Raible Designs

Sunrise on the way in

It pays to get up early.

South Platte River

Nice day for a ride. Matt Good, my old boss from eDeploy.com, is on the left.

Spelling

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Hypersonic PC Sucks!

Hypersonic PC Sucks - they charged me $165 for returning the POS Aviator ZX7. I returned it because the following items did not work: power cord, bluetooth card, wireless card. Otherwise, it was a nice machine. Hypersonic PC Sucks because they didn't refund my money until I filed an investigation with my credit card. And then they claimed there was a $100 charge for scratches on the box, and the shipping costs are non-refundable ($65). After this, they warned me:

We also reserve the right to charge a restocking fee of 15%.

Maybe this post will cause them to up-the-ante. In the meantime, I hope Amex gets me a full refund.

Is the stress getting to me?

I don't know what's causing it, but I've woken up with a headache every day since I caught a small cold from Abbie on Monday. I've been cranking out a fair amount of hours between my day job and other side-projects, but you'd think this headache would go away. Is it the stress? Who knows - all I know is that I have to take Advil on a 4 hour rotation to get rid of it. I've even ditched my contacts for glasses one day, but that didn't help either.

I need to find a better way to relax, and a way to quit worrying about "getting things done" for my clients. Do I have productivity anxiety or is it deadline anxiety or maybe it's just West Niles.

Doin' the Netflix thing

I got inspired by Matt's post about Netflix and I signed up on Sunday. 3 DVDs arrived in the mail today. Nice! That was quick. The question is - will they have the same new releases that Blockbuster does?

My tips o' the day

I found an easy way to update a MySQL database with new columns this morning. The traditional way is to create an ALTER_TABLE script and run it. However, I had added more than 30 columns, and creating this script sounded like a pain in the ass. Keep in mind that I use Hibernate to create my database from scratch - tables, and all. If you're familiar with appfuse, you might be able to use this stuff.

• Dump the existing (production) database using "mysqldump -c database > database.sql". Edit this file, replacing CREATE TABLE with CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS. The "-c" option includes column names in the insert statement.
• Create an empty database (appfuse: ant db-init) and export (mysqldump database > create-tables.sql) it.
• Drop all the tables in the production database (backup first!), mysql < create-tables.sql followed by mysql < database.sql.

Of course, other suggestions are welcome - I'd love to see a mysql diff tool that generates the ALTER script for me!

My other tip is how to start/stop Windows services from the command line - don't know why I haven't used this sooner.

net start "$serviceName"

Where $serviceName is something like "Apache Tomcat 4.1" - use "net start" to see all currently started services.

Dual Monitor Video Card

Found this daddio from some co-workers today: GeForce4 MX440 64MB DDR 4x AGP Card w/Dual VGA. All for a measly $36.55. Now if they only made one of these for laptops. I'd love to make my next computer an Intel-based PowerBook, but you can only plug in one additional monitor to a laptop - I'd love to have dual.

California Rocks, Family Rocks

We just got back into Denver a few hours ago. It's great to be home, but it sucks that vacation is over. 10 days of driving up the cool California coast - aaaahhhhh blissful... We had an awesome time seeing my parents and sister, as well as a few old friends (and their families). It reminded me of two things: 1) don't sink your life into your job - it can disappear at any time, family and friends are forever, and 2) the United States is a beautiful country. We're actually thinking about moving to San Diego in the next 6 months.

Tonight the e-mail reading, blog reading, and tech support begins. I feel like it's a 2nd job. I feel like I need to put in 2-3 hours per night to keep up. However, with my just-got-back-from-vacation mindset, the motivation just isn't there. It feels good to be de-motivated, rather than technology obsessed - too bad it won't last very long.

Sunset on Fisherman's Wharf

Last night, we had a scrumptious dinner at the Crab House on Pier 39. While walking home, we were honored to see a beautiful yellow and gold sunset along the water. Today, we're heading out to Alcatraz and possibly a on winery tour.