Week 12, 2001 ,Svenson

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Markedly cooler this morning and no rain. Just lots of low hanging loaded clouds rolling overhead. And dumping their loads in various forms throughout the day. Rain, hail, snow, sleet, you name it we got it. Heck we even got a few showers of sun rays. And some genuine sunshine just before nightfall.
Current temp is 13.8C in and -3.1C out.

I did finish the validation test setup and solved a problem with the validation program itself.
I was getting strange file errors while I was testing the test program and I couldn't find the cause. Until, at last, I remembered we had changed the LOG_ file to remove a problem with the Progress database schema. Progress cannot handle a physical file with a key, it only correctly handles Logical files with a key. Another problem was that the physical end in an underscore and the index tools from Progress add some underscores and later remove them again, of course they remove one underscore too much.
So we changed the LOG_ file so that it doesn't hold a key in the physical but I forgot to adapt the validation program.

And we continued the discussions we started last Friday. And just as we completed that Jan and Pieter came in to ... discuss those same points. I didn't join in that discussion. I lost enough time already.

 

I installed some more programs (Lotus Symphony, WordPerfect 5.1, Antivirus, ...) on my brothers box and later explained what he still must do himself (change keyboard, install printer,...)

 

Descrambling DVD revisited. http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/glossary/Illegal.html . Maybe the MPAA will try to put a stop to mathematics.

Probably an Illegal Operation.

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Cat with steel nerves

 

Salem??

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Solid frost on my car this morning, which is no surprise at -3C with mist coming out. With most of the mist trapped down we get a nice red sunrise with some high veiling clouds. And some patches of low white stuff. Generally sunny though.
Current temp in is 10.8C and 2.8C out.

I patched up the last problems with validation-10 so now I can start at some other new 'enhancements' of other validations. I keep pretending that it will be finished one day. .

And we had some problem with TeleSales. Jan was off to Germany and then logged in from there to test the programs on our test environment. He was doing that via MS NetMeeting, taking over the desktop on Ronnies second PC. Showing off all the wrong ways to use our program.
He didn't get it to crash though but he did complain a few times about orders he didn't get released. It turned out he tried to release orders from one place, while having them opened for update in another module. That is no problem but it can become confusing if you get several orders open for update and some close normally and some don't. Especially if you don't know what you are doing. We did find one problem that he unwittingly exposed. If all the validations are set off or set to run 'online' then no validations must be done in batch. Sounds good. So the program didn't submit the batch validations. Of course an order is only released to logistics (and set to the 'released' status) at the end of the batch validations if there were no errors (and batch is only started if there are no errors in the earlier online validations.
So, no validations required for batch means no batch and no batch means no release to logistics.
Got that solved now.
Once Jan got completely lost (or couldn't find the phone anymore) and stopped his 'testing' we could continue with some tricky problems in TOS. A lot of details like missing backgrounds in the Integration environment (and even a completely missing program there) and missing stuff in the non UK environment. We did get most of them sorted out.

I am also learning JavaScript fast.
I am actually learning it the only way I am efficient at learning. Wile doing it and under pressure. This whole thing must be presentable and working in about a week time and there are still countless black holes and blind alleys to be investigated.

 

To busy even to read much of the other Daynoters.

There is something wrong, yesterday I got an upload average of 651bytes per second. And that is discounting the interrupted attempts (time-outs). This has been going on for some time now so I fired off a mail to Masset.
Got a reply too. It seems I am hitting the 10 MB site space I signed up for. Oeps, I'll have to get that bumped up a bit.

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The best way to learn to run is to be chased.

 

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Grey and misty all morning. and throughout the day. With huge packs of laden clouds rolling over and dumping their load, at times violently.
Current temp is 14.7C in and 5.7C out.

I have been hammering myself senseless on some stupid JavaScript code.
We must validate the amounts entered on an order. For an item there are various limits (pack multiple, pallet multiple, item minimum, user minimum, etc.), some producing a warning others an error. The original JavaScript contained only one test handling it as an error while it should be a warning (display it only once). We fill hidden fields on the generated HTML page and compare those with the entered value. Using JavaScript (hawk, spit according to most other Daynoters) saves a round-trip to the server in this case.
The main problem (although there are other big ones we didn't even touch) was that for the item minimum. When I compare the values directly ( if ( qty < itemMin ) ) I get the wrong result, six is smaller than five. On the customer minimum I use the same method without problems. I did solve is by introducing a calculated field ( dude = qty - itemMin ) if I then compare that against zero ( if ( dude < 0 ) ) it works out normally.
Weird and brain knotting stuff.

 

I started installing Turbo Linux (v6.0.4OSE, code named Roadrunner) on Taloý , the new box for my father. He will not use Linux but I am still waiting for the wireless network kit.
Hmm, nice simple step by step installation routine. And not graphical.

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You hate CLI ?
What is the difference between a BASH shell script and a classic DOS batch file.
Or a VBA script for that matter.

 

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Grey and misty all morning and throughout the day. Again. And again with low laden clouds. They do keep their water up however, speeding by, probably to dump it over Germany. They speed by because there is a fairly strong wind.
Current temp is 16.2C in and 5.8C out.

I did engage in combat again all day and did an heroic battle with the JS coding. And I won.
I think I found out what is causing the 'weird and brain knotting' JavaScript stuff. When you compare two values in JS they are compared alphabetically, 'ABC' is lower than 'EFH' which doesn't come as a surprise. Likewise '129' is lower than '51 ', again totally normal. What got me confused is that 129 is lower than 51 , notice the missing quotes. That means that JS does all its comparisons on character data types (I later found out JS doesn't support typed variables).
One can live with that but it means you must always be careful with you expectations.
Well in the end we got the validations working. With warnings coming just once (per type) and errors persistently nagging till the fault is corrected.
There are still problems left for tomorrow though.

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Tomorrow now will be yesterday and yesterday will be history.

 

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Grey and misty all morning and throughout the day. Again. (easy copying) And again with low laden clouds rolling over. They don't retain their water though and weep (hard) all over the place constantly till well into the afternoon. At around four we get to see the sun though so there is improvement on the way. Although the wind got rather gusty and strong which doesn't bode well.
Current temp is 18.9C in and 8.8C out.

I picked up the fight again after yesterdays battles.
The first target was getting the warnings to remain warnings. The problem with JavaScript on web pages is that when you send the page back to the server for processing and it gets redisplayed all your variables and data are initialised. This is not good for warnings because you typically, when you display them pull up a flag so you don't test them again. Of course submitting the page and redisplaying it drops all the flags so the warnings get repeated. Not good.
Well, not good enough for me.
So now we send the flags along with the other data on the form and te server just pulls in, stores, reuses and forgets them. Seen from the JS side the flags aren't local fields but became data values. Easy.
Only, Ronny had to do some code massaging and database abusing on the server side and I spend some hours cursing and trying various tricks until I discovered that you compare two values using a double equal sign (==), the single sign (=) is used for assigning values to variables. Of course JS running in a browser cannot be debugged and when you use an assignment in stead of a comparison no errors or warnings are generated. It is for all practical purposes good code.

Apart from that I solved some other minor things (after tweaking the page to destruction a few times)...
Hey we now have a 'one click validation' process.

 

Oeps, I was too tired to actually edit my rough draft and post yesterday . So I did that today. That is called catching up.

 

I did get a notice from Masset. My rented server space got upgraded to a 35MB pack and I noticed it in the upload speed. No hiccups or time-outs anymore.
And he informed me that the wireless stuff did arrive. I'll pick that up tomorrow.

That of course means I got to install Windows on the new PC (that will be Windows ME). When I switched on the box I got, after a bunch of normal looking start-up messages, a "kernel Panic" messages telling me the file system could not be mounted. And of course I don't have a clue about getting out of such a hole. Except by attempting the installation again.
No problem this time around though. WinMe is installing (without problems so far, fingers crossed while holding on to wood).

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You can't beat the clock.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

 

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Grey and misty all morning and throughout the day. The series goes on. It does stay dry till about midnight.
Current temp is 16.5C in and 3.7C out.

Shopping. Standard fruit an wine. The wireless kit did arrive though. One ELSA Lancom access point and two ELSA AirLancer PCI sets. I need only one PCI set at the moment but I expect to use the second one as well soon enough. All together this stuff costs more than a full size PC.

The rest of the day is spent resting. Intensively.

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Rain and wind started at about midnight and lasted till about noon. The rest of the day is grey and windy and dry with some flying drizzle.
Current temp is 17.2C in and 2.4C out.

No running. I got a sore and red toe and I want to give it some rest. And with the switching to summer hours I can use the extra hour for sleep in stead of running. It should have been fun though with the wind and the rain.

Well the finger crossing didn't really help I guess. Everything installed normally but I don't get sound out of the box. The CD works normal (I get sound from the headphone jack) and all the programs I installed work normally. There just ain't no sound.
I guess a fault on the motherboard ( an A-Open MK33 with VIA chipset and integrated sound) I had the same motherboard in the new computer for my brother and there the installation worked well and te sound worked well. Will mean I get it back to the shop next weekend.

The intention is to get the network extended with that box (wirelessly). This also implies I need to setup some form of Internet sharing. I got all the tools for that but not (yet) any knowledge. It also means I need to clean up some desk space for a firewall and such stuff (of which I don't know much either).

This will prove to be some interesting weeks ahead.

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Secretary to boss :
If I were as good as you think I have to be, I wouldn't work for you at all.