All Rows, All Columns

Usually my first instinct is just to SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE 1 and then just figure everything out in R afterwards. I intone the words “all rows, all columns” just like the airline gate agent boarding all rows, all passengers.

But the database that I’m dealing with these days has a particularly pesky column that is filled with quotation marks, commas, backslashes, grouping symbols of various sorts, and assorted other things that seem to predict disaster. And today I had a remarkable breakthrough on the problem that I’m trying to solve. I could do two separate SELECTs: one where the gnarly column was LIKE something and one where it didn’t matter because something else was NULL, and I didn’t even need to SELECT the troublesome column.

After that particular win, I left the office two hours early so that I could beat the traffic and get to the airport by the time that the Delta 747 N669US would be landing at San Diego International Airport less than an hour after the 747 from BA. Now, we get the 747 from BA every day (as I’ve mentioned), and it tends to come in right around sunset, maybe a little bit earlier. But Delta’s 747 was landing during Nautical Twilight. For the sake of photographing something that is moving really, really fast, that is really, really dark. And my fast lens has fierce lens flare when it is wide open. And airports are just covered with lights.

And did you notice that earlier this week Delta retired all of its 747s from regular passenger flights? All of them. If a Delta 747 is coming to your airport, it is a special occasion. (In this case, a Michigan State charter for the Holiday Bowl.)

And while I was waiting for N669US to arrive, I saw the SpaceX launch. If you look up the LiveATC.net archive of Lindbergh Tower, you will hear that they had no idea that it was going to be happening nor what it was.