We’ve had some discipline problems with Patrick, so Monday he was confined to his room. It was one of the first nice days, and every kid in the neighborhood was out playing. He screamed in frustration the whole afternoon. I think he got the point that we were serious.
Spring is coming. I took some pictures Tuesday.
Thomas came down to me about 9:30 that night, complaining his ear hurt. Having been through this one before, I took him to Wee Care (April had come home early because she was not feeling well). When nurse put the thermometer in his ear, he told her that it was the other ear that hurt. It was an infection, so I asked that the antibiotics be done with an injection. He screamed when the needle went in, of course, but after he told me, “Dad, that REALLY hurt”. On the way out he gave the doctor his meanest look and said, “I HATE doctors”. He was feeling much better this morning.
Someone at MS had an interesting idea: an FAQ as a blog. I need to get a technical blog going. I had a couple of odd crashes to diagnose. New knowledge this week includes:
64 bit applications are a little more sensitive to exceptions and setjmp/longjmp. I need to be careful about static local variables.
Pay closer attention to compiler flags. The engine was using optimized libraries, but the main routines were not being passed the same flags. The library utility ar does not support ELF format files needed for 64 bit, so the library code was linked directly with the main code. The mix of flags caused things to be slow. Changing the flags to be consistent solved this. Level 3 optimization pegs a couple of the server processors at %100 utilization, so compiling a couple of versions for release should be fun.
A couple of clients ran some large amounts of claim data through the engine. I found that the UNIX kernel parameter maxdsiz that constrains the amount of dynamic memory each process can have was too low to handle it (it defaults to 64 MB).
I been mucking around with Flash. I have some nice new interfaces to use, but I can’t seem to get the page to load the animation. Weird. I might have to break down and read the documentation.
Lots o’ plans for the spring. I’d like to build a small deck in front between the door and the corner window. It has always worried me that someone might fall off the small cement stairway, and it would give more room. In the summer, it would be in the shade of the house during the afternoon and evening. I have a general idea about how to do it. The main need is tools. I have to find a power saw somewhere, and replace the rechargeable batteries for the cordless drill/screwdriver. After the deck, there is a need to build a new swing set and play area out back. I also need to get into shape for it. Obesity is fast becoming the number one preventable killer in the U.S., and my pants are getting tight.
We get email every once in a while that someone in the department will be late, or is not coming in. Wednesday morning the manager sent one stating one of the senior developers was on his way. I thought that was an odd way to word it. By noon it was bugging me so much I put this reply together:
RE: Developer is on his way
How long is he able to stay?
And when he is here,
will we have any reason to fear?
At end of day, can he know
how much further there is to go?
Browsing through DevTrack for information to extract,
will this email cause a great distract?
When all manner of data is chipped in Onyx,
could buy a lot of gin and tonics?
Can much use be made of Jabber,
without resorting to mindless blabber?
(bizarre need to emulate Dr. Seuss has faded, returning to work...)
DevTrack is the defect and enhancement management software, Onyx is the customer information tracking software, and Jabber is the approved instant messaging software. It took a few minutes to come up with something that rhymes with onyx. The response evoked much laughter, and I hope some stress relief.
End of Entry
No comments:
Post a Comment