Some code

Stef,

I tried to push this to the inbox, but there was a problem, and "the administrator has been notified."  Oh well.

Attachments work.  Attached are my FFI extensions, including non-aligned (with which I have been able to slide so far???) double arrays, catalog (schema) information for ODBC, value adapters, and some patching around weak collections to make a thread safe and self-cleaning sort of them - essential IMHO.

None of this is particularly polished.  Some parts are more heavily tested than others.

Bill