I reinstalled the 32 bit version of mysql and then recompiled the mysql gem. Then magically things started working the way I needed them to. Hopefully this can get fixed in a future version of Ruby.

Here is the command I had to use to finally install the gem properly.


sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql-lib=/usr/local/mysql/lib --with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql --with-mysql-include=/usr/local/mysql/include


Notice the i386 arch. I was previously using x86_64 as the arch which compiled properly and appeared to work until you actually tried to use the gem in ruby and got a stack trace.

Tonight I decided to try out the Migration Assistant. For some unknown reason I’ve never used it in the past when I’ve upgraded my mac. After using it though, all I can say is wow! Why haven’t I used this tool before? What is so amazing to me in contrast to Windows machines is how well it works and how easy it is to use. Also as far as I can tell so far it appears to have transfered everything just the way I told it to. This includes all my files, custom settings, and even applications. Although it technically should be possible to transfer appliations between Windows machines, in most cases it isn’t even an option. Whenever I have moved from one Windows machine to another I end up having to reinstall all the applications. The only thing that really moves well on Windows is files such as documents and other application data. The applications themselves though don’t like to be moved.

With Migration Assistant, the fact that applications can be moved is huge for me since reinstalling all my applications usually takes at least an entire day if not more. Whats more, its really something that isn’t fun and frankly shouldn’t be necessary to redo every time I move to a new computer.

So far I’m completely sold on Migration Assistant. It has definitely made this the least painful upgrade I’ve ever experienced. I’ll have to see if I’m still as impressed after making sure everything really does work over the next week or two.

All I had to do to fix the problem was disable IPv6 and comment out the localhost ::1 line in my hosts file. This took a significant amount of troubleshooting to figure out though. I thought there was some type of problem with PHPUnit or php itself. Luckily I was finally able to solve the problem.

It seems like a really bad idea for Microsoft to enable IPv6 by default and additionally put it higher in the resolution order than IPv4 addresses. Based on the number of active IPv6 networks this can’t be a good default decision. Supporting IPv6 is a good idea, but it shouldn’t be the default method of resolving addresses. Windows should have knowledge that you are connected to an IPv4 network and disable or lower the priority of IPv6 accordingly.

The closest I came to any type of solution was by following the discussion at Bill Evjen’s Blog. Even after tinkering though the best pseudo solution I came up with was running XP inside of a VM. It isn’t really a solution, but it gets me by for the few things I absolutely need the VPN for. Hopefully these types of issues will get resolved over time. Unfortunately, I’m pretty certain this isn’t the last issue I’ll run into with 64 bit Vista.

While we were logged into our Hamachi network we were able to ping each other and followed all the troubleshooting instructions given by the Hamachi site. This was despite the fact that starcraft is one of the games that is supposed to “just work” with Hamachi. None of us were able to see games that anyone else created. After tinkering around with this for probably about a half-hour my friend orb360 found a solution. The steps to get Starcraft and probably many other older applications working with Hamachi are below. These instructions are Windows specific. Although the method should probably work on other platforms.

The main tip is to make Hamachi the first network interface that Windows tries to use. On other platformsthe goal would be the same. Only the way you accomplish it would be different.

1. Go into control panel then click on “network connections”

2. Click the “advanced” link in the menu

3. Click “advanced settings”

4. Change the order so it looks something like this

5. Reboot Windows

After taking these steps Hamachi and Starcraft played nice together.

Sometimes I’ve been logged into a machine and wondered what distro and/or version of a distro is running.

The command I found that does the trick is

lsb_release -a

This should work on most recent distros such as ubuntu, redhat, or suse.

Signing up for the service is extremely easy. You can get a kit at almost any electronics store, or sign up online, or get referred from a friend, and probably many other ways. The unknown downside of their practice is that they make it extremely difficult to cancel the service. The tactics they are using are reminicent of the way AOL used to work. I was finally able to cancel but it took two separate calls wasting over 1 1/2 hours of my time (most of it on hold). Both people I spoke with were extremely unhelpful and rude and tried extremely hard to give me the hard sell of why I should stick with the service all at the same time while giving me a poor experience making me want to cancel even more.

Another issue I found with Vonage is that they want to be treated and be equal to typical utility phone companies. However, they don’t want to do business in the same way. Their hours to call and cancel the service are extremely inconveninent for anyone on the west coast so that they basically have to call during a normal work day. They are only open mon-fri. I wasn’t able to find a time to call during work and they were closed on the weekend. Due to this fact I was unable to cancel before my billing cycle renewed. Based on this I was forced to pay for 29 days of phone service I didn’t and cannot use. If I were dealing with any typical utility phone company such as Quest they would be forced to give me a prorated refund for the service I didn’t receive because they are a public utility. If Vonage and other similar companies want to be on the same playing field as a utility and compete with them they should play by the same rules.
These types of tactics are completely opposite of what companies should be doing in a competitive market place. The only reason I can see businesses using these type of business practices is that they don’t have faith in their own products enough to let them stand on their own. If you have a decent product you should have faith that customers will stick with it. So the point is for businesses to be successful in a fast moving and ever-changing market place they need to make the customers ability to make their own decisions easy. If it is easy to sign up it should be equally as easy to cancel.
Treat your customers well and make a quality product. If you do this the chances of success are much higher than if you treat them as if they are a commodity.

I finally found out how to use Svn auto-props today. These are very nice. You can set a given property based on a files extension or filename pattern. This allows for doing things like:

[auto-props]
*.py = svn:keywords=Author Date Id Revision

This means I don’t have to keep adding svn keywords on every file I add. It just gets turned on for all python files I add to svn. These properties are set in the svn config file on the client, so every client can have their own settings. Very handy.