The Ji Village News

季庄新闻–Haidong Ji’s Blog

一天和老婆开玩笑。我说：“孩娘，我英俊、潇洒、有钱、光彩照人，你到底想要什么？！”。

老婆温柔地、甜甜地一笑，应道：“相公，你说的那些，有一样就行！”

我当即被雷倒。和这个聪明善良厨技差的无厘头妮子斗法，我基本上没占过便宜。

One of my buddies wrote a program that can help you find the DTS packages that reference a server, database, table, stored procedure, column, etc. I’ve worked with DTS enough times to know that this is really a very handy tool to help your day-to-day job and DTS package promotion from one environment to another. He has sold the program worldwide and it really performs well.

Check it out here at Gerasus Software.

一年一度的芝加哥半程马拉松比赛今年八月十日星期天在Lake Michigan旁边的Grant Park举行，参加者万人左右。这天天高云淡，气温凉爽，是长跑的好天气。

海外中国教育基金（Overseas China Education Fund, OCEF）芝加哥分会参加了这项盛事。芝加哥分会是34个参与这项盛事的慈善社团组织之一。早在半年前，OCEF芝加哥分会就开始了筹备工作。十日大清早，OCEF的十名义工从不同的远郊赶来，迎着早晨的凉风，搭起了帐篷和图片展，向运动员和观众分享了OCEF支持中国贫困地区教育的成绩。并且详细地回答了运动员和观众的问题。

本次比赛，有四位长跑爱好者为OCEF义跑。这次活动，OCEF募捐了美元2700左右。更重要的是，义工们把OCEF支持贫困儿童教育的信息传递给几百甚至上千的参与比赛的各界人士。

OCEF以援助中国贫困地区的教育事业为使命，在广大会员和捐款人的大力支持下不断发展壮大。十余年来，基金会先后在中国农村地区资助逾两万人次的贫困儿童上学读书，帮助 90 余所学校建立了图书室，并开展了修建校舍等其它特别项目，受益学生和学校遍及中国19 个省和自治区。海外中国教育基金会是一个独立的民间组织，不从属于任何官方机构或其它组织，无政治与宗教诉求，不为任何特殊利益集团服务。教育是海外中国教育基金会唯一关注的对象。读者可以到网站http://www.ocef.org了解更多的信息。

OCEF芝加哥分会成立与五年前，现有活跃的成员二十五人。如果你有兴趣并且想对中国贫困地区的儿童做贡献，欢迎你和这个邮箱联系：chicago@ocef.org。

Above is a news bulletin published in Chicago area Chinese media. I am a volunteer at OCEF and was there that day. 多解决些问题，少谈些主义。

During my to WordPress 2.6.2, I decided to use the default spam plug-in, Akismet.

After a few days of usage, there were still a few trackbacks slipped through, creating additional emails and work for me. So I wasn’t too satisfied and searched for an alternative spam plug-in.

I decided to try WP-SpamFree. So far it has been working great. In fact, I will remove Akismet now and let WP-SpamFree handles all my spamming needs.

Let me know if you have problems commenting, by writing an email at haidong.ji gmail.

A while ago, I read my blogging buddy K. Brian Kelley’s entry on what font to use, which led me to another blogging buddy Adam Machanic‘s recommendation on ProFont. I tried it but gave up eventually.

Here are my own three key requirements for fonts:

1. Readability: I want to tell the 0OolI1i and such easily without doubt and confusion;
2. Monospace: I want each letter, punctuation mark, and other symbols to take the same space;
3. Appearance: I want it easy to the eye.

ProFont satisfies the first two requirements. It also has a metallic feel which I like, but it fails my third requirement. Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to me, it looks a bit crude and unpolished. The font also looks bad when you set it to a bigger size.

The day before yesterday, I was hacking away with some MySQL stuff and read a few MySQL related blogs, which led me to try IRC for the first time. I installed ChatZilla and fired my font question to the VIM channel on freenode.net.

Within a few minutes of time, I got excellent feedbacks. One recommended the Terminus font and Microsoft’s Consolas font. I think Terminus has the same problem as ProFont. Another suggested DeJaVu, which is my font of choice now. The one I picked is DejaVu Sans Mono TrueType. Consolas is not bad either.

How to install TrueType font:
1. Download it;
2. Copy the ttf file to C:\Windows\Fonts;

The IRC chat is interesting. However, in my brief encounter, I saw a profanity-laden shouting match happening on the VMWare channel. I think I will observe a few more days to see if it is valuable to me.

Now I used Yogi Berra’s quotes, let me list a few more. I think the legend got a life of its own and I sometimes wonder how many of those famous quotes really came out of his own mouth. By the way, the Yogi Berra and Yao Ming commercial is pretty funny.

When you come to a fork in a road, take it!
I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.
You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.
I couldn’t tell if the streaker was a man or a woman because it had a bag on it’s head.

#There are two key parts for this script. The first part copies the latest backup and paste it in the local g drive. The second part do the restore from this backup file. It’s a LightSpeed backup and restore. Linchi Shea’s SQLDBA helper Perl files are needed. This is mainly for my own safekeeping.

#Part 1
use File::Copy;
use File::stat;
use SQLDBA::Utility qw( dbaRunOsql );  # import the function
$dirname = shift or die "Please provide a directory to search for";
$timediff=0;
opendir DIR, "$dirname";
while (defined ($file = readdir(DIR)))
{
	if($file ne "." && $file ne "..")
	{
		$diff = time()-stat("$dirname/$file")->mtime;
		if($timediff == 0)
                       {
                       	$timediff=$diff;
                       	$newest=$file;
                       }
                if($diff< $timediff)
		       {
                       	$timediff=$diff;
                       	$newest=$file;
                       }
        }
}
print $newest,"\n";
copy("$dirname/$newest", "g:/$newest");
#Part 2
# Construct the SQL script
my $sql =<<__SQL__;
SET NOCOUNT ON
USE Master
DECLARE \@strSQL varchar(255)
PRINT 'Killing Users'
PRINT '-----------------'
CREATE table #tmpUsers(
spid smallint,
ecid smallint,
status varchar(30),
loginname varchar(128),
hostname varchar(128),
blk char(5),
dbname nchar(50),
cmd nchar(16))
INSERT INTO #tmpUsers EXEC SP_WHO
DECLARE LoginCursor CURSOR
READ_ONLY
FOR SELECT spid, dbname FROM #tmpUsers WHERE dbname = 'MyDatabase'
DECLARE \@spid varchar(10)
DECLARE \@dbname2 varchar(40)
OPEN LoginCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM LoginCursor INTO \@spid, \@dbname2
WHILE (\@\@fetch_status <> -1)
BEGIN
	IF (\@\@fetch_status <> -2)
	BEGIN
	PRINT 'Killing ' + \@spid
	SET \@strSQL = 'KILL ' + \@spid
	EXEC (\@strSQL)
	END
	FETCH NEXT FROM LoginCursor INTO  \@spid, \@dbname2
END
CLOSE LoginCursor
DEALLOCATE LoginCursor
DROP table #tmpUsers
PRINT 'Done'
-- The line below is the command to restrict access (behine EM) to dbo (schema owner) and sysadm (sys user):
--exec sp_dboption N\@dbname, N'dbo use', N'true'
--exec sp_dboption N\@dbname, N'dbo use', N'false'
EXEC master.dbo.xp_restore_database \@database='MyDatabase'
  , \@filename = 'G:\\$newest'
GO
__SQL__
# Prepare the osql command line options
my $optRef = {
      '-E' => undef,
      '-n' => undef,
      '-w' => '1024',
      '-d' => 'master',
      '-l' => '5'
   };
# Execute the SQL script on the APOLLO named instance on the local server
my $result = dbaRunOsql('MyServerName', $sql, $optRef);
if (!defined $result) {
   die "***Err: failed to run osql.exe.";
}
else {
   print $result;  # Print the results
}

Finally, after more than 2 years behind the latest release, I did the WordPress upgrade today. Let me know if there are any issues.

I’ve been using FeedBurner for RSS and ATOM feeds, and I know FeedBurner has been harmonized inside China. I thought about getting rid of FeedBurner and let people get the feed directly from my site, but I don’t know if that will generate additional load for me. The site has not been stable lately, due to issues at the hosting company.

本网站因用FeedBurner，所以RSS和ATOM输出被和谐了。据我所知，网站本身没被封。我现在考虑让FeedBurner下课，阅读器可以直接到这个网站来拿输出。但又怕因此给网站带来压力，因为我用的网络服务公司最近很差劲，要么奇慢，要么干脆不工作，把寡人气得不轻。不知各位看官意下如何，搞掉FeedBurner有无帮助？

VIM Version: 7.1
On Windows gvim, right click and pick Select Block;
On Ubuntu Linux gvim, while in normal mode, press Ctrl V

最近儿子左脚的中指上长了个鸡眼，比较痛苦。妈妈前两天给他对温水，让他晚饭后泡泡。

一开始他告诉我的时候，我不明白wart的中文意思，还以为是水泡（blister）。我就告诉他：不着急，让它长一长。我起水泡时，等其成熟，用针捅破，挤挤脓水，和抠脚丫子类似，之后闻一闻，很有味道，苦臭中取乐，兴致盎然。当然我有很长时间没抠过脚丫子了，并且我的脚丫子的味道不如以前好。我也没有告诉他抠脚趾的乐趣，改天给他讲我童年的故事时再说。当然我一说这个，老婆就会无奈地看我一下，说一声恶心。

要说这抠脚丫子的爱好，好像全世界都流行。本人就曾目睹过瑞典人和印度人干这回事儿，当然他们是无意疏忽时做的。到目前为止，我还没见美国人抠过。但如果有人告诉我他们也这么做，我不会感到奇怪。美国人手不闲着，又爱看电视，把脚放在沙发上，不抠一抠才怪呢！

我小时候长鸡眼，是在脚掌处靠近大拇脚指的地方。老婆的也是。所以看到儿子的长到脚趾上，我觉得有点奇怪。后来在网上查一查，读到长在脚趾上的鸡眼，并不奇怪。wikipedia上的一副图，那鸡眼就长到了眼皮上。真所谓第三只眼睛看世界了。

Google Chrome Beta is available for download today. I played with it. I am not impressed at the moment and will not convert from Firefox. I may give it another whirl in a few months.

The strength of Firefox, in my view, is its many available extensions, which practically spoil and pamper me to the point that I do not feel comfortable in other browsers like IE, Safari, Opera, etc.. For example, I have Ad Block Plus. As a result, I hardly see any flashy, scrolling, popping advertisements on any sites, which is almost like a different reality as opposed to IE, Google Chrome, and Safari’s rendering. (Yes, I am aware that it is possible to block those ads in other browsers.)

Another extension that I won’t give up is Vimperator, which uses VI commands for browsing. Closing a tab is a simple press of the letter d. Searching and opening URL can be done with O, o, T, t commands and tab completion, so Google Chrome’s OmniBox didn’t impress me. I even have a little suspicion that Vimperator inspired the OmniBox idea.

This is not to say that Firefox is perfect, mind you. It still crashes once in a while for me, especially when attempting to connect to intranet sites while not on corporate network. But given all its advantages, I feel I can live with it.

It looks Google Chrome has API for extensions and customizations. So Chrome, give me some nice plug-ins, or at least some samples like Ad Block Plus and Vimperator. Then we can talk.