http://phlonx.com/blog/fred A blog. Of Fred. Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:13:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I recently got a feral cat (Max) from a shelter in Brooklyn to be integrated into my local cat colony. Unfortunately Max came with a plastic ID collar that the shelter people had put on him during his incarceration at the pound, and obviously this collar had to come off ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2007/11/26/removing-a-collar-from-a-feral-cat/ Since I started making my own catfood back in August, I have refined my procedure somewhat. For one thing, I've become more skilled at carving up a chicken carcass. With a good heavy santoku knife and sharp kitchen scissors I can skin and dismember a 4.5 lb chicken in about 20 ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2007/10/28/catfud-revisited/ I've got a script that runs through the alert logs for all the Oracle databases I manage every 10 minutes or so and sends me a text message containing the error number if it finds an error. Sometimes, when the errors are of the more exotic variety, I am left ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2007/08/28/oracle-error-messages/ Back when the tainted petfood scandal broke earlier this year, I resolved to make my own catfood. (Which is to say, I would continue to eat my own regular food, but I would make catfood for my cats). It wasn't until I met someone who did it herself that I was ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2007/08/20/catfud/ Someone recently asked me how to rename their C:\Documents and Settings\mysername folder but they didn't leave a correct email address so my reply bounced. So here, for the benefit of all, is my answer. Under the Documents and Settings is a folder saved in my name instead of my sons. When ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2007/08/15/renaming-your-windows-xp-user-account/ Here are some notes from Steven Feuerstein's Best Practice PL/SQL seminar held at St. John's University in New York on October 16, 2006. This is not a complete blow-by-blow of the seminar, just a few points that especially piqued my interest. Tools Discussed Use of the timer object for testing PL/SQL code PL/SQL ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2006/11/17/plsql-best-practices-seminar/ After two months in the wilderness, my tutorial on the Three Normal Forms is back online. I took it down because in the original, it had some serious flaws. While not factually inaccurate, the section pertaining to NF1 was vague and misleading, and actually belonged in the NF2 section. I have ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2006/11/09/three-normal-forms-tutorial-revised/ Saturday morning I was jogging down South Beach a little south of the Verrazanno Bridge when I came upon a stupefying sight: a huge sea turtle had crawled up on the beach and died. It was a little awe-inspiring, because the turtle's great size implied great age. I measured it ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2006/10/01/gigantic-sea-turtle-on-staten-island/ Putty is a great if you only have a handful of servers that you connect to on a regular basis. But as a consultant with a growing list of clients you can rapidly find yourself having to deal with a larger and larger number of servers, and scrolling through that ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2006/09/27/e-z-putty-tunnelling/ As I mentioned previously, Cancer-grrl and I signed up to run in the Komen Foundation Race for the Cure (you can still make donations there! Don't be shy!) for breast cancer research, which we did this fine morning along with some 20,000 other people. I have never run in such a ... http://phlonx.com/blog/fred/index.php/2006/09/10/raced-and-cured/