Classic ASP (older site maintenace).

Lately I’ve been charged with adding some functionality to an older internal site done with good all Classic ASP and Java Script.

What a terrible mess. I’m fortunate to have learned to hook up Visual Studio to the code so I can step through the code and find out what makes it tick.

I has been a daunting task changing anything without breaking something else. I’m writing this in the middle of a break from the madness (I exaggerate of course), just so I’ll not run the hall way screaming!

In any case, Option Strict was not turned on, so there are hundreds of variables that are not dimmed. Some are mistyped (typos not the type kind) and forms are well.. malformed!

I hope I never do this to the next guy coming behind me!

BTW, if you are good programmer and you love coding don’t ever forget what it was like when you become a manager and start thinking that everything is easy!

The OneNote experience…continued!

I recently wrote a friend of mine the following: Dear Friend, I hope you are doing well. I wanted to share with you this site: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/onenotetips/ It’s all about OneNote, how to use, tips etc., etc.  🙂 I have now been using OneNote for about two weeks. Everything goes in it. My personal notes, work, web stuff, code samples, troubleshooting solutions. Clippings from the web and more. I’m so enamored with this program I’ve now gone mad and recommended to fellow developers and showed them how I’m using it. I get excited about certain things to a fault! 🙂 This program has been around since 2003. I used blogging originally as a way of writing some of my thoughts in a diary like manner. The downside was that I could not really put down very personal stuff on the web. With OneNote I now have my journal, my very own diary which is password protected and of course all the other things that go with it. Notes for the day, notes on projects and more as I mentioned before. Hope you or someone in your team finds the link useful. There are other similar software programs, I happen to have access to this one. One more thing, I can draw directly into this program. That’s just absolutely ‘fantaboulous’! Sincerely, Your friend in tech: Otto

The OneNote Experience!

To WordPress from Tweetdeck

This is pretty good, service is in its infancy and growing! We’ll see how it matures.

Just added my wordpress account through

Just added my wordpress account through tweetdeck, interesting.

ORA-01555 Snapshot Too Old

Recently one of our DBAs sent me an e-mail stating that one of our long time running Oracle procedures failed. The error output by the Oracle engine was ORA-01555: snapshot too old: rollback segment number 8 with name “_SYSSMU8$”

I did some research and found the following:

ORA-01555:	snapshot too old: rollback segment number string with name “string” too small
Cause:	Rollback records needed by a reader for consistent read are overwritten by other writers.
Action:	If in Automatic Undo Management mode, increase the setting of UNDO_RETENTION. Otherwise, use larger rollback segments.

Well what does all of that mean? Fortunately I found that others have experienced this problem and some tips that will help in solving the problem. Now there are many links with the solution and I’m hoping that by adding one more, it will facilitate finding the answer to those who need it.

From this site Burleson Consulting I found a reference to the original Oracle documentation I had found and additional tips:

1. – Do not run discrete transactions while sensitive queries or transactions are running, unless you are confident that the data sets required are mutually exclusive.
2. – Schedule long running queries and transactions out of hours, so that the consistent gets will not need to rollback changes made since the snapshot SCN. This also reduces the work done by the server, and thus improves performance.
3. – Code long running processes as a series of restartable steps.
4. – Shrink all rollback segments back to their optimal size manually before running a sensitive query or transaction to reduce risk of consistent get rollback failure due to extent deallocation.
5. – Use a large optimal value on all rollback segments, to delay extent reuse.
6. – Don’t fetch across commits. That is, don’t fetch on a cursor that was opened prior to the last commit, particularly if the data queried by the cursor is being changed in the current session.
7. – Use a large database block size to maximize the number of slots in the rollback segment transaction tables, and thus delay slot reuse.
8. – Commit less often in tasks that will run at the same time as the sensitive query, particularly in PL/SQL procedures, to reduce transaction slot reuse.
9. – If necessary, add extra rollback segments (undo logs) to make more transaction slots available.

The above list was summarized from a post by Steve Adams from another IXORA.

I hope these references are useful to someone else who may be experiencing the same issue.

This can't be happening!

Ok, is not that bad, but when you have something running for a long time, hitting an error like this is annoying to say the least.

Photoshop Cs4 Spritelike Installation

We recently (finally…) obtained our Photoshop CS4 license. I really like the interface!

Enjoying working with Photoshop is one thing. Installing it is another matter. Let’s go through the motions of what I’ve had to go through.

Obtaining the software.

First thing I had to do was justify using the tool. That was easy enough, justification of software, hardware I believe is sometimes just a deterrent, discourage people from  wildly ordering things just because they’re available. We have been running CSs for quite a while so I figured it was time.

While owning the software a designer one does not make, it makes it easier for those who do design to get their job done. Yes, there are free tools out there  and those should be given a good run as well. On the other, hand the Photoshop community is very helpful and there are tons of tutorials and support available to make best use of the tool. One of the reasons to upgrade.

Once justification was accepted, PO was submitted and after a few weeks got our email stating our order had been processed.

The Install Nightmare Begins!

I was eager to get thing going so I asked if I downloaded the trial version, I could then later supply the validation key and be done with it. I figured I had 30 days and could be using it meanwhile.

The trial install had a few glitches. It took a while and after what seemed an eternity I was able to begin exploring the new features.

A few days later the license key came in and so I figured all I had to do was enter it and we would on our way, no longer being asked to enter the key every startup. That was too good to be true. The trial version, even the one we download from the official Adobe License site, defaults to the extended version. Our key does not work with that version. That’s something I didn’t understand fully the first time around. Or the second for that matter. Since the trial version was the Extended version and we had the Standard version key, I had to uninstall the trial version, re-install again and provide the key immediately upon installation.

That’s what I know now. I thought that by getting the installation software from the Adobe site, I would get the correct installation files. On my second attempt on another PC (we have a total of five licenses), I did not have the license number with me and so I decided to go for the trial version until I retrieved the license number. That was a mistake because again the installation defaulted to the Extended version and there was no other option.

To get it to run, I had to uninstall and re-install providing the key immediately upon re-installation. Since I did not fully understand what was going on, I had saved the downloaded files to install on the next PC. That did not work either. It seems that I have to download the files and run the install on each machine, providing the license key upon installation. Does that sound ridiculous to you? I know I missed something along the way.

There is a deployment file on the AWL site. I supposed I should have tried that or read the read me files first 🙂. But alas! I’m a typical guy, don’t ask for directions or read manuals!

Third time is the charm!

I’m not sure why the license key was not being accepted on the installation file previously saved from the first install. Since I could not go any further I downloaded the file again and provided the license key immediately. Worked like a charm!

CS4 Splash Screen

I have a couple of more installs plus a copy on a home computer (read the license agreement for this), I hope I don’t have any more issues. Have you had any similar install issues with Adobe software? It seems that all of these issues are anti-piracy related. One can not get to the original install files unless you have access to the AWL site. That’s what I’m thinking.

In any case, I’m putting it through PS through it’s paces, lots to learn ahead!

Posting by email

I’ve set up my blog posting via e-mail, another convenient way of posting on the fly.

Tinkering…

It’s been a while since I did this kind of thing.

My sister’s PC failed and I was recruited to fix it. While I was doing this I decided to upgrade my Laptop and Desktop to Windows 7.

Thursday night around 10:00PM is when I started. The upgrade on the laptop ran unattended from about 11:00PM till next morning. Once I did that after a break on Friday, on Saturday I tackled my sister’s PC and my desktop upgrade.

The whole affair took about 7 hours and my sister’s PC is still not working.

My desktop and laptop are working wonderfully.  My old desktop is running smoothly.

I watched a movie or two in between upgrades. I did find that I had re-install some programs as they stopped working. My old desktop does not support hardware virtualization so if I want that feature bad enough I may have to upgrade the motherboard and/or chip.

A technological dalliance, a portent of things to come.

Windows 7 happily running on an old HP Desktop.

Your Bookmarks or Favorites from anywhere!

I’ve discovered a neat add on to my broswers.  Xmarks!  It allows you to have your bookmarks and favorites synchronized between browsers and locations as well.

Bookmarks are now available on the road, at home, at the office.

Xmarks was known as FoxMarks, you can visit the site and read more about it here,

http://www.xmarks.com/

As long as their servers are up, I don’t have to worry about loosing my favorites. There is always the method of backing up your favorites but this sure is more convenient.