Saturday, January 13

Life

Bleh

I've been down with a cold all week, which is why I've been less active than normal. I'm trying to finish translating Minx from the proof-of-concept model to the production design, but that's hard to do when your head is all squishy.

Worse, I think the cough that took me out for three weeks last October is coming back. Well, it's nothing like as bad yet, but it feels similar. Or maybe it's just a cough; I don't know.

I'd go back to bed except that it's nearly 30 degrees here at Pixy Central even with the air conditioner running non-stop.

I'd eat some ice cream except that seems to aggravate the cough.

I'd drink some of my nice iced tea except I already drank it all.

I'd go to the shop and buy some more except that it's even hotter outside, and as I said, my head is all squishy.

Meanwhile, I was doing some testing, converting all the munu blogs to Minx using my automagical converter program. Two problems cropped up:

First, it took 50 minutes to convert everything, which seemed a bit slow. It's less than 15 seconds per blog, and that involves pulling the data out of the old database as well as putting it into the new one (this is a direct db-to-db transfer rather than an export/import function) - but that's still slower than I'd hoped.

Second, the resulting database was nearly twice the size of the original Movable Type one. I know I have a lot of new fields to account for the extra functionality, but I was very careful about how and when and where they were added, so I was extremely disappointed to see that they caused that much bloat. Essentially, that would mean I'd need twice the memory on the database servers to handle the same number of users, which makes for a lot more expense.

And then I discovered a leetle bug in the conversion program. That caused it to copy each blog twice. Which would account for 50% of the slow and 100% of the bloat.

My head feels a bit better now.

Update: Well, it fixed the size problem. The speed problem, not so much. The code isn't the issue; 45 minute run time vs. 4 minutes CPU. I'll move on to the import routine and see if it's the pull/push nature that's slowing it down.

Update: The dread cough of doom seems to be in hiding. Let's hope it stays that way. It's also set to be a lot cooler the next few days, with predicted maximums of 23 to 23 degrees, where today it was as I said 30 degrees indoors with the air conditioner running...

Now if I could just lose the headache, I'd be almost happy.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:19 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1

Hope you get better soon.  Being sick is a pain.

(At the risk of gloating... I had a cold this week too.  I had to clear my throat several times a day, and once I coughed 3 or 4 times! Easily the worst cold I've had in years.  Hehe. )

Posted by: TallDave at Saturday, January 13 2007 04:59 PM (odS+4)

2

Your headache is probably due to caffeine withdrawal.

If you're using 4 CPU minutes on a 23-minute program run, I would bet it means you're disk-bound. Changing your disk cache settings might improve it considerably.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, January 13 2007 07:03 PM (+rSRq)

3 I hadn't really been sick for ages up until October.

And yeah, being sick is a pain.  Bad enough when you're sick and working for someone else, but being sick when you're self-employed really sucks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 14 2007 11:06 AM (GaSFI)

4

Yeah, I found that out myself when I went independent several years ago.  There are no sick days working for yourself, just days you didn't make any money.  Chronic illness = bankruptcy.

That's about when I started my Vitamin C kick.  I can't be sure it's not all in my head, but I feel better.  Seem to help along my recovery from laser surgery, too; my body was absorbing a lot more C after the trauma of the surgery, and the doc was surprised how fast I healed. 

Of course, it could also be all the green tea exctract or curcumin or the million other things LEF puts in my mix.  Hard to do empirical study on one's self.

Ditto on the caffeine withdrawal; the only time I get headaches anymore is when I am inexplicably and onforgivably out of tea.

 

Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, January 14 2007 06:27 PM (odS+4)

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