Thumb Drive
They are flash memory devices that are in a package as small as the thumb on a kid. I bought a sleek SanDisk one and marveled at how small it was. I kept it in my pocket with my change. I guess it is with some of that change in a couch somewhere. I haven't seen it in a very long time. Too small!
I have several of these and it is so easy to misplace the cap that goes over the USB connection! I am usually tense when I use one because I am trying no to lose the cap. Of course you can just buy a replacement one from the manufacturer -- NOT!
The 2 GB PQI thumb drive that has been on my keyring for 6 months lost its cap today. I wasn't going to stand for that, so I retraced my steps and found it on a sidewalk waiting for somebody to step on it and crack it. When I got home I noticed that it had separated from my keyring. Then I plugged it into my desktop PC and it hid from Windows Explorer. It worked in my laptop for what that's worth. I have an uneasy feeling about it. Time to replace it.
I bought a 1 GB SanDisk that has a slide switch that slides the USB connector out of the housing. I bought it because it has a U3 "operating system" that lets you run applications without installing them on the host PC. Problem: The U3 part stopped working and I can't find any replacement downloads on the SanDisk site. Just as well. The U3 software is normally not free. I've built a fair collection of freeware that runs on the thumb drive. I'll use it. The 1 GB SanDisk lets me stop worrying about losing the cap ... it's capless. Also it is black like the handles of my car keys, not some trendy hideous color. So I'll use it until it fails.
Thumb drives are a curiosity but not the sort of thing you would want to archive your prized documents on. Today I burned a CD of my thumb drive, waiting for this one to fail.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
I Knew He Was A Drunk When I Married Him...
I make a living writing database applications using Microsoft Access. I'd rather be programming with .net but we don't always get to go exactly where we want on our career path.
I use Access 2003. Some say it's the most reliable version of Access; some say it's the most unreliable. I think that is unreliable while you are designing an application, but is thankfully much more reliable in running your application in production. I can live with that.
Recently I was making many changes to a complex data editing form. At least 10 times in an 8-hour day I got the "Microsoft is sorry" error message that lets you know that it's too bad you didn't save your work. If you work quickly, you can often remember all the changes you made between crashes and archive a copy before the next crash. It's a pain but I'm used to it.
I used to feel sorry for myself having to use a program that I'd be embarrassed to say I wrote. But then I think, "Hey! I know enough work-arounds that I can succeed in building applications with this. It would be too hard for mere mortals. This gives me an advantage!"
Today I wasn't losing my work. But Access was acting up anyway. Sometimes in the VBE window, it goes brain-dead and you can't save your work -- at least not from there. Today it refused to close down a help pane (pain) when I was finished. Thank goodness for the Windows Task Manager.
When the ugly head of "Microsoft is Sorry" appears, the message window looks very business-like. As though it's there to help. It offers to send data back to the mother ship so it can be ignored and offers to repair your database (which isn't really broken). Often, when you let it repair, it gets confused and you can end up losing everything. As far as using the information that is sent to them, don't get your hopes up. I understand that some 10-year-old Access problems still exist. There is not time to fix practical things when you are more interested in marketing "gee whiz" features rather than fixing basic problems.
Sometimes I feel as though Microsoft hates developers using its products.
I use Access 2003. Some say it's the most reliable version of Access; some say it's the most unreliable. I think that is unreliable while you are designing an application, but is thankfully much more reliable in running your application in production. I can live with that.
Recently I was making many changes to a complex data editing form. At least 10 times in an 8-hour day I got the "Microsoft is sorry" error message that lets you know that it's too bad you didn't save your work. If you work quickly, you can often remember all the changes you made between crashes and archive a copy before the next crash. It's a pain but I'm used to it.
I used to feel sorry for myself having to use a program that I'd be embarrassed to say I wrote. But then I think, "Hey! I know enough work-arounds that I can succeed in building applications with this. It would be too hard for mere mortals. This gives me an advantage!"
Today I wasn't losing my work. But Access was acting up anyway. Sometimes in the VBE window, it goes brain-dead and you can't save your work -- at least not from there. Today it refused to close down a help pane (pain) when I was finished. Thank goodness for the Windows Task Manager.
When the ugly head of "Microsoft is Sorry" appears, the message window looks very business-like. As though it's there to help. It offers to send data back to the mother ship so it can be ignored and offers to repair your database (which isn't really broken). Often, when you let it repair, it gets confused and you can end up losing everything. As far as using the information that is sent to them, don't get your hopes up. I understand that some 10-year-old Access problems still exist. There is not time to fix practical things when you are more interested in marketing "gee whiz" features rather than fixing basic problems.
Sometimes I feel as though Microsoft hates developers using its products.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Curmudgeon
The thing I like most about Windows is the ability to continually improve the computing experience by tweaking settings in programs and by adding programs that accomplish specialized tasks. Microsoft Word has been great at allowing me to get rid of icons I don't regularly use and replace them with ones that are more appropriate for my needs. You can write some impressive macros and attach them to a toolbar button. For example, my sister uses Juno.com for her email and her messages have hard returns on every line. She uses paragraph indents rather than using whitespace between paragraphs. I have a toolbar macro that reformats the entire email so that it is much easier for me to read. One click and it's instantly done. The macro is actually a procedure that is automatically written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Some of the most useful, troublefree software is freeware and shareware. The software is never bloated and its producers are much more responsive than the big guys. The latest PC magazine has an article on "The Best Free Software". Because it is so much easier to access these programs to try out from the web, I googled for the web page with all the links. Before I arrived at pcmag.com, I came across this web page:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#19
Before long I had found a gem of a desktop search program called X1. I've only been using it for a short time and it really appeals to me. It is extremely customizable and lets me do what I want to do. This is, by far, the best desktop search program I've seen. I've tried Google Desktop Search, and several others and had settled on Copernic. But I like X1 a lot better. In my initial testing, I found quite a few gems hiding in plain site on my hard disks.
http://www.x1.com
Sometimes it hard to be a curmudgeon.
Some of the most useful, troublefree software is freeware and shareware. The software is never bloated and its producers are much more responsive than the big guys. The latest PC magazine has an article on "The Best Free Software". Because it is so much easier to access these programs to try out from the web, I googled for the web page with all the links. Before I arrived at pcmag.com, I came across this web page:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#19
Before long I had found a gem of a desktop search program called X1. I've only been using it for a short time and it really appeals to me. It is extremely customizable and lets me do what I want to do. This is, by far, the best desktop search program I've seen. I've tried Google Desktop Search, and several others and had settled on Copernic. But I like X1 a lot better. In my initial testing, I found quite a few gems hiding in plain site on my hard disks.
http://www.x1.com
Sometimes it hard to be a curmudgeon.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Irritiation: Battery-Operated Drill
I've got one of those cool battery-operated electric drills.
The trouble is, almost every time I grab it to do some work, the battery is dead. Keep it on the charger all the time? Not recommended!
Solution: Get one of those timers that you can turn things on and off at preset times. Set on at just about any time and off 10 or 15 minutes later. Leave the battery in the charger when you aren't using the drill.
It works!
A curmudgeon would wonder why the manufacturer doesn't put similar circuitry into the charger.
The trouble is, almost every time I grab it to do some work, the battery is dead. Keep it on the charger all the time? Not recommended!
Solution: Get one of those timers that you can turn things on and off at preset times. Set on at just about any time and off 10 or 15 minutes later. Leave the battery in the charger when you aren't using the drill.
It works!
A curmudgeon would wonder why the manufacturer doesn't put similar circuitry into the charger.
It's not all Bad
Back in the "good old days" there was not such thing as the registry. We copied whole programs into folders of our choice. We used the same operating system to install on more than one computer. This simplicity might have denied Microsoft and others money due to them, but it spread the experience far and wide and ended up hooking everybody on PCs.
Now we are expected to pay over and over again to keep going. Most upgrades cost far too much for the benefit given. Sometimes the new version works worse than the old.
Case: I got Sound Forge with my Sound Blaster sound card more than 10 years ago. It worked extremely well with the exception that it wouldn't always update the screen properly. If you worked on more than one file, chances are the toolbar icons would disappear and you were working in the dark. Sony had bought out Sonic Foundry and I decided to buy the new version. It had a couple of stinker problems that their support people were not able to fix. I did not get my money back.
Case: I used Norton Antivirus for many years. I upgraded to 3-license version of System Suite 2005. It installed nicely on two of three PCs but complained that I had the wrong CD Key on the third. After 12 calls to Symantec and talking to folks in Bangalore who thought I was the stupid one, they sent me a new version. It did not install either. By then, the word was that Norton Antivirus was bloated and took too many CPU cycles. I decided to pull the plug.
Case: I moved to Zone Alarm Security Suite. I bought a 3-license package and it provided a firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spam. The anti-spam was stupid. If you loaded Outlook automatically at startup, it would complain that it wasn't ready and that you should reload Outlook. I wrote a program that would wait a couple of minutes and then load Outlook. I shouldn't have to do that! It was no better at spam protection than a freeware one I had used before. The firewall seemed pretty stupid in that it was supposed to have a database of known-good programs but it would ask stupid questions constantly. When I loaded a new version from time to time, it would forget the learning information. The clincher came after less than 6 months. It cheerfully told me that the antivirus definitions that I downloaded were not valid. "Try again." After a day or two, I sent in a request for help from support. They, of course, acted as though it was something I was doing wrong on my end, even though it acted the same on 3 very different PCs. I threw in the towel on that. This is why I say "It's not all Bad."
It's not all bad: I moved from Zone Alarm's Antivirus to AVG Free antivirus. It may be lacking something, but it seems more efficient than what I'm used to and works more smoothly than Zone Alarm or Norton. I use Comodo free firewall which appears much more intelligent than Zone Alarm. For anti-spam, I tried Cloudmark and am delighted with its effectiveness. And lastly, I bought Webroot Spy Sweeper. Now I have small, efficient, free programs that handle anti-virus, and firewall duties. I have world-class protection from spam and spyware that I pay $70 a year for 3 computers. These 4 programs work much more smoothly than the Zone Alarm Suite or the Norton suite.
It's not all bad: It's really spectacular that Windows allows software from thousands of software vendors to work together, and with thousands of hardware products. It's something we take for granted, but it's great!
It's not all bad: USB2 now provides the utility similar to a power outlet. You plug in a device and it works! My workhorse PC has 14 USB2 outlets and about 10 are in constant use: graphics tablet, mouse, PDA, camera card reader, and several external hard disks. It's something we take for granted, but it's great!
It's not all bad: Cloudmark antispam is brilliant! Instead of looking through your email for words like "viagra", it relies on the kindness of strangers to click their "block" button if they happen to be one of the first to receive the spam. This marks the message as spam and it gets blocked on millions of other computers immediately. It works very well and I'm starting to take it for granted!
Now we are expected to pay over and over again to keep going. Most upgrades cost far too much for the benefit given. Sometimes the new version works worse than the old.
Case: I got Sound Forge with my Sound Blaster sound card more than 10 years ago. It worked extremely well with the exception that it wouldn't always update the screen properly. If you worked on more than one file, chances are the toolbar icons would disappear and you were working in the dark. Sony had bought out Sonic Foundry and I decided to buy the new version. It had a couple of stinker problems that their support people were not able to fix. I did not get my money back.
Case: I used Norton Antivirus for many years. I upgraded to 3-license version of System Suite 2005. It installed nicely on two of three PCs but complained that I had the wrong CD Key on the third. After 12 calls to Symantec and talking to folks in Bangalore who thought I was the stupid one, they sent me a new version. It did not install either. By then, the word was that Norton Antivirus was bloated and took too many CPU cycles. I decided to pull the plug.
Case: I moved to Zone Alarm Security Suite. I bought a 3-license package and it provided a firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spam. The anti-spam was stupid. If you loaded Outlook automatically at startup, it would complain that it wasn't ready and that you should reload Outlook. I wrote a program that would wait a couple of minutes and then load Outlook. I shouldn't have to do that! It was no better at spam protection than a freeware one I had used before. The firewall seemed pretty stupid in that it was supposed to have a database of known-good programs but it would ask stupid questions constantly. When I loaded a new version from time to time, it would forget the learning information. The clincher came after less than 6 months. It cheerfully told me that the antivirus definitions that I downloaded were not valid. "Try again." After a day or two, I sent in a request for help from support. They, of course, acted as though it was something I was doing wrong on my end, even though it acted the same on 3 very different PCs. I threw in the towel on that. This is why I say "It's not all Bad."
It's not all bad: I moved from Zone Alarm's Antivirus to AVG Free antivirus. It may be lacking something, but it seems more efficient than what I'm used to and works more smoothly than Zone Alarm or Norton. I use Comodo free firewall which appears much more intelligent than Zone Alarm. For anti-spam, I tried Cloudmark and am delighted with its effectiveness. And lastly, I bought Webroot Spy Sweeper. Now I have small, efficient, free programs that handle anti-virus, and firewall duties. I have world-class protection from spam and spyware that I pay $70 a year for 3 computers. These 4 programs work much more smoothly than the Zone Alarm Suite or the Norton suite.
It's not all bad: It's really spectacular that Windows allows software from thousands of software vendors to work together, and with thousands of hardware products. It's something we take for granted, but it's great!
It's not all bad: USB2 now provides the utility similar to a power outlet. You plug in a device and it works! My workhorse PC has 14 USB2 outlets and about 10 are in constant use: graphics tablet, mouse, PDA, camera card reader, and several external hard disks. It's something we take for granted, but it's great!
It's not all bad: Cloudmark antispam is brilliant! Instead of looking through your email for words like "viagra", it relies on the kindness of strangers to click their "block" button if they happen to be one of the first to receive the spam. This marks the message as spam and it gets blocked on millions of other computers immediately. It works very well and I'm starting to take it for granted!
Oh, no!
Written 1-22-07:
Today I watched as my PC got Microsquashed. Access, of all things, stopped working. Just what I don't need. So I ran my registry checkers without any benefit. I ran my antivirus and antispyware without any benefit. I "repaired" Access without any change. It's cold comfort to see the Microsquash message: "Successfully repaired your Access application" when all it did was waste my time. I reinstalled Access and saw the same message. But whatever I did, when you asked to look at the Visual Basic window, it would agree and then display the hideous hourglass cursor for, uh, hours. I tried this with Word 2000 and it did the same. That told me that I was NOT going to win.
But wait! I have an Acronis True Image (uh) image of the hard disk as of 12/29/06!!! It worked and so I used it and cloned that hard disk into a spare tire. Several days later I realized that my Outlook mail was on the C: partition, (unlike most of my documents which are on another drive) and three weeks of email had been lost.
What do non-nerds do when Windows misbehaves?
I was so very lucky to have my image of only 3 weeks ago. All I had to do was install drivers for toys bought between then and now.
Watch it!
I recently made a charge on my credit card on the web. The charge posted on the Visa statement was exactly 2X the original charge.
I purchased a chocolate soda at Baskin Robins and put it on Visa. I thought the $5 on the cash register was kind of high but looking at the Visa invoice I noticed that they had rung it up at $9.
I picked out an electric heater at Fred Meyer. It was the only one of a particular brand and the price on the shelf (no prices on any products) was $30. When I went to checkout it rung up at $50. I protested and they said, "Well, that's what we charge." I left the product with them.
Business Integrity
Friday, February 16, 2007
NPROTECT
The big computer companies such as Microsoft and Symantec are there to protect us! We are children and they are our protectors.
I''ve use Norton Utilities since before there was Windows and got used to having them around. One feature that slipped in was the Norton Protected Recycle Bin. I thought the Recycle Bin was to protect us from making stupid mistakes. I don't think I've ever used the Norton Protected Recycle Bin in a positive way so I've discontinued it and stopped the Nprotect service from stealing CPU cycles.
Recently I was looking around on my wife's PC and found almost 200 Mb of crap in the NPROTECT folder. Tried re-enabling Norton Protection so I could delete this junk but it pretended not to notice anything. The button to delete the remnants was not enabled. I used a combination of Windows Explorer and other not-so-windows methods and deleted what I could but it came down to seeing the files but the operating system claiming that I was "seeing things". It couldn't delete what it couldn't see.
Thank goodness for Google. I googled for delete nprotect and the first entry was http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/94102.html
Basically, it said, Run > cmd and then enter
del \\?\c:\recycler\nprotect\*.*
...which does the trick. I have no idea what the "\\?\" part does, but it works.
I know that 200 Mb on a computer with an 80 Gb hard drive is a small percentage of the space. But *I* want to be in charge, not some bloated corporation.
I''ve use Norton Utilities since before there was Windows and got used to having them around. One feature that slipped in was the Norton Protected Recycle Bin. I thought the Recycle Bin was to protect us from making stupid mistakes. I don't think I've ever used the Norton Protected Recycle Bin in a positive way so I've discontinued it and stopped the Nprotect service from stealing CPU cycles.
Recently I was looking around on my wife's PC and found almost 200 Mb of crap in the NPROTECT folder. Tried re-enabling Norton Protection so I could delete this junk but it pretended not to notice anything. The button to delete the remnants was not enabled. I used a combination of Windows Explorer and other not-so-windows methods and deleted what I could but it came down to seeing the files but the operating system claiming that I was "seeing things". It couldn't delete what it couldn't see.
Thank goodness for Google. I googled for delete nprotect and the first entry was http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/94102.html
Basically, it said, Run > cmd and then enter
del \\?\c:\recycler\nprotect\*.*
...which does the trick. I have no idea what the "\\?\" part does, but it works.
I know that 200 Mb on a computer with an 80 Gb hard drive is a small percentage of the space. But *I* want to be in charge, not some bloated corporation.
My First Blog
I've been using computers for more than 40 years. I develop database applications for a living. I may be idealistic, but I have higher standards for my own work than I think are generally used for commercial software in general.
Being a Microsoft Access developer, I am always amazed at how good my development tools are, but -- at the same time -- how the development of these tools stops far short of goodness. Not perfection, but goodness.
I have concluded that developers of commercial products don't actually use these products, or are thwarted by management trying to make short-term money.
I'll use this blog to share my problems and solutions.
Being a Microsoft Access developer, I am always amazed at how good my development tools are, but -- at the same time -- how the development of these tools stops far short of goodness. Not perfection, but goodness.
I have concluded that developers of commercial products don't actually use these products, or are thwarted by management trying to make short-term money.
I'll use this blog to share my problems and solutions.
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