A Mind Lost

OK, that’s a blindingly obvious statement.  But if a reminder was needed, an interesting fact reported here is that just two Chinese Internet Service Providers serve 20% of the world’s broadband users, and they’re still growing!  OK so it’s not a completely open market like in other countries but that’s still a huge proportion of the internet-connected population.

Slashdot discussion

The UK government has announced that businesses will no longer be able to insist that employees retire at 65.  At the moment, an employer is required to discuss retirement with the individual six months before their 65th birthday and while they can continue to work past that date with mutual agreement, the employer can insist that the employee retire.

While it is good news that people are more in control of their working life and how they choose to move on from it, it raises other problems which the government and the pressure groups have not been keen to address.  Firstly, a workforce working longer means that younger people coming onto the jobs market have less jobs to choose from.  Secondly, there is a probability that ill-health will become more of a factor in a persons life and there must be a framework in place whereby a persons employment can be terminated if ill-health results in unacceptable absence levels.  You can argue that this falls within existing employment law but experience has told me that it is no easy matter to end the employment of someone through long-term or repeated absence.  Such a decision requires critical attention to procedure and with an older employee may result in claims for discrimination on the grounds of both age and disability.

It’s good news for the individual, but a potential minefield for the employer.

I had a problem this week installing a second copy of WordPress on my server from which to run a personal blog.  The installation kept failing to access the database, pointing to a permissions problem.  Running a GRANT statement to give the correct privileges to the new database gave no error but on checking the mysql.users table I discovered that no changes were actually being written to the permissions!

check table user

returned an error:

Table ‘.mysql.user’ is marked as crashed and should be repaired.

repair table user

returned

Table is already up to date

and the circle continued……..

So I had a corrupt user table which wouldn’t let me repair it.  However, there is another repair utility which is used on upgraded tables from MySQL 4.x which will repair tables in these circumstances.  To use it, just navigate to your MySQL data directory and run:

myisamchk -r *.MYI

This will check and repair all tables in the directory.  Of course you can repair just a single table by replacing * with the table name.

I have just specced a new desktop for my desk at work and, for the first time in 20 years, I will be using a computer at home or work which I haven’t built with my own hands.  I bought an off-the-shelf Acer Veriton and all I need to do is put a dual-head graphics card into it and it’s ready to go.

Does this mean I’ve lost my geek credentials?  I certainly don’t have the old passion for tinkering I used to have and I bought this PC because I simply couldn’t be bothered to research the component specifications to assemble a new one by hand.  The processor market for one is an utter mess where model numbers mean nothing.  At least under the old CPU MHz ratings you had some, admittedly inaccurate, sense of where the CPU sat in the speed stakes.  Maybe the technology is passing me by and I can’t be bothered to keep up with hardware I don’t need to use.  I’ve gone from geek to informed consumer.  As a geek I would have spent hours and £800 putting together a finely tuned PC to match all my needs whereas as an informed consumer, I spent 10 minutes and £450 to get a machine that gets 98% of the way there and the other 2% I don’t really need anyway.

People I know will still call me a geek and it is still a badge worn with at least a little pride, although it seems to get more tarnished as the years pass.

I don’t really post personal stuff on here as I’m very private, but I’m feeling unusually low today and need to unload a little. This post may even get deleted later if I change my mind.  Several things are weighing on me just lately:

• Problems developing between my fiancee and myself.  Nothing insurmountable because we love each other, but there is tension which we need to overcome.
• A year of trying to prevent a shop/off-license opening next door to my home.  Loads of stress over parking, noise, litter etc as well as the £40k+ and 3.5 years hard work we spent improving the place being wiped out by potentially having an off-license next door.  Lots of opposition locally and having done all the research and organised letters/petitions, I have a belief it can be beaten but I feel it’s all resting on my shoulders.
• Almost two years now of dragging two companies through this recession with poor cashflow and only small signs of improvement.  The markets this week would have you thinking the world was about to end!  Our Chinese supplier is again trying to steal customers direct.
• This morning (it started yesterday but has escalated today), we have petty squabbles between a couple of shop-floor workers over a fan of all things.  It’s not even a company-supplied fan but one of the people wants to make an issue of it and is demanding a mediation meeting. I’m sick of these childish antics.  It’s like a playground and we’re supposed to play teacher.  I’m not in the ****ing mood! She’s even trying to make it a race issue FFS!

Am I feeling sorry for myself?  Probably. Am I justified in feeling sorry for myself?  Probably not.  After all, I have a great life compared to most.  I live in a nice home with a woman I adore and have a decent, if frustrating job to pay for it all so I feel very fortunate.  I just feel I want some of this stuff to be over so life can be a little lighter.

That’s my bleating over with.