[conspire] Saturday's InstallFest

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Mike Higashi (mhigashi at imat.com):

> By the way, Rick:  This InstallFest is listed on the CABAL site, but not
> on BALE.

Yes.  Some while back, Deirdre was kind enough to do the bulk of the
work required to convert BALE to PHP/MySQL -- for which I'm very
thankful.  That work did not include any systematic briefing of me about
the schema and design, though I've gotten answers to a few questions and
a bit of help.  

Eventually, after using the MySQL command-line query tool to make
changes for a while and finding that... tedious..., I got OpenOffice.org
set up on my laptop as a query tool for MySQL access via ODBC.  I was
going to sit down a couple of days ago, and try to figure out -- perhaps
with Deirdre's help -- how to set up one-time, non-recurring events such
as CABAL Installfests in the new setup.  Last I remember hearing from
Deirdre, the new design did not incorporate that design element, though
I'd been very clear on its necessity.  Of late, Deirdre has been too 
busy with important work of her own to take a hand in the problem. 

Two days ago, my laptop developed a variety of hardware trouble, and is
currently at a service shop, allegedly being repaired.  I do not have an
ETA, for its return (if any).  All I have so far is a $75 charge to my 
credit card for the first hour of work, which may of course be down the
tubes if the machine is not repairable.

I could, very likely, replicate the OpenOffice.org/ODBC setup on the
spare desktop box on my kitchen table (running Knoppix installed to the
hard drive).  That would take opening up the MySQL security access via a
command-line-tool revision to one of its system tables, again -- and, of
course, another dollop of setup time.  And then, presumably, I'd have to 
lavish another even bigger dollop of time on the problem of how to
implement non-recurring events, since the database design reportedly
didn't include that.  Meanwhile, I'm crunched for time to do paying work
-- with reduced computing facilities.  You see my problem.

Or, of course, I could just say "Fsck this", scrap the PHP and MySQL,
and put the ugly old -- but well-maintained -- vi-edited static HTML 
back.  But that would ignore the fact that the database-driven design
_is_ in pretty nearly every way better.

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick at linuxmafia.com     modern-American-English-usage-improvement association.