If you have a laptop with some kind of Windows Vista version on it and you would like for your laptop to actually function you might have been considering an upgrade to Windows XP.
If you have SATA hard drives and no floppy, here is some good advice regarding drivers you need to consider.
We kinda had a direction change at work and the business objects were put on hold. It’s hard to write about high tech stuff when I am not actually doing any high tech stuff. Seems like business is picking up a bit though I don’t think the business objects are back on the table for now. But there has been an item or two of interest pop up from time to that I can discuss.
But right now I want to point out something that I came across that I didn’t know about and want to pass along. I don’t do a lot of Windows API programming but when the need arises it’s nice to have some tools to ease the way along. Detours is billed as “instrumentation” and basically provids a wrapper for Win32 and Win64 API calls and for injecting custom code into existing libraries. Code injection allows code maintenance without having to redo, or even have access to, the existing source code. I haven’t downloaded the trial version yet to look at the API but I could see this product literally saving some poor programmers life.
Coming up next I’ll show you how to replace 30 pages of custom .NET code with less than three pages of T-SQL and discuss the reasons why my way is the better way.
I’m trolling through some old tech forum archives trying to track down the signatures of rogue malware programs when I came across this jewel from Ziff-Davis’ Neil J. Rubenking:
So, after reading that the big warning window is a fake, and that clicking the links on it will install programs that a) you do not want and b) are very hard to remove… you chose to surf to the site anyway?! That is a strange choice, unless you have powerful antispyware protection in place, but OK. Upon reaching the site you got a fake warning popup containing a very similar fake warning as is found in the box at the top of the example screenshot we showed. What specifically was surprising or confusing about this?
I’m thinking of the kid at the end of “Time Bandits” - “Mum, Dad, don’t touch it! It’s Eeeeeeevil!”. We said, basically, “Don’t touch this window - it’s Eeeeeeeevil!”. You touched it anyway, and got an Eeeeeeevil response (another fake warning). Seems quite consistent to me.
Of course, they always push the red button. Like Dee Dee on Dexter’s Labratory.
Although abstraction is crucial in any effort to build a class library of re-usable business objects it is important to not get carried away and become what is known in my book as a “purist”. Physical patterns don’t always match logical patterns. Something beautiful on paper may be a clusterduck to implement in the real world. Pardon my French but if you are reading this kind of dry material, you probably already speak French. Our goal here is flexibility and efficiency, not adherence to rigid dogma for the sake of purity.
As an example of the point I am trying to make above lets revisit the Data Access class for a moment. There are some purists who will say no business logic should be embedded in the data access layer and no data access functions should be found in the business layer. On paper that is correct and a proper design should reflect that. In the real world where some guy is trying to piece everything together one can either go through great contortions to satisfy the separation of concerns aspect of encapsulation as laid out by the purist, or one can have a boat load of stored procedures in the database to return pre-configured datasets.
The reason why the stored procedure scenario breaks the rules of encapsulation is because the business layer is required to know something about how to return certain sets of data from the back-end data stores. I have concluded that breaking this rule is preferable to maintaining a SQL command object in every business object. The end result is the same.
I don’t know if this is even technically breaking the encapsulation rule but I have read a couple of articles that suggest it is. In a logical diagram I can draw the stored procedures and views as business rules, which are clearly in the business layer but in a physical diagram the procedures are stored in the back end database and thus are retrieved using the connection object in the DAL. The best of both worlds.
So what I am saying here is that stored procedures will be used extensively in this project including the current Employee business object. As mentioned at the end of the previous article we need to figure out what all is needed in the employee object. One thing the Employee object will definitely need is a database connection so it will need to know how to ask the Data Access Layer (DAL) for a connection. This is likely a static property but probably should nonetheless be acquired from a system initialization mechanism, like an .ini file. The value of this property should never be the connection string as the connection string is the business of the Data Access Layer.
Also, the Employee object must know how to get data to satisfy every method and property that is to be made available according to the contract made at instantiation. If the employee object says it can produce a punch history list, the object has to know the secret words to get a punch history list back from the DAL.
The calling program says the secret words to get a new employee object with ‘1234′ as the employee id –> set myEmp = new Employee('1234')
Everything goes well and Bob Jones’ employee record is returned encapsulated in an employee object. To get Bob’s punch history, I just need to request it from the Employee object. Depending on implementation the punch history maybe stored inside the object or returned as a record set. Either way, when me.getPunchHistory() is called, the object has to know how to request it from the DAL –>
myDBConn.RunProc(’stored_proc_Punch_History’, ‘1234′)
That’s it in a nutshell. Every bit of data I may want to retrieve, such as schedule, absence, vacation, is made available through the employee object utilizing stored procedures. The basic employee stuff is populated when the employee object is instantiated, the rest is provided as needed. The good news is that from now on, whenever a new application is needed that will interact with employee data, all the data access functions are predefined and the programmer can focus on writing the needed application instead of worrying about database connections, security, SQL queries, and all the rest of the administrative stuff.
In the next article we will take a look a how to display our employee information to the user, which is in the presentation layer of an n-tier application. Decisions made here should not in any way affect what the Data Access Layer will ultimately look like. But this is one of those cases where the physical architecture of an actual enterprise environment dictates as to how the logical models are implemented. VB.net is not the best tool for implementing design patterns because of the code-behind-the-form method used in the product. Such a construct physically binds the presentation and business layers, but not necessarily logically.
As I mentioned above, this contradiction can be avoided if the developer eschews all the nice functionality provided by VB.net, namely the typed datasets available in the connection object which can bind data directly to the components on the web forms. The code is generated automatically and the SQL query results are shoved directly into the presentation layer…
Considering that we are mandated to use VB.Net as the development platform, what should we do? Use VB.Net datasets, or write our own SQL Command objects to maintain order with the model-view-controller design pattern evident in the n-tier model?
So I’ve pitched building a library of business objects as the solution to transform about a million lines of VB code sitting in a hundred or so 7- to 10-year-old Access database applications into a valuable corporate asset of reusable code objects built using current technology.
The director of the IT department is not an IT guy but he has a great interest in sorting out the huge tangle of code he inherited with his job: it is expensive to maintain, difficult to secure, and is not easy to enhance. In short, it is a strategic liability.
Prior to me coming along, the solution has always been assumed that every application would simply be re-written in something else, that something else likely being Visual Basic dot Net. Since day 1 I have been lobbying against that approach in favor of analyzing the applications and consolidating the code under a set of centrally managed business objects as defined by the companies existing back-end data structures and their application needs.
In other words, I’ve proposed… get ready for the buzzwords… to build the middleware in a multi-tiered distributed database architecture. The task is daunting and to the casual observer may seem impossible but it is doable nonetheless. Though my boss is in charge of the IT department, I would consider him a casual observer so his response, as I had hoped and expected, was “show me.” We picked one of the more sophisticated MS Access database applications in the inventory and I am in the process of converting it to an n-tiered application using object oriented design and implementation.
Because I am having to write the code as well as do the design work, as well as support the current state of the beast, getting the design laid out has been a slower process than I am accustomed. The area I support is HR/Payroll along with all the supporting applications for time and attendance, manpower scheduling, and other personnel related activities so it was a no-brainer to start off by building the employee object first since every single application will at some point need to manipulate an employee’s data in some way.
As I’ve touched on before, these objects in the business tier are built separately from both the interfaces that utilize them and the objects that actually access the SQL data stores. Ideally the business objects are built to work independently of the consuming applications and the source of the data being manipulated. This is accomplished on the application side by defining a contract between the business object and the application that consumes it: if an application requests an employee from me under certain terms (the parameter list in the constructor call) I will return an employee object with certain information (the public properties and methods). No mention is made of what the application will do with the data nor does the business object disclose how the data is made available.
On the data access side, the business object becomes the consumer and has a contract with an object in the data access layer (an ADO.net connection object most likely.) If I know how to ask for something, say an employee’s punch history, the data access object will return the data without disclosing where it came from and without regard to what I am doing with it. We’ll get to security later.
Lets take an inventory of what we have so far towards this goal. We have a meta-data dictionary of all the VB code base that was created with the Access documenter utility we built. We have a simple DBConnection class to serve as a basic data access layer. And now we are starting on our first business business object: the employee.
Next time we will take a closer look at the employee object and decide what we need in there and what will be the best way to set up the design. We will also be tweaking our DBConnection class as we go along to take advantage of some of the very nice features of ADO, namely the typed dataset object which looks very unwieldy but one simply cannot ignore the power of the tools provided in the class.
Some interesting stuff here, a cornucopia actually, including a circular periodic chart.
6:00 AM, The Garage — I don’t have much time to write this morning but I have been busy in the tech world so It’s time to start a new series. I am still working on sortin gout the VB6 code base for the guys I am currently working for. Remember, they are the ones with over a hundred MS Access databases interfacing their SQL data. I just about have them sold on developing a library of reusable business objects so I am going to bring everyone up to date on the progress and do a few follow-up articles on the process as it continues.
I support the majority of the Access applications (along with the people who use them) as well as several IIS web applications built using Microsoft’s Web Classes architecture (along with the people who use them) and the Ceridian HR/Payroll application and SQL database (along with the people who use them.) The guy who created the mess wrote all VB code in all these applications made some attempts to encapsulate the common objects but really didn’t understand the basic concept of Object Oriented Design. For example, he built a class for database connectivity but all of the connection parameters were hard coded in modules running the main application code, which of course defeats the whole purpose of reusable, low-maintenance code.
12:00 PM, on-site, Tx City — One of the main purposes of OOD and OOP is encapsulation, meaning all the components of an object, both methods and properties are encapsulated withing the object. As a programmer, if I want a new database connection and I have my database connectivity defined in a reusable object, dbConn for example, I want to be able to request a database connection and not have to worry about how the connection is made.
So if I need to write a little utility that lists all employees and their job codes I want to be able to get a database connection by simply requesting it. I don’t want to have to set connection strings and server names and passwords and such. In a large enterprise there is likely not only many databases, but many database (SQL/Oracle/Domino/etc) servers as well. Changes made to the back-end infrastructure will break any code that has the connection parameters hard wired.
For example, here is how the apps are all written now using ODBC DSN connections:
Set dbADC = New DBConn dbADC.DBToUse = “DSN=TimeAtt” Set dbBuildSec = New DBConn dbBuildSec.DBToUse = “DSN=BuildSec”
If a database is moved or a server crashes all the DSN configurations have to be changed on every computer running the application, which is not as bad as this scenario:
conn = New OleDb.OleDbConnection(”PROVIDER=SQLOLEDB;” _ & “server=Server_002;” _ & “Initial Catalog=BuildSec;” _ & “User Id=userid;” _ & “Password=pwd;”)
in which case every instance of the code in every instance of every application that uses the code would have to be changed. In short, a nightmare — in which I have been living for about five months now.
So what if one chooses to do things my way? Well the concept of building a class to manage database connectivity is sound but heck what’s the use if robust code is not the end result. Where the previous coders failed is in not understanding encapsulation or how to build overloaded constructors (polymorphism) in their class so the class can handle disparate requests when a new object is instantiated from the class.
Set myTandA = new DBConnection(”TimeAtt”) Set myBuildSec = new DBConnection(”BuildSec”) Set myEmpRpts = new DBConnection(”HRRpts”, “Access”)
Then the constructors in my DBConnection class might look something like this:
Public Class DBConnection Private mConnectionString As String Private mConn As ADODB.Connection Sub New() ‘This is the default constructor and will return an error End Sub Sub New(ByVal dbname As String) ‘Connection strings defined in Constant declarations Select Case UCase(dbname) Case “TimeATT” mConnectionString = TIME_&_ATTENDANCE_CONNECTION_STRING Case “VHR_DATASQL” mConnectionString = HR_CONNECTION_STRING Case “EARNHIST” mConnectionString = EARNHIST_CONNECTION_STRING Case “BUILDSEC” mConnectionString = BUILDSEC_CONNECTION_STRING End Select mConn = New ADODB.Connection mConn.ConnectionString = mConnectionString mConn.Open() End Sub Sub New(ByVal dbname As String, ByVal dbtype As String) ‘this contructor will be used to open non-sql data sources ‘valid types will be Access, ODBC, etc) End Sub
Pretty sweet huh. Now if something happens in the server room or even if database vendors are changed, the code only has to be updated in the class definition to reflect the changes and the programs utilizing the class go on like nothing ever happened.
To be continued…
Where I work they have over a hundred Microsoft Access databases that act as interfaces into their corporate SQL data. These databases range from Access 97 to Access 2003. My client would like to get away from this code base but so much of their business rules are embedded in the access code (VB6) that it has proven difficult to even contemplate ditching MS Access and VB6. Lax version control has made the planning much more difficult and tedious. Live and learn, right.
To get a handle on the task at hand I wanted to document all the databases by recording all the objects into another database. A meta-database, as it were. Didn’t seem like a big deal until I started trying to access different properties of some of the different objects I was interested in; specifically the record source for reports and forms and the content of the code modules. I came to the conclusion in the process that the Microsoft object model is so unwieldy that I now categorize it as crap.
So the Internet search for knowledge began and the insight that I needed to finish my little utility came from John Barnett who wrote a similar utility called mdbDoc that builds a nice html document of all the db objects contained in an Access application. His app was set up as an MS Access add-on (.mda) that could be executed from within any Access application. It is a very nice piece of work except that the html formatting is embedded with the code and that it has to be run one database at a time. I needed to document a couple hundred databases all at once and with an eye toward consolidation I needed to be able to view all the queries from all the applications sorted together in one place. Same with the code modules and tables. Though his utility wasn’t suitable for what I needed I was able to configure it as if it were a function in my app and attached the resulting HTML doc to a rich text field in the database structure I built for each .mdb file.
There were a couple of subroutines in John’s code that I was going to have to write or do without so with much gratitude I borrowed the ListCodeBlocks and dependent subs from John Barnett’s mdbDoc. I have a nice Logger class that I use when scripting in Domino but since I was doing this all in VB6 and I am so rusty with VB, I borrowed John’s mdbdclsFileHandle too. Another nice piece of work that takes away all the mundane tasks of reading and writing to disk.
So here it is. The following code builds a Domino database with a record for each MS Access object. The back end could just as easily by SQL Server or MySQL. I just chose Domino because it was easily accessible and convenient. Now I can sort by object type regardless of what database actually contains the object.
To use the app you fill an array with all the target directories you want to scan. You can rig it to crawl servers but in my case that was extra features that weren’t needed.
When you start the application you check off the objects you want to document and click ‘Do It!’ When the app finishes you open up your target database and look at the results. In Domino it looks something like this:
The main code follows. If you want the modDocumenter code or the file handle class in John Barnett’s mdbd utility, you can get it from his site, linked above. (If you have a free editor like like PSPad or ConText, paste the code over there. To me it’s easier to read code that way.)
Everyone who works professionally with computers or software has at least heard about Daylight Saving Time issues and has likely grappled with them at one time or another. Incorrectly accounting for DST can wreak havoc with date sensitive processes like payroll, logging, and synchronizing systems.
Well, at the J.O. B. there was just such an occurrence relating to the daily time and attendance system software that computes time sheet hours for hourly workers based on a scheduled shift. The software was still using the old rules for DST; specifically the last Sunday of October instead of the first Sunday in November. Since the law changed the rules in 2005 and the rules went into affect this year, 2007, there have been numerous operating system and software patches to reflect the new rules. However, relying on the operating system patches to solve all your company’s DST issues will be a big mistake in almost every case as many programs were written by dumb asses who hard coded the DST rules into each and every application.
On my current job I am just a contractor who basically does whatever I am told, within reason. Even if I had the authority to fix such a problem before it occurred I would not have known where in the dozens and dozens of applications and millions of lines of code to look to even know about the problem. But when the graveyard shift is being paid for 13 hours instead 12 it suddenly becomes my problem and many people down in the cubes are satisfied to believe it is all my fault as well. I love being a contractor. Thick skin is definitely an asset.
Not wanting to go through the unpleasant experience ever again I tried to to come up with a way that the system would be configurable so that if or when the DST rules change again it will be as effortless as possible to make the changes to the code. I wrote the following and pasted it over three pages of existing code to compute whether a DST adjustment was needed. None of this ever happens unless there is a Sunday involved.
First, set up some constants to represent the DST rules (yes, I am working in VB for now):
Const SPRING_FORWARD_MONTH = 3
Const SPRING_SUNDAY = 2
Const FALL_BACK_MONTH = 11
Const FALL_SUNDAY = 1
Const TIME_CHANGE_HOUR = 2
The above assumes the change will always be on a Sunday. Set the month, the Sunday (eg, 1st or 2nd etc), and the hour the time changes and the rest is handled computationally.
Private Function DSTFactorMins(ByVal inStartTime As Date, _
ByVal inEndTime As Date) As Integer
Dim vDayOfYear As Integer
Dim vEndingDayOfYear As Integer
Dim vStartingDayOfYear As Integer
Dim vSpringDay As Integer
Dim vFallDay As Integer
Dim vStartTime As Integer
Dim vEndTime As Integer
Dim adjType As String
vStartingDayOfYear = DatePart("y", inStartTime) 'y' parameter returns the day of year
vEndingDayOfYear = DatePart("y", inEndTime)
'DST changes only affect those whose shift starts before the change and
'ends after the change, ie, graveyard shift
If Weekday(inStartTime) = vbSaturday Then
vStartTime = 0
Else
vStartTime = DatePart("h", inStartTime)
End If
vEndTime = DatePart("h", inEndTime)
If (vStartTime < TIME_CHANGE_HOUR And TIME_CHANGE_HOUR <= vEndTime) Then
If springForward(inStartTime) Or springForward(inEndTime) Then
DSTFactorMins = -60 'minutes.
adjType = "SPRING_FORWARD"
ElseIf fallBack(inStartTime) Or fallBack(inEndTime) Then
DSTFactorMins = 60 'minutes.
adjType = "FALL_BACK"
Else
DSTFactorMins = 0
adjType = ""
End If
End If
Debug.Print "DST " & adjType & " adjustment is: " & Str$(DSTFactorMins)
End Function
Private Function springForward(ByVal inDate As Date) As Boolean
wMonth = CInt(Format$(inDate, "mm"))
springForward = False
Dim vToday As Integer
If wMonth = SPRING_FORWARD_MONTH Then
vToday = DatePart("d", inDate)
If vToday >= ((SPRING_SUNDAY - 1) * 7) And vToday <= (SPRING_SUNDAY * 7) Then
springForward = True
End If
End If
End Function
Private Function fallBack(ByVal inDate As Date) As Boolean
wMonth = CInt(Format$(inDate, "mm"))
fallBack = False
Dim vToday As Integer
If wMonth = FALL_BACK_MONTH Then
vToday = DatePart("d", inDate)
If vToday >= ((FALL_SUNDAY - 1) * 7) And vToday <= (FALL_SUNDAY * 7) Then
fallBack = True
End If
End If
End Function
The obsessive compulsive programmer in me wanted to combine the fallBack and springForward functions but the lazy contractor decided not to. To Change back to the old DST rules just change the constants:
Const SPRING_FORWARD_MONTH = 4
Const SPRING_SUNDAY = 1
Const FALL_BACK_MONTH = 10
Const FALL_SUNDAY = 3
Const TIME_CHANGE_HOUR = 2
Unfortunately for this particular application the code is compiled, put on a server and run on a schedule. Ideally, a system profile should be used so that these types of changes can be made without altering the code at all, but I am only a system engineer, not God. I can only do so much. It took these guys well over a decade to get into the mess they are in and it can’t be fixed in a few months.
I noticed over the weekend that my domain dcdo isn’t working. The tip off was that I wasn’t getting any spam in my inbox. How likely is that not to happen, really? Ping returns the new IP address but doesn’t reply. Probably some further adjustment to the DNS records needs to be made.
I haven’t taken the time to mess with the DNS issues because I haven’t been here much except for on weekends and this past weekend I was busy trying to figure out how to run WordpressMU; the multi-blog, mult-user version of the software I am running now. This is a key step in the process of changing my infrastructure from Domino to hosted WordPress. It wont be any fun maintaining and posting to a half-dozen or so blogs that each have a seperate installation.
Like on the other thing I got it working half-assed but then I had to keep tinkering with it to make it work how I want it too. The closest configuration I found as a model was from Dan Frey at the Office of the Provost Web Team blog at the University at Buffalo:
“Our situation is interesting, but I would not call it unique. We have a server that has multiple domains pointed at it. We installed MU in a directory off of the root of our server, /wordpressmu. Our default domain name is ugly - the idea was that we wanted folks to be able to go to nicedomain.buffalo.edu/myblog and get to their blog on our server.
Easier said than done…
Yep pretty much what I’ve found out. My situation is the same except I want to point any domain to any blog regardless of where the blog is and regardless of where the domain is. This is what I have so far:
I know the symlinks are the way to go and that’s how I found Dan Frey’s article–by Googling wordpress mu symbolic link. I’m pretty sure Dan has it figured out I just have to tinker with it some more.
But dang I can’t mess around with it forever. It’s one of those deals that I’ll have to revisit after I get a few other things worked out, like my damn mailserver at dcdo.
And don’t we know to whose advantage Windows Genuine Advantage is. But what happens when Windows Genuine Advantage doesn’t work?
Late last night we started receiving reports from readers experiencing problems with Windows Genuine Advantage authentication. Users of both Windows XP and Windows Vista were writing to say that they could not validate their installations using WGA, and one user even said that his installation was invalidated by the service.
We contacted our sources at Microsoft, who told us off the record that the company is aware of a major WGA server outage affecting users across the globe. The Windows Genuine Advantage support forum has exploded with complaints, as a result, and Phil Liu, WGA project manager, says that he won’t sleep until the problem is fixed. Windows Vista and XP are affected, 32- and 64-bit versions.
I bet Phil Liu is one very tired son of a gun.
I still have some work to do on the infrastructure changes I’ve been making over the last several weeks. First, let me recap what I’ve done so far.
I bought a hosted account where I have ample space on a Linux server. I can use the provider’s packaged services or I can load my own. I am using the MySQL service and phpMyAdmin utility which is provided with the account, including up to fifty databases. Each database can only be 100 MB so that may have to be upgraded eventually.
I passed on the blogging software offered by 1and1.com and loaded Wordpress for my content management system. As a test I saved several categories of technical and business related blog posts from incongruities as .xml files that I could then import into Wordpress. Wordpress did a pretty good job of importing those articles considering I know the xml was not well-formed.
After the import process worked so well on the test I decided to move my blogs and point my domains to 1and1.com. I activated this blog first and it was a simple affair because I bought the domain name from 1and1.com.
Then I set out to move incongruities from Domainsite’s DNS servers with as little work as possible. The first idea, which was the simplest and one I should probably have skipped because it didn’t work, was to forward the domain name to 1and1 with a masked URL, meaning that the URL would still start with my domain name after the request was forwarded to the new address.
I got that configuration working but only half-assed, then I somehow trashed it completely. At that point I went back to what was probably the best simple option which was to change the DNS entries of incongruities to point to 1and1. After doing that I set up a virtual host entry in my apache configuration at 1and1 and pointed it to my webspace directory holding the Wordpress installation for incongruities.
All the while this is going on I am switching my internet provider here at the house. I finally have a high speed cable connection that knocks the old DSL in the dust which means I have a new IP address here in the garage. To complete that change I had edit the A and MX DNS records for doncallaway.org to point to the new IP. My web server and mail server here in TheGarage will still be handling http and SMTP requests for doncallaway.org.
In summary, so far I have installed Wordpress ona remote host, converted and moved two blogs and one website to the remote host along with the MySQL databases that go with the blogs, and I have switched Internet service providers at the house. Though it doesn’t sound like much, it has taken my spare time over the course of several weeks to accomplish.
FINAL GOALS:
I still have at least three blogs and a substantial photo gallery to move to the hosted environment. One of the blogs is in Blogger and the other two are here in TheGarage. Of the two here in TheGarage, one is a photoblog so I have to figure out how to move all the images with the appropriate linkage.
After I finish all that I will have totally redone the way I operate my vast publishing empire. Only archives and backups… and a sandbox, oh and a mail server will remain here in TheGarage. Everything else will be hosted off site.
I will have bandwidth. I will have uptime. I will have industry standard software. I will be taking a big doo in high cotton.
One of the by-products of this move is that I will be able to decommission a few pieces of aging equipment that should have been put to pasture years ago–most notably the relic Dell Poweredge 6300 workhorse. Even though the Dell would make the perfect sandbox it is just too big, too noisy, too hot, and too expensive to operate. In other words it will make a perfect boat anchor as well.
It’s snappy, that’s for sure.
CMA never did correct the problem. I’m sure once they get it corrected my gear wont work anymore. Turns out they bind the MAC address of the device connected to the cable modem with an IP address and even though I purchased a static IP that will never change, my router still has to use DHCP to acquire the IP from the provider. No problem. The problem is that they set up the wrong MAC address so the cable guy calls in and has them change the MAC address to use which would fix the problem. Then I’m told changes to the MAC addresss can take up to 24-48 hours. I’m like what?
Anyway it still wont work with the settings they emailed to me yesterday (like I am supposed to get an email on Internet that doesn’t work) but I have rigged it up so it will work.
I was able to plug the cable modem into a network port on a PC and let the cable modem automatically configure the network connection. Then I looked at the properties for the connection and wrote down the IP configuration, notably the MAC address that was being reported.
I then plugged the cable modem back into the router and instructed the router to use the MAC address I specify when communicating with the cable modem.
Bingo. So when, or if, they ever change the setting at CMA, my connection will go dead and I’ll have to change my router’s configuration again. I bet a dollar it never gets changed. They was just gonna leave a brand new paying customer without service until I raised hell. All because they don’t really know what they are doing.
The Internet is Dead. So says Dallas Mavericks owner and erstwhile internet tycoon Mark Cuban.
We have reached a point of diminishing returns with today’s internet. The speed of broadband to your home won’t increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth.
I think we may have a slight case of sour grapes here and what Cuban really means is that he has come to the realization that his business efforts surrounding the Internet are dead. Ironcically, later in the article we found out the Internet is about as dead as the telephone:
Answering questions by email from the Cayman Islands, where he was vacationing with his family and recovering from hip-replacement surgery, Cuban also shared his views on Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo versus Google, day-trading, his personal investment strategy, and why he won’t pull the plug on his much-criticized business journalism operation, Sharesleuth.com, in which he shorts companies that the site plans to trash-hoping to turn a tidy profit on his pre-publication insider knowledge.
Yes Mark, there are other things to do with the Internet than make Billions of dollars on a gimmick. I could have told you five years ago streaming hi def video to the home was not going to be doable any time soon. Not because I am so smart or anything, but because it is just common sense to look at the size of file that contains a full length movie and then look at the pipe available to shove it through and anyone can see that it will take forever.
It was all just a wet dream. What was I thinking; it’s August, not December.
The cable guy finally showed at about noon yesterday for the “easy install”. He did a good job hooking me up from the pole but left me hangin’ three hours later with me waiting for a phone call from the office letting me know the configuration has been corrected. It was a phone call that never came. Sometimes after four I dozed off for abit while listening to John Gibson drone on about The Big Story. By the time I called CMA Cable, whose number I had to look up in the regular paper-based phone book, I was informed by the answering service they close up shop at 4:30.
That’s damn inconvenient.
Like I trusted the cable people to be able to roll up in here and deliver high speed cable Internet on the first try. Finally giving up on cable for the day I switched my router back over to DSL. It didn’t work, of course, but it didn’t work the same way it always doesn’t work so I knew I would at least have connectivity to the Internet this morning because in the morning my DSL miraculously starts working. Then like clockwork it goes out every evening. But there is nothing wrong with it I’ve been told.
Anyway, I’m rehashing. Maybe CMA gets it figured out today, maybe not. So far their customer service rating is not looking good.
It seems me SSI is not working properly on cgwwff. Suddenly my footer with all the nav buttons and sitemeter and whatnot isn’t showing. Dammit it’s always something.
UPDATE: It was the old XBitHack trick. My .htaccess file was”renewed” somehow in the process of all the domain changes and blog reconfigurations and the problems therewith. I was using the XBitHack for cgwwff to implement server side includes for my footer without having to change the file name of all the pages to an .shtml file extension, which is required for the server to process includes. XBitHack tells the server to scan all pages with the executable bit set so I can just chmod +x *.html and presto all my web pages will be scanned for the include footer directive.
It’s important to enable this for only those pages that need it as a slight burden is placed on the server for each page scanned for includes. No since in incurring an unnecessary burden on the server for pages that don’t even have an include, eh.
…only better!
Waitin’ for the cable guy, my heart pining away for what he is bringing for me. I can hardly wait. I know it is going to be sooo good. I have been on his schedule for over a week now and he is finally coming to my house; it’s my turn for service. Bring it on big boy!
I’m talking about high speed cable Internet, of course. If it is all of what people who have it say it is, I know I’m going to be creamin in my jeans. No more blackouts, disconnects, slow transfer, kids screaming about the crappy internet. Here is the background on my Kids computer:
I’ve had worst case scenario DSL for quite a while, getting 128K/bps up and way less than 384 K/bits down. People with low cost DSL and cable get three times that bandwidth and those who pay a bit more get Megabit throughput up and down. SWBATTCingular… acknowledge the problem but wouldn’t even consider lowering my monthly rate even though I was paying a premium already for static IP addresses.
But a couple of months ago the service went totally to hell. It would basically go off every night around 6:30. Sevenish sometimes. But sure as hell it goes off every night. When you are only home in the evening that is the equivalent of having no Internet. The kids are upset–at me no less, thus the not-so-subtle message above– that their day long gaming has been interrupted while I am basically unplugged from the Big Brain for up to twelve hours. Talk about kicking heroine and nicotine being difficult…
Oh well, I did call SWBATTCingular… and gave them the opportunity to address the problem but a man named Gilbert–or was Gilbert with the Internet host company? Anyway they both sounded like their name probably wasn’t Gilbert and he said there wasn’t anything wrong and I would have to call back when the problem was actually occurring. Damn inconvenient.
Kinda like how it is damn inconvenient for me to be sitting on my ass here at the house waiting on the cable guy to fit me in to his busy schedule sometime between 8:30 and noon instead of sitting on my ass in Texas City where they pay me a decent hourly rate to do so. The catch is that I have to go to Texas City to do basically the same thing I do here.
Like I told the nice lady who took my order for high-speed cable internet this is going to be an easy installation. Since we had cable service here at some point in the past the coax cable is already run up to the house right at the spot where I need it shoved inside. Shove the cable through, plug in the cable modem, verify connectivity, give me my IP address, and thank you very much. Wam bam thank you ma’am.
I incorrectly figured they would knock out a couple of easy ones first thing but more likely they save the easy ones for the heat of the day. No sense being in an attack at noon when you can be standing in the A/C bullshitting with an old school technology hack.
Microsoft shill and PC Magazine’s editor-in-chief Jim Louderback says about Windows Vista:
I’ve been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn’t work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.
I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can’t get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.
Not that it will make any difference for Microsoft, but any other company that did not hold a monopoly on it’s market would be rightfully concerned. It doesn’t matter how bad Vista sux because at some point all Microsoft has to do is turn off support for XP and Vista is the de facto standard.
A couple of months ago when I built this new computer system for under a $1,000, I splurged and bought myself one of those ergonomic keyboards because, well, because my hands hurt quite a bit of the time. Why else would anyone get one of those?
I liked it initially but after a couple of months trying to get used to it I finally switched back to the old Dell QuitKey, which isn’t so quiet anymore but still has a nice tactile feel to it. I could have eventually gotten used to the funny Qwerty part of the ergo keyboard, but the function keys and Home/End/Insert/Del keys were just too dysfunctional.
For example the F9 key was in the middle of a group of keys instead of on the left end of a group. Now that may not seem like much if you never use those keys but I happen to use the F9 key about a thousand times a day to refresh database views and have used it thus for over a decade. You think it’s hard to quit smoking? Well boy howdy let me tell you.
Same with he navigation keys. I am a primarily a keypad editor. It’s highly efficient. (Yes, I go way back.) Changing the Home/End/Insert/Del keys is like rearranging the furniture in a blind person’s apartment.
The pisser is that now, after switching back to the old style keyboard, I keep hitting the F10 key instead of the F9 key. Aaarrrgh!
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