computer vs. me: i won!

well, it took giving in and doing a complete wipe of my machine, but i've finally fixed the damn laptop. naturally, during the systematic reinstallation of all the applications i use, the problem came back and i was actually able to find the root cause. AND IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU!!!

dramatic overtones aside, this was a pain in the ass and the fix is easy. sure, it turns out i didn't have to wipe the machine, but from my pain i pass on my knowledge. the short and dirty is this: on vista and win7 (at the least) zone alarm (freebie version) and norton anti-virus 2010 do not play nicely together. the symptoms are random encoding errors in any browser and all downloaded files erroring out as corrupted (or "not a win32 program"). neither norton nor malwarebytes ever found a virus and the errors did not surface running in safe mode.

anyway, long story short, the problem reared its head as soon as i reinstalled zone alarm. a quick (and more finely tuned than my prior) google search found the same symptoms noted in the zone alarm support forums. i gave the latest beta for zone alarm a try, but it doesn't fix the issue, so it had to go.

ominous portents

system restore...that'll fix my problem(s)! yeah!

oh, wait, the restore failed...that cannot be a good thing.

looks like it's time to dig out the vista disks and reinstall the fucking OS. joy.

dear garmin mapupdater

you suck. you may well be the shittiest piece of software i've had to use in a long, long time. here are a few tips:

1. if i select "download to computer only", then you should continue to function after i've unplugged the fucking GPS from the USB cable. one would think the entire purpose of this option is to allow the download to proceed without the device attached. otherwise, why offer it?
2. did you implement the windows file copy status bar for your download progress? newsflash, IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO GO BACKWARDS
3. is your server actually a decrepit laptop running a pentium 2 chip in some admin's basement in taiwan? seriously, i just ran a network speed test and my current download speed is 21 Mbps. why is my download speed from your server ranging from 24 Kbps to a max of 2 Mbps?
4. related, are you just not telling me the file size because you know i'll be wondering why it is taking more than a few minutes to download?

really, this is awful. i left the fucking thing running all night, and of course it errored out. this is painful and makes me hate those who created it. i had no idea it was possible to complicate a fucking file download this much.

EDIT: okay, so maybe it's not all your fault, map updater. a big fuck you to vista as well. and possibly my network adapters. at least at work i get paid to try and figure this shit out.

hawking the forum, again

hey kids! i've mentioned this before, but i'm going for it again...why not comment in the forum? you have the option, and there are some fun and interesting conversations going on in there. check it out. registration is easy and painless. honest.

semi-informational message

this is for those of you who've wandered over here from somewhere other than WikiFray (ie: people who didn't know me before i started this page). first, if i've not personally welcomed you, i do so now. second, you may have noticed the option to comment in a forum, instead of traditional blogger-style comments. if you haven't read any comments in the forum, i invite you to do so. not only do you get threaded comments (far easier to navigate), but there are some interesting people to talk to. some assholes and lunatics too, but that's normal as well.

anyway, you have the option, should you choose it. if you like it, you can add the same capability to your page. if you don't, well, then you don't.

disney is evil. and other thoughts

great. so, my internal work IM seems to have lost connectivity. we'll add that to list of today's frustrations. along with the fact that WID never deployed the latest version of our service to the INT box. oh, it went to QA and was released in production last week. but it's still not in INT. what the fuck? we'll tack on to that the request i just got for documentation on this service, so the people who took over maintainence of it (last fucking year) actually have some clue as to what it does.

this is on top of the frustration of not being able to test my own work. seems to be working in lower environments, using the same code. and it doesn't seem to be data driven, as, well, transactions that should hit well established error processing code (ie: none existant policies) aren't going through. i have no information at all as to what is going arwy. which is leading me to believe the transaction just isn't being run at all. bugger.

but what i really want to say is that disney is evil. not just in the usual "disney is evil" sense. they've gone beyond that. today, i saw a commercial for some show called "my friends tigger and pooh". apparently, this is a cgi cartoon about a little red-headed girl who solves crimes with tigger and winnie the pooh. seriously. what in the name of all that is holy is this crap? who thought this would be a good idea? i'm not even a big fan of pooh. but shit like this is just wrong.

disney: dedicating to rooting timeless classics in a very specific time! woo hoo!

i think it's time for a drink.

dear employees, we think you're stupid

looks like work is rolling out a new software release to the office i am technically attached too. and, as is typical, they want everyone to actually turn their machines off for the weekend. but was it really necessary to include this in the email?

You can power down your computer by using the following procedure:

1. Click "Start" in the lower left corner of your computer screen
   
2. Choose "Shut Down"
   
3. In the pull-down menu under “What do you want the computer to do?” make sure "Shut Down" is selected
   
4. Click "Okay"

This will sign you off and power down your computer.

i'm sorry, but that's sort of insulting. do they honestly think people don't turn off their machines because they don't know how? not due to laziness, or not wanting to have to wait for the damn thing to boot up in the morning? sheesh.

yet another work rant

can you sense a trend?

okay...so you want to have your name and address fields to be variable length. fine. that's nice, and thanks for putting a delimiter in there for me. however, you stupid fuckwits, if you then put the data into a fixed length table, you have done NOTHING but make coding more complex.

look at this shit:

* THE FOLLOWING IS THE NAME AND ADDRESS FIELD. IT IS VARIABLE
* LENGTH, WITH A MAXIMUM OF 25 CHARACTERS FOR THE NAME AND
* A MAXIMUM OF 5 LINES OF ADDRESS AND A 5-DIGIT ZIP CODE
* THE FIRST 4 LINES OF ADDRESS MAY HAVE A MAXIMUM OF 25 CHARACTER
* EACH, AND THE FIFTH A MAXIMUM OF 20 CHARACTERS. THE LAST
* CHARACTER OF THE NAME AND EACH ADDRESS LINE IS FOLLOWED BY AN
* ASTERISK. THE LAST NAME IS FIRST AND IS
* ITSELF FOLLOWED BY AN ASTERISK.
10 NAME-ADDR-AREA.
20 NAME-ADDRESS-X PIC X OCCURS 156 TIMES.

fine, fine. but, you see, if you want a variable length table in cobol, you need to write: OCCURS 1 TO 156 TIMES DEPENDING ON NAME-ADDR-AREA-LEN. or somthing akin to that. otherwise, you have a fixed length table. such as above. in which case, you'd have been better off just defining the fucking field names so i could do simple moves, instead of having to write a routine to unstring the fucking name from the address. more over, if you and moving variable length data into fixed fields, there is no point. a variable table takes up the maximum defined size in memory when you run the program. you aren't saving any space in working memory. you certainly aren't saving space in the database. the only time variable length tables are useful in cobol is when you have a variable length OUTPUT. otherwise, it's just a pain in the ass.

i hate these morons.