Swinging on a star

I've mentioned a few times that I really love music, and it is the original basis of my database. And while I think the cloud is a pretty neat idea, I am practical enough (paranoid, perhaps) to know that if I store my data in the cloud, it could be gone without warning. More and more, tech writers seem to agree in their writing that the cloud is not a matter of technology- its a matter of trust. And to be honest, most of the data I have on electronic storage devices is not important in the grand scheme of things, nor does it have great value, nor is it particularly embarrassing.

Still, its my data, and I don't intend to lose it should an ill wind suddenly blow my cloud away (Mick Jagger apparently was concerned with his personal cloud as early as 1965, in Hey You Get Off of My Cloud). So, I safeguard my data by keeping it local. One of the best ways this happens is demonstrated by my music collection. I do purchase .mp3s from time to time, but I prefer having the music on CD. If I do purchase a song or find a free mp3 (Amazon offers freebies, as do several other legitimate sites), I usually try to burn it to a CD, or at least make a copy to be burned at a later date. When Jennifer and I go to the local Goodwill store, the first section I peruse is their music. This past Sunday, we went there and someone had donated around fifty recordings from the Forties through the early Sixties. I picked out eight. Swinging on a Star by Bing Crosby was one of the songs on one of these collection discs (each has over twenty songs). I really enjoyed listening to it just now, but the funny thing  (and please don't think less of me for it) is that I think I like the version sung by (of ALL people) Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello in Hudson Hawk. Yup. And I generally am a purist, preferring the original recording  to covers.

Update: I started writing this a few days ago (hmm, have I said that before?). Work has been crazy-busy... I don't complain about that, really, because I still like to eat! As I ended Friday with overtime, the work I anticipate on Saturday will put me well over fifty hours- and we really do need the money, so I consider it a blessing. However, as a knowledgeworker with I.T. interests outside of my job, these hours can be a bit challenging. The most visible example is this blog: it often languishes for days from start to publication date. However, I don't force what I publish, and having what I consider to be a naturally terse writing style, I don't try to add a bunch of words just to make a piece a decent length. So, if I have nothing to say, I write nothing.

In a tweet the other day I remarked that epiphanies are easier to conceive than to execute, which fits perfectly here. In the evolution of my database, I've run into a bit of a conundrum: to simplify data entry, I've been adding records to subtables prior to adding the info to the primary table. This leads to a problem of not knowing which subtable data has been updated into the primary table.I think the solution is pretty simple- I say "think" because I have not tested it yet. The plan is to add a field to the affected subtables which denoted if a record has been added to the main table. Not rocket science, but the database is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, so I can't complain too much.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.