diff --git a/pyfpdb/Configuration.py b/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
index 22395970..8b9ed376 100644
--- a/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
+++ b/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
@@ -208,6 +208,8 @@ DATABASE_TYPES = (
         )
 
 LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
+if not LOCALE_ENCODING: 
+    LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getpreferredencoding()
 #LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getpreferredencoding() #this breaks on Mac OSX - please leave this comment
 if LOCALE_ENCODING == "US-ASCII":
     print _("Default encoding set to US-ASCII, defaulting to CP1252 instead -- If you're not on a Mac, please report this problem.")
diff --git a/pyfpdb/Database.py b/pyfpdb/Database.py
index 3e7e23d6..3bd464d0 100644
--- a/pyfpdb/Database.py
+++ b/pyfpdb/Database.py
@@ -2211,8 +2211,8 @@ class Database:
             hc['tourneyTypeId'] = pdata[p]['tourneyTypeId']
             hc['styleKey'] = styleKey
             for i in range(len(line)):
-                if line[i]: line[i] = 1
-                else:       line[i] = 0
+                if line[i]==True:  line[i] = 1
+                if line[i]==False: line[i] = 0
             hc['line'] = line
             hc['game'] = [hc['gametypeId']
                          ,hc['playerId']