the set of things your free will will let you do with this supercomputer that is you. All the killing people, turning things into pillars of salt, destroying the world, wars, etc all fit perfectly with the idea of fearing God.
If, on the other hand, you program your mind to love God, to think of God as a friend and ally rather than a enemy, you will experience a world that is the opposite of scary, and you’ll end up riding the wave that I think Jesus was riding during a lot of his career. At the END of his career, Jesus started to fear God at least somewhat.. “Take this cup from my lips”, he says, BUT DOESN’T BELIEVE GOD WILL DO SO.
And THAT is how you end up with some poor slob dying on a cross. Of course he lived through it – we’re all eternal creatures! And I bet he felt rather dense when he realized his mistake…
I was pondering donating to both political parties.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a democrat insofar as I can identify at all with the centerist group o’ people that run the country. However, it has occured to me that the two parties *need* each other.
They need that tension to help evolve the best ideas. Hopefully in their best days they’re like black & white hats at defcon.. aware of the fact that it’s a chess game rather than a war, or should be. In our worst days, we do awful things to people we think are “the enemy”. But increasingly I’m finding that I think the real enemy is within us all – our own worst thinking, our own darkest thoughts, the demon within. The key to a successful life is to figure out how to simultaneously love and disarm the enemy. I think some very wise chinese dude said “Whenever possible, always leave room for your enemy to become your friend”.
I mean, the virtualization paradox hits me where I live no matter what I’m doing. I’m aware of the fact that no matter what I do I’m participating in a reality that is generated inside my own head off a bunch of inputs that I know virtually nothing about. Now there are definitely things about my conscious experience that I love and things that I hate. But I’m also starting to understand that hating something and not doing anything to change it is contra-life behavior. And I’ve become profoundly interested in living rather than merely surviving.
With that, I think I shall make a gratitude and not-so-gratitude list 😉
So, for today, things I love:
*) Friends
*) Physical affection in all forms
*) Music
*) Hope
*) Computers
*) Networks
*) the inner network
*) the inner light
*) God by my current definition of same [“the best of all of us, in aggregate”]
*) Alternate points of view
*) Ideas
*) Cars
*) Connections
*) Good dreams
*) Sanity
*) That my mind has a debugger
*) The person in my mind that has been walking me through using the debugger among other things [You know who you are ;-)]
*) Skating
*) Bowling
*) Dancing / raves
*) Saving throws
*) NASA
*) Voyager I
*) The wikipedia
*) Google
*) Facebook
*) 6 flags
*) roller coasters
*) being eternal
*) CAbi, you guys rocked my world and finally helped me find my way
*) Epoch, you guys rocked my world and made it not matter so much I was lost
*) Hacker Shack, you guys rocked my world and made me see different could be beautiful
*) America the beautiful, long may she live [Especially Seattle and Los Angeles and Woodbridge and Paonia and Rochester, NY and Akron, OH, my true homes thus far]
*) The interstates
*) Finding out your bottom is a U-turn.
*) The commercial flight network [You guys do a AWESOME job!]
*) Angels
*) Solutions
*) Sex, and the moment of beauty and sanity that follows
*) Happy endings.. well, um, there are no endings, but happy moments
*) Knowing who I would invite to my island
*) Knowing what my three wishes would be
*) Knowing my base class
*) The moment when I realized the world engine had to have better tech than the tech exposed in the world, which was already pretty tanj impressive
*) The moment when I realized [Thank you eVicky!] that I *AM* information technology
*) Everyone who’s ever been proud to wear the label “Slut”.. WE RULE! they just don’t get it yet.
*) Too many people to name here, but obvious includes would be (in no particular order for the most part) Gayle, Vicky, Kamran, Shepherd, Lara, Geincarlo, Jessica, Tavian, Samual, Amy, Brian L, Clint, my parents, my uncles & aunts, my grandparents [Good luck and Godspeed, Anne! Bill, Mary, I hope you know I love you always.. ], James, Brenda, Andy, Adrian, Lucas, Joan, Martin H., Linnea H., Brett, Kris S., Kelli, Daniel T, Kristy M., Heather M., Jill C., Liccie, Scott & Cori, Woody, Bunne, Loha, Carol L., Carla B., Christopher L., Caeser R., Dennis, Big D, Jerry, Kent L., Tim C., Jen S., Phoebe, Nicka, JL, Tamex, Jarad, Nancy W., Diane B., Deena, Craig W., Lee H., Courtney, Nathaniel [Good luck figuring it out, kid! I think I’m getting pretty close to cracking it, hope it takes you a lot less time or the time it does take you is so beautiful you don’t mind], Vinnie, Raven, Jeff S., Josh R., Spider R., Robert H., Bill W., Anne M., my cousins especially Brock, Chad D., Jesiah M., Debbie, Sabrina, Justin, Miranda, John A., Barack O., Jim M., Becky, Ant, Nathan, Kitsune, Pretzel, Woman, Dorn & Diane, Brad H., Scott P., Tamerisk, Abby, Eve, Mei, Sarah & Sarah, Carolyn, Brian & Brandon, David K., Peter, Grace H., Cygnostik, Heather, Daniel S., Ness, Molina-Petrokia, Scott G, Bill B., Azam, Manticore, Jen W., Ryan (Chief! way too long since we hung!), John G., Anne G., Jim C., Alex, Tory, Mike M., Art D., Bruce D., Krissy, Merlin, John S., Mara, Kayti [Thank you for the U-turn!], Autumn, Rebel, Daisy, Heidi, Allie, Hollie, Owen K., Trish S., Cy B., Al E. [SPEBSQSA], Rich R., Bruce S., Linda S., Tristan S., Wikkid, Bewitch/Melinda, Sara, Mike L., Rick, Steve S., Mike B., Powell H., Trisha, Big Sam, Edie, Shahada, Paul G, Ron [such lovely trance], Jennifer [even though I really could have used about 1000x less threats and violence from you], Even H., Aaron H., the girl from ASP with the bread, Amy Ann, Cyndi E., Sally A., Elizibeth R. [When the future is conquered it will be by wanted fans..], Felyne [I love you so much], Dr. Nick [I would LOVE to have the discussion we were having the night of your father’s death NOW! I’d have a LOT more to say 😉 and I bet so would you], Jeremy, Jo O., Allemande, Shorty, Mani/Alia, the OTHER Alia, Brandi, everyone who ever helped me build myself up, all the teachers near and far who helped me learn to love the truth, and all the many musicians who help light up my life every day and the many engineers [including myself] that built both the system this runs on, and the system that helped me understand the system this runs on.
And that’s not even getting into the many “fictional” characters that helped me along my way, most importantly Friday [thank you so much for all you gave me!], but also Mike the computer and Mike the martian, Lous Wu, the Hindmost, Mike Callahan the bartender, Lara and Gwen, Rincewind [my brotha!], Jillian, Mother [Cattle mutilations are up this year], Ray and Egon, the DJ from Treme who played in the Brassy Knoll, Maeby and George Micahel, Picard, Data, Guynan, the Doctor of course [EVERYBODY LIVES, ROSE! EVERYBODY LIVES!], Troi, Dr. House [I hope you finally turned your skills inward as I did], Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, Scooby and Shaggy, Bo and Luke, Kit, Mr. Feeny [I loved every one of you..], Topenga, Cory, Max, the flight controller from Pushing Tin, everyone from the Goonies, Doc and Marty and Einstien from BTTF, everyone from Fallen Angels, the crew at Dream Park, and most especially
And the crews around the world that keep things going, including everyone who helped build the internet even a little bit, everyone who helped build 6 flags, everyone who ever stood between what they thought was the dark and what they thought was the light [Semper Fi!], everyone who helped build the fine planes that ply the sky every night [Boeing, Airbus, and Cessna, special mentions to you for all you did for us in helping our souls take flight again], all the fine men and women of Honda, the crew at Google [Keep dreaming, and keep doing it!], Facebook [you got EVERYONE in!], Wikipedia [You changed the world on a shoestring and in a amazing way], every one who made sure we had food to eat, clean water to drink, and power to keep the dream alive, Hollywood for all you do to keep us climbing and dreaming bigger and higher, Jim Henson and your crew for reminding us that we are a part of everything we dream, Sting and U2 for keeping it so real, everyone who has ever thrown or worked at a rave or concert for helping to teach the world about vibe and open our eyes to the truth, the Seahawks for kicking so much ass and helping me believe in my city, all the people at Wells Fargo for helping restore my faith in banks caring about their customers, Sprint – and all the wireless carriers and the riggers and engineers – for keeping us all connected when we want to be no matter where we are – we give you a lot of abuse but we LOVE what you’ve done, NASA for so many things I couldn’t possibly list them all, please don’t give up you can get another starship in the sky!
I’ve found that state where it’s possible to love everyone, at least for a little while.
And movie quotes that inspired me:
*) Maybe I can’t.. but WE can. [Hackers]
*) Too many secrets [Sneakers]
*) Welcome to my sky [Pushing Tin]
*) We tried giving you a perfect world, but your little minds wouldn’t accept it [The Matrix] [Give me another try. I think this time I can. ;-)]
*) Carpe Diem / Oh Captain my Captain [Dead Poet’s Society]
*) No dream is too great, and no dreamer too small [Turbo]
*) I don’t know what you’re doing, but you are DEFINITELY participating! [Sorcerer’s Apprentice]
*) [not a quote, but a moment] the moment where Eddie pours out the booze and throws the bottle in the air in Rodger Rabbit – his U turn
*) There’s only us, there’s only this, forget regret or life is yours to miss.. no other road, no other way.. no day but today [Rent]
Special mentions to some musicians:
*) Sting
*) U2
*) Pink Floyd
*) Styx
*) Simple Minds
*) Paul Van Dyk
*) Aarmin Van Burian
*) Jefferson Starship
*) Dire Straits
*) Simon & Garfunkel
*) When In Rome
*) Information Society
*) Indigo Girls
*) Melissa Etheridge [I RUN FOR LIFE! I still cry every time I play it. And Silent Legacy.. Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear, refuse to hand it down.. the legacy stops here.]
*) REM
*) Counting Crows
*) Toad the Wet Sprocket
*) Seal [In a world full of people, only some want to cry, isn’t that crazy?]
*) Madonna
*) Lady Gaga [PUT YOUR PAWS UP! There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are.]
*) Eagles
*) Poison
*) Boston [Especially Walk on, a masterwork]
*) Amy Grant
*) Michael W. Smith [For one song.. friends. Thank you for writing how I feel.]
*) Emenim [and thank you for letting me channel you when I was most afraid sitting in a jail cell in SoCal.]
*) There’s so many more of you, and you’ve given us all so much.. and I’m going to be a part of you soon.. today a song I wrote helped lift someone else up, and I knew my destiny is real.
Every band I’ve ever been in, you all were truly the best
*) Disillusion
*) Mischief Committee
*) Fraud in france
Every band I’m going to be in in the future! 😉
And things I hate:
*) Money
*) Scarcity
*) Fear
*) Doubt
*) Shame
*) Guilt
*) The idea that I’ll never be worthy of love
*) The idea that I’ll never be good enough
*) Whatever happened in my childhood to shatter my mind
*) Physical pain
*) Being beaten up
*) Being hit
*) Being threatened
*) That my sister thinks I would ever use force or violence on her
*) Anyone else that thinks that, if there is anyone else that thinks that
*) Fear of fear, a cycle that seems like it will never end
*) The idea of ceasing to exist
*) Suicide
*) Mental illness
*) My inability to do either lucid dreaming or dream control
*) That the friend I want to talk to most doesn’t appear to want to talk to me “out here”
*) That I ever believed God would judge me and torture me forever
*) Misunderstandings
*) Wars
*) Fights
*) That I don’t have very good access to most of my memories
*) That my mind is damaged
*) My fear that the police are going to beat me, then throw me in a box where people will rape me over and over and throw away the key
*) My fear that the world is hostile even when it has been proven the majority of it is not
*) Irrational fears
*) Paranoia
If I were to log off of Earth today and connect to another world server.. I’d still be glad I came. It hurt, it was terrifying, it wasn’t quite what I wanted.. but it was still one freaking amazing work of art. Here’s to us, and let’s not stop just yet because I have a feeling the story is about to do something awesome..
To anyone still locked in the box, keep making it through.. do your time, don’t let your time do you.. and remember, the box you are locked in is INSIDE YOUR MIND! Once someone’s mind is really awake, not even a jail cell can contain them.
A very comfortable, very long-term-wearable EEG which has the minimum subset of electrodes needed to detect mental activity level, connected to a electroluminescent panel on a T shirt that shows current activity a la CPU meter.
When having a conversation with someone wearing this device, you’d be able to tell when something you said engaged their mind. I think it would be *very* cool.
Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand
And holding infinities in the palm of your hand
And Heaven’s realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower
And eternities in the space of a single hour
Send your love into the future
Send your love into the distant dawn
Inside your mind is a relay station
A mission probe into the unknowing
We send a seed to a distant future
Then we can watch the galaxies growing
This ain’t no time for doubting your power
This ain’t no time for hiding your care
You’re climbing down from an ivory tower
You’ve got a stake in the world we ought to share
You see the stars are moving so slowly
But still the earth is moving so fast
Can’t you see the moon is so lonely
She’s still trapped in the pain of the past
This is the time of the worlds colliding
This is the time of kingdoms falling
This is the time of the worlds dividing
Time to heed your call
Send your love into the future
Send your precious love into some distant time
And fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing
Send your love
Send your love
There’s no religion but sex and music
There’s no religion but sound and dancing
There’s no religion but line and color
There’s no religion but sacred trance
There’s no religion but the endless ocean
There’s no religion but the moon and stars
There’s no religion but time and motion
There’s no religion, just tribal scars
Throw a pebble in and watch the ocean
See the ripples vanish in the distance
It’s just the same with all the emotions
It’s just the same in every instance
There’s no religion but the joys of rhythm
There’s no religion but the rites of Spring
There’s no religion in the path of hate
No prayer but the one I sing
Send your love into the future
Send your precious love into some distant time
And fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing
Send your love
Send your love
There’s no religion but sex and music
There’s no religion that’s right or winning
There’s no religion in the path of hatred
Ain’t no prayer but the one I’m singing
Send your love
Send your love
I am the one and only, oh yeah
Call me, call me by my name
Or call me by my number
You put me through it
I’ll still be doing it the way I do it
And yet you try to make me forget
Who I really am
Don’t tell me I know best
I’m not the same as all the rest
I am the one and only
Nobody I’d rather be
I am the one and only
You can’t take that away from me
I’ve been a player in the crowd scene
A flicker on the big screen
My soul embraces
One more in a million faces
High hopes and aspirations ideas
Above my station maybe
But all this time I’ve tried
To walk with dignity and pride
I am the one and only
Nobody I’d rather be
I am the one and only
You can’t take that away from me
I can’t wear this uniform
Without some compromises
Because you’ll find out that we come
In different shapes and sizes
No one can be myself like I can
For this job, I’m the best man
And while this may be true
You are the one and only you
I am the one and only
Nobody I’d rather be
I am the one and only
You can’t take that away from me
I am the one and only
I am the one and only
Nobody I’d rather be
I am the one and only
The one and only
You can’t take that away from me
I recently gave this explanation of SQL to a beginner, and I thought it was good enough to save for posterity. This is from a Skype Chat.
[2/28/14 3:56:05 PM] Sheer Pullen: The real thing to understand is that SQL is just a very formal way of asking questions
[2/28/14 3:56:42 PM] Sheer Pullen: and putting information into a system to enable you to ask it questions
[2/28/14 3:57:08 PM] Sheer Pullen: The basic form of information storage in such a system is the table, which is basically just like a excel worksheet
Tables have rows and columns – a column is a datum about something, generally, where a row is a instance of that something.
So if you had a list of customers, each customer would be a row and details about them, like their name or number would be a column
In order to make joining easier, a convention has grown up to use “keys”, which are unique numbers or strings that help identify a row
[2/28/14 3:59:20 PM] Sheer Pullen: in most systems these are just a number, called a identity, that automatically increments.. grows by a set number each row you add – generally 1
[2/28/14 3:59:33 PM] Sheer Pullen: foreign keys point to values in other tables or even other databases
[2/28/14 3:59:51 PM] Sheer Pullen: so if you had a table that was orders, and a table that was customers, orders might have a foreign key to point to he customer
[2/28/14 4:00:00 PM] Sheer Pullen: because it’s “foreign” to the orders table..
[2/28/14 4:00:36 PM] Sheer Pullen: SQL has a few very basic verbs that you use for almost all operations
[2/28/14 4:00:44 PM] Sheer Pullen: SELECT, for looking up a value – asking a question
[2/28/14 4:00:47 PM] Sheer Pullen: INSERT, for adding a row
[2/28/14 4:00:50 PM] Sheer Pullen: DELETE, for removing a row
[2/28/14 4:00:54 PM] Sheer Pullen: and UPDATE for changing a row
there are also some verbs you use only when you’re setting up a table, like CREATE TABLE and CREATE INDEX
[2/28/14 4:01:13 PM] (name deleted): insert, delete and update sound scary to a newbie
[2/28/14 4:01:20 PM] Sheer Pullen: yes, as a newcomer you start with SELECT
[2/28/14 4:01:29 PM] Sheer Pullen: especially if you’re working on a production database 😉
[2/28/14 4:02:01 PM] Sheer Pullen: and as a newcomer, you don’t work directly on prod databases at places like (medium-sized client), you work on what is called a read replica, which is a clone
[2/28/14 4:02:05 PM] Sheer Pullen: that way you can’t actually damage anything
[2/28/14 4:02:15 PM] Sheer Pullen: even if you ask a question that takes more resources than the server has to answer
[2/28/14 4:02:33 PM] Sheer Pullen: (it is possible to hurt (our production main server) with a poorly chosen SELECT just by asking it to use more resources than it has)
[2/28/14 4:02:54 PM] (name deleted): server down
[2/28/14 4:02:56 PM] (name deleted): crash
[2/28/14 4:02:57 PM] (name deleted): boom
[2/28/14 4:03:00 PM] Sheer Pullen: well, no, you won’t crash the server
[2/28/14 4:03:06 PM] Sheer Pullen: but you will make it very slow for all the other people using it
[2/28/14 4:03:17 PM] (name deleted): what is a deadlock
[2/28/14 4:03:27 PM] (name deleted)t: to many wanting the same thing from same place
[2/28/14 4:03:29 PM] Sheer Pullen: Ah. This actually gets into a non-SQL concept
[2/28/14 4:03:33 PM] Sheer Pullen: but yes, that’s a very good summary
with modern computers, you can be doing more than one thing at once because there’s more than one CPU
[2/28/14 4:04:02 PM] Sheer Pullen: if two CPUs both want the same disk resource at the same time, they can’t have it, because there’s only one disk
[2/28/14 4:04:09 PM] Sheer Pullen: so one has to wait for the other
[2/28/14 4:04:13 PM] Sheer Pullen: if they ask at *exactly* the same time
[2/28/14 4:04:23 PM] Sheer Pullen: then the database engine doesn’t know which of them it should serve, so it tells them both they deadlocked.
[2/28/14 4:04:27 PM] Sheer Pullen: and then they have to try again
[2/28/14 4:04:47 PM] (name deleted): so what manages that “request”
[2/28/14 4:05:03 PM] Sheer Pullen: modern database engines have a concept called ACID, which means Atomic, Consistant, Isolated, and Durable
[2/28/14 4:05:11 PM] Sheer Pullen: They will not let the code ask for something which would break it
[2/28/14 4:05:24 PM] Sheer Pullen: the database engine is what handles requests in SQL
[2/28/14 4:05:28 PM] (name deleted): are we a modern DB engine?
[2/28/14 4:05:30 PM] Sheer Pullen: We are.
[2/28/14 4:05:42 PM] Sheer Pullen: We use mysql 5.5, which is a database engine with 20 years of open source work behind it’s code
[2/28/14 4:05:47 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’ve worked on it a time or two myself
[2/28/14 4:05:51 PM] Sheer Pullen: thousands of people have
[2/28/14 4:06:15 PM] (name deleted): is there any book you recommend ie sql for dummies?
[2/28/14 4:06:25 PM] Sheer Pullen: That w3schools tutorial is a great place to start
[2/28/14 4:06:32 PM] Sheer Pullen: it has a SQL engine written in java written right into the page
[2/28/14 4:06:37 PM] Sheer Pullen: so you can try things out on the web page
[2/28/14 4:06:48 PM] (name deleted): and what is the best doc to have for (clients) schema
[2/28/14 4:06:56 PM] Sheer Pullen: *laughs* There isn’t really one.
[2/28/14 4:06:58 PM] (name deleted): saw something called ERD?
[2/28/14 4:07:02 PM] (name deleted): what is ERd?
[2/28/14 4:07:12 PM] Sheer Pullen: (our DBA) is building ERDs, which are graphical representations of the relationships between tables. ERD stands for Entity Relationship Diagram
[2/28/14 4:07:22 PM] Sheer Pullen: and you can get a copy of those and look at them and they will help you
[2/28/14 4:07:42 PM] Sheer Pullen: the “stock” ofbiz tables are documented in several Ofbiz books, I can send you links if you like
[2/28/14 4:07:56 PM] Sheer Pullen: but we have added many tables and relationships only documented in (our DBA’s) diagrams, or in some places (sadly) nowhere.
[2/28/14 4:08:18 PM] Sheer Pullen: However, a lot of those are for pretty exotic concepts
as a beginner, you’re going to start out asking questions like “What was the volume for this order, and who placed it”
[2/28/14 4:08:50 PM] Sheer Pullen: Actually, your very first questions will be things like “What is the name for this party ID”
[2/28/14 4:08:54 PM] (name deleted): how many active (customers) by state
[2/28/14 4:09:42 PM] Sheer Pullen: Now, if you are curious, here is how I would ask that question
[2/28/14 4:10:32 PM] Sheer Pullen: First, I’d think about what tables I needed
[2/28/14 4:10:41 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’d know I needed POSTAL_ADDRESS, because duh that’s where addresses live
[2/28/14 4:10:49 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’d know I needed (custom customer table), because that’s how I find active consultants
[2/28/14 4:11:01 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’d know i needed PARTY_CONTACT_MECH_PURPOSE, because that ties the two together
[2/28/14 4:11:13 PM] Sheer Pullen: then I’d think about HOW I needed to join the tables together
[2/28/14 4:11:44 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’d know POSTAL_ADDRESS and PARTY_CONTACT_MECH_PURPOSE needed to join on CONTACT_MECH_ID, and additionally that I wanted entries that had a CONTACT_MECH_PURPOSE_TYPE_ID of (a enum), because that’s where we store their most important address
[2/28/14 4:12:34 PM] Sheer Pullen: I’d know (custom customer table) and PARTY_CONTACT_MECH_PURPOSE needed to join on PARTY_ID, because that’s the key that describes a unique person like a consultant, and that in addition I only wanted rows from (custom customer table) that had a APPLICATION_STATUS_ID != ‘(Customers who are still active enum)’ because I wanted ACTIVE (customers).
[2/28/14 4:13:09 PM] Sheer Pullen: In addition, I’d know I wanted to group the results, because I’m looking for a particular thing, their state
[2/28/14 4:13:15 PM] (name deleted): so first tables
[2/28/14 4:13:23 PM] (name deleted): that the where
[2/28/14 4:13:29 PM] (name deleted): then the what
[2/28/14 4:13:30 PM] Sheer Pullen: *grins* I’m just describing the way I think through these things. You might choose a totally different way.
[2/28/14 4:13:34 PM] Sheer Pullen: but yes, that’s exactly right
[2/28/14 4:13:37 PM] Sheer Pullen: then the last one is the how
[2/28/14 4:13:48 PM] Sheer Pullen: in this particular case, I want them grouped by the state they’re in, and I want a count of that state
As far as what order to join in, the true wizard joins for performance, starting with most specific first, when writing something that’s going to take a lot of database Parenthesis. For a question like that one that’s pretty easy, I generally just write it out in whatever order it comes to me.
[2/28/14 4:35:46 PM] Sheer Pullen: Two more little quick things I want to mention and then I’ll get back to “real work”
[2/28/14 4:35:48 PM] Sheer Pullen: 1) AND and OR
[2/28/14 4:36:02 PM] Sheer Pullen: these are very important concepts in every type of computer operation you will ever do
[2/28/14 4:36:13 PM] Sheer Pullen: AND means both sides are true, OR means one or the other (or both) sides are true
[2/28/14 4:36:21 PM] Sheer Pullen: There’s a third, XOR, which means ONLY one or the other side is true..
[2/28/14 4:36:29 PM] Sheer Pullen: but that’s not very often needed for stuff you’ll do
[2/28/14 4:36:33 PM] Sheer Pullen: and 2) Parenthesis
[2/28/14 4:36:53 PM] Sheer Pullen: As you probably learned in high school math, there is a order of operations which every equation.. which a SQL query is a type of.. will be evaluated on
[2/28/14 4:37:07 PM] Sheer Pullen: The way to bypass this is by placing terms in parenthesis
[2/28/14 4:37:24 PM] Sheer Pullen: if you are getting results you didn’t expect, you might add parens to expressly state the order of operations you want
[2/28/14 4:37:29 PM] Sheer Pullen: this is just like algebra..
[2/28/14 4:38:02 PM] Sheer Pullen: i.e. in algebra the OO is PEMDAS – where the P is parens, forcing anything in parenthesis to be evaluated first
[2/28/14 4:38:19 PM] Sheer Pullen: and otherwise it would be exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction
[2/28/14 4:38:28 PM] Sheer Pullen: but if you want subtraction to be evaluated first you throw it in parens
[2/28/14 4:38:39 PM] Sheer Pullen: SQL is the exact same way, as is every high level programming language I know of
Could you coders please start encoding lyrics in mp3s as metadata and then allowing us to search our mp3 collection via lyrics?
Thanks, S.
The song most often commented on at Fraud In France shows is Starshine, which is about Voyager I. We finally have a halfway decent take of it, captured at practice #46 and mixed by Bunne Rabb – for the curious, here’s a link: http://pb.sheer.us/bunne/Dec%202013/Star%20shine/SS-46-non-asplodey_mix.mp3