A little while ago, I wrote to the PostgreSQL general mailing list that I’d been approached by Packt Publishing to contribute a quick manual on doing PostgreSQL backups: Instant PostgreSQL Backup and Restore How-to. They’re the same guys who published Greg Smith’s PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance book which everyone seems to swear by. The goal of the backup book was to distill the PostgreSQL documentation, tools, and Wiki down to a collection of short step-by-step guides much like the O’Reilly nutshell series.

Mid March is an interesting time of year in 2013. Now that the Galaxy S4 has been announced, there are really three major contenders for my itchy spending finger. Well, technically there are four, but one of them doesn’t really count, for reasons I’ll expound upon shortly. Google Nexus IV This is the phone that doesn’t count. One major benefit it has over all of the others, is that it gets updates directly from Google.

About a week ago, I was prescribed Lexapro. While this may not be the stuff I’m on long-term, it’s still long overdue for reasons obvious to anyone who knows me. What I currently find most interesting about it however, is actually related to a dream I had last night. My dreams tend to be very vivid and numerous, though sometimes they follow a theme or storyline. Last night, there was one particular scene I recall with such clarity, it’s almost difficult to accept I wasn’t awake.

Stop it. Seriously, just stop. All of you are acting like children. Not merely children, but spoiled little selfish brats, and it’s embarrassing to everyone. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Why? I’ll tell you, and it’s not what you might expect to hear. It isn’t about fanboys or fangirls, theft of intellectual property, laughably vague patents on generic concepts which could feasibly apply to practically anything, jealousy, innovation, or even the almighty dollar.

As far as post-apocalyptic dystopian novels are concerned, Robert Gleason’s End of Days is unique mostly because it’s mid-apocalyptic. Some of the blurbs on the jacket proclaim Gleason as the “Dante of our age,” so it must have been worth reading. I’m not sure what kind of hyperbole inspired a comment like that, but I really hope it’s sarcasm. That isn’t to say End of Days is bad! Far from it.