Connections

The end-of-semester crush has begun. People are beginning to buckle down and get stuff done, which brings more of them to ask me for help on various things.

Rodger had spoken with me about making a searchable interface for data from the insect collection. I showed the pages we had created previously. They finished the data from the first order (Lepidoptera) and sent me a spreadsheet. I used it as a pretext to go back and look at my old code and think about how to migrate it to the new server. I wrote all the old informatics scripts using mSQL. I started building these when it wasn't clear which database was going to become the one to use for web applications. I liked several things about mSQL: it compiled cleanly (while MySQL often would not); it used unix users and groups, it was simple to set up and use, and it was extremely stable. We're not planning to use mSQL on the new server, so I need to migrate everything over. This was a good test case.

I left work early to arrange a location for the Zamenhof Fest. A week ago, as I began trying to set up the Zamenhof Fest, I sent an email to the Jones Library about reserving a room. I sent the email to the library. On Wednesday, I got an email back that explained I had to visit the library in person during business hours. So, I went downtown, filled out the necessary paperwork, and got the room reserved.

Lucy and I had planned to go downtown anyway to have an early dinner at Baku's, the new African restaurant. It's actually been there for a while. I've wanted to go there, but Alisa had tried their food at some point (at the Taste, I think) and didn't like the sauce -- too ketchuppy. I could see that. I got the curry chicken with jollof rice, fried plantains, and vegetables. Lucy got the jollof rice and black-eyed peas. It was all delicious. They had fair-trade Kenyan coffee, which was very good too. It brought back a lot of memories for Lucy of her African adventures.