Archive | November, 2002

Post dated 2002-11-30 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 30, 2002 in Home Page

Saturday, November 30, 2002

Another bit of software silliness I ran into today. I needed to find out if it was practical to drive from home to Toledo, Ohio. The machine that had my mapping software on it has left the premises, so I had to choose a volunteer and install the software. Disk One, Disk Two. At the end, the software congratulates me (or itself?) and informs me that the software was installed successfully, presenting me with a button labeled ‘Finish.’

Now, wait a minute. The problem was ‘how long is it from home to Toledo?’ The machine restated the problem as ‘Can you successfully install this package?’ and left me at the finish line.

It could have offered to start the package, don’t you think? Isn’t that probably why I installed it? Isn’t that probably why many people isntall many software packages?

I click on the ‘Start’ button. This is a WinXPPro? box with full default Candyland theme. No package visible. If I am clever enough to float my mouse over the ‘All programs’ option, a little tooltip pops up to inform me ‘New programs installed.’ Isn’t it possible I knew that? Who swapped the disks the computer asked for? And is that that sufficiently passive for you?

It’s more like a game of hide-and-seek. “I know what you’re looking for, and I’ve hidden it somewhere in the cascading menus over here. Bet you can’t find me!”

Post dated 2002-11-29 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 29, 2002 in Home Page

Friday, November 29, 2002

Steve and I struggled Wednesday to downgrade an older PII-366 laptop from Win2K to Windows 98SE as a test platform for a client project. Since it’s NTFS, we’ll need to blow away the partitions. The MSDN CD for Windowsw 98 isn’t bootable. Found a wonderful resource for bootdisks at – where else? – http://www.bootdisk.com. So, of course, the floppy disk doesn’t work any more. Sheesh.

Today we’ll buy a copy of partition magic and try to resize the partitions so we can dual boot Win98 and 2K.

Post dated 2002-11-28 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 28, 2002 in Home Page

Thursday, November 28, 2002

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the US, and happy Thursday to the rest of the world.

I have much to be thankful for this year.

Post dated 2002-11-27 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 27, 2002 in Home Page

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Installed and configured WinCVS? on my machine for source-code control of a new client’s application. Lots of good documentation on http://www.computas.com/pub/wincvs-howto/ and http://ccvs.cvshome.org/servlets/ProjectHome and http://www.cvshome.org/docs/

Pretty neat package. I’m looking forward to working with it and seeing how it compares to VSS.

Post dated 2002-11-25 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 25, 2002 in Home Page

Monday, November 25, 2002

Monday was five hours of commuting and eight hours on-site with a new client. A very exciting new project. Glad to be working again.

Post dated 2002-11-24 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 24, 2002 in Home Page

Sunday, November 24, 2002

Sunday. I’m trying to catch up on a week unblogged and, gosh, I can’t even remember what I did on Sunday.

Post dated 2002-11-23 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 23, 2002 in Home Page

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Succeeded in re-assembling Steve’s double-hung window. Stripping and reglazing turned out to be far more challenging than we thought. Next time, we’ll plan to take the window out after the first frost.

Post dated 2002-11-22 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 22, 2002 in Home Page

Friday, November 22, 2002

TGIF. Back to work, and getting up to speed at work.

Dave Birley posted a link to his pictures from Great Lakes. Nice job!

Post dated 2002-11-21 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 21, 2002 in Home Page

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Back home. Spending a slow day catching up on email, snail mail, newspapers and house chores.

Robert X. Cringely starts his column about Comdex and ends with his predictions about the IT economy for 2003 and 2004. We’ll see.

Microsoft released Security Bulletin MS02-066 this week, about a number of security problems primarily with IE. It looks pretty bad. However, I saw something in the security message I got that I had never seen before – an MSKB number from the far end of the number range. Until this time, I’ve seen the numbers progress sequentially over time, from the 70 thousands, to the 100, 200 and 300 thousands. This message had a reference to an 800 thousand number, and clicking on it did indeed bring it up — this wasn’t a typo. I wonder what they are up to…

Post dated 2002-11-20 00:00:00

By Ted Roche on November 20, 2002 in Home Page

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

I hate to see the party end, but I’m not sure I could have taken much more. The closing session was great, and featured a professional magician. Very fun.

Had a nice quiet lunch with a few friends afterwards, and started the long trek home. We were hours and hours early to the airport, as I’ve been traumatized enough being late, and had no reserves to deal with it this time. Flight was uneventful, the Logan Express showed up promptly, and the drive home went quickly. But it was still a little after midnight before we pulled into the driveway. It will be a quiet day tomorrow.

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