Archive | April, 2002

Post dated 2002-04-17 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 17, 2002 in Home Page

Wednesday, 17 April, 2002

Is nothing safe? Now it looks like the Back button (or backspace) can be used to exploit your computer. Is Nothing safe?

At the prodding of Ken Levy to fix the stuff I messed up yesterday, I got to play with the Web Services interface of http://www.foxcentral.com. Pretty slick and simple and elegant.

Ten-thirty AM, and the web server is up and running in the basement, er, the server room :). Not bad. Three-thirty PM, with a break for lunch, and Steve and I have the Dell Workstation set up with a clean installation of Windows 2000 Server, with SP2, SP2SPR1, and dozens of other security patches. Can’t get Terminal Services to work, but everything else is running. More tomorrow.

Microsoft isn’t the only one doing underhanded things to boost revenue. Oracle looks like it took the state of California in grand style, and Microsoft is shaking down the state of Texas for 5-year-old licenses.
.att%KBAlertz is a new service on the web that will send you email about changes or additions to the Microsoft Knowledge Base on the topics you select, for free. Good deal!

Post dated 2002-04-16 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 16, 2002 in Home Page

Tuesday, 16 April, 2002

Bruce Perens has an interesting article here on Microsoft’s continued antagonism towards the open source community: http://news.com.com/2010-1075-882846.html.

With the aid of TR&A’s new Network Administrator, Steve, we set up a rack in the cellar and moved the Dell Workstation 400 onto the rack. Running Cat-5e to the basement was not a pretty sight, but it’s up and running. The web server moves tomorrow.

Monday, 15 April, 2002

By Ted Roche on April 15, 2002 in Home Page

Happy Tax Day. Twelve hours of billing yesterday left little time for blogging. Today was cleanup and errands and also little time.

Ken Levy sends a “Memo from Microsoft” with good news for Visual FoxPro enthusiasts.

Microsoft claims HailStorm wasn’t killed, the strategy just changed, in this (now deleted) piece. Spin doctoring.

Funniest MSKB:Q313166 article of the day stated:
“Known Issues”

NT domain authentication does not work on computers running Windows XP Home Edition

When working with the Workflow Designer for SQL Server or the Workflow Manager for SQL Server on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, you will not be able to obtain NT domain authentication. To avoid this issue, do not use the Workflow Designer for SQL Server or the Workflow Manager for SQL Server on a computer that is running Windows XP Home Edition.”

Sounds like the old vaudeville routine: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this” “So, don’t do that” OK, it was funnier in the original Yiddish.

Microsoft cancels the PDC: no big surprise, they talked out all they could at TechEd. They might need to actually back it up if they had any more conferences :). A report on that and the reaction from the DevX editor to a quiet TechEd.

A Washington Post column reviews a promising, simple ThinkFree Office.

Post dated 2002-04-14 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 14, 2002 in Home Page

Sunday, 14 April, 2002

Happy Tax Day Eve.

Post dated 2002-04-13 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 13, 2002 in Home Page

Saturday, 13 April, 2002

“IBM, Microsoft plot Net takeover” is the alarm-bells-ringing title of this article on ZDNet’s Tech Update site. In the meantime, the Java Developer’s Journal thinks that Java has 5 years left, tops, thanks to Microsoft’s C#.

Too busy with client work to get much updating of the Wiki done. Eager to try out cookies, but need a few hours free. Hopefully next week…

Friday, 12 April, 2002

By Ted Roche on April 12, 2002 in Home Page

Groggy morning, following a user group meeting last night – SQL Server Users Group.

Continued troubleshooting issues with VFP development, Outlook and Exchange Automation. And continued, and continued… whew.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30972&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=111&mode=thread&pid=3329065#3329156 has an interesting discussion on adding mailto links to a page without having them easily screen-scraped by spam bots, but still easy to use. I wonder if all of the effort is worth it… Read the source here for one of the solutions…


    // Anti e-mail address harvester script.
    function n_mail(n_user) {
       self.location = "mailto:" + n_user + "@" + "tedroche" + "." + "com";
    }

<a href="n_mail('tedroche');">tedroche
<!-- antispam -->@
<!-- antispam -->tedroche
<!-- antispam -->.
<!-- antispam -->com
<!-- antispam --></a>

Post dated 2002-04-11 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 11, 2002 in Home Page

Thursday, 11 April, 2002

Son Stephen is twenty years old today. Happy birthday, old man!

Microsoft announces that Hailstorm is dead, according to this article, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/technology/11NET.html. Perhaps resistance to assimilation is not futile.

Post dated 2002-04-10 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 10, 2002 in Home Page

Wednesday, 10 April, 2002

Another day spent hard at work, troubleshooting a large Visual SourceSafe installation, and working some VFP code to automate incoming mail processing as part of a sales force automation system.

Had a great dinner out with my girlfriend and my son, who turns 20 tomorrow. Twenty years old!

Here’s a little essay I’m working on…

“Benign.”

Such a simple little word. Rather an ugly word to look at, but wonderful in meaning.

My brother, eight years my junior, called me two weeks ago to let me know that, as part of a medical workup for an unrelated problem, they found a mass where one shouldn’t be. In the smooth muscle tissues, not far from the kidneys, and perilously close to the vena cava, there was a dense mass they could not identify. Initial blood tests had eliminated many possibilities, but the one that remained was not good. Leiomyosarcoma is rare, but inevitably fatal, not responding well to chemical, surgical or radiation treatments. Survival is under 50% in 5 years.

Surgery was Monday, and the word came late afternoon. “Benign.” It was not the sarcoma they dreaded, but another, less dangerous growth.

Joe’s recovering in Surgical ICA at Mass General (in the ward he works in, strangely enough – he’s an RN).

And I’ve had a fresh reminder on the fragility of life and the importance of family.

Post dated 2002-04-09 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 9, 2002 in Home Page

Tuesday, 09 April, 2002

http://www.basicguru.com/ has some interesting information on the BASIC language, including links to free or cheap implementations. The most interesting link, to me, on the page was to http://www.cmdtools.com/, for command-line tools. Having a set of tools available from the command line has tremendous advantages: writing scripts for routine functions, quick and dirty operations, ease of use, easy access over slow links or telnet.

Spent most of the day hard at work, trying to get Outlook automation to behave properly.

Added InterWikis links so that I could add MSKB and ISBN links easily into documents. Can also have links from here to my favorite Wiki, FoxWiki:FoxForumWiki.

Working on installation of the Twiki:Plugins.UserCookiePlugin so that I might be able to support authoring on the site with proper credit to the authors.

Post dated 2002-04-08 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on April 8, 2002 in Home Page

Monday, 08 April, 2002

Three weeks and the Twiki’s still running!

http://www.scumware.com/ is an interesting link discussing all of the blinking, pop-under, stealth-download garbage that advertisers are trying to cram down our throats as we try to get our job done. Advertising itself is a necessary thing; that’s how we find out about new things that might actually make our lives easier. But the stuff that comes with it is unacceptable!

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