Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Firewalls
The Exeter system is taking an ever dimmer view of Mr G's subsidiary sites. Blocked by certificate error when trying to go in directly - but get in OK when I go via a search and click on the search result. With the caveat that the page header seems to have got corrupted and does not respond to Windows refresh. When I was in the world of work, I had colleagues who went gray over the mysteries of firewall policies and the somewhat (and necessarily) pedantic style of the policy holders.
Apart from including in the foregoing 'work of world' for 'world of work' in the foregoing, the last couple of days have been a time for senior moments, after something of a holiday. Must be the country air - the usual effect of which is to bring me down with a cold. First, coming off the Matford roundabout, heading east down the Exter by-pass, just miss riding into the side of a bus which I had not seen. The underlying problem being that it was one of those roundabouts where you do not have right of way, in the ordinary sense, on exit. There is an additional lane on one's left through which people turning left can speed, without let or hindrance. Leaving the unhappy push bike rider between two potentially fast moving lanes of traffic. And the neck not being as supple as it once was, did not get it around far enough to cop the bus bearing down on me. Bus driver made interesting sign as he passed. (The Devon roads people would no doubt say that I should have been using their expensive and generally spiffing cycle lane - but somewhat inconvenient at that particular point). Second, not quite as serious, attempted to put my short range glasses on before I had got around to removing the long range ones. Fortunately, both they and my eyes survived. Although I seem to remember that this time, I bought a spare frame against such eventualities. Last time, I had perfectly good lenses and a perfectly bad frame, but the frame had moved on some weeks since I bought it and the perfectly good lenses were junk. And third, I failed to correctly remember the number of my PC for the 5 seconds it takes to walk across to the librarians to get some more time. Luckily they were indulgent: they were not able to recover the 30 minutes from the lady to whom I had inadvertantly gifted them, but they did give my PC 30 minutes for free. Perhaps she was a season ticket holder.
Dreams as well. Woke up this morning having had something of an altercation in a railway, probably underground railway ticket office. When I arrived there was queues at most of the machines but not at this one. Not smelling a rat I make for it. Get there and read the instructions while a middle aged (same age as me, that is) couple make a detirmined effort to push in. This miserable looking wife with an old red coat comes in first from the right and while I am dealing with her the husband comes in from the right. I think I resorted to foul language and the scene shifted to me trying to work the machine. It turned out to be somewhat ancient and tricky and required one to click through a whole lot of stuff in a little glass fronted window - maybe one inch square - where the return coin slot should have been in an attempt to tell the thing that I wanted to go to Epsom. While I was grappling with the window problem also became aware that the thing only took ancient money, with which I was unsupplied. Give up in disgust and wake up. On thinking about the dream on waking, associate to a regular dream I have about adventures on the Northern Line and which may have been mentioned here before - although a quick search does not reveal where. Must find myself a sub-editor who only speaks when spoken to and then only to agree with me - while at the same time tactfully dealing with spelling and other mistakes.
The last couple of days have also been a time for detective work. Poking around in a reasonably complicated program trying to find the reason for odd behaviours. Quite hard to get the right balance between eye-balling the thing and running test shots. While the right test shot sometimes reveals all, getting the test shot right can take some time. Maintaining a decent test environment is a bore. Chasing all the strange hares and theories one comes up with along the way becomes a bore - although there are quite often unexpected benefits. Unpicking all the diagnostic code one wound up having to put into the test often leads to more errors. All this good stuff which someone else used to have to worry about! All in all, as I am sure I have mentioned before, rather like some of those television detectives. The ones that get things wrong until the last minute that is - say Wexford or Morse - not Holmes, Poirot or Father Brown (to be fair, this last not having been a television detective, at least not as far as I can remember) - who thrash around in just the same way until they light on the right path, just before the end of the episode. The Holmes crew seem to solve problems without taking many false turnings at all. The odd one, just to prove they are human, but with little of the angst of the Wexford crew.
My own detective work particularly frustrating today in that after much faffing about I am more or less sure what the answer is. But also that I am never going to prove it. Far too much time and bother involved in doing a rerun which will be close enough to the original to reproduce the problem. So I won't bother -while remaining irritated. Most unprofessional - if I were not retired.
Apart from including in the foregoing 'work of world' for 'world of work' in the foregoing, the last couple of days have been a time for senior moments, after something of a holiday. Must be the country air - the usual effect of which is to bring me down with a cold. First, coming off the Matford roundabout, heading east down the Exter by-pass, just miss riding into the side of a bus which I had not seen. The underlying problem being that it was one of those roundabouts where you do not have right of way, in the ordinary sense, on exit. There is an additional lane on one's left through which people turning left can speed, without let or hindrance. Leaving the unhappy push bike rider between two potentially fast moving lanes of traffic. And the neck not being as supple as it once was, did not get it around far enough to cop the bus bearing down on me. Bus driver made interesting sign as he passed. (The Devon roads people would no doubt say that I should have been using their expensive and generally spiffing cycle lane - but somewhat inconvenient at that particular point). Second, not quite as serious, attempted to put my short range glasses on before I had got around to removing the long range ones. Fortunately, both they and my eyes survived. Although I seem to remember that this time, I bought a spare frame against such eventualities. Last time, I had perfectly good lenses and a perfectly bad frame, but the frame had moved on some weeks since I bought it and the perfectly good lenses were junk. And third, I failed to correctly remember the number of my PC for the 5 seconds it takes to walk across to the librarians to get some more time. Luckily they were indulgent: they were not able to recover the 30 minutes from the lady to whom I had inadvertantly gifted them, but they did give my PC 30 minutes for free. Perhaps she was a season ticket holder.
Dreams as well. Woke up this morning having had something of an altercation in a railway, probably underground railway ticket office. When I arrived there was queues at most of the machines but not at this one. Not smelling a rat I make for it. Get there and read the instructions while a middle aged (same age as me, that is) couple make a detirmined effort to push in. This miserable looking wife with an old red coat comes in first from the right and while I am dealing with her the husband comes in from the right. I think I resorted to foul language and the scene shifted to me trying to work the machine. It turned out to be somewhat ancient and tricky and required one to click through a whole lot of stuff in a little glass fronted window - maybe one inch square - where the return coin slot should have been in an attempt to tell the thing that I wanted to go to Epsom. While I was grappling with the window problem also became aware that the thing only took ancient money, with which I was unsupplied. Give up in disgust and wake up. On thinking about the dream on waking, associate to a regular dream I have about adventures on the Northern Line and which may have been mentioned here before - although a quick search does not reveal where. Must find myself a sub-editor who only speaks when spoken to and then only to agree with me - while at the same time tactfully dealing with spelling and other mistakes.
The last couple of days have also been a time for detective work. Poking around in a reasonably complicated program trying to find the reason for odd behaviours. Quite hard to get the right balance between eye-balling the thing and running test shots. While the right test shot sometimes reveals all, getting the test shot right can take some time. Maintaining a decent test environment is a bore. Chasing all the strange hares and theories one comes up with along the way becomes a bore - although there are quite often unexpected benefits. Unpicking all the diagnostic code one wound up having to put into the test often leads to more errors. All this good stuff which someone else used to have to worry about! All in all, as I am sure I have mentioned before, rather like some of those television detectives. The ones that get things wrong until the last minute that is - say Wexford or Morse - not Holmes, Poirot or Father Brown (to be fair, this last not having been a television detective, at least not as far as I can remember) - who thrash around in just the same way until they light on the right path, just before the end of the episode. The Holmes crew seem to solve problems without taking many false turnings at all. The odd one, just to prove they are human, but with little of the angst of the Wexford crew.
My own detective work particularly frustrating today in that after much faffing about I am more or less sure what the answer is. But also that I am never going to prove it. Far too much time and bother involved in doing a rerun which will be close enough to the original to reproduce the problem. So I won't bother -while remaining irritated. Most unprofessional - if I were not retired.
# posted by Jim @ 6:20 AM 
