public DepthTableWriter() 
  {
    AnnotationProcessor.process(this);
    
    //HACK
    try {
      // The newInstance() call is a work around for some
      // broken Java implementations
      Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
      
      conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/pluto_dev?" +
                                         "user=icyte&password=icyte");
    } catch (Exception ex) {
      // handle the error
      logger.fatal(ex.getMessage());
      System.exit(1);
    }
  }