MySQL Performances Issues I'm in debate with my database admin. He claims that my queries I'm sending through PHP are the problem and he is stating several things I believe are completely false. 

To begin I have a site receiving 64,000 daily views. My server monitors queries over 5 seconds. Multiple times during the day I see 3-6 "SELECT" queries all taking more than 10 seconds, sometimes even up to 200 seconds. This is on an InnoDB table on MySQL 5.0. Also PHP is calculating the speed of the query using microtime. Ironically enough I try the same queries in PHPMyAdmin and they take 0.0031 seconds.

My Admin says I shouldn't use an asterisk in my code, but nowhere online goes against that. He says I should convert all my tables from MyISAM to InnoDB. I have already done that but still the same things happen. He doesn't seem to be budging and even worse once in a while my server is down for 1-2 minutes with a MySQL error of "Too Many Connections" or "MySQL Server has gone away"

The Admin isn't listening to reason and these problems continue. I'm on a version of mysql with profiling disabled so I can't really see query times of just mysql. Can anyone suggest anything I can do or try to diagnose this? I'm only the coder but I have experience in mysql (probably more than the admin).
In your question, there is not enough information to see where the problem is from technical point of view; however, I can see that there is a problem in communication between you as developer and the DBA. This is not abnormal though as DBAs and devs do not always 'speak the same language'.

Let's go the some points in your question:


You should rely on the 'slow query log' to get your slow queries. Monitoring them in PHP may not be accurate measurement for slowness of the queries.
The query that took very little time in PhpMyAdmin could be cached. Use "SELECT SQL_NO_CACHE", and repeat at times that are not close to each other to avoid hardware level caching.
"SELECT *" vs "SELECT field1, field2": If you don't need all fields in your result, don't use "SELECT *", as it will waste resources sending non-wanted values. 
"Too Many Connections" could be of different reasons, one of them is slow queries that lock the tables so other connections are waiting and piled up to the max where the server refuses new connections. 


My recommendation is that you talk to your admin and work both as one team, not as two separate teams. 

HTH