Gratitude Journal 20090401

I am thankful for or that

1. Rain.
2. LEB giving me a ride to and from work.
3. Some nice neighborhoods near work to walk through at lunch time.
4. The public library.
5. Money to buy coffee for LEB & me.
6. Running into Mr. MT from church while downtown.
7. GAB cooking dinner.
8. MJB behaving while LEB and I were out.
9. Our working washer and dryer.
10. Mr. DS holding a conference call for our team.

I acknowledge myself for

1. Talking openly about various issues w/ LEB.
2. Working hard and accomplishing numerous tasks on the job.
3. Doing laundry.
4. Taking a long walk.
5. Putting away the leftovers from dinner.
6. Taking a shower before bed.
7. Brushing my teeth before bed.
8. Making the bed.
9. Getting rid of two small trash baskets of old mail and papers.
10. Making sure the kids have lunch money for school.

Gratitude Journal 20090129

I am thankful for or that

1. All the people who make Upwards Basketball possible for CIB and MJB.
2. My job.
3. Gas to run “Dad’s Taxi Service.”
4. All the people who make the JL Mann women’s lacrosse team possible for GAB.
5. GAB taking care of MJB while I was at basketball practice w/ CIB.
6. The book Mindless Eating.
7. The book Career Renegade.
8. Clean fresh water.
9. Our laundry washing and drying machines.
10. Our minivan.

I acknowledge myself for

1. Working on the stupid ASP/FoxPro thing again!
2. Picking GAB up from lacrosse practice.
3. Taking CIB to basketball practice.
4. Picking up LEB from work at 10PM.
5. Taking my lunch to work.
6. Eating a healthy breakfast.
7. Keeping this journal.
8. Running the dishwasher.
9. Doing a load of laundry.
10. Going to bed at a decent hour.

Gratitude Journal 20090128

I am thankful for or that

1. LEB got home safely from ATL.
2. CIB and GAB helping out in the kitchen before and after dinner.
3. Money to buy groceries.
4. Electricity for cooking.
5. Hot water for washing dishes.
6. Being able to eat dinner with the kids.
7. Eat Stop Eat.
8. Top Chef.
9. Serena Williams.
10. Serena Williams making it to the Australian Open Finals.

I acknowledge myself for

1. Complete another 24 hour fast.
2. Cooking a healthy dinner for the kids and myself.
3. Shining the sink.
4. Doing laundry.
5. Swishing-n-swiping the master bathroom.
6. Making the bed.
7. Diligently researching the interaction between ntpd and SELinux.
8. Diligently researching a customers problem with ASP/ODBC/FoxPro although all should be scrapped.
9. Staying awake until LEB got home from ATL.
10. Calling Dad and DKB.

Compiling PHP w/ support for Oracle, MySql and MSSql

Compiling PHP on linux w/ support for Oracle, MySql and MSSql turned out to be quite a chore. The Mysql part was easy, I guess due to the long history of using php with mysql.

In order to get support for MSSql I had to download and compile a package called FreeTDS which provides support for MSSql and Sybase. But after compiling and installing FreeTDS, I got an error:

configure: error: Directory /PATH/TO/freetds-0.82 is not a FreeTDS installation directory

Turns out php is looking for files that are no longer part of FreeTDS. Thanks to google I found the solution.

PHP tests for a FreeTDS installation by looking for files that FreeTDS no longer installs. To assure PHP that FreeTDS is installed, create two files where FreeTDS was installed e.g.:

$ touch /usr/local/freetds-0.82/include/tds.h
$ touch /usr/local/freetds-0.82/lib/libtds.a

Now for Oracle. That was a bear, too. I found much conflicting information on the internet but mainly it seemed that I needed to use a couple of flags to the php configure script:

–with-oracle=/PATH/TO/ORACLE and –with-oci8=/PATH/TO/ORACLE

However, both of those were wrong. The php configure script ended with apparent success but warning that I had used to unknown options. It turned out that I needed

–with-oci8=instantclient,/PATH/TO/ORACLE-INSTANTCLIENT

I found that by running the configure script with the –help option. Of course I had to install the oracle instantclient and sdk before any oracle support would work. I also installed sqlplus just to be on the safe side. Those packages are free to download if you create an oracle login.