Tony's Microsoft Access Blog : Wry Humour maybe

The idiots at Pitney-Bowes

Tony — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:00:05 GMT

I keep getting phone calls from Pitney-Bowes every three to six months or so trying to rent me a postage machine for $x per month. Every time I tell them that I send out maybe one business related letter a month. If that. Maybe two a year. I’m not at all interested in renting a postage machine.

So today I get the phone call again. I tell the lady the above. She then states “But sir, you can advertise …” I hung up.

Java Takes Down the Network

Tony — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:07:29 GMT

Java Takes Down the Network is a fascinating story about a timed, intermittent network outage. In this case though I can't believe they still had coax Ethernet cabling. Well, actually I can.

Jim, who I've mentioned before, stated that when his current office was wired for networking the high school kid run the cable across not one but fluorescent light fixtures. Worse the cable was right over the ballast. Jim had been having the occasional network disconnect message but it was a misleading message.

Relevance to Access? This kind of network problem can easily cause Access corruptions. When I look at the Corrupt Microsoft Access MDB Causes - Hardware page I stated "If you are running BNC/coax throw it out. However this highly unlikely these days thankfully." And I wrote that probably about ten years ago now.

I've personally seen corruption happening in a old house renovated to be office space with an overloaded electrical system. It was so bad that the server and every work station had a UPS. I was over visiting and suddenly there was some corruption on a table right there. I went and looked at the server and saw it had a UPS. I couldn't find the hub/switch as it was hidden behind a filing cabinet. I told them it needed a UPS. The network guy said it didn't. I insisted back. They purchased a UPS and I never heard from them again.

(That office was so crowded they had two smallish desks in the small bedrooms. To get past one person sitting at one desk they had to move out of the way.)

Unusual software bugs

Tony — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:26:34 GMT

Thanks to fellow Access MVP Graham R Seach for showing that these kinds of bugs really do have a name. And that it's not just me.

"Unusual software bugs are a class of software bugs that are considered exceptionally difficult to understand and repair. There are several kinds, mostly named after scientists who discovered counterintuitive things."

Heisenbug, Bohrbug, Mandelbug and Phase of the Moon bug are among the bugs mentioned.

A Training Issue

Tony — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:36:28 GMT

A Training Issue <chuckle> Folks much younger than me won't necessarily get this one as they've never seen punched cards.

I recall a client nearly thirty years ago telling me how they'd lose data if the tapes snapped. They'd splice the tapes back together but would be missing a block or two of data.

Tales from the Interview: The Receptionist Test

Tony — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:27:12 GMT

Tales from the Interview: The Receptionist Test This is brilliant if you are hiring a tech support person.

A friend, we'll call her Sheila, was telling me of how she worked in a telephone call centre and after a number of months was promoted to screening calls for executive positions. Part of Sheila's job was to score the callers on their attitude talking to her. One call in particular the person was very impatient and rather rude. After about the fourth or fifth question he clued in that Sheila wasn't just the dumb receptionist but doing a short interview. He immediately changed attitudes and put on the facade of being really friendly person. And she dutifully recorded all that. We can only assume he never got the job.

Hmm, that reminds of the time I was catching a flight from Calgary to Edmonton in the evening in the mid 1980s. I could tell from the folks in front of me that the flight I was hoping to be on was canceled and the next one was in two hours. A guy starting yelling at the ticket agent and shouted he was off to TimeAir, the competitor's. I knew the competitor ran much smaller and much less frequently operated equipment. Their gates were also at the other end of the airport.

So now it's my turn. I ask the same ticket agent "So let me guess. Your competitor is all full up this evening." She smiles and agrees. "So that jerk is going to be walking to the other end of the airport and going to have to come back, right?" She smiles even wider and again agrees with me. We chuckle. I just ask her for the next available seat and go have supper.

An amusing, errr interesting, list of Honorifics

Tony — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:55:49 GMT

Need a list of the possible honorifics for your database? All the possible combinations of Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr/etc? See Harrods.com Account Registration and click on the Title combo box.

I'd never heard of Begum before. Where is Adm and R. Adm?

And what happens if you're a doctor and something else? Nah, lets not go there.

Stunningly weak Yahoo password security

Tony — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:24:56 GMT

I was wondering just how the hacker got into Palin's account so easily.

"Rubico claimed the actual intrusion into Palin's account was a relatively easy matter. It began after Rubico read news accounts claiming Palin used gov.palin@yahoo.com in her official capacity of governor of Alaska - which, if true, would skirt the state's open government laws. Rubico then hacked Yahoo's password recovery feature. In 45 minutes, he had her birth date, and two possible zip codes, and soon after that online research revealed Palin met her spouse, Todd, while they were students at Wasilla High School, in Alaska."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation_continues/

What is the name of my favourite pet, mothers maiden name, etc, etc. Gotta love all those password recovery questions. I frequently put in words that some, including my mother, would consider offensive.

I was extremely upset when some genealogy buff put my full name and birth date on a web page a number of years ago. Along with my parents and siblings information. That page is gone now. And thankfully genealogy software doesn't do that by default any more.

Back in the days of bulletin board systems in the early '90s a friend found that many of the local BBS sysop's used the same password on their own BBS's as well as when logged into other BBS's. Duh! He was happy to see that that didn't work for me.

How many other website's use similar systems? Hopefully they're all having a massive "Oh sh*t" moment. Including the banks.

Application Rewrites after Acquisitions: How Large Software Companies Destroy Startup Value

Tony — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:22:49 GMT

Reading Application Rewrites after Acquisitions: How Large Software Companies Destroy Startup Value made me think of a decade or two ago how Computer Associates were famous for the same thing. Then later it was Symantec. One comment I read somewhere, somewhen went along the lines of "As soon as you read that XYZ, big software conglomerate, purchased a product you had a year or two to find an equivalent product by a smaller software organization. "

I feel the reason is even simpler. The best folks in the small acquired software company, from management to developers to testers and others, start leaving due to the clash of corporate culture and ossification of the new corp culture.

Actually that applies to all acquired corps. Not just software corps.

I saw the same thing with a client from the 80s who was a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) wholesaler and was acquired by a company which, once you traced through the corp ownership, was on the world wide Fortune 10 list. For the while after acquisition by they weren't too bad but the senior managers at the former head office in Vancouver started leaving as did the branch managers. As did all the employees at the former head office. After five years there was only two employees left in the head office from when they were acquired. I recall visiting that employee in the office. The difference in moral and attitude was striking.

Then the head office in Toronto, who was running a very different business, decided to convert the sales order, accounts receivable, and accounting app onto their older, slower and much more cumbersome system. Which had much reduced functionality compared to the HVAC's system. Thus folks had to go back to manual systems in some cases.

Mind you, presumably the acquired corps owners made a healthy profit. And I don't blame the owners of the HVAC company either. The owners were two brothers who wanted to get their money out of the business before they died so they could enjoy retirement. They tried employee ownership but there wasn't enough interest or funds available to buy out the brothers.

Minor milestone

Tony — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:34:38 GMT

According to my Google Groups profile I have a little more than 35,000 newsgroup postings. Now they're not all Access related of course. But then I have some postings to the comp.databases.ms-access newsgroup under an older email accounts, ttoews@agt.net, so close enough. (Google groups has some severe problems with postings from back then as they are missing many/most/almost all although the count is likely correct.)

Even at that I was asking and answering questions in the Access Echo (similar to newsgroups) on my Fidonet BBS (Bulletin Board System) before then even. I first electronically met Larry Linson, fellow Access MVP, in 1993 or 1994 or so on Fidonet. We finally met as MVPs at Redmond a few years back.

Moral: I need a life. <smile>

I should mention that other MVPs do have considerably more postings than I do. For example John Vinson is incredible. Over a thousand postings some months. And he's quite the punster.

The Laptop Drive of Shame

Tony — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:14:19 GMT

The Laptop Drive of Shame <chuckle> Fortunately I've never done that.

However twice I've left the power adapter home. Well once at the motel room so no big deal. But once I left it at home and went out of town. So I had to have it placed on the Greyhound. <sigh> I use a Virtual machine installed on a clients tower to work that day.

I've been meaning to purchase a spare laptop power adapter or two but just haven't gotten around to it.

Googling your first name

Tony — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:18:53 GMT

Needless to say I have a lot of hits with my commonly used name - Tony Toews. However you need to enclose the search in quotes otherwise you'll get a Canadian politician and a Canadian hockey player. Neither of which are a close relative. Undoubtedly they're fourth or fifth cousins three times removed.

However I'm now upset with Google. Again. I've been relegated to the second page on the search results. In the past when searching on my first name only I used to be on the first page. Now I'm on the second page. Number 12. <sigh> What am I doing wrong? <smile>

Now you ask why would you search on your first name only? Jon Udell in his blog posting Your winnings, sir got me to thinking about this.

... hit the big green TRANSMIT button.

Tony — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:53:50 GMT

... hit the big green TRANSMIT button. You know, to transmit it over the stockroom’s intercom. The Free Bird Database. So nice to read that lack of testing backups isn't a problem only in this century. Or indeed the last forty years.

No indexes on a 2.2 million record table?

Tony — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:46:22 GMT

Hastening an Inevitable Now this is truly ridiculous and very worth of a WTF page.

This page also illustrates how CPU speed isn't that important. 150 Mhz systems. Hard drive speed is where you should be spending the money on a server. RAM is also important but relatively inexpensive. Of course I'm over simplifying as there are many other factors such as network interface, switches and so forth.

I had a 10,000 record table of names and addresses in Access 2.0 on a 486. To lookup a name with no index took 25 seconds. Once I added the index it was so fast I couldn't really time it.

The Detention Wizard

Tony — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:59:24 GMT

The Detention Wizard - In this story I blame the school for clearly not choosing a competent software developer. This app has so many problems it's frigging unbelievable.

And regretfully it's an Access based app so it perpetuates the stereotype of Access being a useless product. Although it's not at all clear that the front end is in Access. The first few comments think it was a VB app.

How many flaws? I feel rather ill just starting to itemizing them. "retina-burningly bright colors applied as a gradient background.", "blink", "unlabeled buttons", "support only eight food items"

One amusing comment - "I've always referred to these kinds of apps as "garage apps"". Other comments were very denigrating to VB or Access. <sigh>

Access made the Daily WTF

Tony — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:06:22 GMT

Error'd: It Happens fourth item down. The Subform wizard. And yes, these kinds of mistakes through Access do bug me. However I'm so used to them I just keep on going.

It is clear to me that the testers used short object names. And I, for one, don't. Especially when one of my applications , the welding shop ERP system, had 160 tables, 1200 queries, 450 forms and 350 reports. And one macro.

DailyIdea.tv: Why a Geek Will Steal Your Girlfriend this Year

Tony — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:01:20 GMT

DailyIdea.tv: Why a Geek Will Steal Your Girlfriend this Year

$499 1.5 m RJ45 network cable

Tony — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:28:47 GMT

The AK-DL1 is a "digital audio reproduction" cable. Note the word digital. There are either 1s or 0s going down the cable. No analog signal of varying intensities or "nuances".

Another link - The Joy of Tech - Why premium cables cost so much.

Now of course this isn't to say that digital cables are perfect. A friend's office was being renovated and added to and so he decided to have them check all the cabling. Especially in his office as he was having random network issues with the connection to the server dropping. Well, it turns out that they got a high school kid into to setup the Ethernet cabling because head office was exceedingly cheap and they had to hide some expenses. Turns out the kid ran my friends network cable right over four fluorescent light ballasts. Cable was moved sideways and he's never had a problem since.

Update: It got slash dotted with a direct link to Denon's page. <guffaw> They're going to get slammed. And mocked.

How to Identify Bad CIOs in Their Natural Habitat

Tony — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:42:55 GMT

An interesting article. How to Identify Bad CIOs in Their Natural Habitat Thankfully I've seldom done any work for an outfit with the need for such a title.