Week 49, 1999 ,Svenson

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1999-12-06     Monday

Another change of mind by the weather gods. With rain all right but not on frozen ground as expected. The frosting on my car was totally gone, it is 5°C for sure. The rain is not heavy but quite cold and it's being swept this way and that by sudden gusts of wind. Real autumn weather. Around noon there are a few dry hours.

I check out the specs for a new program. Currently there is a hierarchical system for product classification codes. The problem is that the concept is hierarchical but the codes are not stored that way, they are just fields in the product database and there are no rules implemented to keep the structure hierarchical. So now I am going to create a specific file for the codes complete with a maintenance and filling program and a prompt service. In a first installment the filling must take the existing structure without forcing a hierarchy on it, that would require changes in the product data base. Later, probably halfway next year, the hierarchy can be enforced.

Peter asked if I had a hard disk to spare, he needs on to revive a PC, the current disk in that box, an 800 meg thing, is loaded full of bad blocks. I think that the hard disk from Pat would be all right, that is a 2GB Seagate. The only problem could be that I tried Linux on it. That didn't work out but it did foul up the drive, the Master Boot Record got Lilo-ed. I tried to boot Pat, with a DOS disk to reset the boot record but Pat refused to start. The power supply rattles like hell and the screen simply doesn't come up. Tapping the power supply (hard enough to dent the metal and this is no flimsy modern thingy but real 1991 grade steel!) finally stops the noise but the picture simply won't come up.

I don't think it makes sense to put effort or money in that old box anymore, just rescue the bits that are still useful, like the floppy and send the rest to the PC graveyard. It has been good workhorse, never really performing as it should but just being good enough.

1999-12-07    Tuesday

WWW, means Wet Warm and Windy. It is rainy, no downpour but wet enough. 8°C is too warm for the season. And gusts of over 100KM/h mean you need to be alert while driving.

I got Dimitri to report on the progress he is making. And later I get a visit from Jan, his project manager who wants me to follow up close because he thinks Dimitri is easily sidetracked. I know that already of course, he was on my project for almost half a year, and he is currently among a group of like minded people with distractions all around. Not that there will be a problem cause Dimitri is rather slow, he always wants to know the what why and how of things he does in stead of just copying. This takes time. But at least he test what he makes. Now of course I must make sure that I don't get side tracked too much :)

So I promptly lost about half the day with, among others daynote mails :-°).
Even so I got the first stage of the Hierarchical stuff done and proceeded well into the second.

The disk from Pat that I gave to Peter was a 2.1GB Seagate Medialist (HDD13) from early 1998. For the same price you get a disk about 6 times as big and a lot faster these days. While looking up the disk to add to its history I noticed that I am way behind with my inventory. This has to be promoted a few points up my to-do list. If I find that damned list

Now, WTF (who ..) has come up with the control-V combination. Several times a day I use copy and paste, followed some time later by applying bold to some words. Inevitably I press control-V instead of contol-B. So WTF (what tunking fool) decide to use the V while there are so many keys further away from the B.

1999-12-08     Wednesday

If you subtract the rain from yesterday's weather you get today's report. Too warm for winter and too windy.

Dimitri is advancing steadily with his programs. The file changes are done, including recompiles of affected programs. And the data-conversion program is done as well. He just started on the selection screen.
The second stage of the hierarchical classification is almost done. I just have to add a few tests to it. With just a few interruptions during the day things begin to flow.

Peter installed the hard disk. The BIOS reports the disk correctly, at 2.048 GB. When he runs checkdisk only 528MB is reported. I gave him a special driver, Ontrack Disk Manager, to solve this problem but de diskettes was the driver from a Quantum disk and they don't find the Seagate disk. There is a possibility that the BIOS supports LBA, Peter accepted the defaults and because the BIOS reported the correct size he assumed all was well. So I explained how he could change the disk to use LBA in stead of Normal mode. This should solve the problem.

On the home front things are rather quite.

1999-12-09     Thursday

I envy Tom. I like low temperatures but it is 10°C here. That is at around 6h00, what should be the coldest moment of the day. The wind is almost gone now and the clouds are showing some breaks.

The module selection program that Dimitri is working on is almost done. I helped him over one or two hurdles. His own project reaches a testing stage now so his time gets split up more. This will take the OMSI-3 work a bit back but that should not be a problem.
My own work is not progressing as fast as it should. I did finish the second stage but only after finding a hole load of stupid errors. Astounding how many errors one can make in just a few days.

Peter succeeded in changing the disk type to LBA in the BIOS so now he has got the disk working and accessible. The PC won't fly, it's a Pentium 133MHz with 16 or 32 Meg RAM running Win95, but it is working. It is in fact a PC that a Kosovar refugee kid bought, he bought it second for a very small sum but he had no money left to replace the disk that was slowly dying. The kid itself is quite bright but he is not fluent in Dutch so he spent his first few years here in a totally wrong school level. At last he got to the right level now, GSO (General Secondary Education?) or something, I don't know the Dutch school system, coming from some direct Job School.
It feels good to give things away like that.

Something is amiss. In Bob's office the wood of his desk is visible. And large areas of the floor are visible too. It looks almost as tidy as Brian's desk. I think it is time for me to get some kind of camera.

This is a V90 modem. This is a V90 modem. This is a V90 modem. This is ...
I keep telling myself that cause otherwise I wouldn't believe it. On my page uploads yesterday I got an average of 300 bytes per second. Sending back the directory listing after the day note update to iTool reported the incredible rate of 42 bytes per second. The Mailbank uploads were marginally faster. The connection box showed 40Kbps and retreiving pages in Netscape seemed to go at about normal speed.

Yesterday was the Wednesday the 8th and not the 7th as posted. This type of mistake is called a copy-ghost among coders. Apart from errors, it remains quiet on the home front. (See Brian, I learn from my mistakes) Things move but only very slowly.

1999-12-10     Friday

There is rain again and the temperature drops by about five degrees. Still not happy weather. Unless you love drizzly wet conditions that is.

Dimitri is advancing reasonably well. Better than I am anyway. But then again after asking Theo a question we get into a discussion. The result is that the Hierarchical Classification file must be extended and the extra fields must be filled. That means I go back to stage one and two.

A problem in TeleSales showed up. We got a report from America and later from Germany that the conditions (mostly reductions) were wrong on credit notes. While entering the credit note and checking the price the conditions were displayed but, after saving the credit note the conditions were lost. After hacking trough the code we found the problem. Conditions never apply to credit notes, don't ask me why, that rule is used in the calculation program since 1994. Looks silly, you buy something, get a reduction, then send it back and get a credit note for the unreduced price.
So. The error was not that conditions got dropped but that they were visible while entering the note. Jan, who is responsible for releasing (after testing) the programs had forgotten that rule and, obviously, had not tested the function. And of course now the solution must be delivered ASAP. Which is not possible because not all the opcos are on the same release level.
I think this rates a Piffle.
Heu, yes Tom, what do you charge for your copy-right?

Peter goes on holiday and will return next year. Good luck to him. While we (try to) keep things from falling over.

On the next post of his office Bob shows the rearranged desk, as tidy as can be. Even the other side of his office has large stretches of floor that are un covered..

The Daynotes gang is beginning to live and thrive on e-mails. and people are updating and posting fast and often. And Marica is being pulled into the ring by posting more regularly. She'll be the first woman in the lot. Leah, Tom's wife had started a daynote page but when Landon came trashing around she stopped updating. That was before the Gang was formed. With all the action going on I sometimes get the feeling that I am losing the line a bit.
Not to worry yet, it is just a bit, not yet a byte :-°}

This is a V90 modem. This is a V90 modem. This is a V90 modem. This is ...
Well actually it sometimes behaves like one. The updates Yesterday went at a normal speed (around 6000Bps). Although I had a problem sending mail. I had to try several times before I got trough without a time-out.

1999-12-11     Saturday

Again rain, al day with varying intensities. Again 9°C climbing to 10°C at noon. Wow. And the wind is back, whipping up the rain.

Shopping. First I visit the barber, and about time it was too. My hair, especially my sideburns and beard, were sticking in all directions. I go to the barber at eight o clock (they open just then) to get ahead of the queue. The result is that I am way too early for the other shops when I leave, so I stroll trough town window shopping. And shocking other people because I wear only a thin T shirt while most of them are packed in thick coats with scarves and hats and all, as if it were cold. Pfhe, what will they do if it actually gets cold?
The modem still hasn't arrived, it sceduled for next Thursday so next week I can pick it up. Maybe.

I treat the rest of the day as a rest day.

Getting on to the internet yesterday evening was impossible. Euronet was constantly busy while my other ISP, Freegates, kept rejecting my password. I tried this morning at half past seven and I got trough without a problem. So what is it going to be today?

1999-12-12     Sunday

It is raining again, non stop from about 2h00 (I did wake up a few times this night). The thermometer got stuck at 9°C while the wind, though less intense than yesterday, keeps whipping the rain this way and that.

I get soaking wet while running. And not from sweating so I don't need a shower. One is enough.

Later in the morning my brother comes along to finish the electricity in the garage.

And the afternoon was spent on peeling beans. They have been dried well enough now so we remove them from their pods and store them in tightly closed bottles. I realize that buying dried beans would be easier and faster. But doing this manually gives more satisfaction. And I use that time to talk with my father, doing things together.
It is called quality time.

Still later I fiddle a bit with HTML but I don't get where I want to be.