A bit drab in the morning but turning nice and sunny with some nice white clouds. 11°C

At work.
Yesterday I worked my way trough the archiving programs. I did find a few things that needed updating in the documentation (that was the original question: "Is this documentation still accurate?" ). I also found a omission in one of the programs. So.
I solved it, tested it, solved it again, tested it again, solved it another time, tested it once again, twice again.
The problem with testing an archiving program is that normally archiving will copy records to a tape and delete them from the database. But there is no way to get them back. You only run archiving to reclaim disk space and no one has ever tried to get data back from an archive. When archived data is needed again it is typically restored from a backup. This means it is damned hard to test the archiving more than once. After the first test, if it doesn't crash, the data is gone. Re-testing is not impossible of course (nothing is) just difficult.

The transport cost adaptation was accepted in v8.9 and now I added it to the v8.8 release as well.

And Koen has been meddling with the performance problems. First he didn't believe me when I said the problem was not on the AS/400. Then he tested it and noticed that I was right, processing on the AS/400 only took about 1 second while the user on the PC was waiting up to 15 seconds.
Now he claims that he can shave off about 10 seconds from the AS/400 processing time. I don't know what he has been measuring but each time he gets different times. And each time the percentage he can gain increases, first it was just about 1 or 2%, then it was 20%, now he figures it at 30%.

In the news.

The government is going to provide special bonuses for civil servants that work up to the official pension age (65). Years ago, in an effort to create new jobs, it was made possible to go on pension at 60 without losing out on money. The result is that only about 10% of the civil servants work beyond 60. Then they encouraged the private sector, with various compensations and tax reduction schemes, to follow suite. And they succeeded somewhat. Now with unemployment declining and actual shortages they want people to stay longer. So extra bonuses and a higher pension if you stay. And now they start to encourage the private sector again to follow. With bonuses and tax-cuts.
It won't be long before you are, nice but firmly, asked on Friday to go on early retirement. So the company can cash in on the old-style benefits. And on Monday you are asked to start again, so the company and you can reap the new benefits.

About the news.
I was having problems with my online registration of my newspaper. For some articles the registration (which is free) is required. So I had to type a password. This worked until some when last week. The password was being refused. I mailed for help and the first advice was that I changed my password. Only to change it you must get logged-in. Catch-21. I did notice that Nescrape did crash a few times on the site so I tried MSIE. And here the password works as it should. A few help desk mails later (they are not your typical help desk, being responsive and to the point. too good to be true) they admitted that the site is MS-optimised with Javascripts and cookies and dhtml and such. They will look into it but don't promise a solution.
Now I am struck out. A help desk that is not only responsive and too the point but also honest.
This must be a dream, time to grab some coffee.

6°C and clear skies at dawn greeting a warm and sunny day.

The transport costs adaptation was tested and prepared for delivery. I got a call from Loek concerning this. He has requested, tested and approved the change. He also showed it to the Norwegians who wanted it in the first place. And of course they were delighted, but ...

It is implemented as an order-header condition. Most simple orders go straight trough and the whole bunch is delivered in one go. If however something cannot be shipped the order can be split in sib-orders that get shipped separately. The splitting is caused by the company so the extra shipping cost is not billed to the client. The original shipping cost is invoiced with the second (or last) shipment. What happens now is that a client orders something he needs and adds something he doesn't need but that he knows cannot be shipped at the same time. The stuff he needs arrives and is invoiced without transport cost. Now he calls back and cancels the remainder of the order.
Result he gets rid of the shipping costs.

The reason why the header conditions are stuck on the last shipment is that, more often than not (but that is dependent on the local customs) the condition results in a price reduction. You pass that on the last shipment and few clients are going to cancel their last shipment. If you pass a reduction on the first shipment the customer orders something and adds something, undeliverable, he doesn't need but something that provides him with a healthy reduction. After getting the first shipment with the reduction he cancels the remaining shipments.
Sometimes thinking out business rules isn't easy. Especially if they get implemented in different countries. The Italians use lots of reductions while the Norwegians work most with added costs.
In the programs this has been changed a few times already. But I expect it will come to a head between Jan and Loek now and something new will be asked for. Like determining at the moment of defining the condition if it goes on the first or last shipment (or, maybe if it gets distributed).

Extra work coming my way.

And we got a presentation of an 'agronomy evaluation' tool. We all have to do some measurements about the size and positioning of our desk and screen and mouse etc. Recommendations about chair and desk heights and tools positioning are given. We must make sure every thing is positioned so it will not cause ergonomic problems (RSI some one?). If something cannot be set to the right condition we must report it trough the tool (everything gets recorded, even the things we are satisfied with). If needed new chairs and mice and other stuff can be provided. Colleagues and managers can not be replaced on ergonomic grounds however.
For one it is required by law that these agronomy things are checked and adapted. I guess it is also a way for the company to cover itself. If you don't mention a problem now you will probably loose the chance of claiming compensations later. That is just a guess. I am not employed by OCE itself but work there trough out-sourcing so I probably wouldn't have a chance on compensations anyway.