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Today just happens to be Rachel’s 25th birthday! Rachel has to work a tiny bit during the day, but we’re planning on going out tonight to see Wall-E and then watching some birthday-works at Bridge Street. HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL!

As I sit here in my office listening to the distant jingle of an ice-cream truck, I can’t help but ponder some of my childhood memories. The most random things often bring back random memories. I faintly remember getting ice-cream as a kid from a much similar truck. I’d hear the ring from miles away (ok, maybe blocks, but to a young kid, a block is a mile), and always ask for money for ice-cream. Most of the time my childish dreams of sweet goodness were shut down by the harsh reality that one cannot always have everything one wants. But, every so often, if I was exceptionally good that day (or exceptionally cunning and asked my grandpa, who shared my affinity for ice cream), I would get the beloved “yes,” here’s some money, now go get something. Next came the riveting task of choosing the perfect confectionery delight. Did I want ice cream, or something fruity? Which item would give me the most satisfaction for the money I had to spend? What item was the best value for my dollar? Yes, even at a young age I spent countless hours figuring out what was the BEST choice before deciding. I could spend hours choosing nickel candies, just to make sure that I got the perfect one. After all, most days my dreams of ice cream were shot down, so on those few days I got it, I had to make the correct decision. Then, whether it be an ice cream cone or a frozen popsicle, I would go off to enjoy my sugary delight. Now, I wasn’t one to eat extremely slowly, especially when it came to frozen delights. After all, a melted ice cream cone is a wasted ice cream cone. But, I would enjoy my frozen confection to the very last bite. Then, I’d yearn for the next day I got the beloved “yes”.

find . -maxdepth 5 -name ‘*iso’ -print -exec du -hk ‘{}’ \; | awk ‘((NR % 2) == 0) {print}’ | awk ‘{print $1}’ | awk ‘{sum += $1;} END { print sum;}’

In case you ever needed to find all of the iso’s in the current directory, recursing up to 5 directories down, and then print out the summed size of the iso’s, this command will do that for you.. “find” is a pretty powerful command…

So, today at the MySQL conference there was a presentation by Kickfire. I am interested in hearing more about this technology. The basic idea is having a “SQL Chip” to help speed up SQL all together. Right now it seems like a lot of PR and marketing, but I’d like to look more into it. From the very little I’ve heard the idea is to help speed up SQL by reducing IO load, as well as having SQL talk more directly to the builtin memory. I’m not completely sure how this works, but I plan on researching it more. I asked one of the people about the pricing, and he was saying that they are still working on it, but plan on having a pricepoint start at around 21K/box and then on up from there. I’ll try to blog more about this as I learn more information.

So, I’m sitting about halfway through my second day at the MySQL conference, and I thought it was high time I blogged a little bit about it. I have noticed at the conference that there are numerous Sun employee’s who are attending, but that should not be surprising at all, as Sun just recently acquired MySQL. I will write about that in a little bit. As far as the conference itself, it’s been great to hear some of the new features, and get lots and lots of ideas for what I want to do for both projects at my work, and personal projects. The only issue I run into with these conferences is the desire to do far more things than time allows. I’ll try to blog after the conference about some of the major things I have heard about, as well as different technologies I hope to utilize in the very near future.

So, MySQL and Sun….What’s this about you might ask? Here are my very un-informed and biased thoughts on the acquisition. (Note that these thoughts have very little real knowledge, so if you are looking for “real data” visit the Sun or MySQL sites…) Personally, I think it could be good for both companies, but I am interesting in seeing how it pans out. I know that often buyouts can be good from the “corporate standpoint” but terrible from the actual developer standpoint. I have noticed here that the “MySQL people” and the “Sun People” don’t interact often. The “MySQL people” are very protective of MySQL, while the “Sun People” don’t always seem as welcoming. (Note this is just a general observation. I have seen several cases where the “Sun People” have been very welcoming). I ran into a Sun developer at dinner last night. I asked the “obvious question” (What do you think of the merger?) He was telling me that he thinks it could be good, but that there is a difference in how the two companies operate. 95+% of the the MySQL employees work from home, whereas most sun developers work from this office. Also, Sun already has partnerships with multiple other databases. As far as the “will mysql still be free” question, I have little doubt that MySQL will ever not be free. I don’t think they are planning on changing their sales model. They do well with a “support model” and it appears that they plan on continuing to use this model. (BTW, I have looked more and more into MySQL Enterprise, and it may be something worth looking into, especially for large-scale products).