Week 02, 2000 ,Svenson

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MM-x     Monday

2000-01-10

Minus two and a nicely frozen car. So far the good news, now the bad. Fog, the whole day, with visibility restricted to about 150m at best.

I picked up one more program for the II (invoice-address related info) adaptation. Changing fas much easier than testing cause I just don't know where the bloody thing is used.

Peter is back so some issues he started but that got frozen are picked up again. The result is that I do an adaptation on the TeleSales order validation program (pro023). Normally only validation that are activated by the user (manager) are executed. And normally that is enough. There is however a problem if both TeleSales and OMSI-3 are used to enter orders. The original assumption was that this should never be done . The problem is that the various tests and validations are executed at different moments of the order entry. So if you start entering an order in OMSI-3 and finish it in TeleSales you are missing some tests, like the presence of an invoice address ( in TS this is one of the early steps, later it is assumed the step was taken, in OMSI-3 this is only required when you release the order, one of the last steps).
The result is that I now have to add these (normally redundant ) test to the validation. I guess that within two or three months I will have added about all the screen-tests to the validation program. By then the opcos will start complaining about the performance of the monster.

Due to some weird political maneuvering all the illegal immigrants get a chance of being 'regularized' in the next couple of weeks. To prevent a sudden increase of illegal immigration during that period the borders of the country are closed. Well not really closed but every body crossing will be checked. We have been in a kind of economic union with the Netherlands for almost 40 years, resulting in free trafic. This is suddenly suspended for three weeks.
The result are enormous trafic jams on the borders. It took me just over 3 hours to get home. The normal time is about 1.5 hours. The extra time was spent on a 5 kilometer stretch of highway just before the border. Grand double Pifle.

My upload of the prawn recipe ^ of Saturday went wrong. I noticed that myself so I rectified it first thing on Sunday (OK not in the morning but first thing I did after connecting). Next I checked my mail, and I promptly got two complaints about the problem. That is what I call reassuring, it proves that my daynotes actually get read. Not that I care too much, since June, when I first published I only checked the statistics two or three times.
I try to cast the cooking notes in a layout that can be printed easily so they are actually useful . Few people have a computer in the kitchen, apart from those crazy daynoters that have boxes scattered all over their house of course.

MM-xi     Tuesday

2000-01-11

The mist has all been frozen out of the air tonight, not that -4°C is real cold. Definitively not when there is no wind. Well I admit to being a little out of tune with almost everybody else around here. I mean, they all come in lamenting the 'verrrrryyyy collldddd' weather. Why, I love it, cool sunny and dry. Nah.

After some discussions with Peter a few of the remaining uncertainties in the HCC specifications are cleared up so I can start at the last program.
The changes in the II (invoice address) and DR (delivery address) files, done by Dimitri, are causing some concern with the OLI people. In these address files there used to be only one record per address, now there are three different records and they have to pick the right one. Seems like nobody thought that out before hand. They will have to use the order type to decide from which module the order came and then pick that module's delivery address from DR.
And another decision concerning the II and DR has been made. All the existing records will be triplicated but new records will only be made for the module that actually needs them. That means I will have to check the programs just a tad more careful.

On the TeleSales front things are grinding to a halt. Progress V9 must be installed and everything migrated to that version but Wilbert has no time. Until everything is installed and converted Ronny has no real job apart from some minor bug fixes. See it is no good if you solve all the major bugs in a piece of software :-)

And there is a request from America to adapt the program just a little. the only way to actually do it is by redesigning the whole technical foundation. Au. The problem is that they have used the flexibility of the design to make a field required while, in the original setup it was optional. Of course the database contains no data for that field because it wasn't required. Now they want to get an error message whenever they view a record that doesn't comply with the new rules. But all the tests are built into a database write-trigger and that only goes off when a new record is added or when an existing record is changed, not when an existing record is merely displayed. There is no way we can make that trigger go off unless we actually change a field but that means double accesses to the database with double validations. On top of that we corrupt the data. OK, only temporally but nonetheless. The only satisfactory way out is by removing the validation from the database trigger and put them in the presentation code. This would cause maintenance problems and it would leave us with a weak database, open to illegal updates.

My proposal is to cut into the flexibility. If it becomes difficult to fiddle with the validation settings we can prevent the problem. For example by adding a simple program that, upon changing a rule, checks the database and presents all the problem records for correction before committing the rule change. The possibility is still there but it becomes a hell of a job. (Have I been reading too much BOFH sections lately?) That would not stop the discussion which is now raging on an architectural level.
Ronny may not have verry pressing work but he does have a lot explaining and defending to do <G>

I took another route home, much slower but with a far less trafficked border control. Result, no pile up and I am home at 20h05.

MM-xii     Wednesday

2000-01-12

The mist has all been frozen out of the air tonight, not that -4°C is real cold. Definitively not when there is no...
No mistake, the weather is an exact copy even though there is less frost with all the mist being used up yesterday and all that.

I didn't start on the last HCC program but I solved a problem with prompting program. The unfortunate fact is that I only make about 3 or 4 brand new programs per year . The rest of the time I am slaving at old bugs programs, adding features, fixing bugs, amending inaccuracies and such, of coughing up quick and dirty, behind the back recovery programs or hole covering patches . That is why I don't know the company standard for adding shining new stuff. The result was that the prompt program worked absolutely as I wanted but none of the text and labels on screen were usable for normal users. Correcting that brought some string handling code to my attention.
I had to add a code to the end of a parameter string. In RPG3 you do that with the CAT (concatenate) opcode. (field1 CAT field2:0 result). That of course still works in RPG4 but I used the alternative method off the EVAL statement (EVAL result = field1 + field2 ). The only problem is that I forgot the stripping of blanks. RPG3 does automatically replace all trailing blanks from the first field with a single blank (adding the :0 removes even that last blank). Of course the RPG4 coding, using EVAL doesn't do that. The simplest solution would be to use the CAT statement but some days my motto is "Why do something simple if you can do it otherwise."
So I thought up a rather convoluted EVAL statement with some new built-in functions. Rather nonstandard but it works. <G>

The discussion on the problem I mentioned yesterday (about the ease with which business rules can be chnaged) was resumed today. The greatest problem with changing business rules is that it has the potential to corrupt your database. Actually such a corruption was what cause the Americans to call for a change. Well I lost out in this argument. My proposal was to add a validation and correction procedure to the rules changing program. Easy to do and, depending on the rules that are changed not really bothersome for the local manager. Peter joined in and canceled my proposal with the simple statement : "database consistency is the responsibility of the local manager, it is not our business". So what will happen now is that any record that is fetched for maintenance will be (invisibly) changed and passed trough the database write trigger even if the user doesn't change a bit. If a record is not fetched for maintenance no tests will be done and the corruption remains. In my opinion that is ......

.....recipe for problems that will haunt us later.

I took yet another route home to, successfully, avoid the border pile up. That is three days of "thoroughly checking the border against illegal immigrants. And two days in a row that I cross over without even seeing someone from customs. Now who are they fooling?
This is fun. I'll see if I can keep up taking a different route each day for three weeks.

PS I try to change the tagline and the next-day content daily but I don't succeed each day. It's called time constarints. And the comments were not intended to be displayed. That is called messing up code :)

MM-xiii     Thursday

2000-01-13

No mist :) , no ice :) , no rain :}, no sun :( . And at 2°C it is quiet nice weather, with sun it would have been really nice.

An error has crept in in the program for invoice printing. Invoicing is done in a three stage process. The first stage is creating the invoice data and filling that in some files. The second stage is creating an invoice-printfile. This file (IZ) contains all the data that is needed for printing the invoice. For example in the invoice file there is only an invoice address number while the invoice print file contains all the relevant address data. The third stage is the actual print program which sorts and formats the IZ data and commits it to paper. Stage two and three are separated because each country has specific (legal) requirements for the invoices so the actual printing program is different in each country (we only provide a model program that must be locally adapted.
As I explained some weeks ago We had a problem with passing the address from stage one to two. This resulted in the printing of invoices that did not belong to the requested address . In the quick fix I applied then I made an error. Now invoices are only printed if a specific address is passed, if no address is entered the intention is to print all the outstanding invoices (of a certain type). An if--and--or--else hiccup. I have only one consolation and that is that, unlike usual, this fix was actually tested and approved by the account manager (Pieter) so I am not the only one who missed the problem.
A simple problem and quickly solved . Theo is going to test it tomorrow <g>

Then there was the problem with prolongation of contracts. There is no specific program to do this (I explained that somewhere as well) but the price list maintenance program can be used for this. There exist two problem reports for this. One (11787) was implemented but , apparently that is not what they actually want so now I implemented the other one (11815). Well I actually started the implementation by adding an extra window but halfway trough the process I noticed that the selection program that I was changing did not work according to the standards here. Normally a selection program doesn't write in the files but passes the selected object(s) back to the calling program via some data structure or a parameter list, this one (prm014) writes records directly to the database. The result is that the changes I started for it yesterday were all useless. So I had to throw them away <click, click, tap, tap Tap > and attack from another direction <tap, tap, tap, click, ... > .
Who says programming isn't fun?
Yep, that got finished as well. and presented for testing.

Hehe, Theo is going to be busy tomorrow. <G>

The PC and network guys have been running around upgrading a bunch of PCs from 32 or (gasp) 16 MB to 64. My guess is that we will get Windows 2000 some when this year. Just a hunch, no evidence. But for most tasks done around here a Pentium of 133 or so and 32 meg is enough (terminal emulation is the most important application, some guys are even using dumb terminals, with some Word crashing, oeps text processing and browsing thrown in). Only a few people need more and they already had more power.

And I slipped the border again unchecked. The only effect of the controlling action is that, maybe, a lot of immigrants don't try to come. Organized human smugglers will enjoy this whole situation;

I try to write a story but I am not sure it will get to something. Up to now I have been adding tag lines with a lot of variation on my daynote pages. I also dumped something different on each 'tomorrow' page. I will try to build a story out of these one-liners (be aware however, they are not spell checked).
BTW I did something similar for the last 12 days of last year but I doubt anybody noticed it.

MM-xiv     Friday

2000-01-14

There still is no mist but the air is not dry anymore and at 3°C that moisture doesn't freeze out. Yes, the clouds are back with their grayness :(

The invoicing solution I did yesterday should have been tested by Theo today but he only succeeded in doing so quite late. The program will be sent out on Monday. If then.

Dimitri came round with some complications in the II and DR adaptations. Most of the problems have been worked out but there is a lot more work to be done than expected. I adapted a few programs but they were not done completely so I will have to recheck them later.

I finished the HCC modification. At least that is out of the way. And without unexpected problems.

And I cracked the last problem in the contract prolongation.

On the TeleSales side of things there is a problem. Ronny has been searching most of the day. In a browser the positioning of the selected record is not working as expected. When an order line is deleted, and then an other order line is adapted the focus doesn't return to the adapted line but to the line beneath it. After hacking and debugging the whole afternoon he still doesn't know the reason why things go wrong, although he knows where it goes wrong. I have been looking in on the problem but the problem is that I don't know Progress., all I can do is put forward suggestions and play lightning rod for his temper. It is slow going and he has patience of the same persistence as my memory (30 nano seconds).

MM-xv     Saturday

2000-01-15

Even though the forecast was for frost at up to (or is that down to) -3 there was none. It remained cloudy but dry and that kept the temperature up at +3°C, with no variation trough the day.

Shopping day. I picked up a network card and some extra memory. And I got a camera.

Most of the day was spent at bookkeeping and paper clearing. I actually got my first invoice of the year so I had to file away the invoices and bank slips of last year. While this sounds simple it isn't. It would be simple if I kept things organized but I tend to put papers down wherever they are out of hand.

I did check out the camera but I didn't actually install anything. Maybe tomorrow. So don't expect a load of pictures. Hey even if I install and use it you shouldn't expect much. It is a rather cheap plastic box, definitively sub-mega pixel, and not the quality I would buy if I needed a camera. But ...
About 5 or 6 months ago I convinced a semi professional photographer that he should try some digital stuff. Well he was rather convinced that digital stuff was just that, stuff. I got him so far that he bought a cheap camera to try it out, if he disliked it I would buy it back.
I met him again today and I did buy his camera back (not for the full price of course). Not because he was still convinced that digital was bad but rather because the camera itself was not up to the job. He is now using a Nikon digital camera, and not the 'cheap' Coolpix consumer version but a professional one (with a professional price as well).

More when I get it tested.

MM-xvi     Sunday

2000-01-16

Dry and cool (1°C), ideal running weather. At noon however it started to ... well ... getting wet. So slow that it cannot even be called drizzle.

Peter (my brother) was home so I spent some time assisting him. While cutting and painting wood he mentioned that he still has problems with Cindy (the 'cheap' Celeron). Sometimes (not always, not indication about when) the PC will boot normally and sometimes (not always, ...) it doesn't come on and needs a hard reset. Once it runs there are no problems. I suspect there is something wrong with the motherboard.
If the problems persist I am going to swap it with Oswal and bring it home. that way I can try it out for problems. Oswal is currently running Win98 without problems, if it starts to show the same problems Peter will have to do some serious checking on the software he runs. I prepared Oswal for shipping.

Brian has set up a mirror of the daynotes.com site on his Linux box. So when for any reason the site goes down there is a mirror available. Several weeks ago I did put a copy of the daynotes.com on my local system (for speed) and later on my site. Seems that the daynotes site is save. I wonder how many copies really exist. And like pebbles on a beach, no two are the same (Brian added some neon effects, I included the netwidows, ...)

I notice there is a problem with switching from the day view to the week view and back. It doesn't work consistently.