Week 10, 2000 ,Svenson

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06-03 to 12-03

MM-lxvi     Monday

2000-03-06

At 1°C it is a frost~no frost situation, just a tiny bit of ice on the front windows while the other are just wet with dew. The morning is clear however and I for the first time this year I can enjoy the rising sun while driving. By noon clouds have mostly covered up the sky again.

Today is a public holiday here in the Netherlands (beginning of Lent) and in Belgium the schools are closed for a week, crocus-holiday. Because of the carnival most companies in the Netherlands are closed, there will be for example only a bunch of silly Belgians working in Venlo, with me being BOFH, the result is of course a total lack of trafic. If it were up to me I'd give them 200 holidays a year.

An other advantage, apart from low trafic, was that there were almost no interruptions. I did the adaptation to the HCC files and programs all in one go. A problem did crop up but it should not be related to a change I made. I just have to get that rooted out, which shouldn't be a problem tomorrow.
As operator there was just one call, which I didn't take. Well I don't sit at the normal operators desk so the phone was ringing there and by the time I noticed, it conveniently stopped ringing. Count that as a solved problem :-)     Another problem was that Chris couldn't log on to the network. He was getting the message that his password was not correct for the domain. I had him log in using my ID and that was accepted.
And in the afternoon the remnants of my OFI knowledge (OFI is the financial module) were called upon. There are a few OFI files changed but the exact change was not communicated to the right person. So I had to log in to the OFI system and find out the actual changes.

And just as I was closing down for the day I received a mail from the boss. He wants to give me a raise or something like that but I don't know what or why. Just wait and see.

My to-do list is becoming rather unacceptably big. How so?
It consists of simple points that must be done but also of more elaborate things that must be checked (ex the code snippet to convert from frames to redirection is included) and done. All saved in one big HTML file. And it doesn't fit on a floppy anymore !!! (Ok I admit I am using an older 720KB flop for it but even so ...). Maybe I would get trough it if we had 24 hours a day and 24 hours a night. And while the earth's spin is slowing down (due to the moon getting further away) it will be some time before that happens.

I rearranged my daynotes mirror to get all the noters on the page without scrolling. And while I was at it I added a link to Brian's mirror and one back to the Master list.

MM-lxvii     Tuesday

2000-03-07

The temperature is up again, 7°C, and it's dry. At noon we have a bit of sun but the rest of the day is gray but dry and not unpleasant.

I drop off my car at the garage for a grand maintenance (240.000km) and pick up a replacement. Normally I leave at 6h15 and I arrive at work at 7h45, give or take a few minutes. Now of course I cannot leave before I get the replacement which is at 8h10. Thanks to the holiday the trafic is such that I get in Venlo at 9h20, on a normal, non holiday that would have been more like 10h20. Hmm did I mention that I like holidays?

An I didn't get any interruptions. So much for being BOFH, no fun at all when there are no calls or requests.

The HCC problem I noticed yesterday was strange. The problem was that I had omitted the ELSE statement in some tests. In the style of "IF record_found THEN fill_data ELSE show_error." The result was that I filled the data and showed the error. Now I am pretty sure I tested the programs and I know that Theo had a look at them as well. So how this slipped trough is strange.

Peter was home to paint the front room and the walls in the garage. He wil be back tomorrow so I made two pizzas, one for now hot and the other for tomorrow, as cold lunch.

Update.

It got a bit late yesterday and I did feel a bit tired so this is posted on Wednesday (7h00 local time).

MM-lxviii     Wednesday

2000-03-08

Still higher temperatures, starting off at 9°C but with a bit of drizzle. The drizzle kept going all day and the temperature, out of solidarity, remained about the same as well.

I uploaded my yesterday-note this morning (just after seven o'clock). I am using CuteFTP for uploading and this displays the local and remote directories in two window panes side by side. Local the files were dated 2000/03/08 and remote they were 2000/03/07. I actually uploaded twice before it dawned that the remote site was running behind. So I actually posted my Tuesday note on Tuesday :-)

I had a day off so I don't have work related notes to bore you with as usual :-)

Peter was here again for painting the front room and the garage. And we did about a thousand other things as well. Most of the time I was running up and down the house. I did notice that the tendon in my foot became rather sensitive after a time. So it clearly is not just from running but also going up and, especially, coming down stairs that stairs that foot. Normally I sit all day, with the occasional walk down the isle to fetch coffee or tee so my foot gets almost no exercise. I guess I will have to rest it for some time. Maybe after running next Sunday I know more (anticipating trouble?).

Between the running I did produce a draft web site for my new domain. Now I just have to check how to update and maintain this thing.

MM-lxix     Thursday

2000-03-09

It remains warm (10°C) and wet (drizzle). The temperature increases trough the day, as does the precipitation.

We solved a Telesales problem and worked our way trough the creation of a patch. Normally Wilbert does that but he was not here so Ronny did it with me standing by. We were following a documented procedure but the steps were not listed in the order that they must be completed. And an older document that I found did, in some places conflict with the new, hand scribbled procedure. I spent a lot of time in the afternoon cleaning up the documentation for the process.

Most of the rest of the day was lost in administration. All the adapted programs have to be transferred from the development environment to the System-Test environment.

And, at home I had a discussion with my brother about the way we are going to lay parquet in the small room.

I have been struggling to get my own site in a more or less consistent shape, and not with much success. I now started on a new site but most of the content there wil not be done by me, it will mainly be supporting the books my father write. Now I cannot demand him to type direct in HTML the way I do things. So I must find some sort of format that is easy to work with and that is consistent. I will also be looking at some sort of HTML editor/generator (but not Frontpage, it should work well with WordPerfect).
Busy times ahead.

Did I mention that this is a short-shift daynote?

MM-lxx     Friday

2000-03-10

A bit cooler, at about 5°C, this morning? But just as wet throughout the day.

I got all the r7v9 stuff out of the way in time. Database changes had to be ready today and before the 15th the programs should be stable and on the same level as the files. So I got there in time (I hope).

Of course there is still work to be done. For example the HCC still needs a few programs for maintenance and translation. To be used today the data must be copied manually from an Access database to the AS/400 file and translating the common description into the local description has to be done manually. Both these action only have to be done once a year and we did them now for testing so if the programs are ready by let's say December all is still well.

And there are a few bugs that must be crushed. They have been left to their own enjoyment because of the need to get r7v9 up but now ...

Someone from Progress has been working here for a few days to get a "proof of concept" ready for demonstration by next Friday. The concept that must be proved is that a subset from TeleSales can be made available on the web. Of course they first claimed it would be easy to do because they have tools to convert programs. After slaving for about a week on the proof of concept (by someone who know the tools and the programs) a fairly minimal order entry screen is ready. Most test and processing is deferred to the server side and not actually adapted yet. Today was the last planned day for the work on it so I stayed extra long.

I have been producing a lot of technical documentation these last few months. Most of it is only intended for my own use and so isn't complete, more a memory scaffold. I write all this documentation directly in HTML (using CuteHTML).

Well while I was working on the GUI project I tried to use MS Word for writing manuals but +I had problems with it. Often Word would let me work and position screen shot reasonably, just to protest the next time I opened the document for editing. Picture had a tendency to move to other places of the document and were sometimes simply dropped. The most common problem was that I finished and saved a document and then, while opening it again Word just informed that "pictures were dropped because they don't fit the page".
I finally got fed up with Word and made the manual with Lotus Word Pro. That went smooth, without problems. But of course the company has standardized on MS products and so non-MS products (except for Netscape) are actively forbidden. <> So once finished I had to convert the manual back to an accepted format. .DOC was a no go because opening it would destroy the content. HTML was acceptable so I used that.

So even though I had a day off from the office I did put in about the same number of office hours as usual. And I had a physically tiring day at midweek (well running up and down stairs if a lot different from sitting behind a screen). I am going to bed early today. and to make sure I do I will defer the posting till tomorrow morning.

MM-lxxi     Saturday

2000-03-11

The breaks in the drizzle are larger today but that is the only difference.

On my shopping trip I didn't collect anything computerish. I don't need anything for the moment and, I went to the barber. That means I go early (8h00 open so I am there at 8h02) but the computer shops (and a lot of other shops as well) around here don't open before ten o'clock. So I only visited my regular shops that do open at a more normal hour (Hema, the newspaper shop, Wibra).

My brother came round for getting the parquet boards and to move the furniture around so he can start on it next week. That took all of the afternoon.

And this evening I was busy adding and rearranging the new site that I almost forgot to do a daynote.
(no wonder it is short!)

MM-lxxii     Sunday

2000-03-12

It's a cooler day (3°C) but dry and even with some sunshine in the afternoon.

Cool and dry, sounds like good running weather. But I didn't go running.
My father had trouble with his heart this night so I stayed up with him. The heart problem was more or less expected, the last time he was checked a sleight narrowing in the heart arteries was noticed. Not yet dangerous then. Because his kidney problems no new checks have been made the last few years (the contrast substance used in a check is rather damaging for kidneys).
By about 4h00 the situation improved enough for me to get to bed. But I didn't get up at 6h00 to run as usual.

I took advantage of the good weather this afternoon for some gardening.

I tried to connect four times but I couldn't connect to any server out there. And the fifth time all was well.
Inter-net?? That means Intermittent Net I guess.