Inventory

As some of you might have noticed, I've got an inventory of my dvd collection online. It's been a good while since I last updated it. Additionally, I've been wanting to add to it my vhs and book collections.

Well, as always seems to be the case with software, the first version just isn't well suited for expansion. So, I spent some time today reworking the database in preparation for supporting multiple types of entities with a more flexible metadata storage mechanism. Ok, too many buzz words. The new database will support:

• Listing both 'X-Files: Season 1' with the ability to get a list of the episodes related to that box set.
  
• Adding attributes to individual inventory listing, such as the imdb link for those items that actually have one.
  
• A nice set of tables to support tracking the people associated with each entry. For example, listing Congo having the author 'Michael Crichton' and then allowing for finding anything else he's done in any capacity, author, producer, etc.
  

Tomorrow I'll start implementing the interfaces to the new database and see how well it will actually work in practice. It won't be hard to convert the original data to the new layout. It'll take considerable time to update the existing inventory entries with more metadata and related people data.

Self Review, Whew

Well, I procrastinated as long as I could.. friday night, well, saturday morning actually, I wrote my self review. Took me 7 hours to transcribe a year worth of projects, team leadership, and management responsibilities and accomplishments from a very tired brain into what turned into a very long review. After I was done, looking back over what I'd written, it was as busy at year as it felt at the time. :)

I'd post a link to an html version of it, but there's way too much company NDA material for me to do that, sorry. Having finally finished it, I feel much better.. it's easy to ignore how stressful putting something off can be.

Ellen

I spent a little while preparing a new set of pictures. This time for my sister, Ellen. As soon as she's had a chance to proof them, I'll add a link for whoever is interested.

For as long as I can remember she's been a dancer. As a kid, she danced. All through grade school she danced. She even majored in some form of dance. Post graduation Ellen decided to get a medical degree and seems to really be enjoying herself. This past christmas she got a stethoscope from our dad.

Procrastination

It's review time at work. So, of course, I'm avoiding working on them. Instead, I did things like a good electronic house cleaning, deleting lots of duplicate stuff on my various computers.