Disable stupid error message in XP

One of the things that bothers me is the message that pops up every time in XP asking me if I want to send an error report to Microsoft. No, I do not want to send a message. I have figured out how to turn that off. ;-)

1. Right-click My Computer on the desktop if using the classic Windows start menu (otherwise, right-click My Computer on the start menu)
2. Click Properties
3. In System Properties, go to the Advanced tab
4. Click Error Reporting
5. Click Disable error reporting
6. It's optional whether you want to be informed of critical Windows errors
7. Click Ok > "Ok out of system properties," and this should disable the error reporting

I didn't figure out this for myself. It didn't bother me enough. I got it from a CNET email...

Listening to: Madonna - Don't Tell Me

Sad news

It's been pointed out to me (March 30th post) that we have all lost something that is near and dear to my heart. It's so sad... something that I enjoyed so much is gone now. I'll try and be strong, for all of us. I'm too over come with emotion to write more now.

Listening to: The Refreshments - Banditos

Marriage view points

After some recent active debates here, I was thinking twice about posting this, but I've been thinking about it and wanted to know what other people thought. And if you are posting, don't use any words that I'll have to look up (none of that ad hominem stuff).

I was talking to a child psychologist the other day (in a social setting). She had a theory that woman look for true love, and find someone that they really want to be with and then marry that person. While men will just marry whoever they are close when they decide that they want to settle down.

Now, let me say right now that I don't think that this is true for me. It's just stuck in my head because it's one of those things that never occurred to me, and I don't think it would have either.

Do guys just settle down when they figure that it's that time in their life, or do they really look at it as a life decision and that they want to find that special someone?

Listening to: Space - Fran in Japan

Too much choice

After talking to Liz the other night about an article about having too much choice, I see that slashdot has a story about it. The excerpt of the SciAm article seems really good. I might pick up this month's mag. It's a good mag, a step up from pop sci to be sure, but not out of the "normal" person's reading ability.

Listening to: Buddy Holly - Everyday

And thoughts of kayaks danced in his head...

One thing that I have wanted to get for years has been a kayak. My brothers know this, and just tonight he pointed one at Canadian Tire to me. I don't think that I want one like that. I want a longer sea kayak. Mec has a couple. But I think that I will only get one that's used. Something that I can afford more. After going to the boat show, I was told to check out Rideau Canoe Club, 'cause they have a sale April 8th & 9th. I really think that I'll be going to that event. I just hope that they have something nice, that I fit in. It's not a thing that you want to buy on a whim.

One thing that I was thinking about tonight is when am I going to make the time to go boating more? I'd love to be close to water somewhere and be able to go after work, but I don't see myself living that close to the Ottawa or another body of water for a while. I could go yakking in my ditch, but it gets boring 'cause it's pretty narrow, straight, and the scenery doesn't change too much. Plus the portaging would get tiring after a while... ;-)

Listening to: The Tragically Hip - Twist My Arm

Red to Blue

It looks like people are seriously talking about terraforming Mars. I read most of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series. Pretty good, with some interesting ideas and things that I don't think that I would have thought of. It was a really believable telling how humans would go to and change Mars. A good read.

Do I think that we're ready to go to another planet and start making major changes? No, not really. I think that we're not doing a good enough job on this rock to be allowed to play with another, but I don't think that anyone is going to stop us. Let's just hope that we do it well, without screwing up too much. I don't see anytime soon that we'll be able to travel to other stars, so the 3rd and 4th rocks around the sun I figure is all we have to play with. Maybe one day we're not going to be the only blue jewel around Sol.

Listening to: Moxy Fruvous - Breakfast at Tiffany's

Amedical Idol

Last night I went to Amedical Idol at school. If you didn't guess, it was put on by the med students. It was wonderful. I totally recommend anyone to go see it (tonight's the last night). I think that admission at the door is like 9 $ and it all goes to charity.

I had no idea that so many of the med students were so talented... there was a group of french guys who did this monk-like chant called "Yo-Yo- chanson francophone" or something like that. That was cool because it had a great rhythm. And there was other singing and dancing acts that were also totally great. One of my favourites was The Amazing Matt Balancing Act. And no, they didn't balance some guy named Matt, he did the balancing. On his chin. The first thing that he did was a hockey stick. Pretty cool. Next he did a wok. Cool again, but not extraordinary. Then he did a full sized street bicycle, with the wheel spinning. Damn cool. Then he did a full sized folding table (like the big heavy kind that they have at churchs and bake sales). Remember, he's doing this on his chin. I won't give away what he did at the end, but it was impressive too.

One of the cool things that I sort of missed with my experience at U of O was the professors involvement. Many of their prof's (and deans!) were there, in some of the acts, and some video's making fun of themselves. They all really had a great sense of humour. They did such a good job. Bravo!

Listening to: Matthew Good Band - Strange Days

Friday at last

I'm very glad that it is now Friday... it's been a long week. I'm just amazed by the warm weather. I guess that's what happens in spring...

At work right now we're trying to figure out EJB's a bit better to make use of all the benefits that they can bring to our project. I don't really want to have to build some things manually that I think can be done better with the code that WSAD can generate. Less tests to write since I would mostly trust that code to work very well. My only concern is changing how we are doing it to a (possibly) more convoluted way. Will changing the code to work in a more widely accepted way be better in the long run? I think so. I'll let the EJB's worry about keeping things persistent etc. and just work on building the app.

At the end of this, I think that my skills will be greatly improved (always a good thing) as well of be able to say I worked with / built all kinds of cool things. In so many ways I am lucky to have this job.

Listening to: Massive Attack - Risingson

Presentation went A-Okay ;-)

Today was my first *real* presentation in the working world. I only had 3 slides, but I think that I talked for over 10 minutes. I think that it went really well, since that's what everyone was telling us. ;-) I'm just de-stressed now because I was a little worried that I would freak out or something. And it's good 'cause we'll be using the same presentation many times. And I think that it's great experience. It's not too good if everyone thinks that the developers can't talk or speak in "non-geek". I think that we can off non-geeky enough. I used a couple of analogies that got laughs, and I think more importantly, understanding.

Now we (the developers) can focus on meeting our deliverables. We're not where I would like to be at this point, but I think that it's all under control and we'll be able to meet our milestones. I feel really busy, but not overwhelmed, and I think that makes a world of difference.

Listening to: Theory Of A Deadman - Say I'm Sorry

F%@& parking ticket

Waiting for me at my car tonight was a parking ticket for illegal parking. I was parked at the park-n-ride, not blocking anyone. On inspection, I was actually parking in a hashed area. But I didn't see that when I parked at all because of the amount of salt, ice and snow on the lot. It's even difficult to see the lines when the lot is dry and bare.

Now my question is: Is it worth me fighting the 35 $ ticket? How much time would I have to take off to go to the court date? 1/2 a day? An hour? Do you think that I have a chance? I'm just pissed off about it, but I did park not in a parking spot, even if I didn't know. Ignorance isn't an excuse, but will a judge let me off because of that? I think that I have 15 days to make up my mind... *sigh*

Listening to: Nerf Herder - Courtney

The kind of life that I want

Tonight I went out with Laura to her mentor's house. It was a nice house, with lots of art on the walls, a couple of kids running around, some guinny pigs, a nice big kitchen. The thing that I really liked was how they seemed to be really laid back, relaxed, and seemed to have things really figured out. I am sure that isn't how they feel, but that's the impression that I got.

I went away thinking that that's where I want to be, where I am planning to go. It seems like a really nice life. Now I just have to figure out how to get there. ;-)

I've been thinking about this for a while: how life can be like engineering (or vise versa). For you to know if you are "successful", you have to first figure out what criteria you are going to make that judgement. Does that mean you will have to be an excellent lawyer? Good parent? Welcoming neighbour? You have to figure out what values and characteristics you hold dear and then judge yourself against that. Don't judge yourself against someone else's criteria. In a way what I am saying is to take a TDD approach to life.

Listening to: Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

It's snowing again

I can't really believe it. I thought that winter was over now that it is technically spring. Seesh. I wanted it to warm up a bit so that I could clean up my car. I find that it's hard to be motivated to scrub it when the snow is falling because that means that they are still salting / sanding the roads, so all my work would have to be redone very soon. Ah well.

I went to the car show yesterday with my eldest brother and dad. (beware: the site is in flash!). It was pretty good. It's fun to check out all the cars, see what's new, how they placed things in some cars, etc. My dad is actually looking at getting a new van or truck, so we were focusing on those. But we still made time to check out other things too. Just in case you were wondering, I don't really fit into a mini. Not enough head room. ;-)

One of the interesting car's there was the MCC Smart Cabrio which looks like this. The engine, cooling system, etc. looks like it came out of a sewing machine and small enough to pick up. We asked the guy running that display from transport canada and he told us that he took it to Toronto and it doesn't scream at 100 kph. Apparently it goes "faster than the posted speed limit". hee hee... but not that he would know that. In Europe they park them nose to the curb because of their short length. I think that they are shorter than many trucks are wide. And I think that's pretty nuts. But it wouldn't be too good if you had to go very far or carry more than one person. Cool though. I wish that it had been open so that I could have figured out if I fit in it though. Ah well.

One of the things that I was interested in while at the car show was rims. I'll need to get summer tires, and I can either go with steel wheels from crappy tire, or I can look at getting nice rims and wheels. My brother keeps on telling me that I should get 17" rims and get 40-45 series tires. I don't know if I want to go that large. I might get 16", but I'll have to think about it more. There's cools sites out there that will allow you to see what rims will look like on your car. Pretty cool. Now I just have to figure out how much money I want to throw at my car. It can be very important to have a great looking car: I need to pick up hot looking chicks. ;-) hahahhaha... Oie.

Listening to: Styx - Mr. Roboto

Interesting week

I I have no idea why, but this seems like a weird week. Well, taking off Wednesday to go to a memorial service doesn't help to make it "normal", but it seems more than that, and I don't really know why.

I feel like I actually got a lot done today. One thing that I have discovered is that if I don't want to go home and watch crappy tv with my folks, I do have many options. And one of them is getting a lot of work done, well, at work. I just wonder if I really am productive, or just feel that way. We'll see tomorrow.

Listening to: Si Tu N'Ètais Pas L‡ (FrÈbel)

Negligence

I was talking to Laura the other day and she said something that I had never thought of before: if you are having heart troubles, it's considered malpractice / negligence [I can't remember which one] if the first thing your doctor suggests isn't aspirin. Wow. I thought that was pretty cool. Then I started to think about how that might apply to software engineering as it continues to develop as a profession.

Does that mean if you don't unit test your code, you'll be held negligiable? I am sure that people will start to demand that all code has a certain level of quality and will be able to sue people if they deliver sub-standard products.

This also goes along with a discussion on kibbee's site where JP made the strong point that when VoIP meets the level of service that everyone expects and demands from POTS people will leave the old system behind. Just like I expect that one day computers will one day replace paper and other similar forms of basic communication because it has the same reliability, but a whole lot cheaper and more benefits (i.e. searching).

I think that it will be a slow process, but over time the voice of the people will win out. Can you think of someone these days that would accept the uptime that Win95 gives them? Not for anyone doing anything seriously.

Going to hell

On a different note: I'm making a ppt presentation with animations for work. And it might have sounds too... I'm surely going to hell for this.

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - The Flag

SSH2 for WSAD 5.1

I'm blogging this in the hopes that this will be picked up by google since I looked for the longest time and didn't find the solution anywhere. I ended up contacting the maker of the plugin for CVS access using SSH2 in Eclipse 2.1. I'm using WSAD 5.1.

Long story short, if you are using WSAD 5.1 and need to connect to a CVS server that only has SSH2 running, here is how I did it from advice from ymnk.

download following files

• http://www.jcraft.com/eclipse-cvsssh2/org.eclipse.team.cvs.ssh2_0.1.3-src.zip
  
• http://www.jcraft.com/eclipse-cvsssh2/bc/jsch-0.1.13.jar
  
• http://www.jcraft.com/eclipse-cvsssh2/bc/jsch-0.1.13-bc.jar
  
• http://www.jcraft.com/eclipse-cvsssh2/bc/bc-119.jar
  
• http://www.jcraft.com/eclipse-cvsssh2/bc/plugin.xml
  

unzip 'org.eclipse.team.cvs.ssh2_0.1.3-rc1-src.zip' in 'plugins' directory.
copy 'jsch-0.1.13.jar', 'jsch-0.1.13-bc.jar', 'bc-119.jar' and 'plugin.xml' into 'plugins/org.eclipse.team.cvs.ssh2_0.1.3/' directory.

And that's it. It worked great for me. I hope it does for other people too.

Listening to: The Crystal Method - Starting Over

Update: Some jars might have moved. If you ever need to do this again you can find a jar on the jcraft site under "downloads" most of the down the page.

RTCW

It's been a while since I had played Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and I sort of forgot how much fun that it was. I really only played it while I was living on Montreal where I had a fast 'net connection. It's one of those games that can be very different every time that you play it, depending on who you are playing with. It can either be very frustrating, or very enjoyable too depending on if your team members are actually working with you. It's one of those games that if you have a good team with mixed classes together (someone to heal, someone to give ammo, an engineer, ...), you can be pretty much unstoppable.

You have to move as a team, work as a team, and help each other to win. I remember when I played the demo (that's the only level I played while in Montreal), a group of four guys who when defended the wall so well because of how they worked together. We weren't able to breach the wall. They would have guys shotting and people standing behind them healing them. It was really cool to watch, and a challenge to play against.

One thing that I doubt is unique to the game, but cool none the less is the ability to "capture" way points that change where you spawn. If you fight well and capture a position, anyone spawning in will show up there. But it's easy for the other side to recapture that position too, which makes it really cool. So much fun, so much time wasted. ;-) One of the funniest things that I liked about the demo was the ability for some classes to throw "smoke cans" to call in an air strike. You put some smoke on one side of a wall, and all of a sudden players get bombed and they didn't see it coming. Ah, the joys of mindless video game violence....

Listening to: Underworld - Born Slippery

Support

I know a couple of people right now who are going through tough times with family and family health stuff. I just wanted to say to those that you're in my thoughts and I'm here if you ever need to talk. That offer to talk applies to all that want it.

And for those that want it, hugs are also available at no extra charge. ;-)

Don't reinvent the wheel

I've had a couple of conversations with someone in software development. They have some "engineers" working for him and he offered to help me out by giving me some tools to do my work. Everything cool so far? Yes. I really like help, and if there is a tool out there that can help me do my job better / faster, I'm all for it.

The reason why I didn't take up the offer is that the tools are things like a logger and a load testing tool. When offered the logger, I was like "I'd rather just use one of the common java loggers", to which the counter argument that was given was "yes, but you have to learn how to use it and it's usually more than you need right now". Maybe, but then again I'd have to learn how to use sw made by anyone else. There are many more arguments against using in house tools when free ones are easily available. Some of these are:

• if many other people are using it, it's been tested in the field a lot more
• my skills are more portable if I use a common tool
• if I left the company, it would take less effort for a new developer to come in and learn a tool that they could have possibly seen before
• with tools used by many people, it's more likely that there's lots of things on the 'net about how to use them
• I've not been hired to make tools, I've been hired to make another product

It just blows my mind when people have the mindset to reinvent tools. I don't know about you, but my time is short enough as it is, and I don't think that my boss would be too happy if my product was late "but I made a really cool tool!".

As for the load testing tool, the reason behind that was because they didn't want to buy a tool that costs 500,000 $, so one of the developers wrote one. With tools like JMeter, I don't see why you would need to hire someone to redo that sort of stuff. And if you have a developer that could turn out 500K$ sw in a couple of weeks, he surely must be able to walk on water, because I've never even heard about someone who could do that.

The short story for this rant is that by doing engineering we are responsible for the tools we use, and why we choose those ones. Just because you're not writing sw to control planes doesn't mean that you should take short cuts that in the long run take longer, are more error prone, you have to maintain and train people to use, and in the end cost more while not solving the customer's problem.

WSAD can be "interesting"

There are things that I am learning about WSAD that are not straight forward to know. Like when Eclipse / WSAD says that an error has happened and to check the log. Where's this log? Well, you have to go Help -> About -> and that bring up a window. Then you click on "Configuration Details" Yes, they have config details in there, but there is no way that I would have found the log there except I clicked on it as I was searching around. Is this the best place for the log? Maybe not, but I can tell that it was just a "okay solution for now" which I am sure that is how a lot of sw goes.

I'm also using Struts Test Case to test, well, the struts. At first I was doing testing using mock objects, but for the sake of consistency we're going to do just (for now) cactus testing. Well, the instructions say that the only thing that you have to do is switch the base class. We all know that it is never that simple. The trouble that I had was that cactus wants to find a file called cactus.properties on the classpath (.classpath) to figure out where to send the http requests. Other options are that you can set it on the command line or using System.setProperty(), both not as nice and prone to error. Could I figure out how to put this one property file on the classpath in WSAD? Not for a bit. I tried to jar it up and put it in the lib folder. No go. So, while getting really annoyed over something very simple, I zipped it up and put it in there. Bam! It worked. If there is one thing that setting up and developing sw teaches you is to isolate problems and work them out one at a time. I can't wait till I am really good at things after lots of industry experience.

Listening to: The Civilian Project - Golden Visions

Lets talk stats

As some of you know already, one of my friends lost both her parents in a car crash this last sunday. This is just a total tragedy in every sense of the word, and I really have no idea what she is going through right now. I can't even imagine it.

Tonight this lead to a discussion about how safe the 401 is because the funeral is going to be held in Toronto and there are some concerns about driving "on the 401 near Toronto at this time of year". When I have these discussions, I think that the people that hear this think that it is certain death if they get in a car near Toronto. I've always gotten the impression from people around Ottawa that the 401 is some mysterious demon highway that only the lucky survive. Having lived for 12 years < 1 km from the 401 practically within the Toronto city limits (like one interchange away) I don't fear it. Probably 'cause my folks have lived there for like ~45 years before we moved, so there is no fear from them.

In the discussion that I got into tonight, I was told that "everyone knows that you are much more likely [as in percentage] to die on the 401 than anywhere else. Everyone knows these statistics". This prompted me to look up these stats since I wasn't part of the everyone group. I wanted to see them for myself. I found a pdf that says the 401 is the 2nd most travelled highway in North America and with the 4th lowest fatality rate. I think that's pretty damn good if you ask me. But it's a big highway and I was told that the "place of death" was right around Toronto. I didn't find (free) stats for that, I wish that I had. I also wish that I can find stats for the 417 to compare because Ottawa people think nothing of driving that road, but avoid the 401. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Getting back to my friend, I believe that the things that contributed to her folks deaths were:

1. it was a 2 lane road
2. it was a car vs. a SUV. Cars don't usually win that one just based on mass
3. the driver (and passenger) were 21 -> which probably means they were inexperienced
4. (my dad's theory) they lost control by dropping a wheel off the road, over corrected to get it onto the road and ended up in the other lane. This just comes from the 1st and 3rd points though. It's just a guess of what happened.

Really, this all doesn't matter because in the end my friend's folks are gone and nothing will bring them back. We just have to focus on being there for her 'cause these next few years are going to be really hard.

Adding more enteries

I changed how many entries are displayed now on the main page. I was tired of my stuff almost going blank if I didn't really post for a week. I have been finding it really hard to write as much as I want to. I don't really want to write at work, and I don't really have the time. I am lucky if I check my friends blogs once a day. And when I get home a lot of the time I don't feel like going on the computer, or if I do, I don't go for long. And for the weekends, I'm hardly ever at home at all, so that's pretty much out of the question. I guess maybe if I ever get a blackberry that might be an option, but at this point that isn't even a consideration. Hell, I have not had the time to set up the palm that Peter lent me yet. :-(

On a different note, in my family it is sort of a tradition to figure out a funny name to name any new babies on the way. It helps to be able to refer the baby as a name, it's easier in the long run. I have not come up with any names in the past. This time Laura and I have (with a suggestion from my mom) have come up with a name: Engelbert Ebenezer Ethelred. Past names include Cletus Melvin and Bubba Ishmael Schmengei. Yes, this is for our amusement. ;-)

Listening to: Robbie Williams - Supreme

Life goes on

It's been weird the last couple of days. I have been thinking about my friend who is getting married in a couple of months; news of a baby on the way; and news of people who have died suddenly. And yet the world keeps on spinning like this is just the normal everyday things. And the thing is, these are the normal everyday things.

It's very surreal actually. Some times when you hear big news you think that some how the world is now different, that things can never be as they were before and you are partly correct. The world isn't different, but you are. Do you see the world differently now? Has it changed? Is it a passing cloud, or has the sky changed for ever? I guess this is what happens as you get older, you ponder what you can perceive and what you know you are missing. When you're small it's easy because you know everything. Hell, sometimes I feel that I don't have enough knowledge to get me to lunch, let alone through the whole day.

I guess that you never know what is going to happen tomorrow, so you should always make the most of today. Carpe diem and all that crap. Try to live life with no regrets. Hug without worry; laugh without worrying what people will think of you; smile because you can; if you love someone, tell them often so that if you don't see them again, that'll be your parting words. Don't be afraid of life, 'cause it's far too short. And don't be afraid to cry, because that is when we know we are human. And when people need you to be there, be there for them. Bringing kleenex doesn't hurt either.

Listening to: Never Ending Story - Techno remix

Graduating

If anyone else forgot (as I did), we must fill out a form to tell school when we are graduating, and what sort of deployma we want. This was supposed to be done before the first, but Peter and I did it yesterday. And thanks a lot to Peter for reminding me a couple of times. I am sure that I would have totally forgotten. Please send out an email to everyone that this would apply to. I keep on forgetting and I don't have any addresses here at work.

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - Rio

Versions are driving me insane!

One of my biggest problems so far has been that I always seem to be using the wrong version of things. Nothing seems like it wants to work together nicely and everything is a fight. Grrrr.... but the thing that is driving me the most mad is that as soon as everything is set up correctly, it will work like butter. (Mmmm... butter...) But in the mean time I feel like I make only little progress.

btw, does anyone have a good / easy way to run sql scripts (*.sql) from junit so that it's easy to get the db into a known state? It's easy to do with WSAD by right clicking on it and then doing it that way, but I wanted to know if there was a better way. My hacky work around will be to just read in the whole file as a string and execute that string. Any better ideas?

Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - Lovers in a Dangerous Time