3: Oh MySQL, you fickle queen.

Luke Oliver

02 Jul 2025 • 2 min read

This is the photo I used on Monday's now-deceased post, this is an emergency stop button of one of the wind tunnels at the CWC (which I'll probably talk in depth about in another post) that I took and made into an "album cover" because I think it's cool.

So, Murphy's Law, right?

I am writing this post on July 2nd. This is supposed to be the 5th post (today is Wednesday, post 1 originally went up on Saturday), but because everything that can go wrong will, I had the database that I was using just... decide to stop at some point yesterday (maybe the same time I accidentally left my phone on airplane mode all night, sorry Claire and Cody). This is especially annoying because I didn't change anything about the config yesterday. Not a single thing, but it still crashed and refused to start again, which lost me my post from Monday. I luckily realized it wasn't working yesterday and copied last night's post somewhere safe before I lost it too, and I had a backup that I had made on Sunday from which to rebuild. I will recopy and post last night's post after I publish this one, but this will count as my post for today, and that one for yesterday. I have no way to access the post from Monday, nor do I well remember what was written in it, so it will remain one of the tragic casualties in the war that is self-hosting.

Someone's car alarm is going off outside as I'm writing this, and it's really adding to the atmosphere.

I switched from MySQL to MariaDB, which is kind of what I should have started with in the first place, those that are in the know tell me MariaDB is essentially just a better version of MySQL, and I can now corroborate that with my experience.

I'm doing laundry right now to pack up and head home for the long weekend, which will be very nice.

I also, just to add it on, got cold called by a good friend of mine (Hi Chip!), and that is something that I wish more people did; I may start doing it myself. He was stuck in traffic and I was just working on this, so I was happy to talk, and it was lovely to hear from him (even, and especially unprompted).

I know this is an uncommon opinion among my generation, but talking on the phone is significantly better than texting, given you have the block of time allotted and a space in which to have a conversation. Texting is more convenient, yes, but calling is more human.