I don’t know if I’m getting better at what I do, or if technology is just getting easier, but I’ve noticed lately that it’s taking me far less time to accomplish what I set out to do, when I’m working on the computars.

Latest example:

I upgraded my server to the next full version up — sort of the equivalent of going from Vista to Windows 7.  But in the process of upgrading, postgresql — my database of choice — got bumped up a version as well, and in the process, the default character encoding was reset to SQL_ASCII.  Not UTF-8.  WTF, right?

So after a little googling, I found the remedies I needed: how to set the default locale in Ubuntu so that it uses UTF-8, and how to essentially wipe out postgresql’s default template and replace it with the one you want.

This pleases me because I got it done in about a third of the time it might have taken me two years ago.  That, my friends, is progress.