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living among crazy terrorists: always open Port 80
Wednesday, June 11 2003
Of late I've been doing a little database development work, mostly to refine my ability to display summaries of server traffic data. It's just like riding a bicycle and it seems I've forgotten very little of what I knew when I last did this stuff, I can't even think how long ago. I've been programming in SQL, although I've had to make use of one of my experimental projects in lieu of my usual development tools. The guy who hosts Vodkatea.com shut down Port 1434 back when the Slammer Worm first started wreaking havoc and I've been unable to alter databases on that server using InterDev (or Enterprise Manager) ever since. (God, this is starting to read like SciFi!) Many months ago, as a sort of for-the-hell-of-it experiment, I'd built my own version of Microsoft's indispensible database tool, Query Analyzer. Since my version was entirely web-based, it communicated over the always-open Port 80. It's actually better than Query Analyzer because it displays linked lists of stored procedures and tables for easy browsing and editing. In the absence of my usual database tools, I've been using it to alter and create stored procedures. It works amazingly well. I wish I'd had that back in the day (1999-2000) when I used to have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to put my miserable cowboy stored procedures live.
The big thing I did this afternoon was the completion of the resurfacing of the concrete slab out in front of the house. I started out using concrete as my mortar, but as I moved into the highest parts of the existing slab (which had to end up having the lowest surface), I had to begin using pure Portland cement as my mortar. The idea was to maximize the amount of exposed rock in the new surface, but towards the end I didn't really have much that was thin enough. I resorted to little flakes, smaller even than an Iraq's Most Wanted playing card in some cases. The local bluestone varies a lot from one outcrop to another. Rock from some places flakes easily into very thin pieces, but often in these areas the strata are so bent that the flakes end up being excessively dished, ribbed, or rippled.
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