The day starts out promising with just some broken up clouds. Only, the night was clear (10C) so the clouds aren't breaking up but rather closing in, for a grey and drab day. Sigh.

Studying the FTP change is over, now the action starts. But it definitively is an uphill struggle.

But first stingy problem cropped up in the patch we sent to Germany last week. For the code-page problem I worked out a solution that works with the new and the old programs. One of the changed programs however filled the return parameter from position 14 onwards, as required for the old method, while the new receiving program looked from position 1 onwards. Easily solved but it took quite a bite out of my time.
Piffle, as some would say.

On the home front I have started to collect and sort the hardware documentation and disks. I needed to find the disks with drivers for the PC Card slot on Mita (486 notebook) but I can't find them. I did find a lot of other stuff though. I did not create some order but at least got rid of some chaos.
Of course I didn't find what I was looking for.
Oh, and btw where is that Win98 CD, the dutch version that came with the Fujitsu?

While the day starts out cool (10C) and drab it gradually becomes better, even sunny in the afternoon. With only a handful of decorative clouds. It is however clear that autumn is setting in. I is dark when I leave for work and it is dark when I get back home.

Ronny took half a day off yesterday to get his wife to and from a visit to the optician for an investigation. She has a strong negative deviation (-14 or so). The good news is that it can be corrected, not with some laser surgery alone but, in addition to that with a small inserted lens. The bad news is that is going to cost time and money. Nah, that's life.

I am making good progress on the FTP programs. I mean I only tripped over a few minor problems and introduced some extra complexity. Like converting a program to RPGLE and then noticing that was not needed. Doing that sort of silly stuff I realised that I don't know how to test all the changes. And leaving the testing to Jan is worse than worthless. That means I must write this stuff without adding any errors. BTW I already solved a 'possible issue' that no one noticed. I just had that feeling that the coding was not 'right'.

At home I had some time with Linux again. One (more) frustrating thing I ran in is that none of the editors that are supplied with the KDE (kedit, GVim, kwrite, ...) will do word or line wrapping. I can't get rid of the horizontal scroll bar unless I press enter on the appropriate place. And that doesn't look good after re sizing. There are settings in the menus but they don't produce a result, setting word wrapping on or off doesn't change a thing. And yes, in Star office word wrapping works but I don't plan on using Star office to view and edit the "ini" stuff. I took all the defaults on start-up so it shouldn't be an installation problem.

And I did leave the delay on my redirect page too long (100) after testing the calendar on it. Oeps.

Its cool and drab again in the morning but it doesn't become sunny, in stead it starts to rain, heavily. But of course, later, after rain comes sunshine.

After hammering out a few of the problems, which I introduced myself yesterday, in the FTP stuff I get a late answer from Robby about the content of the XML file. A few easily fixed things that were wrong in the basic document that I got for specifications. And of course a difficult, insoluble problem.
In our product database we have a key that can contain blanks. And they are significant "blank + A" is not the same as "blank + blank + A". The XML parser the guys from the Catalog use however strips off the leading blanks which obviously results in duplicate keys values. And of course they want us to change our whole database setup.
Though. They will have to fight that out with the Logistics people.

And while I am busy with explaining that there is a problem call from Germany. They changed their production environment over to v7.9. And now they run into a problem with invoices that contain duplicate lines. The total amounts are correct, and the actual invoices are correct, it is just the printing programs that cause problems.
The ironic thing is that they have been testing v7.9 since August and last week they were coming up with make do problems like "we are not going to v7.9 until this button is moved, the users must click three times and that is too much". That type of thing were 'stoppers' but invoices that don't print? Well they noticed it now and we asked if everything worked before on the test environment. Which is when Volker admitted he had never looked at it.
I have made the mistake of thinking that invoices were important enough to test them. Big mistake <G>
And of course the acceptance team here in Venlo didn't see the problem either. <sg> (that's a sad grin.)
After five hours wading trough their database (the reported problem invoices start at around record number 5,685,620 !) and our coding I have found the way to produce the same result but I can only get that by using the debugger and changing values in the process, not by following the normal program flow. More work tomorrow.

 

More depth than we are used to from The Register in the MS-Corel connection. Connect this with the anti trust case that is on track for fizzling out and you notice that Billy boy is not counted out. Not by a long shot.

Another overcast and black (well, at 6:00 its full dark) morning. Only one or two showers in the afternoon though with a good bit of sunshine in between.

I picked up the German problem where I left off yesterday. I checked the settings on the German system and the possible way to repeat the problem was not what was happening. So I walk trough our source again with the debugger.
After struggling with it till my eyes are worn out I still come up without a solution. Now, early yesterday I noticed that they have their programs in a local library in stead of in the common library. This normally indicates that the programs are adapted locally but in this case I saw all the invoicing programs there and after checking their sources I didn't find any changes. So I assumed the installation had placed the programs there.

Rule - 1 of problem solving : Don't assume anything. Check everything. Twice.

Well it turns out I forgot the last word of that first rule.
In a BTW question to Wilbert I asked if something had gone wrong in the German installation. Which he negated, there was a problem after the installation but not during it so the objects in the local library are local indeed. Turns out I checked the wrong source while looking for changes yesterday. Five minutes after Wilbert points me to the actual German localised source I found the problem.
They had replaced a statement with a complete block of coding in the previous version and they copied that over into the new program. They did however forget to remove our original code so something was executed twice. The code they added, BTW, is redundant since a few months because I added exactly the same test somewhat further in the program. So apart from bad coding they did not read the release documentation and they did not test their own coding.
As Jerry would say "Don't ascribe to malice what can easily be ...."
Wo ist die Deutche Grundlichkeit geblieben?

In between I prepared the XML stuff for transferring to the system test environment so I can send a batch of real data to the Catalog.

It's dark and raining in the morning, turning into an ephemeral day. Weather wise we get rain, heavy stuff, a few times with grey in between but also a few sunny spells and strong wind at times. The type of weather that you look out the window to a sun splashed lawn, and by the time you open up the front door its raining.

And it is not only weather wise that the day is ephemeral. Things to do appear and disappear at alarming rate.
The highlights.

The Germans call in with a 'new' problem that 'must be an error'. They invoices from earlier this week are being printed each time the invoicing runs. Surely a bug from Venlo because "we are not running our local version anymore", nah nah. The original problem they had (local program) did place duplicates on the printfile and our print program reads them but of course only updates the first header. The second header remains unchecked and causes the invoice to print again. and again. And again. We advise them to clean up the mess their local stuff created.
And then there is No news from the German front.
Weird?

This German stuff causes a lot of interruptions while I try to (and finally succeed to) finish the version-8 adaptation of the FTP programs.

Robby has been nagging to get a good XML-data-set (what he had up to now was from out development environment which is overflowing with crap data). I can only give him 'real' data after everything is done. Well, to get rid of his nagging, I close the project, transfer the unfinished stuff to the system test environment (a major breach against standard procedures). Then, quickly, get a data-set ready and sent that over (lot of manual stuff because the FTP isn't working yet). And haul back the project to the development environment. (I actually have to haul it back, change things so that everything breaks and move it up again to sys-test and back to development. I cannot leave half-working programs in sys-test.)

 

And I am struggling with mail. I usually send a joke to a list of addresses each morning. While it is not unusual that someone isn't reachable sometimes I have been getting 'undeliverable' notices on three addresses each day this week, with a notice that the mail contains the 'iloveyou.c' virus. All three are in the outside world while the rest is local. One of the three is my own external mail address (included to get a confirmation). The strange thing is that, if I send to each address separately the two other externals are 'undeliverable' but my own gets trough. It only, and consistently, gets returned is it is not alone.
Weird (ephemeral?)

 

And speaking of mail. Up to about August this year I got less than 1 spam mail per month (more like one every three months) . Since halfway August however the spam rate has been increasing. I got 3 today. If the rate keeps going up like this I won't be able to keep updating my filters anymore. But what can I do?
As far as I can see the only way to curtail Spam is to charge for sending e-mail. Not much so that for normal use the cost remains low. But, lets say at 1 Bef ($c2.5) it would become quite expensive for spam businesses. Of course in this 'everything must be free' era that would be a no-go. Maybe a scheme where every message that gets replied to is free or refunded?
Sorry, I am daydreaming. Again.

Another day with both sun and rain. But finally it starts out cool, 2°C. Yes I love cool and cold night.

Shopping. Just the standard stuff, wine, vegs fruit and some herbs. Nothing for bits and bytes to play with.
I get back home early so I can make a couple of apple pies. And nothing beats the smell of apple pie, fresh from the oven. While they are baking I make lunch, roast with potatoes and salsify and a good sauce (béarnaise spiced up with cayenne pepper, basil, and ginger).
Delicious, and the Italian red wine (Valpolicelli) nicely fits in.

I don't know where the afternoon went. The evening though was spent moving the double glass panels for my brothers green house. The foundations and frame are ready and tomorrow we are going to fit the glass so we move it closer today. Now that are 16 panes of double glass, weighing about 30Kg each. To be handled with care. My right shoulder, which hurts a little to begin with is really protesting by the time we finish.

The temperature is a bit up again in the morning (8°C) but stays (un)fairly low for most of the day. And it rains most of the day as well.

Fairly nice running weather, cool and wet (but not freezing or soaking). I actually run the course in 45 minutes in stead of 50 to 55. And I really only the last the last incline (railroad-bridge) too fast.

We have local elections (city and province) in Belgium. Which practically eats the morning. Of course the local TV and radio covers that the whole day and we do have the TV on all day but no one is watching. Only picking up snatches in passing. Maybe more tomorrow, when the results are known. Then everybody will tell how glad they are about their positive results. Those that win because they won, those that lost because they could 'contain' their losses and did 'better than last time' (national). And those that lost heavily will of course point out that didn't lose everything, 'hey, see, we did win 5 votes here and 6 there'.
No, I am not particularly enthusiast about politics. Mind you I would go voting even if it weren't compulsory, I just don't think it is worth my time to listen to all the crap commentaries.

It rains and there is a bit too much wind to put the glass into the greenhouse so we leave it out. In stead we fit the doors. Not simple but than slicing doors are not simple to place. Especially if the wheels are designed for use on bare aluminium and you have lacquered aluminium. The thickness of the paint is actually a problem in some spots.

I had trouble getting my post up on Friday and Yesterday. Well I did get a that up this morning without error messages but than I couldn't reach the server to check. And I am not sure the problem lies at the server because I have problems getting at a lot of other sites as well. And I only get one mail, from the newspaper while I should get at least one other from a job search site, but that doesn't turn up. Maybe the telephone wire is a bit tired <g> .

Check out Jonathan Sturm's Sunday post, the corn growers reality. Read it and apply it to your life if you can. (probably moved here next week)