RTFM!

I had gone about as far as I could go the other day with my MySQL problem, which consisted primarily in not being able to gain access to the system even though I plainly had added a line to the 'user' table that gave the user named 'foo' access from any host (designated by '%') if the password 'bar' was supplied.

The folks over in the #mysql channel on the IRC OpenProjects net seemed a bit catatonic the couple of times I dropped in to ask why this might be the case. Feeling a little frantic, I dropped into the #livejournal channel, hoping someone there could help. Someone did, indirectly (fellow LJer dormando suggested I go RTFM, which I did, hitting the MySQL FAQ at the Bit By Bit web site).

And there it was, just what I needed, in section 4.2.10 (Causes of Access denied Errors):

A very common error is to insert a new entry with Host='%' and User='some_user', thinking that this will allow you to specify localhost to connect from the same machine. The reason that this doesn't work is that the default privileges include an entry with Host='localhost' and User=''. Because that entry has a Host value 'localhost' that is more specific than '%', it is used in preference to the new entry when connecting from localhost! The correct procedure is to insert a second entry with Host='localhost' and User='some_user', or to remove the entry with Host='localhost' and User=''.

The suggestion was followed, and now everything works fine.

Now to get down to some serious development, once I take care of some other matters. (There is a good chance I'll be getting a rather large rush job within a couple of hours.)

Cheers...

Research is grand...

It's a crying shame to see how obsolete my collection of paper dictionaries is becoming, especially my dictionary of abbreviations and acronyms. (I don't count the ancient document I own that summarizes the state of the known Soviet universe of abbreviations circa 1964; it was obsolete when I bought it and is only useful for historical purposes, but I digress...)

My latest tactic is to submit unknown abbreviations to the Rambler search engine, and it hasn't failed me yet (about 60 forays thus far), at least for commonly encountered abbreviations.

Take, for example, my attempt the other day to determine what "КРАБ" might be, standing in front of the name of a bank. What I find typically happens is that the first two screens of "hits" are of no help when doing such a search. In this particular case, it was even worse, as 'краб' denotes 'crab', which retrieved a number of interesting recipes, but no hits on banks.

I added the word "банк" (bank) to the query, and that got rid of the culinary items. My "first two screens are useless" rule held, and somewhere in the third screen, I found what I was looking for: коммерческий региональный акционерный банк (which I rendered as: commercial regional incorporated bank).

This technique does have its hazards, as I found two differing expansions for one other abbreviation I was interested in, though they were close enough for the difference not to matter. Too, just because one finds out what the words are in an abbreviation doesn't assure success in translating them. I'm still scratching my head over what a "унитарное предприятие" might be ("unitary enterprise"? pardon me while I spit).

One curiosity: While browsing the nist.fss.ru site, I ran across a link to "ЧаВо", which I clicked because I had no idea what it meant. Apparently, it appears to be an accepted abbreviation for "FAQ" (as in: "ответы на часто задаваемые вопросы").

A follow-up search on Rambler found over 34,000 references to this abbreviation (albeit in only 3227 Runet documents). I wonder how it originated?

Enough procrastinating. Back to work!

Cheers...

P.S. Note to self: This was redone in... IE5.5 as Mozilla does not let you submit Cyrillic inside of LJ posts. Blech.

Winding down...

The translation of the acceptance test paperwork went like a dream. All that's left is to look over the text to make sure I caught all of the subtle changes that occurred among the four largely similar documents I worked on.

That other job hasn't materialized yet, although I've received reference materials (which is a good sign). The client indicated it would be due on Monday, which means weekend work, but unless I get it first thing tomorrow, it may have to go to Tuesday. (Who am I kidding? They want Monday, they get Monday!)

Feht should be winging his way toward Houston as I write this. Last night, after trying unsuccessfully to install a Zip drive on the Toshiba I lent him, we determined that he was trying to hook up a SCSI Zip drive onto a machine that speaks only parallel. So, Maria and William came by and I installed my parallel unit and they took it with them.

I set my alarm for 3:45 am in order to get up and see if there was an aurora over the mountains. As it turned out, I woke up on my own around 1:30 am. When I looked out at the mountains, I could make out them out against the sky, but I'm not sure why. I believe the moon had already set by then (but didn't check), so if there was an aurora, it was not very spectacular.

Anyway, I am tired. Bushed. Beat. I need to sit down and remember how to make a martini (fortunately, it's not much of a reach :^).

Cheers...