[Catalyst] connection() or die

[apv]

I swear I tried to solve this and searched about 20 pages and query 
combinations but I can't find it.

How do you verify your connection is good in a Model base class?

I know it's the problem when I'm getting "Can't call method "search" on 
an undefined value at ..."
but I would like to test for it in the module to do something with some 
sane/directed feedback.

When I get all this worked out (with the question Matt just answered, 
I'll put up a bit on the wiki
about doing pure YAML database configuration b/c that's what I'm trying 
to solve).

-Ashley