Week 43, 1999 ,Svenson
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Once upon a time, this was the future, now it is all past |
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Week 43, 1999 ,Svenson
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1999-10-25 |
MondayClouds have been coming in and out this night I assume because the temperature, at 10C, is still high. This drifting over of clouds continues throughout the day. The sunny spells become gradually longer though. I forgot to set my alarm yesterday. I notice that because it still hasn't gone off at 5h50. Basically I don't need an alarm because I wake up around 5h00 if I am not too tired. Because that is of course too early to rise and because I don't want too look up every five minutes to check the hour I set my alarm. This is the last day of the SAP course for Tom and Wilbert so it is my last day of administration. As usual there is not much to do on a Monday. Typical stuff gets promised for week so and so much which usually turns out shipping on Friday. I continued and finished coding for the parameter passing problem. I just kept a few tests for tomorrow. To make sure I have something to do of course :-/ I have Yaku located in Venlo. I had OS/2 and Win95 dual booting on it and I tried to upgrade the Windows side to Win98. This blew up the machine and while an un-install seemed to work I had problems writing CDs. I scrubbed the box down to DOS and tried to install Windows again but that would not succeed. The installation would hang or crash at various points but it never completed. It has been sitting under my desk now for about a month so I thought installing Linux would be something interesting. I have Caldera Open Linux 2.2 laying around here so I tried that. Without success. It runs all the way till I get to the "Postinstall" screen where it hangs at 4%. Rebooting and side stepping the installation (alt+Fx) gets me to a prompt, but the user profiles and passwords are not installed yet so I don't get in. Looks like I got a hardware problem here. I'll try OS/2 tomorrow, might be interesting. But I'll take a screwdriver along as well. |
1999-10-26 |
TuesdayThe clouds have been blown away mostly but the temperature remains high (11C). We seem to enjoy a pocket of marketing (hot air) accompanied by lost of sun (and one lone shower). A combination which makes for some wonderful autumn displays. While testing the parameter passing solution we did hit a problem. The LDA (Local Data Area) is a memory area on the AS/400, each job has its own private LDA. We store the user name and job number (aod) in there for easy reference. The LDA is copied from the parent job so normally the first thin that happens is that a program is run to fill the LDA properly. This doesn't happen for the server jobs for TeleSales. Wilbert had built a program that let us view the LDA from the client and he had added an initiating program to it. The result was that when you run a program that needs some LDA value it went wrong until you view the LDA. What you see is correct and running the program after viewing goes right as well. We spent a few hours searching and debugging, until Wilbert passed by and said "of course that doesn't work, ...". He survived, but only just :-[ I solved the problem in such a way that I don't use the LDA proper because it is unreliable. Another problem, with overlapping data structures in the credit card validation program, cropped up. But while I was debugging it I was called away for new tests on the McKinsey adaptations. Some programs in one or two of the other modules had produced errors during the previous test so the whole test had to be redone. Immediately of course. As the OMSI-3 programs were correct it was no problem for me, just a nice time sink. And there is a good chance the test will have to be redone again later. I intended to try OS/2 on Yaku but I forgot the boot diskettes and OS/2 doesn't boot from the CD. So I'll do that tomorrow. And I have been searching for wheel base data about roman chariots and about track widths of European railroads in the 19th century. Quite unsuccessfully sofar. |
1999-10-27 |
WednesdayAlmost exactly the same weather as yesterday, just a few drops of rain less and as many clouds more. I resumed the testing of the parameter passing solution. To make sure I covered all the options I added a few dump statements to some programs. And we didn't encounter the problem any more. Probably some older version of on of the dummy American programs was causing the crash and after recompiling, with added dump statements, the crashing error was gone. The dummy programs basically do nothing more than take parameters and pass parameters back. I use them to be able to test the American version of our interface but they are not part of our system. The Germans found a problem in their order history files and are now accusing us of fouling up their database. I checked the program which they say caused the problem but I cannot find an error in it. This program solves a problem with orphaned order lines. the 'new' problem is one of a widowed header in the archived orders. What really happens is that the program solves the problems with orphans but doesn't touch anything else. Widows remain. This is obviously not a newly introduced problem but rather an existing problem that surfaced now. It needs solving of course. Before yesterday. Of course. I tried to install OS/2 on Yaku but halfway trough the installation hung itself. There is definitively something wrong with that box, I tried installing Windows (95 and 98) and Linux and OS/2 and they all crash before finishing. Only DOS installs and runs. It is not my hardware time of year I think. |
1999-10-28 |
ThursdayClear sky and no marketing anymore (no hot air). The temperature is back to an enjoyable 3C. By 8h00 however, when I reach Venlo, the clouds are back. To stay The German problem is real but strange. I have been checking and searching. I see what the problem is, I see that it is generated by my program (last-user field) I see how it can be solved. When I check my program I don't see how the problem could occur. Ghosts? In Belgium there is a problem with orders that have been made on deleted addresses. This cannot be done via our programs but it seems to have happened with a migration program (they moved from a different system to TeleSales). Once an order is made the order address cannot be changed. There is panic in Belgium, especially since Jan is not available (bitten in the hand by a dog) and Martine, the local co-ordinator is home ill. We don't do anything for this, they can solve it by turning off the test on deleted addresses and channel the orders trough. Afterwards they must of course reactivate the test. Dr Keyboard is back from Italy and got directly working on his hardware. But he has a whole daynote without mentioning food. What's up doc? |
1999-10-29 |
FridayAgain clear sky but there is a lot of mist around, the temperature is up a bit (5C). The mist thickened and remained untill almost 14h00. Then the sun came out. The problem in German is even more foggy than the weater. They have run the correctioon program and there are still orphaned order lines. Some time ago (days, weeks, gee I duno!) we got the news that there would be someone to work on the documentation. Yesterday we had a meeting with him to determine the required time and resources. We came to about 60 days. And Belgium has a special method of getting away with taxes (that is our national sport, TAX dodging). They want to be able to calculate the regular VAT on only a part of the total taxable amount. They have to adapt the programs themselves, locally but of course they want us te tell what to do and where to do it. The big question is how to print the amounts on the invoice. What they want would result in an invoice with the total taxable amount being less than the sum of the taxable amounts of the lines. I did not upload yesterday. While moving my system to the other side of my desk I pulled just a bit to hard on my modem cable and it broke loose. This was an old cable, not the modern type where the 25 pin side is full plastic but the sort of hand soldered type with a thin, screwed cover. Some of the solder points broke off, leaving the pins in the computer socket. It was already late so I left it for today. Checking from Venlo I noticed that the Wednesday Daynote page is uterly unreadable in Opera. Netscape and MSIE display it as intended but Opera seems not to interprest the background for a table cell. Of course it is easy to suppress graphics in Opera and then you see the text. Too bad. |
1999-10-30 |
SaturdayA bit more clouds in he morning (6C) but almost no mist so the day turned bright an sunny, even warm at moments when the wind slackened. I went shopping and almost bought a notebook. In the GB they had a fresh load of Fujitsu notebooks for 49.999 BEF (1300$ ) which is about as cheap as they ever get. This was for a mobile Celeron at 366MHz, 12.1TFT screen, 32MB RAM and 4GB harddisk. Not sparkling, especially the RAM, but at that price one cannot reasonably expect more. We are typically a 30 to 50% more expensive than the USA so you should translate this to an 800/900$ notebook over there. I just in time remembered that I don't need a portable computer and that I have better uses for the money. I still remember the Toshiba my brother bought in 1990 for about 180.000BEF (4800$). That was a 286 at 12MHz with 1MB RAM, CGA mono screen and 20MB harddisk, not sparkling for its time either. BTW he is still using that today although the floppy drive is on the way out. In the afternoon my brother wanted to dismantle the greenhouse to store it for the winter. So I got over to help him. Dismantling is definitively easier than building it up but it still took the whole afternoon. The magazines are piling up here and are getting in the way so I started reading. I used to have Byte, Computer Chopper (UK) and PC Magazine (US). PC Magazine was great to stay abreast of what was available on the American market and they have a few great editorials (Bill Howard, Dvorak, Bill Machrone, ...) and some good technical background articles. But being American the products are not available here and lately they have become too product minded. Byte was simply the best magazine if you were interested in technology and future possibilities. They did hardly ever cover actual products in large comparative articles, but they gave unsurpassed detailed technical background information about cutting edge technology. It was the only computer magazine in the library of the university (early eighties) and deservedly. If you could follow it you were always five or six months ahead of the common trends. And they had Jerry who, after reading about al the glorious future could bring you back to reality (and that from a SF writer). Computer Shopper is the counter point to PC Magazine. It is not PC centred, it has Apple, Amiga, Atari, etc. columns, it provides insightful articles, like Byte, and it has a rather large news sections where you notice that the USA is NOT the only country in the world. And the articles are sprinkled with typical unbeatable British humour, even absolutely serious articles have passages where you cannot help but smile. A bit like The Register on the Web. I replaced Byte with PC Plus, a slightly more serious English mag with a broad, non MS-focused topic range but leaning to the programming side of things iso to the business side. I think I am going to drop PC Magazine, I can get at the editorials on the Web. I hope to be able to cope with the other two by skipping articles. |
1999-10-31 |
SundayThough it rained heavily during the night; in the morning the sky was clear and it is rather warm (10C). The day remained dry although it turned threateningly dark a few times. I started running but after less than a kilometre I turned back due to a sharp pain in my left foot. Each time I had the foot flat on the ground I felt a sharp stitch at the bottom as if a tendon or nerve was being over stretched. I felt this yesterday when I walked to my brother for dismantling his greenhouse but it was not as sharp then. Now, after running a few hundred meter it started and became sharper with every stride. I hope resting will clear the problem. I normally get up at 5h45, even on Sunday, but we changed over to winter time. The Americans call it Daylight Saving, although nothing gets saved of course. I had not changed my clock so I got up at 5h45 and arrived in the kitchen at 4h45. He he. And as I cut my running short I enjoyed an extra long morning. Not accomplishing more but doing things slowly. Until my brother comes. He always does things fast. And he never does one thing alone, he always combines things to do, even (especially) when it is better to do them separately. So we rebuild a cupboard and few drawers and we sort trough a heap of clothes. All at the same time. Normally on Sunday afternoon I take a very hot bath, soaking for about an hour. The gas boiler in the bathroom doesn't want to fire up. So I spend about two hours trying to get it working again. All to no avail. I take a cold shower each morning but a cold bath is not something I am ready to try so I resign myself to skipping the bath this week. I just tried the boiler again just before uploading (23h00) and now it works. Probably a drop in water or gas pressure. Bother. |
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