1999-11-08

Monday

The clouds we had yesterday like it here. They decided to stay, and close to the ground as well. It didn't actually rain but while driving you needed the windscreen wipers. The minimum temperature was about 8C and I guess the maximum was the same. Lovely :-(

After vainly searching for the best part of last week I cas a last look at the shipment date problem and find the problem. I test two key fields before accessing a file and I combined the test with an AND in stead of an OR. Stupid? You bet!!!
The problem was that, in on the test machine, in all the available environments the error did not occur. It happened only in the G environment on the production machine (G env is a copy of the German database). And of course I cannot debug on the production machine.

Up to the next problem.

I haven't followed the MS Trial so I picked up the conclusions. So Microsoft is found guilty of ...
Well I haven't seen any conclusive evidence of direct unlawful behaviour, but then I guess that is typical for a anti-monopoly trial. Most people seem to be satisfied more because the trial is now concluded then about the actual outcome.
Of course this is about software so we can expect a second release (appeal court) and then a third release (). Maybe that will be stable after a few patches.

I have been incinerating Gifs. I just hope there aren't too many charred spots left.

PS Anyone knowing Dutch should have known not to use them because gif in Dutch is Poison.

1999-11-09

Tuesday

10C and overcast in the morning the only change in this were a few showers. The clouds just stopped hugging the ground.

The next problem is one in Germany. They have an order where one of the lines has the indication of a contract but when looking at the line detail the price is taken from a price list in stead of the contract. OK, I see the problem but not the solution.

I burned my GIF. That meant replacing them on all my pages with the newly created PNG files. The problem is that I don't use a specialised site management tool. I type HTML by hand in CuteHTML and upload all my changes via CuteFTP. Using CuteHTML you can do a find and replace over all the open files so I opened all my weeknote pages and did a few find replace actions. All went well until I made a typing error and I lest an extra > sign in the replacing string. This confused CuteHTML so that it will not do any find replace including a tag. That is it does the find and replace but the find is wrong. So I got spurious characters on all my pages and the only way to get rid of them is by hand.

Yea, burning GIFs keeps your fingers warm. From typing :-(

I think I got them all corrected.

Microsoft got beaten. Yep. Good? Well not really.

1999-11-10

Wednesday

It is still overcast but thinner and it doesn't rain (8C). At noon there was even a sunny break.

I am still digging in the sources to find out how contract toggle on the order entry screen works. Basically because it doesn't work. It toggles the contract number in the order line record but the calculation afterwards resets the contract data.

And I got a lot of daynote mail flying around. Most Daynoters post the mail they get (not all of course) but I don't do that.

• because most of my mail is with other daynoters most will be posted. Why post double?
• and I receive and handle most mail from my office but I compose my daynote at home in the evening. The mail remains on my office PC and is not available at home.

A lot has been said about the MS case. Probably more than necessary. I get the Idea that most of the daynoters don't want MS to be slaughtered. Only Bob sees the need to defend Microsoft and I agree with most of his arguments.

I do remember someone saying 'Microsoft Delenda Est'. But who was that?? <mg>

And then there is Brian who dares to post some literature and then feels ignored when we are all to polite to comment. So I challenged him to write the novel he has been planning for ages now.

This writing of a story could become a daynote requirement. If so I don't think I would want to compete with Jerry.

1999-11-11

Thursday

No sunny breaks today. It started off overcast at 11C and stayed that way. It did remain dry.

Armistice Day is a public holiday (in Belgium).
The company remains open but we stay home. That is because the Dutch did not join in the first World War. They didn't 'earn' the holiday. Not that I earn it, my grand father faught in the Great War, not I. But that is the way holidays are made.

So I had a whole day to correct the problems I got with burning my GIF's. Not that I am finished with it. I lost too much time doing paper-shifting jobs. I have a pack rat mentality which results in such a chaos that Jerry would feel at home. Only the few photographs he shows make it clear that he has loads of books and heaps of computer boxes, mainly software. I don't have the space to keep the boxes so I throw them out soon but the content remains.

I had stolen the Matrox card from Oswal to get Aria running. Now I plugged in the Butterfly card in Oswal and reconfigured it. Because my brother keeps having problems with Cindy I am configuring Oswal as a replacement. That means I must make it dual booting with DR-DOS and Win98 and then install all the software he normally uses. If all goes well I will swap them in the weekend and see what I can do with Cindy.

1999-11-12

Friday

My car was frosted over completely. With exactly 0C on the thermometer that is normal. The day was rather sunny with just a few banks of cloud lazily passing by.

We had noticed a problem in the handling of conditions (reductions and fees) on order lines. Well we had a fax from America with a problem and Peter spent most of the day yesterday trying to repeat it. He succeeded doing so. But when I started trying everything worked. In the end we found the problem. If you created an order with say four lines and you save that order (without releasing it) and you open the order again and delete any but the last line the condition lines get copied but the last line becomes duplicated. Often the last line has no condition but inherits the condition from the previous line. In OMSI-3 we don't have that problem because when a line gets deleted the other lines are not renumbered. In TeleSales the lines become renumbered but the conditions don't.
That is job for Ronny when he comes back on Monday so I leave the queries and dumps in the programs for testing.

I handled a few other issues. All in all a reasonably productive day.

I developed a tooth ache yesterday evening. Not enough to keep me awake all night yet painful enough to cut my sleep short. Of course the dentist is on holiday until Monday. Well I will see how it goes, at the moment it doesn't hurt, and try to forget it till he is back. I take a day off next week (Thursday?) for my car so I can try for an appointment then. If it becomes more than a nuisance I can always get to another dentist.

The daynote and weeknote pages are now GIF free. But I noticed that I forgot the other pages. This is not a GIF burning day but rather a GIF burning week. If I get it done this weekend

1999-11-13

Saturday

Minus 1 on the thermometer and a small glacier on my car. I don't work today so it doesn't bother me. The day is mainly sunny but not bright, as if a very thin mist hangs about filtering the sun out.

I went shopping and handled some affairs at the bank.

In the afternoon I tried to work on the GIF chaos but I could not get work flowing. Tooth ache is something frustrating. It doesn't really hurt but it keeps nagging you and it breaks your concentration. I tried reading but I couldn't, I tried watching TV but even that didn't go too well. It is a damned irritating condition. The only thing I accomplished was raking up death leaves in the garden
And then, suddenly it stopped. Well not really but for the moment it has receded far enough to be ignored. So I type my daynote and post early.

On one site my pages come up all right while on the other site none of the graphics work. This is strange because they are both identical copies of the directory structure on my E: partition on Miona. Snork.

1999-11-14

Sunday

It was 5C and wet, with clouds hugging the ground and water dripping from trees and shrubs. I was soaking wet when I returned from running.

The tooth ache that abated yesterday evening returned with a vengeance. The longest I could concentrate was about one magazine page, before the tooth called for attention.
With a little luck I get to a dentist tomorrow. If so I will probably not have much to report. And if I don't see him I think I will post nothing.

Sorry;