Category: Uncategorized

Ray & Edee prepared a

MothersDayDinnerRay & Edee prepared a wonderful dinner to celebrate Mothers day. Ray grilled steak, and Edee prepared a really great salmon, baked potatoes and two great deserts. Looking back at this meal I sure could go for another serving. Afterwards Ryan & I played a game of Generals. Working together we destroyed the enemy.
This dinner picture was taken by Ray with his new Canon EOS 20D digital SLR camera. I now have a serious case of camera envy. The past few weeks I have been checking out various camera’s and settled on a Canon PowerShot A95. Now that I have seen the EOS 20D in action … don’t know if I can settle for the A95.

I have been having the

I have been having the most difficult time getting EOModeler to connect to mySQL. It worked great on my PowerBook. However, on my iMac it will not connect. Connection attempts result in the message:

JDBC connection failed for driver :’org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver’. Driver not found in Java Runtime! Please verify your CLASSPATH environment variable. The current CLASSPATH for your application is : /Developer/Applications/EOModeler.app /Contents/Resources/Java/
eomodeler.zip:/Users/MikeD/Library/Java:/Library/Java:/System/
Library/Java:/Network/Library/Java:/System/Library/Frameworks/
JavaVM.framework/Classes/classes.jar:/System/Library/Frameworks/
JavaVM.framework/Classes/ui.jar:/Developer/Applications/
EOModeler.app/Contents/Resources/Java/eomodeler.zip

So downloaded the latest stable JDBC from the mySQL site, and copied the jar to the /Library/Java/Extensions/ directory. Still could not connect. However, the error message had changed to:

java/sql/Savepoint

I tried alternate entries for the URL and Optional Driver value but nothing worked. Even created a small java class to verify the JDBC Driver worked. It did. I could connect to mySQL create a new database, add tables, and create a new user. After a couple evenings of failed attempts to get a connection, I emailed a request for help to
Webobjects-dev mailing list. Received several responses.  One responder(Jacky Gagnon), suggested:

Try on another computer with 10.3.8…Or try another version of mysql-connector-java-3.1.x like 3.1.7.

Since I did not have access to a sysem with 10.3.8, I opted to tried another version of the driver. Downloaded
mysql-connector-java-3.0.16-ga.tar.gz and placed
mysql-connector-java-3.0.16-ga-bin.jar in my /Library/Java/Extensions directory and EOModerel immediately connected to mySQL.

Yahoo! What a wonderful feeling when one resolves an irritating problem like Java connections. Once again everything is right with the world … well at least it seems that way for the moment.

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iMac Sold a 12-inch 1 GHz PowerBook on eBay. With the proceeds, purchased a new iMac G5, with a 17-inch screen, superdrive, wireless keyboard and mouse. Had planned on getting a Mac Mini. Just love its small footprint. However, with the desired upgrades it just made more sense to get the iMac. So far I am not disappointed with this decision.

Initial setup was a breeze. The mistake was using Apples system utility to migrate data from the PowerBook to the iMac. It successfully migrated everything. Unfortunately it configured the iMac to run like the PowerBook. All my efforts failed to correct the situation. Ended up rebuilding the system to return it back to its original condition. Following the reinstall, the system could not find bluetooth. Ended up contacting Apple via web chat. It was a great experience … they quickly provided the solution. That is “remove all USB connections, disconnect the power cord for one full minute, replace the power cord and start the system back up” the resultant startup recognized bluetooth and reconnected the keyboard and mouse. Like magic everything was working great.

Lesson learned … do not use the migration tool between a PowerBook and iMac.

This January I started using

This January I started using MacJournal. Have tried several other products. However, for me this works best. Tried to convert my last digital journal without success. Did manage to convert it to text. However, all the dates were lost. From the subject matter reconstruct the approximate dates … This exercise pointed out a major problem with digital journals. That is, they are only as durable as the software used to create them. With my first two, I never considered archiving content in a format readily imported into other applications. I did create backups. Problem is these backups require the original application… MacJournal provides multiple export options including saving in HTML.

Spent a few enjoyable hours recovering a digital journal covering the period from September 1999 – June 2003. Reading this record events and my thoughts brought back so many memories. Its like time traveling back to the past. Think I would like to add some notes like from an outside agent who knows how it all turns out …

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