Blogrilla

Some people have “Laundry Day”; I have programming day. It doesn’t really happen as often as laundry happens. Most of yesterday I devoted to confirming some programming techniques. That is, I’m not really a programmer every day so when I sit down to actually get serious about it I need to try out some different ideas on how to accomplish some tasks. So yesterday I spent most of the day not producing anything. Today I sat down and after a couple of hours of tweaking my program started working!

Here’s the issue: I have this huge archiving effort waiting around for a report to be finished. The users are naturally reticent to let me remove their data until they have a report that will show ancient billing information AND they can print it. The data is stored in many different tables and some of it is even stored in files at the UNIX level. There’s even some data that’s been archived and is stored in a tertiary location (optical media) that the program needs to be able to fetch.

The good news is that most of this isn’t my problem. SAP provides good tools for fetching the data no matter where its stored. However, some of the table names are different in our quality assurance and production system than they are in development. Normally, this is what we strive to avoid but in this instance it was unavoidable. So when this critical report moved to QA for testing it bombed out right away because some of the data sources it was looking for weren’t there.

Then the programmer left the country for three weeks, but it seems like he’s been gone a lot longer than that.

So I had to flex my code-crunching muscles and take care of the issue myself. Normally I would prefer to hand the problem over to another programmer but everyone is already over-allocated. There are times where I won’t let that stop me from taking resources away from someone else’s project, but I can’t justify those kinds of tactics in this instance so I’m doing the work myself.

Since I don’t code every day it takes me significantly more time to come up with my programming solutions than an actual programmer, but I’ve done it. I’ve changed the ABAP code so it addresses the source table dynamically and doesn’t depend on the data to be in the same place every time. I’m very pleased with myself.

“Chuffed” as my British friend would say.

Unfortunately, I just realized I have another problem that I had resolved to address with programming changes and that will likely take up the rest of the day. I find I’m more successful if I can group these programming tasks together because my brain gets in the right groove and I can solve minor problems more quickly.

<*sigh*>

Priorities just changed while I was writing this and now I have to abandon this to address other problems in completely different areas.

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It got better.  I put up the last post around 7:30pm.  By 8pm
the server had finished creating my account and I was able to actually
start playing the game!

Fancy that!

Its a good game.  Its not a radically different game but its
pretty fun!  So far I’ve managed to get a crowbar, a pistol and a
submachine gun.  Each has its uses.  It surprises me how
frequently the crowbar gets used.

The environment is also surprisingly rich.  The city really does
look like some European city!  So far I’ve spent my time skulking
around some canals and sewers but there are plenty of
thug/stormtroopers roaming around to fight.

Do you remember those critters from the first game that attached
themselves to the ceiling and hung a long rope-like thing down to the
floor and if you wandered in to it, the creature would drag you up to
its waiting maw?  They’re back.

There was a de-fanged headcrab early on too.  Its name was
Llamar.  Yeesh.  Those things STILL give me the creeps! 
Its 10pm now and I have to wander off to bed.  I’ll play some more
tomorrow — I have to give the kids a chance to get on here and use the
computer some too.  They have a number of programs that are more
productive than mine.

whew!

I still want to find out more about this piece of crap “Steam”
thing.  I resent it quite a bit.  I don’t mind fiercely
defending a copyright but this thing seems to be overkill just to
prevent piracy.

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AIIIGH!!!

This is unbelievable. I remember back years and years ago many companies were very uptight/focused on preventing piracy of their programs. They would go to any length to make their programs uncrackable. And each tool they tried they would be foiled again and again by the clever crackers.

Eventually everyone seemed to settle on a simple key system. Each program would have a “key” string of characters on it that the buyer would enter when the program installed. I think the idea was that the companies knew the wouldn’t be able to get paid for 100% of their product and they decided to settle for 50% or whatever the volume was.

I just purchased Half Life 2 and there’s this program associated with it called “Steam”. Not only is there a key string stamped on the CD sleeve but this Steam program has to login to Valve servers and authenticate that this specific copy of the game is ok to use. Even if you have no intention of playing online and all you have is a 56K modem connection you STILL have to run this piece of crap “Steam”!

I don’t think I would be nearly so torqued up about this except tha tthe program won’t run without Steam being active and the company’s servers have been overwhelmed with the volume being requested and it took me TWO HOURS to finally get an account!

And now I come to find out that its “preloading” some kind of encrypted content?! It also has to do some kind of unlocking!

Holy cow. I had no idea. I’m quickly loosing patience for something I was very much looking forward to. Maybe I’ll watch some crappy sitcom instead.

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I’ve been waiting for weeks for Half Life 2 to come out. I went over to CompUSA today and purchased it!

Liz asked if she would see me this evening — I said probably not. I’m pretty good about this kind of thing and don’t often spend all evening playing a video game. Usually its between 60 and 90 minutes. Rarely for two hours.

I’ll write some more about the game later.

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Went back to work today.  It was a drag.

My new DVD player arrived from Buy.com.  I’ve always had very good
luck with them.  Anyway, I got an outstanding deal on a
progressive scan DVD player.  With shipping it was $64. 
Total!
The player also plays Karaoke discs.  So I bought a Sesame Street
Karaoke disc for Grace and Chloe!  I think they’ll LOVE it! 
I can pick up an el-cheap-o microphone around here somewhere.  I
think Target carries one for $8.

Also, the player will handle both PAL and
NTSC.  So now the discs I have of Born and Bred I can show to my
parents!  See about a year ago I thought they would like these
discs.  It really seemed to be the kind of stuff they would
love.  Liz bought it for them from the BBC but it turned out they
were PAL-only and our player at the time couldn’t handle it.  I
assumed Mom & Dad’s wouldn’t either.  Maybe it would.

In any case, they’re coming here for christmas so we’ll make sure we conduct a showing!

How cool.  I’ve hooked it up and its attractive and behaves
correctly and seems to be solidly put together.  Its made by
“Sungale” and their documentation was cleaerly not written by a native
English speaker so I expected it to be pretty crappy, but its ok so far!

Half Life 2 is due out tomorrow.  I intend to pop over to Best Buy or CompUSA or something to buy my copy ASAP!

I’ll write something brief on it tomorrow.

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Time for “true confessions”. Ok its nothing dirty. I
just have to admit that no matter what the calendar says, in my book
winter begins when the snow comes. And this year despite whatever
Matt Noyes at NECN predicted we got hit with a very comfortable 4
inches or so last night! I was very impressed. It was
picturesque! Wow! The downtown looked like christmas
and snow made all the tree branches hang low with the weight of the
snow. The evergreens were the best part. There’s a road
nearby that goes through the Middlesex Fells that has conifers lining
the road on either side. And with all the snow piled on their
branches it looked like some kind of cathedral. It was really
dropdead gorgeous. In fact I saw that some people had
pulled their cars over and taken out their cameras and were taking
photos. It was something.

And it reminded of one of the good things about living in New
England. When I grew up outside of Knoxville, Tennessee it was
surreal and bizarre to see a scene like what happened today.
Fortunately I can look forward to several more of these before the
spring comes.

The kids liked the snow too. Here are some pictures of them appreciating it:

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Its snowing like crazy! Its really very pretty. As I understand
it we usually have SOME kind of snow by 11/8 so I guess we’re
technically a little behind. Nonetheless I hear that around two inches
are expected. How nice! I’m so pleased. Its soothing to look at.

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It wasn’t much, but it sure was pretty!

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A week ago someone dumped about thirty pounds of Halloween candy on a
desk here at work. There were tootsie rolls and three musketeers and
snickers bars. All the usual suspects. Over the last several days the
pile slowly diminished in girth as the we, the neighbors expanded in
girth.

Today after I finished my lunch I stopped by the Desk-o-Plenty and they were all gone! The pile had completely vanished!

Well,
not completely. Someone had left a single lonesome little snickers bar!
It looked all sad and lonely! It was sitting there without any of its
family or friends. It needed a hug.

I announced that I would take it somewhere where people would love it and take care of it.

Poor little thing.

It was delicious.

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From the New York Post:

I hate Zell Miller. What a two-faced worthless sonofabitch. Anyone he despises I figure can’t be all bad.

And
just for the record I don’t think everyone who voted for Dubya is an
idiot. I think any born again christian who voted for him out of
conscience… well, I think its an enormous mistake but I can see the
logic in voting for someone whom you believe shares your core values. I
think anyone who makes more than $200,000 a year and doesn’t care about
the poor of this country probably voted for the right guy.

I think everyone ELSE who voted for him is an idiot!

What’s
bothering me right now is that when Dubya privatizes social security
he’ll essentially eviscerate it. Without every dime the program will
not have enough money to continue its existance. Privatizing the funds
will sabotage it and in short order I think the program will collapse.
The rest of the New Deal will follow shortly thereafter. And every one
of those idiots who voted for Bush will be wondering how this happened.
They’ll have nobody to blame but themselves and their “values”.

The
good news for me is that I should make out ok under Dubya’s plans. My
salary is pretty good and I’m investing my money based on the idea that
Social Security won’t be there to take care of me. My employer offers
me a pension, of which I will take as much as they’ll give me, but I’m
not counting on that to be available in 30 years either. I heard on the
radio this morning that a person like me can expect to make 20% more
money under Dubya’s plan than without it.

So from a selfish
point of view I think me and mine will be fine, but I never intended to
rely on Social Security as my only source of income. I’m afraid too
many other people will be relying on the generosity of strangers to
keep them out of the poor house.

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