Week 12, 2000 ,Svenson

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20-03 to 26-03

MM-lxxxx     Monday

2000-03-20

As I expected my car was frozen over, though it was only -1°C. It remained dry and even sunny at times.

I got the HCC codes transferred to the CD file for Belgium. I exported directly from the Access database and this time I never got the last closing semicolon. At least it is consistent.

And we did some test on TeleSales, along with a discussion. Finally Ronny (and Koen) started on the r7v9 modifications. They should all be done before the 1st of April. Ahum.

Oh dear, I didn't have tome to read any of the daynotes. I didn't even get time to read my e-mail. And now I am tired. How should that come?

MM-lxxxxi     Tuesday

2000-03-21

Holding on to morning frost (-2C) but less mist and more sun than yesterday. It really looks like spring.

More interruptions today but I am making progress on the translation program for the HCC. This is not a high priority program, it should be ready somewhere early next month. Theo doesn't however write specifications for us so we have to do that ourselves. Afterwards he adds to and modifies them of course.
For me that is not a problem because I like to work out my own specifications based on a rough and short description of a problem. The problem I often run into is that I start out with a rough description and build a really nice set of supportive features around the basic concept.
Of course there seldom is time to actually implement such nice features. The result sometimes compares to a rough concrete bunker with steel doors and with a marble patio and some stained glass windows.

Ronny actually started on the r7v9 programs and is progressing better than expected. Partly because the scope of TeleSales is more limited than that of OMSI-3. And partly because he started on the easiest part (purely by accident). Just wait till he starts on the II/DR stuff <MG>
He is however less than enthusiast about the work Koen is doing. Koen, in his typical style, doesn't adhere to the standards and doesn't heeds the advise given. As I mentioned before he is a good programmer but not a good team member.
When I start to work on TeleSales, probably next week, Ronny will become realty depressed :-)

Strange thing. Yesterday evening (23h00 my time) I could upload to my iTool account but whenever I wanted to view I got a message that the page couldn't be presented. I guess they were doing something at the server (Matt?). This morning all is back to normal.

Hey I got my third Spam mail this year. I wonder why some would get that much more spam than others. (ps I am not envious)

With what time I had left I changed the copy right notice on all my pages. A simple change. It was a link to the Sjon page but you can already reach it from the top of most pages.
I am not using FrontPage or some other site building and managing program, juste CuteHTML for the moment. That means I do the changes all by hand. Well I tried the global scan-replace but CuteHTML only does that correct is the change and replace are the same size and if that size is small. In the current year daynote folder I have about a hundred pages and the scan replace did its lousy job on them all. The result was that I had to manually cut and paste the correct section over the mangled one. For all the pages. Ouch.

As an aside, Normally Harper (Cyrix p166, 64MB) can easily keep up with me but loading all hundred pages got him to his knees. Maybe I should swap my main system for a faster one.

MM-lxxxxii     Wednesday

2000-03-22

Just a little frostiness, at 0°C. Normally I defrost my windscreen using warm water (not boiling) but I could easily scrape it off with the windscreen wipers. The warm water method is quite efficient at removing ice and it heats up the window so I don't suffer condensation on the inside. (And it cleans the window). The rest of the day was a bit too warm already. Well behind the windows it was.

Theo is on out of the office, normally working from home on Wednesdays. Rony has the afternoon free. And Koen is of to the physiotherapy for his back. So I am holding the fort for Omsi3, TeleSales and GA.
Not that there were many distractions, just one call from America about the handling of the order validation from TeleSales.

Wilbert installed the latest version of Progress (V9.1) on my PC so I had to make a run trough all the functions of TeleSales using this new version to check for different behaviour. It did cost me the whole morning and I found only one difference. An improvement at that but not available on most of our screens because we aren't using the standard procedures.

And in the afternoon I finished the maintenance program for the localization of the HCC descriptions. Well there are just a few bells and whistles to be added.

In stead of getting my site organization cleaned up (on my local copy there are lots of unrelated and loose files scattered in between the web pages) I went over to my brothers place to help him relocate some stuff. So I didn't have time left to continue with the story. Normally I try to stay a day ahead but this last week I haven't been keeping up.
Short shift seems to become the operative word around here.

MM-lxxxxiii     Thursday

2000-03-23

There is even less frost this morning though it is again 0°C. And the bright warm sunny spring weather holds. It'll probably remain bright until the weekend, with rain when I am home :~]

Ronny is back but Theo remains out (course till Monday) so I can work uninterrupted again.
Although ... .

A problem we solved some time ago cropped up again in TeleSales. Well that is the symptoms of that problem. It turned out to be an error in the installation scripts resulting in a wrong library list (path) being used on the AS/400. Something like you write a record in a database and then verify that record in another database. Result : Record not found (or worse, record found).

I am having a problem with one of the bells, from the bells and whistles I am adding to the HCC maintenance program. That is business as usual for me.

And finally this, for Tom. It is no fun drinking alone but it is fun drinking a good cold beer sitting on the porch at home. Now you can combine them : http://www.secure-shop.net/stellacam/ . There is not (yet?) a cam in Sascatoon.

I just finished my lunch for tomorrow, rice-mix ( 200g bacon, 2 onions, 200g rice, a handful of chopped paprika (red green and yellow) and a handful of pea bean and carrot mix). That is for eating cold so I boiled the rice a bit longer to make it stick.

MM-lxxxxiv     Friday

2000-03-24

When you have been working flat out for a few days it is time to rest he. Well the sun must think that way. The clouds have had their rest and are back, keeping the night temperature up (10°C°). With rain. And drizzle.

I started this morning, at eight, with an 'almost working' program, well it was working but the screen refresh after a change was not automatic. At about nine I had 'improved' the program beyond running. It still started and reached to input but I had no refreshes, no messages, pop ups that cleared the screen and ephemeral data updates. At five (eight hours later!) I had a program that wasn't running any better. And then, at 19h55 I found the problem and had the whole stuff humming in tune after just a few minutes.
Great day :-(

And I ate too much. First my lunch, way over a kilo rice mix prepared yesterday. And then dinner, baked salmon with mushrooms and a bottle of light cider.

MM-lxxxxv     Saturday

2000-03-25

It is still overcast and relative warm (8°C) but apart from a few drizzly spells it remained dry.

Shopping but again nothing computerish. I did have a talk with Steven about the mailbox on the site I host on his server. The problem is that I can send to it but I cannot retreive mail from it. Nowhere in the documentation was setting up of a mail client mentioned. I asked him last week what I had to enter for mail server. He said I should use the domain name but when I tried it didn't work. When I told him so today he was a bit surprised and went checking. Everything looked OK so he made en entry via his client. And he could get at the mail without problem. I sneaked behind the counter to look at the setup he used.
Duh. He had told me to use the domain name as mail server name. So I had used swijsen.com without success. He uses WWW.swijsen.com. (The site is just a place holder so don't waste your time going there )
What a difference www makes.

Now I have the mail addresses for my brother and my father open . Neither has net access yet but my brother is pulling cable in his house so it won't be long for him.

As everybody by now knows I type these notes on Harper, copy them on a diskette, move them to Miona on the attic and upload from there. Today I got a 'diskette full' warning. Yea, the notes are flowing this year. I have all the daynotes of last year fitting on a single diskette (1.3MB all). That were about 340 days (I only started to publish on January the 15th). Now I admit that this year (as I did in December of last year) I keep everything double, once in daynotes and once in the week notes but still, it is only the 85th day so even if I throw out one of the note types I am producing double the amount of rubbish. And costing me a lot more time as well.

Putting all that time in daynotes means that the rest of my site gets neglected.

MM-lxxxxvi     Sunday

2000-03-26

Some of the rain that was passing by, trekking west, descended to take a short rest. The morning is dry and cool (3°C) and once the sun gets up it turns bright and sunny. Until the afternoon which becomes unsettled with a few thundery showers.

I changed my clock last evening to double summer time so I got up at my normal hour for running.

I recovered the lost hour by dosing off before noon. Well I had to leave the garden time to dry. I mowed the lawn yesterday but the grass was to wet (and at about 10 cm too tall in places) to mow as it should. The second pass, this afternoon was a much better job. Now that the grass is cut it becomes clear that most of the lawn is made up of moss.

And I dig up a first part of the garden so my father can plant shallots and sow radishes next week.