My Windows 7 laptop was finally nuked. It was only a matter of time before something got to it -- Windows is a virus vector hell.

I'm downloading Debian for my Lenovo IdeaPad Z580 -- I hope it works. I've never tested the system for Debian compatability, though Lenovo has a good reputation for it.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure it's going to mean losing my glorious 192/24 audio playback, as I can only get 44.1/16 working on the desktop despite it having a HD soundchip. I'm going to miss that...

More to the point, I won't be able to do any further work with Oracle, Sybase ASE, or SQL Server for my pet project. Such is life. What's there at this point works; someone else will just have to pick up the ball for those databases.

I love Amazon reviews:

A review on a scale explains how (cheaper) scales provide repeatable numbers.

People love repeatable numbers. Consistency is more important than accuracy. Of course some get the two mixed up. But that's okay, as long as you get what you want.

(Cheap) bathroom scales are affected by slight differences in foot placement. Another scale compensates it otherwise. Other people just go for three consistent weightings.

Similar to the 80/20 Rule, perhaps, most people just want a decision made for them. Sure, we all know the numbers change, but which do i use? Three weightings? That's unscientific! Proximity to the last time? That's silliness! Yes, what if the manufacturer of the scale is willing to do just that for you? Finally, an accurate, consistent scale!

Currently, it has 12,639 out of 15,649 5-star reviews. That's ~80%. Who woulda thought?

Leaving the office yesterday, i got in at the 6th floor. First it stopped at the 5th and a man got on. At the 4th floor, another man and woman entered. From there we went straight down the other 4 floors unabated.

Mr. 4th floor recognized Mr. 5th floor and they chatted. Moments before the gates to freedom something like this transpired:

Mr 4th floor: "Now off to the gym to say hello to all those 2015 resolutions."
Mr 5th floor: encourages him that he'll be able to keep them.
Mr 4th floor: "No, i have no problem with the gym. I mean all the other people."

For the love of all that is holy, please do NOT automatically select shit from a dropdown list if I'm typing and a dropdown opens up underneath where the mouse pointer just happens to be idling on the screen.

Chrome: This. Means. YOU.

Overheard a coworker in mid sentence, "but if we were talking about pesos, there'd be _a lot_ more zeroes"

On a side note, i've been at the office for a year. How do i know? Building access was denied. Happy anniversary...

A friend pointed me to Study proves we CAN see âinvisibleâ(TM) infrared light.

I like to customize my email addresses. (parts 2 and 3 are not as relevant here.) The problem is, not all websites accept this format. Somehow the extra period throws them for a loop and either i get no response from them or they reject it from the outset.

So, like Froman's comment i started using + which is supported in GMail.

That all worked great for a while. Recently, however, many websites are rejecting the plus sign! Worse, some sites that used to accept it, no longer do. For example, Barnes and Noble used to accept it as my login email contains a plus sign. No more. I had to create a new account to login. Part of their stupidity is putting sign-in and create account on the same form, so the validation routines validates email addresses that are already registered. But, wait, don't buy yet. We'll throw in a free stupidity. Free nookbooks now require you to have a credit card listed. Really?!

It's as if some moron wrote code without checking the RFC and somehow that code became standard. The beauty of this is that whereas emails to sub-domains are now supported, plus signs are not. Flippity flop. Luckily, i can do both.

Service Pack 6 provides move up/down functionality for the Chains for all of the supported databases. Note that the RAM storage does not support Chains or complex object deletes at all -- it's intended for high volume read/update/delete data, such as the call record information for an Asterisk or FreeSwitch PBX system, or the internals of MSS Code Factory itself.

There are some critical bugs fixed with Service Pack 6, including cache integrity bugs that were discovered during testing of the move up/down functionality.

With this release, I think I'm pretty much done with MSS Code Factory 1.11. I can't think of any more functions I'd want to add that I have experience with. Sure I could implement proper login security with hashing algorithms, a JEE server to receive and respond to X(ml)Msg requests, and polish the prototype GUI some more, but that's really not my forte. I spent 30 years as a back end database programmer, tuning servers and wringing every last bit of performance out of database engines that I could.

MSS Code Factory 1.11 now incorporates everything I ever learned about making an RDBMS sing and dance. It provides all the functionality points that I was ever asked to deliver to a front end application programming team, and does it all automagically from a Business Application Model.

It's been 18 years of long hours working on this project to get to this point. The idea was around even longer (I came up with the concept way back in 1987, before I'd even had any experience with data modelling tools.)

Service Pack 6 is, in essence, my life's work. My magnum opus. I have climbed my mountain, and the view is great.

http://msscodefactory.sourceforge.net

Woman can keep $10G ring reminds me of another court ruling (from another state.)

Friday Philosophy - Is Dave Working?

And the part about the backspace or delete button. This guy is scary. :)

Well, Apple just refreshed the Mac Mini. I was actually waiting for the update because i have a 2011 Mac Mini and upgrades are usually nice.

I switched to the Mac because i got sick of Windows with all their changes. There's the ribbon, the attempt at removing the start menu, the reorganizing of the Control Panel, and the overall homogenization of the desktop and handheld UI, which i want to be different. After disliking Vista, not liking Windows 7, and being horrified by Windows 8, i just gave up. Now i run OSX on my Mac Mini which, for the most part, i find to be fun.

After my conversion, i realized what OSX users had that they could be upset about. First and foremost, Apple is not responsive. Find a bug, they'll probably fix it in the next release, if they care. For me, the Speakable Items bug was the worst, because i wanted it, with a multiple monitor bug being annoying as well. The former has been fixed in Yosemite, luckily someone noticed.

That call upgrades into play. Apple now offers them for free, but it's take it or leave it. Like those blue scroll bars? Too bad, they removed them. Like something else? You can keep them as long as they want them. Yosemite changes the UI giving it a flat look which the community seem divided on. I dislike it so much ihave decided to not upgrade to it. Between it's ugliness and the push to make it like the handhelds, i'm back to my problem with Windows. Oh well.

But now comes the clincher. The Mac Mini has soldered RAM. My current Mac Mini has 16 GB RAM that i bought myself for significantly less than what Apple would have charged. I would not want to limit my next Mac to 16GB nor pay Apple some ludicrously large amount for it either. On it's own this is a bad move. Added to the flat look, and i no longer want a Mac.

So, my next computer will probably run Linux. Question is, should i go back to Debian (i don't think i can handle Slackware anymore) or use one of them newfangled distros. Well, i have some time before i need to upgrade to Linux again. And who knows what will happen?

A friend sent me a link to a synopsis of work done on a 13th century treatise that has theories about cosmology very close to the Big Bang and Mutliverse theories.

It's amazing how the old is new. Or is that the new is old?

It's amazing how many friends and fans i have that no longer post. Well, on second thought, it actually isn't that amazing. But, when i sent the voting fairy to do her job, she had a hard time finding posts to moderate!

Nonetheless, she got the job done. Though, noone left her any presents under their posts.

MSS Code Factory is a model-to-code development tool that provides Java 7 using JDBC and stored procedures for DB/2 LUW, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and Sybase ASE.

Service Pack 1 corrects defects in the manufactured database schema installation scripts, the core Java ORM objects, the stored procedures, and the JDBC layer. It also adds in the production of an XML messaging based communications framework for doing client-server or web development (you have to code the transport layer, but the message parsers and processing are provided.)

Service Pack 1 also provides a prototype Swing GUI that can be used as-is for performing demos and walkthroughs of a business application model for users, rather than counting on users to understand ERD or UML diagrams. The prototype is entirely factory and interface based, so it can form the basis of a custom user interface by either subclassing the manufactured GUI components produced, or by replacing them wholesale with JInternalFrame and JPanel instances as appropriate (the only requirement is that they implement the interfaces specified by the manufactured objects.)

The source code for the project is hosted at github, but the main project is on SourceForge at http://msscodefactory.sourceforge.net.

The project has been under research and development since Java 1.1 was released in 1997, with the past two years focusing on the 1.11 release.

UIs are just getting worse and worse. Things are now bigger and larger, colorized even. "We really think you want to click this" has taken precedence over usability. I feel like i need to be an idiot to use such software.

I was in the Quicken For Mac 2015 Beta. At one time i reported a bug that the back button was disabled. But, as it turns out, just because a button is greyed out and the other button is big and red does not mean the button is disabled. Really?!? No, seriously, really?!?!

I went Citibank to pay a credit card. I had to look for a minute to find the "MAKE A PAYMENT" button. I saw the two other options, which are links and in camel case, easily. The payment option is different in three ways! It is a button, the colors are inverted, and it is in caps. I think my brain tuned it as if it were spam. It's as if i had to refocus on the page to see it.

Oracle changed their forums again. The old, old software was good. Then they moved to Jive, which was so bad i left the forums. Eventually i came back, as the pros outweighed the cons. Well, they did it again, and this new software is just plain terrible. Not only is there a huge bar on top to tell you where you are and where you can go, the site itself took a greyish look, except for buttons that are red. The red pulls my eyes (basic design principle) and is inconsistent. I use Element Hiding Helper to block some stuff/ now. I only stay with Firefox because of the addons.

Windows 8 has that big screen to choose application. I can't find anything. What was Microsoft thinking? Luckily, i can search control panel to find things, since they moved everything around again. Sometimes i remember the executable's name (e.g. appwiz.cpl) and can windows-r it, but i feel so stupid searching for something which is categorized, and i don't want to re-learn the new hierarchy. Though i have switched to the mac, i am stuck with Windows at the office (7, currently, modified to work like XP) and to support people in the community. I'm even a little scared about the mac, as 10.10's flat look might just be a harbinger or the "one UI" stupidity. I want my devices to look different! Different types of devices are used differently.

I am befuddled by these and similar changes. Changing the color of buttons has three problems. One, the color may not be noted by the colorblind. Two, color pulls the eyes. Three, changing the looks of similar items can be misinterpreted as the items not belonging to the same group. An example of this is Window's 7 Explorer which shows the current selected item as its icon. I often do not register that an explorer windows opened to the desktop (shows computer) and another opened to a directory (shows folder) are both from the same program. I have opened multiple explorer windows on many occasions because of this. Or maybe they don't expect anyone to use the keyboard and alt-tab anymore.

Web accessibility has always been neglected to some extent. But of late it seems to be rejected entirely. I feel as if control is being removed as some designer decides what it is i should be doing and hiding the other options. It is frustrating. I want to scream at this idiotic trend, though i don't know if they are stupid or just plain ignorant. Did someone think this approach was a good idea and others blindly followed?

One refreshing website is PerlMonks. Every once in a while someone starts a discussion modernizing the UI or the like. The replies usually mention that PM wants functionality and many things can be changed in Display Settings anyway. So, at least one site has people that use their brains. A diminishing trend, for sure.