Week 36, 1999 ,Svenson

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1999-09-06

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The weather is turning. It was warmer (14C) and overcast in the morning and throughout the day it remained generally overcast with a few breaks. It rained but not much, as my father calls it 'just 20 drops'. So the weeds I pulled out are being replaced in record time :-\

The financial period correction program is finished and tested and the missing invoice programs are ready as well. Only testing of that correction program remains. And then there is nothing to do anymore. Except of course the 3 problems that must be solved before the end of August. And that Euro rounding problem that had to be solved before ...

Work is fun.

I am checking some alternative suppliers for a non Soyo mainboard. I have a good Asus board in mind or I could go for a Yellow Dragon 'cause they are cheap. We will see. If I get one of them working I'll know I am incompatible with Soyo.

1999-09-07

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Tuesday

The weather stopped in mid turn and got stuck. It is exactly the same as yesterday.
Maybe we must reboot the clouds <g>

Missing invoice programs are tested, packed and sent. And the Financial period adaptation is up for acceptance testing. I finished up some research for Belgium. They want to convert some files with old order to get Invoices and statistical data about those. However they don't want to pull them trough the logistics module. To do this they must handle them as if they were all based on 'manual price' and add them to the trigger file. When then the trigger processing and invoicing runs are executed things should ready. I wonder what they are going to do with all the invoices, remember these are old orders from their previous system.

While checking up I noticed that I got about 4.5MB on my site. The limit is 5MB so I am going to hit the buffers soon. Especially since Mailbank has no policy of extending the space. I am now looking into a solution to get more space without disrupting my whole site. I am going to keep my account at Mailbank. I took it for the mail and now their servers seem to be responsive again, I uploaded the last few days reasonably fast. But I will probably have to migrate all, except the entry pages (sjon and lair) and the day notes to some other site. Maybe a new domain, I got an offer for about 30$ per year (+10* setup) but I don't know if that is a good price. If any one has a suggestion I am open for it.

Oups.
While moving my pages around a deleted the wrong directory. At first I thought that would not be a problem because I have backups of everything. But when I restored the pages (daynotes) I noticed that a lot of graphics links were broken. I think I got everything back but it did cost me more than an hour.

1999-09-08

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Warm at 14C and misty in the morning turning to warm and hazy throughout the day. Nice enough for temperature but not conformable due to high humidity and no wind. It feels tropical.

But without the palm trees and bikinis :~(

I picked up an easy problem first. And solved it not as fast as I could.

Then Peter noticed an error in the correction program for the financial period. The invoices of type C (and B,D,E) had to be adapted but I had reversed the selection, all the other invoices were changed.
Oups. I had tested it but I had only checked the period against the dates and that was good. While testing we also noticed that some invoice lines have no corresponding order lines, ex conditions. These are not changed and keep the same financial period as the invoice header. I think that is as it should be but Peter thinks they should have the same period as the (last) regular invoice line. We had a long discussion but I am programmer and he is architect.

So I change the program.

I have been uploading quite fast the last few days (yesterday I attained an actual upload speed of 12Kbps) but throughout the day I could not see my site. There is another site on the same domain and I could not reach that either. I checked the server status and that indicated that everything was normal.

Mailbank rents out sub domains, for example in the domain svenson.com I have got the sub domain sjon.svenson.com, another domain is sven.svenson.com (a department of the University of Tromso, Norway) and when I cannot reach my sub domain I check them.

So I mailed them the problem. Now, at home I check again and presto, problem solved. I check the server status and that notifies that there was a problem. It is obvious the regularly have problems but also that they work on them and they react to problem notifications.

This is one of the few good companies around. Pity they don't offer more than 5MB.

1999-09-09

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Quite misty this morning, 12C. Warm and sunny with the lightest of breezes for the rest of the day. Happy weather. Until about 17h00, then it began to get hazy and humid again.

I adapted and re-tested the financial period programs. They should be OK now. Then a tricky problem cropped up in the Order validation of TeleSales. There were a few orders that should produce an error but didn't, they were accepted. The test was margin test. In our development database we have a rule that all the orders must have a minimum profit margin of 50% (there is a manual override). Ronny succeeded in pushing trough orders with -240% profit. He had been trough all his programs but he didn't find anything so he concluded that the AS/400 program was acting up. I checked the program and I found a few potential problem. After debugging the server, which you don't do if not absolutely positively necessary, I isolated the problem to a wrong instruction (division in stead of an addition) that was in the program since late last year. This made the test always return 100% profit margin, regardless of the reality. So the test had never failed.
Bad testing from my predecessor on the project followed by blind fate in the results.
I solved that and tomorrow I will check the other potential problems I noticed.

And I quickly solved a parameter passing error in the calculation module. A 90 character string was chopped off after the first character. This was a bug I made myself. Pfew. Bank (= hand hitting head)

And there is some new project brewing.
We are switching from the custom logistics module to a SAP implementation over the next few years. The sales module wil remain. A new interfacing between SAP and TeleSales/OMSI-3 must be made without breaking the interface to OLI. This interface will be XML based using HTTP server stuff. So I do get to do some new and less boring programs.     Yippee.

Of course this will add one or two balls to what I am already juggling. Maybe I can learn from Tom how to pick up fallen balls.

I am rearranging the local web, not that you should see it on my site. Now it is stored on several computers and several Zip disks and floppies. Only Miona has the full site exactly as it is on the server at Mailbank. But Miona is not my main system because it is on the attic and there is no floor and no decent chair, I am sitting about 15 cm lower than planned which is highly uncomfortable.

1999-09-10

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The world was blanketed by a misty haze all nigh resulting in high temperatures, 17C at 6h00, and lost sleep. The sky cleared producing an altogether warm but enjoyable day.

The financial period stuff is finally shipped. And the parameter solution got shipped. And I solved a new problem in TeleSales, keeping credit notes out of the logistics module. Not bad for a slow day.

At home I pulled the case for Aria to pieces. I am going to get an other mobo to test it because I suspect the Soyos to be defective (by design?)

1999-09-11

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Less hot then yesterday morning but still to warm (15C morning) and getting very hot in the afternoon at over 30C. There is however a brisk wind that keeps things nice. Unless your are a garden plant that is.

Shopping. First to EuroSys.
No luck there, they used to be knowledgeable and not trying to pass up stuff you didn't need and they had good products in stock. I often went there when I needed some part in a hurry. These days they are falling behind a bit. They are focusing on larger business clients and are losing the smaller fish. Going and returning did cost me about tree quarters of an hour. And I think it was the last time I went. I did recommend them but I cannot do that anymore. Not for individual purchases anyway.

Back to Masset.
The AMD K6/450 that I bought in his online auction still hasn't arrived. Steven assured me he would never again put things in auction that he didn't have actually in stock. Wise decision.
I picked up a Chaintech mobo to try out in the Aria case. We agreed that, if it doesn't work I can swat the case and try again next time before I leave the shop. Good.

I fiddled this evening with the Chaintech motherboard but I still cannot get things to work. I tried with all the possible settings of the mobo, and with various processors. Nothing works, I only get a steady stream of short beep tones. I will have to take the case back for a replacement next week. So the story continues.

The upload yesterday did not go. I simply couldn't gate a connection. And that was for all modem connections. No Web, no Mail, no Uploads, nothing. In stead of finding out why I just went to bed.

Better luck today.

1999-09-12

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Sunday

Yet.

With the temperature and climate I didn't achieve much. Mainly I read so the stack of magazines got reduced a bit. And I cleared (part of) the desk space on the attic.

I also cleaned up my computer pages a bit, lets say half way. The result is that they are not presentable. With luck I find time next week to scrub them up further. I did a lot of small things without much to show for it but things that have to be done sometimes. For example I collected computers crews from all over the house into a segmented box. Not a glamorous action, not essential but useful. Not the same as locusts ( © Jerry ) but close.