It is raining today. That is today, not 'this morning' or in the afternoon' but 'Today". Combine a gusty wind with that rain and you get generally unpleasant weather.

I took a day off to help with the greenhouse.

In view of the weather we were lucky to get the actual greenhouse work done yesterday. Tall pains of glass are not easy to work with and wind is the last thing you want to have to contend with. Everything is finished now with only a few minor details to be worked on.
The next big project will be getting electricity to it. Peter decided to pull the wire under the garden path. All well and good but the path needs to be 'lifted' for that.

 

I am being pestered by a strange problem for some time now.
When I send mail, from the office to someone who is not on the intra-net I get my mail bounced back as undeliverable. The strange thing is that it doesn't happen on all the mails I send. Most of the time mail I send to a single recipient gets trough. Most of the mail that I send with more than one 'to' or 'cc' address gets bounced with (reason: 553 This message may contain the iloveyou.c virus.) or something like that. The mails I send are plain text typed straight into the message client, mostly two or three lines, and contain no attachments. And it happens when I use Netcape Communicator (usually) or Outlook (if I have to).
I first suspected this was a setting on the MS Exchange server that is used at work.
Now, while sending mail from home I notice the same so it cannot be a server setting at work. Here it happens in Netscape Messenger (another version) and in Outlook Express (win98) and in Eudora Light (free on the ISP disk).
I checked my system using Norton Anti Virus (latest sig) but no virus was found. So that isn't the problem. Where else can I look?

It doesn't rain in the morning but you wouldn't know from casually looking out, everything is wet from past rain and dew, the sky is grey and miserable and nothing gets dry. (9C). In the afternoon it does start to rain but you wouldn't know from casually looking out, ....

There were no problems yesterday. A clear indication that I am not indispensable <G>

I started to pull back the XML programs into the development environment to add the extra stuff that Theo requested on Friday. Most of the changes are ready but I guess I need an extra program where the user can make a selection, up to now the whole bunch has been a background or command line thing. Only that start-up screen remains on the to-do list.

Around noon Sandri came over with a problem in the FTP program. Turns out the FTP in v9 is broken on the development machine (I knew that) and yet it us used regularly (didn't know that). I planned to fix the FTP stuff in version 9 when I got approval of the v8 changes but now I couldn't delay it so ...
Ok, that is done, FTP in v9 works again. That's a quick and untested job but it must (and will do).

While I let my fingers cool down I test the mail some more but the virus warning remains an mail keeps bouncing when I send it out. Some addresses bounce regularly while others seem to go trough all right. And yet others sometimes bounce and some times don't. I just can't see a rule in this.
In the mean time my spam rate is going up. Now if I could let those messages bounce back, ...

We are again greeted by rain (at 9C). Most of the day is just grey and unbecoming.

I started on the XML start-up screen but while I was halfway trough I got interrupted.
There is a rounding problem in the consumption's screens. TeleSales and OMSI-3 produce different results from the same data set. After a long search and a few test programs we find that on the AS/400 we round all the values before summing them while in TeleSales we make quarterly sums that get rounded before summing further for the year results.
So in stead of only solving a related problem in TeleSales the OMSI-3 program must change as well.
Of course that just drops in unscheduled.

Oh and there is that problem from Germany, and ...

 

And BTW we have yet another new daynote member : John Dominik . freshly taped to the mirror .

A lot of rain in the morning (at 10C) and another lot of rain in the evening but in between things looked dry. Hey we did even see the sun a moment or two.

I made some progress on the start-up screen, or rather on the program behind it cos the screen itself is done. Most of the day however was consumed by interruptions.

I spent a considerable amount of time cleaning out my mail directories.
The problem I have is that some external addresses (almost) always bounce messages back claiming that the message contains a virus. I am pretty sure the messages themselves are clean because I don't attach any attachments and the body never contains anything else but plain text or a referring URL. I know I received the iloveyou virus some time ago (when it was still fresh) but I never opened it.
I normally don't delete my mail so I have mail folders of considerable size. Even though it didn't seem logical to me I thought that perhaps I had a mail somewhere in a folder that contained a virus (I am positive that I have, in the 'virus' folder) and that the Exchange server was acting on that. So I removed all possibly contaminated mail and a lot of other mail as well.
The result seems positive as I have been able to send a few mails to the external addresses (myself, my brother and Kristel) that usually give problems.

When water isn't falling down (rain) it is 'falling' up (mist). It was a relative cool night (7C) so the rain that fell yesterday rises up again. At 5:40, when I get up there is no mist yet but by the time I arrive at work at 7:45 it's thick as pea soup. Only in the afternoon we get some sun.

Theo, who has a day off today, prepared a document about the order validations. We, that is Theo and me, had a short discussion about it yesterday but Ronny wasn't in anymore then.
So today I discussed it with Ronny.
The problem now is that there can only be errors, no warnings, and testing is stopped at the first error that is encountered. The user only sees that there was an error and what type of error but not on which line or what item the error occurred. If there are seven errors he has to present the order seven times (eight really) before it passes on.
That obviously is not a good situation but it grew out of proportion by gradually adding tests and by sticking to classic programming where errors are presented to the user as soon as possible and one error at a time. We are going to throw this all up side down but there are a few thorny details to be worked out.
We did not come to a conclusion other than that the (imo) best solution will not be implemented.
Mostly due to politics but that is another story.
I will work out an acceptable and extensible solution in the weekend and have it approved by Ronny and later by Theo.

During the discussion we did hit a security or rather an authority problem. Normal users could add modify or delete validations even when the authority settings were changed around. It took us the best part of the morning to nail that one down.

 

And the cleanup of my mailboxes yesterday did not actually solve my virus warning problem. I did get a few messages trough but this morning things started to bounce back again.
As an ultimate test I deleted all my mail and started with a clean empty and virus free set of mail folders. And I did get 2 mails trough to Kristel. The third bounced again.
I had Ronny send a few mails from his PC and they bounced as well. So I did spend hours cleaning mail folders for nothing.
Later, when I got home I tried to send to Kristel again but I got bounces, again claiming a virus.

I think I will have to remove Kristel from my lists and see is the bounces on my brothers and my home mail continue. These only occurred if Kristel was included.

Nice grey mornin turning into a nice grey day. No mist or rain though and quite warm at that. Not at all like autumn should be.

Shopping. Not for computer stuff however, just a few bottles of wine some chocolates and fruit. And no lingering either.

We had roast beef with haricots for dinner and while they were waiting to be consumed I made a cake. Nothing fancy, just the basic cake without embellishments. Basically because it is the first time I do that. I have been cooking for years now but I only started baking pies and pastries this summer. We didn't actually have pie forms or cake forms in the house even so I had to get that first before I could even begin baking.
Oh, btw, the cake turned out perfect even though I didn't make enough to fill the whole form. But a 1.5 inch high cake can be just as good as a full size one. :)

The afternoon was largely spent on cleaning out the oven. The thing is almost ten years old and it hasn't been cleaned before. This a so called 'self cleaning' gas oven. And it, more or less, cleans itself. The sides and top are of some special material and they were about as clean as new. Only the bottom and the holding mesh were packed with, mostly charred, stuff. And after taking the thing apart I noticed that quite some screws were a bit rusty. Made for some interesting re-assembly. <,g>

I just received a mail from Dan Bowman that something was amiss with my yesterday post (well it was sent Yesterday (Bowman time, or about 6:00 this morning GMT) but I only just fetched my mail, I almost did the day without computer. Oh dear). Something seems to have eaten part of my page while it was on the wire. And of course I didn't do an after-post check. Anyway, thanks Dan.

When I get up for running, at 5:45 there is clear sky with some stars but by the time I return, n hour later it's completely overcast with just a lighter spot where the moon would be. Not promising but once the sun gets up things clear out and we get a reasonably clear and warm (18C) day.

Running. Even though the sky is clear it isn't really cool enough (9C) and there is no noticeable wind and it doesn't rain. No problems while running however but I am dripping salt when I get home.

Because it stayed dry I can mow the lawn at last. In places it was getting over two inches high. In other places the grass that remains was just high enough to be cut. The problem with this lawn is that there is more moss than grass and the ground is hard packed so water runs off. The only way to make a real lawn out of it again is actually digging the whole stuff out and starting from scratch. There are however a few trees, with accompanying root systems, in the way for that.