New school building - St. Benedict

Stardate 56082.5 (8-25-2003)

The SoBig F virus variant has been causing lots of trouble; at least that’s why I assume the network has been slow. I notice it more at work then at home.

Cognizant, the Indian consulting company has had some strange issues. On one application that dumps information to a fixed format file, they reported that null values in the database were written as blanks on the output. I’m not sure what they expect to see. Should the application make up stuff to put in there? They have been good at finding documentation errors.

The C# project is now coming along nicely. I’m ready to test, but other testing needs to be done first. One thing I did learn from this is that Oracle hates multiple threads on one connection. I remember someone telling me that before. Oh, well, now it is firmly in my mind. I also found a neat way of parsing command line arguments. Ray Hayes put together an object to parse the args to properties in an object. This does away with clumsy if/else and switch constructs. Another feature of his class is that it uses C# object attributes to alias arguments to the same property. Therefore, things like ‘-u’, ‘—u’, ‘user’, and ‘name’ can all do the same thing. The next step is to build the reports into it as XML documents.

School started up again. Rachel and Patrick got up and ready in no time. They were both anxious to get back to school and see friends. They are also going to a new building purchased last spring. Grades K-2 will go there, and 3-8 goes to the old building. The school needed more room. The family went to see the new St. Benedict’s ‘campus’ last Friday. It’s nice, but I was surprised at how small it was. I thought it used to be a public school at one time, although not recently.

I did manage to take the kids fishing on Sunday. It was great fun, although a little hot in the morning and we didn’t catch anything. People around us were catching fish. I never was a good fisherman, but I still like to do it. It did keep the kids outdoors, and we all got some exercise. I would like to try doing this at different place each Sunday if the weather is good.

The bad/good news is that Gail Meyer, Ray’s wife, got a promotion, so the Meyer family is transferring to Boston. I’m happy for them, but I will miss Ray. Fortunately, we live in the age of the Internet, so communication over long distances is easy. I was asked to take over the job of Chief of Operations, and I accepted. Ray handed a hat he had made in Orlando to me. that says “USS Ticonderoga – OPS Chief”.  I will admit to being touched.

End of Entry