I was recently bitten by this error message while trying to use perl DBD::Oracle with mod_perl and Oracle OID. Since there isn't great documentation of this problem from a general point of view on Google, I decided to write this up.

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If like me you're unfortunate enough to have to work with Oracle and ColdFusion, you probably get sick of reconfiguring your data sources every time the DBAs move a database to a new host. It's the same problem that Oracle used to have with tnsnames.ora, and which they addressed with ldap.ora and OID. Wouldn't it be great if you could do the same thing with ColdFusion? Turns out you can.

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Today I set up the latest version of TWiki (4.2.3) on a system running RedHat Enterprise Linux 3, which is pretty far out of date at this point. Most things seemed to work fine, but the WYSIWYG editor would fail with the cryptic message "There was a problem retrieving the page: OK." I didn't find good documentation of the problem anywhere else online, so here's what I learned.

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I just finished setting up a Subversion system with a ViewVC web frontend. I wanted to configure authorization for both components in the same place, but it wasn't clear how to do that. It took me long enough to figure out how to make it work that I figure it's worth posting for anyone out there on Google looking to save a little time.

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I thought it was about time to write up one of our household's favorite recipes. We love risotto -- it was one of the very first things I ever cooked for Elliot, way back in the day. But, the best part comes when you're done eating risotto and have leftovers. You can turn your Tupperware full of rice into delicious Italian fried rice balls called arancini ("little oranges," from the golden color they take on). I've written up general recipes I use for these meals, but feel free to substitute ingredients (vegetable broth for chicken broth, different types of vegetables) and so on.

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Thursday is farm share day here. We typically make something quick and easy for dinner on Thursdays to make up for the fact that the trip to the farm means Elliot gets home later. This is usually pizza, and last Thursday was no exception to the pizza rule. Since the farm also gave us some miraculous November lettuce and a pound of carrots, I decided we also needed some salad. And because we've still got some malingering apples from last month's apple-picking trip (inspiring several other recipes, including delish apple muffins that I will post later), I wanted to make a fruity version of our typical side salad. The normal balsamic vinaigrette didn't seem right, so I went online and found this recipe on epicurious.com for spinach and apple salad with crispy almonds. I didn't follow it to the letter, but it served as the inspiration.

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Since joining our CSA and reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I've been mildly obsessed with the local food movement. By making the effort to buy locally grown and produced food products, I am trying to help the environment (reducing fuel used to ship goods from far away to me), help animals (supporting small farms where the animals lead relatively normal lives before becoming dinner -- I have never felt it was intrinsically wrong to kill an animal for food, although I have cut back on meat consumption), and help my tastebuds (local = fresh = delicious). I try not to get all high and mighty about it, because I'm certainly far from perfect in my buying habits, but the concepts make sense to me, and as a bonus I've been inspired to explore more of my neighborhood and meet some interesting farm folks.

So, anyway, we split our CSA share with another couple. They recently joined yet another CSA which does a meat share. I wasn't as into this idea, since we only eat meat about once a week, but I did ask if they could procure some local ground pork for me. Local ground beef was already freely available at our farmer's market. With their powers combined, I made local meatloaf!

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If you use Mac OS X, you're probably familiar with the .dmg disk image file format. They're really just HFS+ filesystems, but they're wrapped in Apple proprietary, undocumented garbage which makes them a pain to work with. For example, most .dmg files you download are read-only and it's not easy to figure out how to get around that.

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For the last few weeks at farmshare, we've been getting the first of the winter squash: a butternut and two white guys with green stripes called delicatas. Since it's been a bit warm to bake squash lately and I didn't have any other good ideas, I've just been socking them away in the pantry.

Then the other day I came across this recipe for spicy squash soup. Since I'm blogging about it, you can assume it came out pretty well.

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The late summer farm share has only brought more delicious vegetables to our household. So many that we had enough in the house to cobble together tonight's meal even though we didn't get to do our shopping as usual this week. The menu consisted of a tomato salad (aka, sliced tomato topped with salt, pepper, a little olive oil, and fresh basil), oven-roasted baby pink potatoes, a zucchini casserole, and frozen veggie burgers (not from farm share, okay). Everything was very simple, but we decided to make the zucchini into a casserole to do something a little different from the standard saute.

I looked up some zucchini casserole recipes online to get ideas, and I was a little dismayed to see how many of them centered around pre-packaged, sodium-filled ingredients like "cream of celery soup." Who has that on hand?! I improvised, searching the fridge for something creamy to take its place, and for a few other ingredients to add texture and flavor.

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