Todd Huss

Caveat: this post is probably only of interest if you’re running into this particular MySQL ODBC Driver problem. Hopefully other people running into this issue will find this useful or please add a comment if you find a better way!

Today I had to get an Excel document that was loaded with ODBC database queries that connect to multiple MySQL databases working on a new machine. The problem I ran into is that if there are any MySQL permission issues such as a missing grant, authentication problems, etc… you’ll always get the following completely meaningless error message:
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I was looking for a solution to keep my financial data (quickbooks, excel, important documents, etc…) encrypted on OS X so that if my laptop were stolen, lost, etc… I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I also like to backup my data to my colocated Linux server so in the event that that machine were compromised I wanted to be protected. As it turns out, Mac OS X has the perfect solution for this: read-write encrypted disk images. Here’s how you do it:
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People love to complain about how Microsoft is too proprietary, and rightfully so. Linux/FreeBSD users can make that claim freely but when Apple users make it I cringe. Microsoft has done some “bad” things with API’s and interoperability and is a worse offender than Apple, however, Apple is by no means a saint of openness and isn’t shy about locking users in to their equally proprietary products and services. Here are just a couple of examples that come to mind:
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Thanks to Dion for pointing out how to get your MacBook to hibernate! When I wrote about switching to the MacBook Pro one of my complaints was that upon shutting the lid the laptop doesn’t hibernate, it sleeps, and they offer you no easy way to switch it via the GUI.
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I had quite a scare today when my new MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot. It would turn on, the screen would go white, and after about 20 seconds it flashed a question mark in a box on the screen. I thought it might have been related to a very minor drink spill incident (which resulted in my purchase of an iCurve stand) but it worked after the spill so I was a bit perplexed. I was not looking forward to going to the Apple store and parting with the laptop and getting charged a bundle so I opted for a little DIY troubleshooting.
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Update 8/13/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.6
Update 5/10/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.2 and built Ruby with the ri docs per Duncan McGregor’s comment
Update 4/7/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.1
Update 3/28/06: Now that Rails 1.1 has arrived I’ve upgraded this package to include it.

Here are the Installation Instructions and here is the all-inclusive ~9MB file to download: RubyOnRailsMacIntel-1.1.6.tar.bz2. If you would prefer to build from source here is my updated version of Geoffrey’s do it all ru-ra-lim.sh script that now works on Mac Intel too.

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One of the side projects I spent a little time on today was researching the use of on-page modal dialog boxes using Javascript and CSS that shade or darken the rest of the page while they are open. It looks like it will be an easy job thanks to these two solutions that are made freely available: (more…)

I’ve gotten through my first week of work on a MacBook Pro after switching from Windows and before I go further let me say that overall it’s been a very positive experience, see my previous post on why I switched from Windows to the Mac. After a week there are still 5 things that I feel were poorly executed on the Mac and they are: (more…)

Part of my switch from Windows to OSX involved figuring out how to get my Outlook Calendar data from Windows/Outlook to MacOSX/iCal. I was really dreading having to manually reenter the whole thing.

Thanks to Norm Jones and Mike Baas who wrote the Outlook Calendar to iCal Macros the migration was a snap. I installed the macros in Outlook, exported to an iCal file, imported it into iCal and I was off and running. Everything came over including recurring meetings. The only thing that didn’t transfer was whether a reminder is supposed to go off before a meeting. In any case, it saved me a lot of time, thanks Norm and Mike!

Here’s the sourceforge page for the Outlook to iCal converter!

I just received my MacBook Pro on Friday. For me this is an even bigger switch since I’m making the switch from Windows to OSX as my primary work desktop. Over the years I’ve alternated between Linux and Windows and as my current Windows laptop is a few years old and shows its age when running IDEA and doing Java compiles (more…)