Raleigh’s water restrictions go into effect today. If you’ve got an odd-numbered address you can water Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. If you’re even, you water Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Monday is the day of waterly rest.
Seeing how these restrictions apply to all the other municipalities that are on Raleigh’s water system, I’ve often wondered how enforcement works. Continue reading
No, I’m not talking about the bizarre “martyred” Palestinian TV show mouse, but the mice in my garage. You see, for a long while now we’ve had mice living in our garage. I think it corresponds to the time I first put up a bird feeder in the backyard.
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Okay, calling it a script is a bit of a stretch. Just one SQL statement, really. 🙂
Bplog is a bare-bones blog app. There are only three tables in its database, so migrating it was relatively simple.
I used the following INSERT statement to move values from one to the other. The nested REPLACE statements are ugly, yes. If I was more enterprising, I’d trade them for multiple UPDATE … REPLACE statements at the bottom of a SQL script. I just went with what I could get working the quickest.
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Through the magic of SQL and lot of “bachelor time” this weekend, I managed to import all my ancient posts from their bplog database into WordPress. That means that every post I’ve ever written is now in one place, for the first time ever. I also fixed a lot of broken permalinks which didn’t transfer cleanly from Drupal. Now the “404” errors should be largely gone.
I’ve paused at times tonight to wade through a few of my early posts. There are some real gems here (and also some turkeys). I chuckled at this apt description of contracting I wrote when I was a contractor at Glaxo. I also looked back in fondness at my post about Hallie’s first ultrasound, back when Hallie was just an ‘it.’
Being able to relive events like these is one of the main reasons why I blog. Its nice to share it with y’all, too. Thanks for five years of being my audience.
I’ve rented too many cars with great tunes beamed from 22,300 miles above. Sirius satellite radio has finally worn me down. I think I’ll be picking up my own subscription soon!
Kiss Them For Me
Siouxsie And The Banshees
(music video on YouTube)
It glittered and it gleamed
for the arriving beauty queen
a ring and a car
now you’re the prettiest by far
No party she’d not attend
no invitation she wouldn’t send
transfixed by the inner sound
of your promise to be found
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My cousin Dave Turner loves his job with the Florida Fish And Wildlife Conservation Commission. His usual duties involve chasing down wandering gators and bears, believe it or not. Dave’s droll sense of humor usually earns him lots of airtime after the critter emergency is over.
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Got back this evening from Annapolis. My flight left 90 minutes late, which meant that I could’ve driven home faster. I think I’ll try that next time, since its so much cheaper if I just take my own car.
The day went well, as did the trip. I’ve got a head full of ideas: what-if scenarios that I’d like to see how the product would handle. Very few times has one of these ideas proven to be impossible, which is one of the things that really excites me about the product. There are very few things it cannot do!
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The nearby Mallinckrodt plant had a sulfuric acid spill this morning, prompting police to advise residents within a half-mile radius to stay indoors this afternoon. The fear was that rain would react with the acid (which it does violently, apparently), causing toxic fumes. We’re about a mile away, but that is still a little too close for comfort.
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I recently got a sneak peek at SiCKO [warning: self-playing Flash], Michael Moore’s new profile of the healthcare industry being released this weekend. Wow. If this doesn’t shame Americans into fixing our broken healthcare system, nothing will. It is very convincing, without pulling any punches. He lets people tell their stories.
Michael Moore may be the Upton Sinclair of our times: controversial mainly because he shines a light on problems we’d otherwise rather not think about. Love him or hate him, he makes you think. We could use a little more of that at a time when a bimbo like Paris Hilton is considered news.
MT.Net says check it out.
At a customer site today waiting for a database to update I decided to check up on my blog. Seems that SurfControl has flagged MT.Net in its “Blogs And Forums” list. Yay! I finally made someone’s list!
I’m in good company, as Jeff and Jamie made SurfControl’s list. The Hallie And Travis page, a blog running far longer than my own, didn’t make the cut. Well-known bloggers Chris O’Donnell and Doc Searls didn’t make the cut, either. With Doc’s hosted at a site named “weblogs.com,” one wonders what it takes to be flagged as a blog. Ironically, other websites I host on the very same machine as my blog are not blocked at all.
The process makes me think about those organizations who control the Internet floodgates, sometimes in secret. I had no idea I was on SurfControl’s radar until just now. What about Google filtering out search results at the whim of Chinese government bureaucrats? What if it happened here? If you get filtered by search engine (or a nanny proxy like Surfcontrol), you effectively disappear from the Internet, don’t you?
