Week 30, 1999 ,Svenson

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1999-07-26

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Monday

Good weather, not burning, just a freshening breeze yet warm enough. Ideal. That is probably why I now sit in the office :(

I noticed that the upload I did on Saturday had not arrived at Mailbank. And Sunday I was to tired to post or check. I'tried this evening. If you are interested you can check up on last Saturday

The American validation problem is solved and send so now I can concentrate on the Price maintenance issue.
Ronny is back from his holiday so we had some issues to discus.

I noticed that Mailbank , where I have my site hosted, updated their home page and their pricing. The price went up to 9.95$ for a full year which is still looks reasonable but I will have to check in detail. The home page looks a bit better I think but it got just a bit wider than my standard window size so now it doesn't fit and of course it has a fixed width. Strange thing is in Opera the navigation bar at the top extends beyond the big blue line under it while in Netscape and MSIE it aligns nicely resulting in a less wide page. Also the layout of some pages (using <,UL> and <LI>) doesn't behave correctly in Opera. I am starting to have my doubts about the quality of Opera

1999-07-27

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Tuesday

I reported some of the layout problems in Opera yesterday. Differences in layout between Opera and the other browsers is nothing special, every browser presents things differently. A more worrying problem is that When I visit my own site in the morning via Opera I don't see the uploaded pages, ex the thisweek.html still is the old one, When I then check via Netscape or MSIE I do get the correct pages. It is just Opera that is acting up even when I press 'reload document' the old pages are reloaded. No doubt Opera is fast, it keeps loading pages from its own cache. And no doubt this can be adjusted one way or another.

I think I found the problem in the price maintenance module. I'll adapt and test tomorrow.

Together with Wilbert I have been struggling to get a batch program running the way we want. It has been a while since I did batch programming and though I used to be quite good at it that was under DR DOS 5 and 6 (no even then I didn't us MS products if I didn't have to). The problems we are having are with an update program for client PCs. When the user starts the client program a check is performed and, if necessary, the client programs must be updated. This is not just copying some files over but it entails a lot more. The actual problem we are having is that the user should not see any negative messages. We must delete a bunch of files and o a lot of checks and often some of them produce messages which we can capture so the job continues but sometimes the user see an "access denied" or "file not found" message and we don't want that. I know that a few years ago I would have solved it no time.

An additional problem is that the routine must work under Win95 and Win98 and WinNT. And in different language environments. There are subtle differences. The DATE command for example under Win9x and NT Server replies on the first line with "Current date is ...."; the NT Workstation begins with "The current date is ..." (current is not the first word and it doesn't begin with an uppercased. In Germany you don't have a current date but 'ein heutige datum' . And other commands differ in other subtle ways. If it wasn't for death lines this would be fun.

At home just time to dash off to feed the cat and to try (unsuccessfully) get Pa to start in Windows.

1999-07-28

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Wednesday

I found the setting that makes Opera use its cache iso the real site, it is in the Preferences.Cache menu. The default is set to check if the cache is older than one day. This sure is fast and for a lot of sites it is sensible. But I don't like the defaults. I changed it to check every time and now the site is displayed correctly each time.

Monday I noticed that Mailbank had changed its prices. They effectively hiked up the yearly subscription by a factor of 3, from 9.9+ for a mail account and 5MB web hosting space to 29,9+ for mail account and 5MB web hosting.. There doesn't seem to be any new services provided so it is purely a price increase. The set-up fee remained the same, at 19.9+ . This is still reasonable but less exciting.

The problem with Pat is that Peter started playing the old games he still has. Most of these are DOS games that even predate Windows 3.x. They are on diskettes, mostly 3.5inch DD (720K) disks, and are playable on an XT machine. He used to play them on the old Tandy. One of these did run in a DOS box in Windows95 but it could not be stopped normally. He tried CTRL+ALT+DEL but somehow task manager didn't pop up so in the end he just reset the box. Since then Windows will not start. When you try to start Windows there is an "IFS error" and entering on that brings you direct to the "It is now safe to shut down" screen. Trying Safe Mode results in a hanging system, the Windows logo never comes up. DOS runs normal so I can reach all the files (not needed because he has a good backup on diskette). I don't know how to get Windows working again except by reinstalling so if I find time somewhen I'll do that, going for Win98 at once.

1999-07-29

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Thursday

The temperature keeps rising here coupled with a warm breeze. the result is a lot of wilting plants.

Wilbert got a brand new daughter last night. He had planned to go on holiday next week so he had already instructed me to take over management. He starts his holiday a week early now but I guess he will need it.

I know I shouldn't be surprised to get e-mail reactions on what I publish and yet I was.

From Glenn : Reply on : Your Problems with batch files

Sjon,
>
> I was just glancing over your website this morning and noticed your
> problems with batch files. Have you tried redirecting the output of
> your commands to the NUL device? That should get rid of any
> messages from the user's eyes.
>
> e.g. del c:\tempdir\*.dat > nul
> would delete all the files without displaying ANY messages.
>
> By the way, I also noticed Mailbank's price hikes - fortunately I am
> not using my 5mb web space at the moment, but probably would
> have.
>
> Regards,
> Glenn.

I hadn't tried that yet so I immediately did it. This redirecting however doesn't work for some messages.
What happens is that, at the start op the TeleSales system, some workfiles are created. If all goes well they are removed when the user closes the session. Often however the session crashes (or some other programs kills Windows) and then the workfiles remain. The batch file is started as first job of the session but by then two new workfiles are already created and in use. The batch programs tries to delete all the workfiles but get an 'access denied' error for those two.
This access denied messages is not redirected. Or rather it is redirected but also displayed. So the 'del c:\TETEMP\ADI*.adi >> c:log.txt ' appends the 'Access denied' string to the log.txt file AND displays it on screen.
I this is very strange but probably resulting from the way Windows95 handles batch programs. I still have to try it on Win98 and WinNT but I think (hope?) it will produce the same result.

I remember that there is some method to redirect all output to another device than the screen via the MODE command. I have that documented around somewhere, probably on Stone, but I don't know where. Probably that method will not work on NT so I think we will have to tackle the problem from a different direction. At the moment we placed the delete statements at the very beginning of the file, followed by a clear-sceen. Now the user sees something but it is cleared away before it can be read. DOS command on a Pentium, any Pentium, are really fast.

Wilbert explained all about the regular tasks for managing the systems. Of course the first problem is not something regular. We send out patches and shipments containing programs, bug fixes and new functionality, to the various operating companies. That is one of the regular tasks. In the opco there is a procedure that must be followed to load and apply these shipments. That is, for us, not a regular task. In Sweden the load went wrong for some files. I spend half the day to get it fixed and although everything works again there are still some loose ends to be cleared. I leave them for Wilbert or Tom when they return.

Martine is back so I don't have to feed the cat any more. I went over however to start making a backup of the applications on Pat so I can install Win98 cleanly in the weekend. I tried to install straight away, using the Win98 boot diskette (from Microsoft, this is not the upgrade but the full version of Win98). The first thing that happens after the BIOS screens is a warning saying that the compression driver is not the correct version. There has never been any compression used on this machine so that seems a silly messages. You can go on after pressing 'any' key. Next you get the option to load from CD or to start with CD support or to start without CD support. Whatever I select The installation stops to a DOS prompt saying that it cannot find the CD. I had exactly the same troubles on Yaku and I never got Win98 installed there so I am not sure it will go on Pat.
To be continued.

1999-07-30

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Friday

The garden is still being baked dry, I wouldn't be surprised to dig up baked potatoes next weekend :)

I inquired about the price increase at Mailbank, they replied :

From : Postmaster <Postmaster@MailBank.com <
Subject New Rates

>Hello Svenson,
>
>I'm afraid when renewal does come up in June 2001 the new rates would apply
>to you.
>
>Recent rate changes of Mailbank service rates have caused some confusion.
>
>A Mailbank e-mail subscription now costs $9.95 USD per year and a website
>is no longer included for free. A Mailbank web subscription now costs
>$19.95 per year. The one-time set-up fee remains the same at $19.95 USD.
>All new accounts processed on the 30th of June 1999 fall under this new
>price schedule.
>
>Account renewals will be dealt with differently. For accounts whose
>renewals were due before the price change took effect, they will be
>eligible to renew at the old rate for one year. For accounts whose renewals
>are due after the price change took effect, they will fall under the new
>price schedule.
>
>The initial rates Mailbank have offered were certainly very attractive for
>an e-mail subscription. The further addition of the free website added even
>more incentive for current and new subscribers at the time. However, the
>free website option also increased Mailbank's operating costs. The websites
>have put increased demands on time and support resources. Thus, Mailbank
>has begun offering the websites as an optional feature.
>
>Regarding the raise in e-mail subscription fees, Mailbank's rates are still
>highly competitive in the vanity e-mail industry and still offer great
>value for their current price. Some vanity e-mail services can cost upwards
>of $2.95 a month; Mailbank only charges $9.95 a year for each personalised
>address.
>
>There are some new developments in Mailbank.
>
>Another mailserver has been purchased and will be delivered in a few weeks.
>As well, the web-based mail project has been restarted and will be
>available late this year.
>
>Sincerely,
>Postmaster

Though I don't like price increase they remain attractive. The few other services that allow you to actually select your domain and name either charge more or make it clear that they sell the personal information they request (sex, age, income, etc.) to 'selected sponsors'. That effectively means that you will targeted by commercials by mail (=spam) from these sponsors. I prefer the discrete handling of Mailbank. They don't sell information and they don't put adds or banners on your pages. That they cannot do that for free is clear to me and I am willing to pay for what they provide. I just check the competition now and then to see if it is worth staying.

I got a hectic day with a bunch of management chores and a little bit of productive work.

I just had a little time to polish the Acronyms page a bit.

1999-07-31

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Saturday

The temperature keeps rising.

The case for Aria arrived. It is a desktop case from A-Open

I immediately started to disassemble the thing which is easy to do because it almost everything is screwed into place. It is well made, no sharp edges, straight well fitting components, solid metal supports. One indication of quality is that there are 6 drive bays and the power supply has six leads, it is not uncommon to find only four leads in a cheap case with more than four bays, requiring splitters if you want to stock it out. All the cables to the case functions (power, reset, LED's) are well labelled. It may not be a Power and Cool but it is quite good, and at about 75Euro it's reasonable cheap.

I reassembled everything, adding the drives and motherboard and cards along the way. Everything fits nicely and there is more space inside than in typical mini tower.

The whole afternoon and evening was spend on potato digging but now then end is in sight. A couple of hours tomorrow and they are done.

And I had a good barbecue to round off the day.

1999-08-01

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Sunday

The temperature started high in the morning, probably trying to establish a new record. By about 15h00 it was over 36°C. Outside. The attic typically is some 6 to 7 degrees warmer. I didn't get up there until about 23h00 ant it still was over 35!

I spent the morning on gardening chores like weeding, hoeing etc. And I listened to a radio play. Well it wasn't a play really rather a monologue parody on 'Around the World in 80 days' in which Phillias journeys with an air balloon around the world. The main theme of the play was rather the music iso the story with music from Biset, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin ea. Lovely. I just listened in stead of working on Aria

I finished the hardware for Aria. For the time being that is I still have to add a SCSI card and a network card, but now she is finished well enough to try some software on her. Which I will do after the last of the potatoes are out. It is to damn hot on the attic to work long.