Monkling's Blog

Regular Readers: you’ll want to ignore this. It’s boring, technical stuff. I’m just posting this here as a little public service act. There is another, real post just below this one.

Everyone else who actually searched for this: read on.

I’ve had major headaches trying to import data from Excel into MySQL. I never found anything online that adequately addressed the issues I had. After a lot of trial & error, I’ve found a way to do it. I then wrote down every step for myself because I know 5 months from now, I will completely forget what I did.

I decided to share this information to save others the trouble so they can avoid errors such as the dreaded “Invalid field count in CSV input.” This assumes you are familiar with using phpMyAdmin and Excel.

These steps worked for me. If they don’t work for you, well I’m sorry. I tried.

1. Create your table using phpMyAdmin. Make sure you have the same number of fields here as the fields in the data you want to import.

2. Clean up your Excel file. Try to avoid having semicolons or quotes in your data or it’ll mess with the import. If you must have those, you need to use the escape character \ before every single instance. The easiest way to clean that up is to use the ‘Find & Replace’ in Excel.

There is also a problem with blank field values, even if you create the field in MySQL with a null value. No matter what I’ve tried, I run into errors when attempting to import fields with empty data.

To get around that, I use ‘Find & Replace,’ to replace the empty fields with  . I click the ‘options’ button and check ‘Match case’ and ‘Match entire cell contents.’ Then click ‘Replace All.’

After that, save it as a normal Excel file. It’s probably a good idea to save it with a different name just in case you accidentally deleted something you needed without realizing it. I like to play it safe & always back up everything before making changes to files, especially files with thousands of records.

3. Open the Excel file in Open Office Calc. Open Office is a free, open source program that is compatible (& comparable) with MS Office that you can download here. I use it because it allows you to specify exactly how you want your CSV file saved. If there is a way to do the same thing in Excel, I have yet to find it.

4. Within Open Office Calc, save your Excel file as a text CSV file using the following values:

Character set: utf8
Fields terminated by ;
Text delimiter “

I know, I know. CSV stands for “comma separated” value so why are we using a semicolon? Well it’s because a semicolon seems to be the default setting in phpMyAdmin. I prefer not to mess with defaults, the logic being they must have picked it for a reason.

5. Open your CSV file in notepad to double check that the field contents are within quotes and the fields are separated by semicolons. Make sure you don’t have your field headers in the first row. (If you do, just delete it.)

6. Go into phpMyAdmin. Select your database and table. Then click the “Import” tab. Browse to the file you just saved. The default character set of the file should be utf8 but if it’s not, change it to that. The format is, of course, CSV.

My options are always:

Format of imported file: CSV using LOAD DATA
Fields terminated by ;
Fields enclosed by ”
Fields escaped by \
Lines terminated by auto

Click the “Go” button. All of your data should have been imported into the database. Click the ‘Browse’ tab to check it. Like I said, this is what works for me. If it doesn’t work for you, well go find someone who’s smarter than I am to help you out. I’m not an expert on this. I’m not an expert on much of anything.

Since I mentioned Facebook in one of my other posts, I decided today that’s what I’m going to talk about. (Hey, with the way my sinuses feel, it’s a miracle I’m sitting here typing anything at all!)

Back in the day, Facebook was for college students only. You needed a college email address to even get on it and if your college wasn’t on the list, forget it. I know this because I was a bit annoyed about the fact that I couldn’t snoop on my kids like I could when they were on some of those other social networking places like Zanga. Then they opened it to everyone but you couldn’t view people’s information unless you were friends with them so I never bothered with it. Until now.

First off, let me say I don’t like any of those social networking websites & don’t have much use for them. This time around, though, I found out half my family was on Facebook and it seemed a good way to upload photos so that friends & family could see them but no one else could. That’s why I joined.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. My daughter informed me that she would not accept my ‘friend request.’ Then she finally decided she would but only after blocking me from a bunch of stuff on her page. My son’s reaction was, “What the heck are you doing on here??”

And that’s just the normal stuff. What about the big decisions you have to make on there? What if someone friend requests you who you don’t know? Do you accept it? Do you message them and ask who the heck they are and why do they want to be your friend? (Being the suspicious sort, that explains why I don’t have 4,293 friends like everyone else seems to.)

Then there are the uh… what would you call them? Weird things. SoandSo just sent you a warm hug. ThisPerson just sent you a gift. Okay, if you’re one of those people who sends those things, I don’t mean to be bashing you but what the heck is the deal with that stuff?? I’m sorry but I just don’t get it. If you want to send me a gift, stick a check in the mail. I don’t want any fake, pretend gifts. I want the real deal.

I do, on the other hand, like how I can write a quick line like, “We’re back safely from Rome,” and the entire family knows. I guess Facebook is sort of like an alarm clock: useful and comes in handy but can be annoying at times. Oh, wait. That sounds like it can describe a whole lot of things…

What’s really good about the Internet is it brings people together. What’s really bad about the Internet is it brings people together. Before this whole online stuff, I lived in my little world where the only people I knew were from work or the neighborhood, from Church or school. Period. I’d watch stuff on the news and sure, that disaster happening way across the country was terrible but it didn’t really touch me in my little bubble. Not on a personal level.

Then I found this online community of writers 15 years ago and suddenly I knew people all over the country. In March, 2007 I started a blog and that expanded the number of people I knew even further. I’ve come to care about these people I’ve met and that’s all fine and good.

The trouble with caring, though, especially when these people are scattered all over the US, is I’m finding that when things happen in other states, it suddenly matters a lot more. An earthquake in northern CA, a wildfire in southern CA, a tornado in KY, a hurricane in FL, a bridge collapsing in St. Paul – I can’t sit here saying, “Oh, how awful!” shoot off a prayer and then carry on with business as usual.

So I’m finding myself paying much closer attention to Gustav. This time around, it’s personal. I know y’all are praying that New Orleans won’t get hit too badly. Keep up those prayers. I want to see Katie back home. That girl’s been through enough awful things in her 25 years to last her a lifetime already. She’s a newlywed. She deserves a break – time to spend with her new husband, just enjoying married life.

Or, as Virginia put it, tag – you’re it. You see, a couple of days ago, Nancie gave me this award:

She also had some very cool things to say about me (except I almost missed completely that she was talking about me because she used “Joanne” instead of “Monkling” and gave our other neglected blog a plug (note to Katy & Kim – we need to revive that, eh?)

Now just so you know, I’m not as nice as Nancie so I’m not going to be gushing here about why I picked people. But first let’s get to the rules (I cheated & copied them directly off the official award page):

• Choose 5 bloggers that you feel are “Kick Ass Bloggers”
• Let ‘em know in your post or via email, twitter or blog comments that they’ve received an award
• Share the love and link back to both the person who awarded you and back to www.mammadawg.com
• Hop on back to the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky then pass it on!

Alrighty, I’m officially listing my 5 people. They are in alphabetical order. Now you have to know that having a sense of humor is high on my list of important things & all these women have that quality. Not only that but they’re even able to hang on to that sense of humor in the face of… well pretty crappy stuff. Plus they get points for being good wives and mothers. In these days, that doesn’t seem to be such an easy thing to come by – people who have/had good marriages, who have close relationships with their kids.

Jojo
Katie
Katy
Kim
Lanny

Oh, man. I’m not done yet, am I? I still gotta go tell them all that I gave them an award. Ya know, this award stuff is hard work!

My goodness, there are a lot of things online! If you’re single and dating or if your daughter is dating, I think you need to bookmark these websites. Then you can find out if a potential date was in a federal prison. Now wouldn’t that be handy to find out? And of course, you want to make sure your daughter isn’t dating a sex offender.

I also discovered that if you are using the Social Security Death index for family research, it’s not altogether accurate. They had the wrong date of birth for my brother (although the correct month and year). I also assume the “P” they had as my mother’s middle name is a reference to her maiden name because her middle name didn’t begin with a “P”; it was Giovanna. The sad thing about that is I don’t think I was named after her. I think they just liked the name Joanne plus there was a song that was popular at the time with that name in it. I guess that would explain why there were 3 other people with the same name in my class.

I never did like it. And now there’s an interesting question for my blog readers – how many of you like your name? I suspect you probably like it now or, at least, have gotten rather used to it but when you were a kid, did you like your name?

I found out the 2 names in contention were Joanne & Christine. I always was annoyed they didn’t pick Christine. My mom’s reason for not picking that is there was some famous sex change person back then so that sort of ruined the name for them. I guess that’s understandable. Frank never liked his name, either. His real name is Francis. He says he wished his parents had named him the Italian version of it – Francesco. Geez, how did this blog post wander off so?

Today, after helping Frank with some yard work, I had to rest my tired old body & blistered hands so, naturally, I plopped myself in front of my computer. While browsing the Internet, I came across a couple of interesting things that I feel compelled to share.

Did you know you can snoop on your neighbors right from the comfort of your home? Yep, you can find out what political party they donated to and how much they donated. I assume you can access this information because candidates are required to disclose this stuff. Anyhow, you can plug in a city, zip code or last name. (Even if you know my last name, you won’t find anything.)

Another interesting article I came across was on Newsday’s website. Apparently the Nassau county police are cracking down on DWIs and, at their request, newspapers are publishing the photos and names of people arrested for DWI.

I was sitting there looking through them to see if there was anyone I know. Happily, I discovered there wasn’t. What did surprise me was the vast span of people – all different ages, both men & women, all races – everyone was on there so clearly it’s not just a problem with underage teen drinking.

Currently we are switching between the Yankee game and the Stanley Cup playoffs. Since the Islanders are out, we want the Penguins to win.

To amuse myself, I like seeing what search terms brought people to my blog. Most of them are mundane things like the ever famous “Muffin Man” theme. Today, there were 9 hits so far from people searching for Frank’s wives. My blog turns up in that search because of my story of Frank being a polygamist.

What I want to know is what prompted all these people from all across the US and Canada to search for that in the first place. I’m thinking their “Frank” is Frank Sinatra but still – there isn’t anything in the news about him that I could find. So this is a mystery. Why are people choosing today to search out Frank’s wives? Is it his birthday today or something?

* * Update * *
Since someone was kind enough to explain to me why everyone is searching for Frank’s wives, I decided to return the favor and put the crossword puzzle answer here: Mia.

New update – it seems there are 2 possible answers, the second being Ava. Geez, that Frank sure got around! (Not my Frank, that other one.)

As a bonus, here are a couple of crossword puzzle links:
NY Times Crossword Puzzle Info (this site has a Clue and Answer Finder)
Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Thanks to Dave, I found this out:

Created by OnePlusYou

If anyone does not see an image there, let me know so I can fix it.