The first word of Christ ...

If we accept Markan Primacy, then the first words of Christ recorded in the bible are as follows:

“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!"

What a truly, truly wonderful thought.

I have an idea.  Let's preach this:  The time has come.  The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent, and believe the good news.  :-D

A couple things I learned about databases today

1 - In DB2, the following pseudocode doesn't work:
define cursor
open cursor
while (not end of cursor)
   make table update
   commit;
 end-while
close cursor

The reason?  The "commit;" statement closes your cursor!  you'll have to commit after exiting your loop.

2 - In SQL Server, you can end up with a database that has no owner.  (!)
To correct this, us the sp_changedbowner system stored procedure.
example: sp_changedbowner 'sa'

A more thorough treatment of this topic can be found here.

Crazy ...

Bleed the Freak

It's funny, but every time in my entire career that I've faced a you-can't-get-there-from-here when writing code, it's been resolved by listening to Alice in Chains.  Tonight's song: Bleed the Freak

I honestly have no idea what to think of that.

Oh, well.  At any rate, another life saved ;-)>.  Who knew that, when writing a db2 stored procedure,  Get Diagnostics ROW_COUNT could be confused by a variable assignment within the select statement.  Now I know.

Here's the code snippet in case anyone stumbles across this and needs it.  Hopefully it's clear.  v_vTable and SWV_RowCount were previously declared, as was v_last_block.:

--    The following is absolutely terrible, but GET DIAGNOSTICS ROW_COUNT simply would not work!!! 

--    It was returning 0 no matter what, perhaps confused by the INTO clause?

SET SWV_RowCount = (select count(N_OID_LST) FROM OID_MGMT WHERE C_OID_CL_ABR = v_vTable);

--      GET DIAGNOSTICS SWV_RowCount = ROW_COUNT;   

select N_OID_LST into v_last_block FROM OID_MGMT WHERE C_OID_CL_ABR = v_vTable;

A note for those who mourn

A note for those who mourn:

My grandma, who raised me and was basically my mamma, died in 1991. When I think of her, it still does something to me that I don't quite have words to express, so much so that I have trouble writing this through the tears that her memory brings.

As the years have passed, I've come to view as something really beautiful the fact that one person can love another person so deeply, and that 20 years after her passing, she's still so real, and so present in my life as to inspire such a powerful reaction.  Missing someone a lot reminds you that you loved them a lot, and reassures you that you still do.  I hope I'm always able to enjoy that deep-in-my-bones kind of sadness as an expression of my love for her, until the day I see her again.

Time doesn't heal that hurt, but that's a good thing.  What time DOES do is alter the character of the pain, morphing it from an intense, shrill, constant, and at times overwhelming pain in places you didn't even know existed, into a deep-in-the-bones ache that appears and then subsides, and that is actually sort of beautiful, as odd as that sounds; something like Sarah Mclachlan's "glorious sadness".

I hope that hurt never heals.  I hope I'm always able to shed a few tears and, for a moment now and then, enjoy that glorious sadness as an expression of my love for my grandma, until the day I see her again.

New goop, same grinder

 We give our kids new raw materials to drop into the same old grinder, turn the crank, and think it's fantastic when a different kind of goop drops out the bottom. But we're completely missing the point, because it's the grinder that Jesus wants to remake, not the goop.
le plus ca change le plus de meme chose

Another brick in the wall.

As always seems to happen when I try to write nowadays, I run out of time and energy long before the finished product says what I want it to say.  Oh, well, I'm hitting "Publish" anyway ;-)>

_________

I don't typically fall into anger when I'm hurting anymore.  Part of me actually mourns this as a sort of loss.   I have to admit that there was a comfort there, a well of will and energy, a strength to fortify against whatever sort of doom one faces.

Korn - another brick in the wall:

I confess that, at this point in my life, when I've been hurt deeply, I sort of mourn the ability to just REALLY FEEL this song again - to build a little wall, to withdraw from the world, to pace and strut and sneer at the object of my pain.  It's not tempting to go there again, per se - it's more an old friend that I miss.

The bottom line is that I have a choice in this, and as a disciple of Christ, I choose a different path.  I'll choose to love my enemies, and pray for those who persecute me.  I'll choose to give also my shirt when my coat is demanded, and to turn the other cheek so that they can strike me AGAIN, if they like.  I will choose to forgive, not once, nor twice, nor 7 times, but 70 times 7, and more if necessary.  I will empty myself, trusting that I will again be filled with something good.  I'll sit quietly, and close my eyes, and fill my lungs, and know that He is God.

A message to all humans

A message to all humans

One of the most important speeches in recorded history was given by a comedian by the name of Charlie Chaplin