The Girl Who Ate Everything

Blogging about food and whatever since 2004.

oh dear god (my heart skipped a beat)

This doesn't really concern anyone but me...

...so this is just some advice.

I decided to dump all the junk comments from my database through PhpMyAdmin. I'm no MySQL pro (I'm a few light years away from that), but I have a very basic understanding of how to get PhpMyAdmin to do my bidding.

So. I put in a command that should've deleted all the junk comments. After waiting ALL DAY for my database to not poop on me (I could use much more vulgar imagery here to illustrate my frustration, but I'll spare you), it finally went through and deleted some thousands of comments. Wee!

cry
Taken by Alex. This is the only photo I have that illustrates my pain. ...Which is equivalent to the pain of leaving Disneyland Paris.

...No, wait, I DID IT WRONG and it deleted most of the legitimate comments as well.

... [insert silence]
.... [insert mental hand wringing]
..... [insert lack of breathing]

This is about when my heart went *pip* (for that is the sound my organs make when they are sad) and I thought, "No no no no no no no I did not just do that. Wait, yes I did. Oh shit."

After a bit of staring into the cold glow of my laptop screen and cursing technology, I realized that Dreamhost must know what dumb things people like me do and have a good backup system. Somewhere. It took me some searching, but I found that in the control panel's MySQL section you can restore certain databases from specific periods of time (from 18 hours to a few months ago) and...

BOOYA, I now have 8000-odd comments back. God knows how much of that is spam.

So, thank you Dreamhost for making that so easy.

Perhaps someone out there can learn from my mistakes. For instance, do not delete a crapload of stuff from your database unless you're sure it won't screw up. That's all there is to it! And then you won't experience a high spike in blood pressure like I did.

Oh, if you have a spam comment infestation in your database, you can clear it by entering "Delete FROM `mt_comment` WHERE `comment_visible` = 0" in the SQL command line (assuming all the spam comments aren't visible on your site).

Also...

I've closed the survey. Thank you thank you thank you for helping me out! Please accept my BIG VIRTUAL HUG. I somehow got 850 replies (shizzle?), more than half of which may have come from Serious Eats, but I suppose my site pulled in a good number of responses as well.

I've written most of my paper, and so far it sucks! The paper only needs to be 10-15 pages long but I could probably write 20 pages (it's about 13 pages at the moment) if I wanted to go in depth. Not that I'm writing a thesis or anything. Sigh. I just hate it when I write a paper and feel like it could've be 200% awesomer (which is most of the time). It's due on Wednesday—I better clean it up fast.

Comments

Will / April 16, 2007 2:14 AM

Yeah, Dreamhost's automagic backups have saved my bacon several times. Very Very handy.

Catherine / April 16, 2007 3:19 AM

Haha, that picture describes how I feel when all the midterms and projects due are crammed into one week.

Good luck with your paper :)

Aunt Jone / April 16, 2007 10:44 AM

That pic of you is freakin' hilarious and I don't know why. I am in tears right now. Thank god I am the only one in the office right now because someone would think I'd lost my ever lovin' mind.

Techology is evil. It is supposed to be helpful and make life easier but in fact it is the brainchild of people who want to inflict horrible pain on the masses and profit from it. Thank god you were able to save your shit.

roboppy / April 16, 2007 6:41 PM

Will: Was "automagic" a typo? If so, that's one of the best typos ever.

Catherine: Oh yes, that photo can apply to so many situations of horror and pain and suffering, etc. [sigh]

Aunt Jone: I make a lot of funny faces; the one above is pretty unique. Maybe I should start taking photos of ALL MY WEIRD FACES (people have tried, without success).

Technology is great, until it SCREWS YOU.

Zach: An "undo" button would have made it even better!

redrhino / April 17, 2007 2:41 PM

Hey Rob-O

How's it g....what the hell!? Dude! That's one "GIGANTIC" purse to be lugging around Disneyland all day. You a shoplifter or something, huh, huh? Well, are you? You stealing soup(stealing soup is an act of the crazies)? You must be crazy to carry around that "MONOLITHIC" purse. hee hee ;7p


rEd

roboppy / April 18, 2007 8:34 PM

Red: It's funny, after seeing your second comment I had a feeling you would abuse this new power...

Oh, as for the purse, I think most of it is taken up by my digital SLR and a half-liter water bottle. I'm always surprised when people don't have to carry bags at all, but then I realize they don't feel the need to carry a DSLR or hydration wherever they go.

binger / April 19, 2007 4:35 AM

This is insane. I sort of just found out about your blog a week ago and I've been non-stop reading everything that dates back to 2004... and I realize that I am now going through ALL, absolutely EVERYTHING, that you probably went through then.. except for school and such. But all of your food and binge eating problems. Seriously. I love bread, and for the past few months have started becoming addicted to bread eating. Plain bread, muffins, scones, crossiants, pita, tortilla, cakes, whatever, you name it! Oh yeah! The nut problem! I've also been eating too much nuts. WAY TOO MUCH! I finished half a pound of pistachios in one sitting once. (Favorites are pistachio and cashews by the way) That was weird, I thought I was going crazy because at one point I felt sort of sick from all the nuts and was mad at myself for over doing it, so to make myself feel better I just ate more!

It's not a feeling I can explain, but it just happens.

So what's happening is that I am beginning to put on some weight. Some weight = approx. 10 lbs. plus

I've always been pretty skinny, but it doesn't look like it's staying that way and it scares me how I can't seem to control myself.

Crap.

roboppy / April 22, 2007 2:05 PM

Binger: Egad, I remember my bread phase! Loaf of bread = FOOD FOR THE DAY. And you love pistachios and cashews too? Oh man, cashews...so delicious...

I remember when I gained 10+ pounds! Haha! That was kind of scary! ...Oh dear god.

...

Well, hopefully you're just going through a phase, like I did! I think. Well. Now my phase is "eat everything!", which isn't a whole lot better, but for some reason I don't feel as guilty as I used to.

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