package, i am committing the intended code, commented out, let's think
  about this for a very short while. i think it's just too difficult for
  the user to know when to run rebuild-db. an exception is thrown after
  rebuilding the db, because the interrupted command, whatever it was, 
  may have to be invoked again. or better still, the application must 
  restart itself somehow :/ or we can make better use of the interpreted
  nature of python (i'm still thinking like a c++ coder)