I believe that this issue was already addressed by this patch that I created and Subutai applied internally in the trunk: http://gitmo.numenta.com:7990/projects/NUP/repos/trunk/browse/external/src/python_modules/pymysql/err.py.patch

We also submitted this patch to the pymysql maintainer, who also happens to be (or was) Scott's roommate (no pressure, Scott).

I am guessing that this patch is no longer applied because PyMySQL is now pip-installed by the NuPIC package, and the fact that the patch existed must have been dropped. *Austin, is there a way to apply the patch to PyMySQL during/after pip-install? 

I think that it would be cleaner to have the real fix in pymysql (assuming this issue is the same one as fixed by the patch), than the workaround in this PR.