Colleen: update

Colleen's still in ER getting IV fluids to rehydrate her after four days of not being able to keep anything down. She sent me away at midnight as she was being wheeled away to X-ray; the blood cultures won't come back for several hours yet. She thinks it's another bacterial infection; she's usually right about what's going on in her body.

She's as comfortable as can be expected under the circumstances, with blankets, pillows, and her head up to ease the post-nasal drip. She'll probably sleep better than she has in days. The nurses are sweet and caring. She'll be fine.

I passed the time reading Ray Bradbury's The End of Summer. Didn't like it. It describes a boyhood as remote from mine as the mountains of the moon.

I need more aspirin, and sleep. G'night.

(5:50am She's ready to come home, apparently. As soon as I have some coffee.)

Colleen's back at home

Was roused out of a sound sleep at 5:30 or so by the sound of my pants ringing. Fortunately I'd given Kaiser the landline number as well; I was fumbling with the cell when they called it.

Colleen's home now; back in her own bed. Much happier, and sufficiently re-hydrated that they're not worried about her anymore. So I'm guessing that they didn't find anything in the blood cultures, or anything else that needed immediate treatment. The anti-nausea stuff(ondansetron) they gave her a prescription for will let her keep her potassium tablets down, and the Cash&Carry across the street sells genuine Mexican Coke.

So I get the full convention experience after all, without the fun of filking til 4am. *sigh* At least I have my flower_cat back.

There's a reason why I don't use databases

Several reasons, actually, but this post, I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Data Debasement | PBS, gets to one of them.

Thanks in part to Larry Ellison's hard work and rapacious libido, databases are to be found everywhere. They lie at the bottom of most web applications and in nearly every bit of business software. If your web site uses dynamic content, you need a database. If you run SAP or any ERP or CRM application, you need a database. We're all using databases all the time, whether we actually have one installed on our personal computers or not.

But that's about to change.

We're entering the age of cloud computing, remember? And clouds, it turns out, don't like databases, at least not as they have traditionally been used.

This fact came out in my EmTech panel and all the experts onstage with me nodded sagely as my mind reeled. No database?

No database.

Not only is a (relational) database (server) hard to back up reliably, a processing bottleneck, and a single point of failure, it also doesn't distribute worth a damn, so it doesn't scale.

Hash tables, on the other hand...

The Commandments of Coyote

From the archives of the awesome and amazing cadhla, we have The Commandments of Coyote.

I. Thou Shalt Have As Many Gods and Spirits and Personal Trainers and Gurus As You Like Before Me, But You Shalt Not Let Them Block the Exits, and More, You Shall Not Permit Them To Take the Last Beer, For That Beer Is Mine. Seriously. Don't.

II. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife, But Thou Art Totally Welcome To Admire Her Ass When She Walks By, and If It Happens To Come Out That They Are In An Open Relationship, Dude, Tap That Ass As Much As They Are Willing To Allow. Same Goes For the Ladies. Coveting Is Sort Of Stupid, But Sex Is Just Plain Fun, Unless Thou Art Doing It Entirely Wrong.