Regardless of how my colleagues who really care about proper database design feel about UUID's and GUIDs used for key fields. I often find I need to do it. I think it has some advantages over autoincrement that make it worth it.  

I've been refining a UUID column type for the past few months and I think I've finally got it solid.

This month my self-built AMD Athalon server died. It was the family computer and the autopsy showed that it had been slowly suffocated by dust over the period of 2 years. Part of this is my fault for not completely sealing it. The same thing happened to my refrigerator some months earlier. I also discovered that I had not hooked up the fans in the front thus the hard drives had no cooling whatsoever.

Several times over the past year I have needed to get a team member up to speed on python development, and I've found myself sending out the same email over and over, so I thought I would take a bit of time to formalize what's been useful for me so that it may benefit someone else.