Week 09, 2000 ,Svenson

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28-02 to 05-03

MM-lix     Monday

2000-02-28

It is thinly overcast, just the moon an a few stars piercing the clouds, but thickly enough to have kept the temperature up at 8C. during the morning the clouds thickens and at around ten it starts to rain until ....
Well, at 19h00 there was a short dry spell.

I almost finished the project and consulting program. It would have been finished if I had read the full specifications first. I started with building a window with the information needed by the first part of the specs. Later I checked the second part and there was a pointer to an existing window. Typical for instructions, first a good description of what the program must do and how it must do things and then, at the very end a reference to how it should look. That is like taking a user, step by step trough the FDISK program and, on the last page, recommend to make a backup before you start.
Anyway, the screen is ready and the program only needs an update routine and some description retreiving module calls. After that I add it to the system and test it.

And I am taking a look at TeleSales. The main shortcoming at the moment is that Ronny knows everything about the project. Apart from his brain there is no technical documentation. If he has an accident we are stranded. I had made a start at documentation while we were making the credit card extension but only the AS/400 part of that is actually done with some screen prints of TeleSales thrown in.
We had a discussion about how the 'copy from history' handles some header fields. I profited from the occasion to start documentation on that. I plan to do that from now on for all the changes and decisions that are implemented.

If things work out as expected I should be picking up some TeleSales problems next week. To be done in Progress.

At home I am working my way trough a stack of magazines. I lost some documents that I am now searching and in stead of picking up things and putting them down somewhere else I am actually throwing stuff away (not into my paper bin because that, having a rather level top, has a printer on top of it).

MM-lx     Tuesday

2000-02-29

Lots of clouds and intermittent rain sums up the day. That is after you add some strong gusty winds. Even with this weather it doesn't feel cold. Because it isn't cold (6°C).

I should have finished with the PCA stuff (project and consulting) but I am not. Filling that full header takes a lot more time than I expected. And I had some distractions.

The Hierarchical Classification programs that I finished a month ago are back under discussion. The file must be changed, some fields added and some changed. This means that I will have to take the programs apart and reassemble them again.

And an other new file must be made, with the assorted programs. The specifications aren't ready yet but ...

Didn't I mention a few weeks back that the death line is approaching? Managers are preparing the test scenarios already, while the specifications aren't ready yet. Sure sign that the death line has been spotted.

I registered some domains (at Joker) and I am now looking for a DNS to park the lot. I can do it at the shop I get my hardware from, although he really wants to sell me a full site where I only want to use his DNS. We are still negotiating.
Ultimately I want to host them from my own attic.

And I just got good news, I can get ADSL at home. When I checked it a few months ago I was just out of range but seemingly they have extended their coverage. I still have to check the prices (they have a full page of prices for various offerings with different services and options). More later.

For anyone who hadn't noticed it Tom is back. After a long and sometimes difficult pregnancy he did deliver his "Outlook 2000 in a nutshell" to the publisher.

MM-lxi     Wednesday

2000-01-01

Lots of clouds and intermittent rain sums up the day. Sounds familiar? Well there was a bit more sun and a bit less wind.

I finished off the PCA program, with a single test run. Now I just have to add a few calls to it in other programs. I did build it to the specification but that means it is rather bloated with imo unnecessary data.
(Remember this is on an 80x25 character display, a native terminal (emulation) on AS/400.)
It is a window where the user has to enter a project number to which a certain order has to be assigned. It is either called from a list of orders, all the details needed to recognize an order are available, of from the order entry screen, where the main header data is always displayed. And yet all the header data must be presented in the window as well. This makes the windows so large that it covers the whole area where the underlying screen shows the header data. The result is that data has to be collected form 7 files (extra IO) and converted to display format. Users love it when you needlessly shoot their performance.
The only thing that is actually needed is the field to be entered (and a header-border) in as small a window as possible. This would mean only one file access.
Unluckily it is rather difficult to later remove the extra info than to add it (if you remove things users are accustomed to they demand it back). <!-- I actually implemented the small window as well, it can be called using a special value in the parameters -->

I intended to get the DNS on my extra domains settled but I didn't find time to do it. Tomorrow should be a bit more relaxed so maybe I get around to it.

I did pick up some of the commotion about the patents granted to Amazon. Brilliant. Just shows how crazy the Americans are. What is the next patent? Could I patent the 'method to express information by way of putting series of characters on a thin cellulose based substrate' ?
Normally not but in America ....
I would license it for a quite reasonable fee of course. Hehe, better than Internet or Linux stock operations.

MM-lxii     Thursday

2000-03-02

We have cooler weather again, just -0°C. The problem is that it is raining lightly. Problem? Yep rain on frozen ground makes driving a real adventure. Much more exhilarating than Lara Croft or Doom, or Unreal. I pulled out of two tailspins (one fast), while a police car in front of me did not succeed to pull out of a similar situation. Hehe.
The rest of the day was unremarkably gray with lots of wind.

The PCA stuff is compiled, tested and ready. Now I must find some spare time to test the unspecified small window version of it. Testing will be simple, finding the time is something entirely different.

Wilbert was trying to create a batch file to stop a bunch of database servers on our NT box. We typically have 5 or 7 or 10 or ... server jobs for the various working environments running. Often, when we have a problem on the development client (Ronny's PC) we must stop and restart the database servers. This takes no more then about ten minutes all included but while we are working with the V9 of progress it sometimes happens several times a day (four times in quick succession this morning, wow). So Wilbert wanted to put the whole action in a single batch file, not to speed up the process but rather to make it easier to do, without requiring attention. He is not proficient in DOS however so he typically asks me for advice. I noticed however that my knowledge of batch programming is a bit rusty.

The problem was that, to stop a server you must call a tool from the Progress Database. This executes as expected but somehow it doesn't return control to the batch routine. The same command has to be executed for each server. Tom finally suggested to use the RUN statement to start the tool (an .exe file) and that solved the problem. I was experimenting with COMMAND to start a new command processor for each action (good old DOS-3 technique) but I didn't remember the correct switches to stop the secondary processor after its command(s) were finished.
Another thing that I am not certain about is if the batch language behaves the same under NT as it did/does under DOS. (I did notice that long filenames were not supported but further than that ...)

And I spent a lot of time 'correcting' some adaptation from Koen. The problem here is that Koen is a very good programmer but he doesn't play by the standards.

When we make a change there is always a problem report relating to it. The rule is that you log, at the top of the source, the date, id and PRS number (and a one line description) of the change and that you mark every changed line with the id. Another rule is that you never actually remove the original code, you convert it to comment line(s) and add the changed source under it. The intention of this is that opcos with a local variation can easily find the changes and apply them to their localized version.

Koen doesn't comply with these rules, he just replaces the code where it needs to be changed. If everything works, and he is good enough that it mostly does work first time around without testing (which he doesn't do enough), this is not a big problem. This time he had made a few mistakes. These were inhibiting some testers but he didn't have time to quickly solve them ( ). So I had to solve the problem, with the help of Frank. While I was in the sources I added the necessary comments and I added the old code (commented out) as well.

The result is that I spent less time on my own projects than I should. And I am down on fuel.

Did any one notice I had moved Wednesday back to January :-)

MM-lxiii     Friday

2000-03-03

Jo-jo. It is 9°C and drizzling. The only constant is the amount of wind, it has been blowing from Monday. It keeps drizzling till the early afternoon when it stops with a grand finale. Pouring rain. It couldn't run off the stairs fast enough and started to seep under the doors into the hall. This lasted for almost half an hour.

A group of functional mangers is testing on the S environment ( that is System-test ). One of them is Jan. To determine what must be tested they look in the PRS and find all reports with status 'solved'. After testing they change this to 'accepted' (or, with additional comment back to 'to be solved'). Basically only the r7v09 reports were 'solved' because all older reports should have been tested long before the v09 programming began (normally the functional manger produces the report, then a programmer solves it and immediately after wards the manager test and accepts it and sends it out to the operating companies). Of course Jan is such a diligent tester, ahum, that there were loads of old reports still solved but untested (from the last three years only about half the reports were accepted). Of course most of the solved programs entered production in the opcos without being tested. So Jan first has to find out which reports he actually has to test.

One problem with this testing on the S environment is that I have to make changes to the HCC file. Well, I did that and I retreived the related programs back to the T environment (test and development). After changing them they must be rolled out again to S (as long as I have them in T the S environment works with the old unchanged objects). Rolling out means that the original data must be saved, the files are then moved to S, than the existing data has to be copied into the new files and, as last step the programs are copied to S. This cannot be done while test are running of course.

The TeleSales conversion from Progress V8 to Progress V9 has been finished. This must of course be tested before it is sent out. First we had set up a system and installed everything on it specifically for testing. Neither Pieter nor Jan wanted to test on that machine because it was inconvenient (etc etc etc). They claimed they wanted to test but couldn't. So Wilbert put in extra work to get the installation scripts ready and installed the new TeleSales on their own PCs. That was two weeks ago and Ronny has been monitoring the servers since then. Nothing has been tested yet. So much for their 'wanting to test'.
Only in this case Wilbert is going to block the release if it isn't tested. This could become interesting.

Next Monday and Tuesday are Carnival Holidays so the company is closed. Except this is not a holiday in Belgium so about half the programmers will be there. Tom and Wilbert won't be so I pick up their role. BOFH for two days :-)

I added Bob Walder to my daynotes mirror. Tom will probably put him on the real Daynotes site any time now.
There are another few candidate daynoters preparing to enter the scene as well. It is getting pretty crowded around here. And I am running out of time to read them all each day as it is now. Something must give way so if you notice that I drop out some days it is just that I read daynotes in stead of writing them.

MM-lxiv     Saturday

2000-03-04

Strange weather today. I woke up to a bright day with just a few red streaked clouds, with 3°C and warming up fast (the frost on my car was of course ignorant of the rising temperature). Then suddenly, at eight o'clock, we got a snow storm. Very weird, really one minute its clear and sunny and the next its snowing with a fairly strong wind. No gradually getting overcast, just snap over snowing. The snow lasted for less than half an hour and then it stopped, to turn out bright and sunny again. Just as instantly as it started. The snow itself was frozen, not the soft sticky type, but melted fast.
This happened two more times today.

I went shopping (between the snow showers). I discussed name serving with Masset for the domains I registered at Joker.com. He originally thought that I was joking when I mailed him about this (Me joking? Would I do that?). He didn't know that NSI no longer had the monopoly for domain registration and he was surprised at the low rate at Joker. He tried to fill in his name server data for my domains but that didn't go unless he registered with Joker.com. His server was not recognized even though he was recognized as a name server by NSI. Joker is not the only register affiliated to Core. Trying to fill in the DNS info via another register didn't succeed. So I am still registered but unnamed.

The afternoon was bright and joyful so I got out into the garden again. Pruning back the fire thorn some more. I am about halfway trough it now.

And then I had a job putting some other people on the daynotes mirror. I hope I got them right. The list is getting overly long so maybe I should spread it over two columns. It is one table now so splitting it shouldn't be difficult. Reading all the notes will become more of a problem. At this rate it is going to be a full time job before the end of the year.
Maybe I should rearrange the whole list, putting my personal favourits at the top. But then again it is not really my list to do with as I please. Not really.

MM-lxv     Sunday

2000-03-05

It must have snowed again to night because there is frozen snow on the cars when I go running. It starts of at -3°C but once the sun get out the temperature rises quickly to around 10C. The afternoon is cloudy and gray, with lower temperatures.

After running, which is very nice at a dry, windless -3, I spent most of the day reading. Except for a few hours pruning in the garden which I must stop because the GFT container is full.

This container is one part of the environment friendly waste collection.

GFT stands for 'groente, fruit en tuin' (translated from Dutch : vegetable, fruit and garden') and is a big plastic container about 1mx0.4mx0.4m (hwd) that is used to collect the biodegradable waste. This is later processed into compost. We handle the normal compost able stuff ourselves but wood from pruning doesn't decompose easy unless you chop it finely and mix it in with the rest to form a good mulch. The GFT container is picked up once every fortnight so during the late winter early spring it is always overly full.
Plastic is also collected separately, in large but thin translucent green bags (not made by Apple :-). This is also done once every fortnight but alternating with the GFT.
Paper is also collected separately but not by the town but rather by some other organization. And only once a month (on call)
All the rest is collected via the classic gray plastic bags

I tried to do some surfing in the morning but this turned into sufring. Every few minutes the modem would drop the connection. So I didn't get the name server data entered at Joker. Maybe this evening.