Jeff Billimek’s Journal

I worked from home again today. I couldn’t do the release 4.1 install of our code because management wanted to keep testing another fix in the SI environment. So instead I created a new tuxedo domain to host the enterprise reference services in development. This moves us away from an older shared domain and will hopefully keep things more stable since this is a dedicated domain for the references services. It’s a long-overdue change.

Also today I completed the quarterly backup. I’m now using unison in conjunction with the encrypted hard drives to do ’smarter’ backups instead of just copying a bunch of files. In theory, unison will check both the local HD and the encrypted backup HD to determine what needs to be copied. I have turned to unison in order to do the actual backup. I tried rsync at first but like the flexibility that unison provides with excluding certain files and paths and following links on a case-by-case basis. For example, below is the prf file that I use to backup the mp3s. They are housed on a share that another computer serves up, but that is encapsulated with a symlink in my unison home directory (/home/Jeff/unison/mp3s). The same is true with the encrypted HD mount which is also pointed to a symlink (/home/Jeff/unison/mp3s-backup):

# Include the contents of the file common
include common
 
# force local root to win out
force = /home/Jeff/unison/mp3s
 
# Roots of the synchronization
root = /home/Jeff/unison/mp3s
root = /home/Jeff/unison/mp3s-backup
 
ignore = Name .DS_Store
ignore = Name .localized
ignore = Name $RECYCLE.BIN
ignore = Name desktop.ini
ignore = Name Thumbs.db

One of the main reasons I went this route is because the built-in backup utility in Vista is a complete piece of garbage. it’s a huge departure from the limited functionality of the XP-based backup utility. The new Vista backup utility gives no control or choice. It decides for itself what files you want backed-up - you have absolutely no choice in the matter.

Jen’s Mom and aunt Sandy came over at around 5:30pm I served them something to drink and fed them cheese and crackers until Jen got home. We all went out to dinner to M&T. Jen got a glass of red wine that we both didn’t care for. I ordered the $26 meatloaf and while it was good, it wasn’t $26 good.

After waking up semi-early we loaded the old Christmas tree into the car and dropped it off at the recycling place at Home Depot. Next we went running on the Silver Comet trail. It was a beautiful day - sunny and warm.

Once we finished we went back home to shower and change. Later we went over to Jen’s parents house for dinner. It was an awesome dinner. We had salad, bread, lightly breaded moist chicken, a meatloaf that Sandy made, and a turtle desert that Jen made. It was all quite delicious.

After dinner I used Bob’s laptop to log into the home machine running Vista to finish reading an article I was looking at before we left the house. After a while Jen and I went home I stayed up a bit and discovered a DNA problem withbillimek .com. From what I could discern, it wasn’t working correctly since about 2am this morning. Once I discovered it, I was about to sent atrouble ticket to site5 tech support, but as I was typing out the ticket, the problem was fixed - great timing!

I worked from home today partly because I’m battling a cold and want to take it easy. It was actually a very busy day. I finalized the release 4.1 implementation plan with James E. and we got the RFC approved, so hopefully everything will go smoothly on Monday. I also crafted a unit-test strategy for the daylight saving time change. I collaborated with some of the other developers and we came up with a battery of test suites to verify if the DST patches work.

The issue is that for the first time in over twenty years, the date that daylight saving time occurs is different this year. Instead of being on the first Sunday in April, it will now be the second Sunday in March. This change (a law enacted in 2005 and beginning this year) requires patches to the operating systems and java. JDK/JRE 1.5 is already complainant, but anything older than JDK 1.5 needs to be patched. We came up with a series of tests which show when DST occurs this year for the following scenarios for our HPUX environment:

• Java 1.4.1
• Java 1.4.2
• Java 1.5
• C++ Standard Library
• C++ RogueWave Library
• ‘date’ shell command

I wrapped them all up into a script and have it packaged in a tar file that we can deploy on whatever server we need to test the patches on.

I also dealt with a lot of emails and worked with Vasu for a couple of hours getting his Makefile changes incorporated into our master Makefiles which are included by all other makefiles. He is working on a small project to convert our dataservices from using Oracle to now be using DB2. We do a pre-compile step that needs to be modified. Currently we use the proc compiler from Oracle. Going forward we will be using the DB2 precompiler (the C++ equivalent to sqlj). My changes seemed to work so it will mean that there will be minimal changes to the local makefiles for each project being rebuilt.

One thing I always push for is to eliminate duplicate code & redundancy, so instead of having all of the same ’stuff’ in all of the local makefiles (we probably have over 100), we have as much as possible up in some master makefiles that are included and used as templates. It’s something I came up with years ago and we still use it today. I’m actually pretty impressed how well the approach has held up considering that I didn’t know a single thing about makefiles when I did all of this - I just learned as I went.

I stopped working around 6pm and took a shower and got dressed just as Jen got home. We worked together to get the house ready for our ‘Game Night’ tonight. We’re having a bunch of friends over to play Pictionary. I wish I was feeling better, but can’t do anything about that.

(The dining room with all of the food)

We had a great time. Katie, Chris, Lynne, Tremayne, and Tracy came over. Jen put some large sheets of whiteboard-type contact paper on the windows that we used dry-erase markers to do our drawings. We played three games (broken out into two teams each time and mixed-up the teams after every game).

Jen also prepared some horderves and drinks. It was really nice. At the very end we decided to come up with some really difficult things for the opposing teams to draw. My team (Katie, Chris, and I) came up with some things like: “Abstract, Oxymoron, & Personality”. The other team came up with some words like: “Mozart, & Tai-Chi” for us to draw. It was extremely difficult but fun. I’m looking forward to the next ‘game night’ which should be hosted by Clint & Erin.

(Jennifer looking happy)

Today Jen left early without me.  She headed up to the Woodstock area to meet with Katie so they could go to the gym together.  She was also going to take a few things to her house because the real estate agent is having an open house.  She’s going to be up in that part of town all day and I’m going to drive up later to meet her at her parent’s house this evening.

At around 6pm I left and drove up to Jen’s parent’s house.  We’re all having dinner up there tonight to celebrate Jen’s Dad’s birthday.  Everyone was already there when I arrived.  Scott was in the garage changing the exhaust system on his Porsche and then we had dinner.

Jen and I went to the group class at the gym this morning.  Katie met us there.  Afterwards we had lunch with Katie at Jason’s Deli at Cumberland Mall.

Afterwards we parted ways with Katie and Jen wanted to do some shopping.  I was low on gas so filled up at Costco while Jen went into the mall.  I met her inside at Express. Shopping is a very boring activity for me.  Next we went to a little jeweler shop to get Jennifer’s necklace fixed.  While we waited, we headed over to a shoe store where some Asian people had a kiosk set up advertising massages.  To entice people to buy a massage, they were giving free ten-minute massages.  Jen and I  both got one.

After the mall we went to Costco and dropped a lot of money on groceries and other household items.  Then we went home.  I did a lot of stuff for work during the day today.

In the evening we had dinner with Tremayne and Tracy for Tremayne’s birthday at a Japanese place nearby.  They wanted to go rollerskating afterwards but Jen and I passed.  Instead we headed over to Erin’s condo where we met up with Clint, Erin, and Denise.

We had some drinks and played Guitar Hero for the first time.  What a fun game!  Later we switched to a karaoke-style game called American Idol.  Because Jen and I cannot carry a tune to save our lives, this wasn’t as fun.

Eventually we went home.  It was a nice night.

I’m really fed up with the Canon rebate thing.  After waiting a month, there was still no update on my rebate status.  I called them again and this time they tried to tell me that the UPC code was invalid which is totally untrue.  I know for a fact that I mailed in the correct UPC code.  In fact, I mailed in everything that looked like a UPC code from the box.

So I did some research and found several threads on the dpreview.com message boards from other angry Canon customers experiencing similar problems with the Young America rebate company.  One guy discovered that he was able to get positive results by calling Canon directly - bypassing the rebate company.  I called Canon using the phone number that this guy provided and was immediately connected with a helpful girl who took all of my information and promised to call me back in 2 business days.  With Young America, they had me call them back after 4 weeks.