Week 23, 1999 ,Svenson
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Week 23, 1999 ,Svenson
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1999-06-07 |
Monday
Peter is back from holiday so we had a long talk. First we got his experiences of Costa Rica. He returned a week earlier than planned. He hired a car locally in stead of relying on public transport. That way he managed to visit everything in less time without hurrying and without losing time ‘waiting on the bus’. Afterward we backed him up on the situation here at work. I brought back some ham and a 10 pack of eggs from the Netherlands cause they are no longer (legally) available here. The government is working on a list of farms that didn’t stock their feed from the guilty producer. The list should be ready by Wednesday so from Thursday of Friday on everything should be available again.
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1999-06-08 |
Tuesday
A bit of rain today but it was clear and sunny in the evening. With a nice cloud sprinkled sky ( copyright Microsoft ?). I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. <g> Most of the day was lost on the search for a problem in Germany. It is probably solved by a patch (prs10318) introduced for France but not yet shipped to them. I installed the phone on the attic a few weeks (already ?) ago and it worked fine Except now my brother noticed that an external call doesn’t ring the new phone. I couldn’t test an incoming external call then but now I had him call my and indeed the new phone doesn’t ring. The phone in the hall (nbr 1) is the main phone and it rings normal. The one in the kitchen (nbr 2) rings about 2 seconds later, which is normal. Number 3, in my fathers bedroom, should ring together with number 2 but it doesn’t. The attic phone is set to be modem capable and thus is rings, on an external call, only after about 20 seconds. That is 5 rings so it will typically never ring because the phone tends to be picked up as soon as it rings. This requires a lot of testing but for that we need someone to call us and every call costs. I must make an arrangement with my brother to let him call from his office. The dioxin scandal spreads to the Netherlands. Apparently some farmers got their animal feed from Belgium and now..
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1999-06-09 |
Wednesday
The communications system (CS) has lost some messages on our production machine. Not a serious problem because the messages could be resent successfully. But serious enough to drop all other work. After slogging trough job logs and spooled files I found that, at the exact time of failure a ‘Bridge service job’ had canceled. Twice in a row. This job affect communication but it is not inside my modules but rather a part of the operating system. I bounced the job back to CSC-management via Jos. They first didn’t want to search because no data was lost and it would cost them to much time, which they didn’t have. We had a discussion with Jan and Peter about the credit card programs. Now this is a local adaptation in the US and Jan wants to make it Common. Because the local programs do a lot of obviously local stuff Peter wants to keep is Local. The dioxin scandal spreads to the Netherlands and now eggs and chickens have to be removed from the shops here as well. Apparently some farmers got their animal feed from Belgium. Or, more plausible to me but not yet mentioned in the press, the mixing of old machine oil into the fat processing plants that provide the base produce for animal feed production is not restricted to a single, Belgian firm. If this is the case then the extra alertness for dioxins, prompting more rigorous test turned up dioxin finds that would otherwise remain unnoticed. This whole story could be as damaging to the wood industry as the British Mad Cow affair. Except now not just one part of the industry, but basically the whole meat and dairy based industry could suffer. Maybe just everybody must turn vegetarian. Until the next scandal with mercury or some dangerous herbicide. Representatives of the dairy industry got a court order that forces the government to produce the list (promised for today but of course not ready) at least tomorrow. Every day after that would cost a billion franks in fines. I guess we will see a list tomorrow. And a new (=real) list a few days later.
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1999-06-10 |
Thursday
The weather is turning unsettled again. No rain for a few days but the wind is whimsical, sometimes picking up sometimes slacking down. A tricky file override problem did cost us about half the day. It was dry enough to bank the rest of the potatoes. So I did. I tried to install a network card in Hinja but I forgot that the Win95 CD was in Venlo. I only noticed that after the card was installed and drivers from the floppy were loaded. The half installation had caused conflicts with the sound card by the time I decided to stop and removing the network adapter of course didn’t resolve the problem. The CAB files are not copied to the hard disk and so it is impossible to get rid of the conflicts. Anything I tried results in a request for the CD. The result is that Hinja now has no sound, no network and no SCSI. I intended to get an Internet connection in the weekend via Hinja but that will not go. Now maybe I could pull Miona up to the attic but she is not completed yet. She has no modem and no sound card, the display adapter is not configured. The only advantage is that she has Win98 installed and the CD is here so experimentation will not worsen her condition. But getting everything ready for the weekend? This daybook is costing me more time than expected. For a professional writer this may sound unbelievable but I am spending almost an hour on it every day. Typing alone doesn’t take to much time but casting events in words is a process that doesn’t come natural to me. Not yet. Hobying is fine but there never seems to be enough time!
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1999-06-11 |
Friday
The government produced a list of firms that is dioxin free. But nobody believes the list is right. To get everything done in time they sent out a questionnaire to all farmer and breeders. they accepted the replies in good faith. So if a farmer says he used feed from Verkest (the “dioxin-mixer”) they will be required to stay closed, to slaughter all their livestock and start again from scratch. If the farmer says he is clean then he can start trading again. The only checks the government will/can do is some spot tests long after the events. Of course there are stupid farmers but how many will say they are clean and keep contaminated feed or animals around. The only checks that can be done are check on the bookkeeping of the farms and on the bookkeeping of Verkest. The managers at Verkest knew they were doing something illegal so you can bet that their books are not the most reliable and complete. This is what is called ‘Belgian circumstances’. I finally decided to get an Internet connection at home. There are a few contenders but I think Online will be the ISP. There were some good reviews in the local magazines and some people recommended them. I must check the documentation but I am prepared to go on some recommendations from people I know. To prepare for it I moved Miona to the attic. The modem capable telephone line from the in house switch box ends there. Miona will act as the Internet connection for the time being. Until the network is in place. Then I’ll put a Linux box in Mionas place and she will become my main workstation. Miona isn’t finished yet so this promises to be a busy weekend.
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1999-06-12 |
Saturday
Another food problem started a few days ago and is slowly coming to a boil. It stared with some kids in a school falling ill after drinking Coke. After a quick search it was found that the tin cans were not rinsed sufficiently before filling, some of the cleaning product (soap?) had remained in the cans before filling. Simply a quality control problem it seemed. Then a few days later a batch of cans smells bad, according to representatives of Coke Cola this is caused by the paint on the outside. If it wasn’t for the dioxin scandal both these facts would have lead to nothing of course. But now they are pulling Coke from the shelves in shops. Two bottling facilities have been closed. In France officials are visiting factories taking samples. I will probably make my first connection tough the 28k US Robotics Sportster because I have got that gathering dust at the moment. I know it work with OS/2 and Windows. Later I want to switch over to ISDN or cable, depending on cost. I do a lot of my buying at Masset, he keeps a small shop in the center of town because he provides some of the lowest prices around, often lower than mail order. While shopping today I had a long talk about Internet connections. He has ISDN and ADSL. And some analog lines as well. I have to check these figures with Belgacom of course because he is using business connections and probably higher rates than private customers get. On the other hand he has a stronger position for negotiation than a private person would have. The alternative would be the cable company which is heavily promoting its new telephone capacity but their brochure seems to imply that you can use only their own ISP.
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1999-06-13 |
Sunday
Running all right. It started to rain the moment I came home, first a very light, barely noticeable drizzle but slowly increasing to a real downpour by 8 o clock. And slacking off again. Its election day here and voting will be by computer, in about half the country this year. By the next general elections probably about 90% wil be electronic. The voting went almost as usual, with manual checking voting lists passing out the cards etc. with only the voting being electronic. The advantage is that the vote counting is automatic and much faster. And you must call up a lot less people who must do the counting, and because nobody likes to spend a Sunday afternoon folding, ordering and counting paper, this is a general applauded. I pulled Miona up to the attic where the modem line ends. The US Robotics modem was recognized as a “default modem” and not as what it is. Dialing out sometimes produces a dial tone and sometimes it doesn’t. In the modem log there is no response to some atdt### commands. Until the job got closed. I reinstalled Win98, with a complete reformat thrown in for good measure. To no avail, the modem remains inconsistent, typically dialing once or twice and then locking up. Another, but probably unrelated problem is that the second disk is not recognized by Windows. This is not related to cables because the BIOS recognizes it. Maybe this can be resolved by Partition Magic.
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