Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
This is a post about manually altering your auto_increment value in a MYSQL table. The solution was just obscure enough drive me crazy for a few minutes, so I figured it’s worth blogging for other DIY MYSQL intermediates (including myself) to stumble onto in the future.
The MYSQL query is:
ALTER TABLE Name of Table AUTO_INCREMENT = Next Value
If you don’t understand the query, or why you might use it, keep reading.
by krisis
I’m absolutely beat after this week of working hard, hard workouts, and bloggerific whinging, so I turn you over to two of my Philly compatriots for your nightly content.
First, via my absolute #1 favorite client in the world, Music Snobbery, a local blogger who gets featured in places like NYT and VF, and who threw himself a third blog birthday bash that – upon the breakup of and corresponding cancellation from The Teeth – lured Moby to fill in. Yes, that Moby.
Gee, I wonder who I can get for my blog’s upcoming eighth birthday? Hmm…
Second, Jen @ 1000 Times No is a particular favorite of mine, but last year whenever I’d stop by she seemed to be on a hiatus. Right now she’s active and I’m active, and it’s a beautiful thing – her random assortment goes well with my own.
And, with that, I will now return to the land of recline, wherein the heavy thing I have to lift is the remote control.
by krisis
Just to show that nothing is safe from competition in Elise’s family, her sister Jenny left an encouraging comment about how she respects my bloggingness – leaving unspoken the inference that the respect is intact despite my hopeless fat, lazy, dumb, ugliness – and parenthetically mentioned that she is on a Dragon Boat team (huh and the what now?), so I should not count her out of the fitness competition just yet.
And, by the by, she is also a blogger, only her blog is broadcast from Taiwan and features regular lessons in Mandarin.
And, oh, in case I forgot, she used to be a competitive ballroom dancer, and she’s choreographing our first dance when she gets back from Taiwan, so I better watch my mouth or I’m going to have to learn to do walkovers and cartwheels.
Do you see what I’m up against here? Elise already volunteered herself to do upper body workouts with me when I move up to a higher set of weights. Next thing you know I’ll have have their brother emailing me songs he’s written and telling me he’s starting his own music festival.
Although, there’s something to be said for marrying a hyper-intelligent, pro-active bombshell with two similarly equipped siblings, in so much as any time I choose to slack off in some aspect of my life I just picture the appropriate one of them sitting on my shoulder, doing that same thing about five times better than I do it.
Whenever it doesn’t send me into wracking sobs or a panic attack it’s very effective. Like, just a few minutes ago I didn’t do enough bicep curls and the trio of them mocked me in imaginary three-part harmony to the point that now I can’t even lift up a glass of orange juice.
Ahh, family.
by krisis
Scene.
Thirty minutes past the proscribed quitting time I – in sharp gray suit, curly hair tucked under my stereo headphones, and bright red sneakers – sigh with resignation, shut down my computer, and walk out to wait for an elevator.
(I am most likely singing along to an Arcati Crisis song at the top of my lungs while walking in a circle, because that is what I do anytime I am alone and waiting for or riding in an elevator.)
The elevator opens.
In it is our CEO and all three of our SVPs. They grin like a school of sharks.
I sheepishly slide my headphones off of my ears, nod hello, and squeeze in next to the highest ranking woman in the company.
The doors close. The air hangs silent for a moment, and then they continue with the conversation they were having when I arrived.
I am sorely tempted to push a button. The floors pass ever so slowly. Any button. Each floor passes, doors shut and unrelenting.
After what seems like an eternity of biting my lip and pretending not to understand the fine details of their conversation, the elevator finally reaches our upper lobby.
The doors open, and we all hang for a second to see if anyone is going to give anyone else the right of way. “Oh, you first.” “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” “Well, you are the CEO.” “Yes, but…”
Nothing. Silence.
The wait continues. We are in danger of the elevator doors closing and sending us back up for another excruciating ride.
I am dead center – a straight shot out the door. And I am the lowest-ranking employee, so it made sense for me to exit first.
Were the doors beginning to inch shut? I would not survive a ride back up.
Flashpoint. I dart out of the elevator … at the exact same moment that the highest ranking woman in the company also makes a break for it.
She was, after all, the only woman in the elevator.
We collide.
In the continuing silence my world slips into impossibly slow motion – I feel my cushy hips rebound sideways off of her slight frame, feel as though I can hear my cellulite churning to reform itself.
It is not just a little bump, either. No. It is a straight on, full-contact body-check straight out of raucous-yet-executive game of deck hockey. I pray futilely that the the men will all pile on (or at least cheer) to make the moment less awkward.
If only.
Finally, my forward motion arrested mostly by utter mortification, I turn back to regard my partner. She is askew, as if I delivered said body check followed by a headlock/noogie combo.
Hers is the laugh of drops of water slicking off of an icicle.
“In a hurry?”
Scene.
(ps: Dear management: I redacted all of the names and sensitive information. And the mean parts. Particularly the word “bony,” which I had mistakenly used twice. So, please do not Dooce me. Thank you.)
by krisis
I have a whole litany of things to say about Lyndzapalooza, Arcati Crisis, and Amy’s new section of the newspaper, but today I’d like to keep the attention on my abdominal section.
Separate from my (now infamous) teenage anorexia, I was also a sit-up addict. I don’t know why – I wasn’t especially interested in any other sort of fitness. In fact, I wasn’t even seeking a six-, four-, or two-pack. I just wanted tone.
I think part of the reasoning was, “food goes to the stomach, so abuse the stomach.” Also, I think one time I saw an anorexic girl on Oprah talk about doing 300 sit-ups a day and thought, Hey, that sounds way better than bulimia as a convenient companion to my anorexia.
Seriously. Fun times.
In any event, I left both the anorexia and the sit-ups by the wayside in college when I discovered things like all-you-can-eat cafeteria mac’n’cheese.
Fast forward a decade past my multi-hundred sit-up prime and my entire abdomen is a joke. And, not a laughing-with-it joke, either.
No, they are definitely to be laughed at.
When fiancee introduced a simple, nightly crunch regimen to get into absolutely drool-worthy shape for her trip to Australia I simply watched – sometimes while eating ice cream – because my abs, they are no longer. Even a standard set of crunches gets me huffing and puffing, and that doesn’t even get into the pure horror of any sort of side crunch that attacks the love-handle area.
A bit insulting, perhaps, that my future wife is in tip-topper shape than me with barely any effort, but it’s not really injuring my pride. After all, it’s not as though I’m spilling out of my clothes here – I’m just weak in the mid-section. I still eat better than ninety percent of the population of America. I still walk three miles or more a day from spring to fall. I just don’t cause her whiplash when I walk by with my shirt off.
However, what did add insult to injury was Elise’s younger brother.
He’s already a better singer and actor than I was at his age, which I can at least rationalize as due to his vastly superior genetics (I mean, we are talking about Elise’s brother, here). Yet, on top of that last year he out-of-the-blue started working out daily.
I was skeptical. I made all sorts of resolutions in high school, but the only two I actually stuck with were playing guitar and try to subsist solely on water and Altoids.
For a while all he had to show for it was endurance for the boredom of jogging and an altogether terrifying skill at Dance Dance Revolution. Now he has actual muscles! Abs, pecs – you name it. And, not just while impressively flexing – he has muscles even while at rest!
When I played DDR in front of him over Christmas I felt like a cow skipping rope. Oh, and did I mention that their father runs marathons, and that when he deigned to run my company’s ten mile race last year he posted the best time of everyone I know? And her sister, the non-fitness-nut, is currently serving out the remainder of her Fulbright Scholarship teaching English. In Taiwan.
I’ll be a legally bound part of this family in a scant nine months, and the peer pressure is starting to mount. To date I’ve skated by on the account of being an academic-wunderkind and a singer-songwriter. Then I had a few months of grace on the “wow, that’s a nice hunk of diamonds you bought for my sister/daughter.”
I’m going to have to step up my over-achievement, lest I become permanently tagged as the fat, lazy, dumb member of their family. (And, theirs is a beauty contest that I am never destined to win (unless I plan several thousands of dollars of plastic surgery (and this is not a post about my need to compete with my own mother))).
My grad school indecision is about to continue into it’s fourth year, so I don’t see a Fullbright in my immediate future, and – let’s face it – I’m not planning on running anywhere anytime soon. (Being the longest-running blog in Philadelphia has so far won me no respect.)
My most realistic aim in this impending crash-course in sibling (and parental) rivalry is somewhere between the fitness levels of my fiancee and her brother – more than a nightly crunch routine, but less than a military-like regimen that causes high school girls to forget how to breathe.
Really, I’d be happy with enough to get Elise to gawk at me when I walk around the house naked, which rises in frequency as the weather improves.