Chopoff Consulting Blog

Now I am examining TE dB and noticing that they use varchar(20) for their primary keys. Yes it works. But what a waste of space!

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html

Tells us that as of 07/01/10   there are 6,830,586,985 people. Now that number is too big for an int of 4 bytes which can only count up to 2,147,483,647. But a bigInt has 8 bytes and can count up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. What a number! We could probably assign a unique number to every living animal on earth. According to:

http://www.currentresults.com/Environment-Facts/Plants-Animals/number-species.php

There are 1,589,361 total species. Now if each of those species are as numerous as people, or to put it another way, each one of us had 1 of every species, that total would be

and still easily fit inside a bigInt. In fact we could each and everyone of us have at least 850 of each specie before we would exceed the counting power of a bigInt.

But many specie are endangered. I found an unconfirmed quote that there are only 7,400 wild tigers left. If I had 850 of those, I wouldn’t know where to keep them. I doubt my house is big enough to even contain them. There are certainly not enough to pass 1 to everyone. In fact at least 923,052 people would have to share each tiger.

A lot of my struggle lately is because of my choice to use a 64bit beast. I tried using it when Vista just came out, but was too frustrated with the incompatibilities. I am sad to say there are still a lot of issues.

I have Win 7 (64bit) running and IIS 7.5 installed. So far trying to debug the TE website SW is hit and miss. Sometimes the db code runs and other times I get an error:

The specified DSN contains an architecture mismatch between the Driver and Application

Then I apply a fix and it seems to go away. Unfortunately, as my friend David Hash says “It’s like a bad horror movie. It’s dead. No it’s alive. Good it’s dead. Wait it’s alive! IT’S DEAD!…”

Hopefully setting some more parameters has finally cured my system of db access errors.

I sent two replies to my client at TE. While I was composing the second apparently I got a reply to the first note I sent. I did not notice, continued writing and then sent the second note to them. On checking what I had sent I discovered their reply to my first reply, but my second reply had disappeared. It was not attached to any of the other notes. I am guessing it might have something to do with transaction commitment on the db.

It is annoying to have ones thoughts obliterated. My wife sometimes comes to me explaining she has spent a L O N G time writing in HotMail and “something Happened!” now she wants me to recover her words for her. I know that feeling all too well!

It is disheartening to tell her it is beyond my abilities. Because she does not understand what is involved, instead of being her hero, I’m a zero. I really wish I could just make it reappear.

I believe I know how to fix it though. Web Apps really need to have some persistance just in case the user hits the wrong key. Oops I mean a gremlin has thrown an object or something has fallen onto the keyboard hitting that one key that deletes ALL YOUR WORK! There is no going back. Clicking on back just shows a BLANK page.

But with a transactional db and persistent storage, until an email or other doc is confirmed stored, a temp and persistent copy should always be available. ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP, just in case a gremlin succeeds in making my wife’s work disappear.

I was destined to be born on the 13th. But my papa told my mama, “No! He must wait until the 14th!” and as a good little baby boy, kept waiting to be born until I did as he wished! Knowing nothing of superstition, somehow I managed to understand his wishes and thus was I born in the wee hour of the morn in April some sixty years ago.

Then they brought me to this great country where eventually I became a citizen. I grewup beyond the irresonsible ages. Into adulthood where life was no longer carefree and discovered the hell hole that is the IRS and taxes. Too many a birthday has been spoilt going over the facts and figures to insure I (and later we) did not overpay our taxes. I calculated to the penny what was due and paid nothing more.

I’ve reconsidered that behavior so this time instead of working on the taxes, I played on my birthday. Though I spent most of the day all alone, I did enjoy some video game chat with a friend and his buddy who were deep into the new Splinter Cell:Conviction while I was playing Battlefield:Bad Company 2.

I stopped by a local Best Buy after a good lunch at King Crab to maybe buy a copy of SC:C for myself. Unfortunately they were completely out of both standard and CE editions and made my decision for me. The CE is an excuse to pay $10 more for some trinkets, including virtual ones!

When I had tons of money to spend and it looked like the well would not run dry, no problem, I would always go for the extras edition. My wife and I still enjoy watching the behind-the-scenes that usually come with those on DVD. But that is rare now as clients with money and jobs are difficult to find.

Today, a friend of mine is sick and I will spend a little time visiting. I also need to find time to stop by my accountant and get what papers I need filled out. I know a lot of this is now electronic. I also know I am being a dinosaur by insisting on holding on to our traditional ways as long as possible. But someone has to remember it has not been that long since the world changed. The world of my youth, the first two thirds of my life.

There is a chance I will live another 20 years (or more). Those thoughts bring to mind the many relative and friends who did not. The numerous funerals and birthdays that have intercected with my life. There is an intense desire within myself to realize the success I crave. It is what continues to drive me through all challenges presented. Whether it be in the field of programming or just life in general. The issues involved with making every step I take be taken in the right direction. The realization that by doing so, each day brings me closer to attaining my goals. Amen!

So all work is put off for another day, two or at least until next week and I wonder if it would have been different if I did not put off being born until the day before taxes. One can only conjecture.

You would think that by now, in the year 2010, with all that knowledge behind us, that all applications will warn that they are unable to deal with a file size that exceeds its limits. It took two runs of cuteFTP to prove that my 4GB file was only transferring 2GB and then stopping at 49% complete.

GlobalScape assured me that it was the server side, though not all servers have this limitation, just those like the one that the TE db is on!

I decided to zip the files. The transaction log was only 3.5 GB and it zipped and unzipped on the target system just fine. But then zip could not handle the 4GB file!

Long story short, after several different products I found (again) 7zip and it did the job (for free). I still do not know if it all worked as I now need to get my SQL server to see the db’s.

But I do learn. I put effort into bringing up new SW on my 64bit beast with 2 brains. Though I’ve run MS SQL before, now I am integrating it into websites with ASP.NET and VB.NET. Someday I may even be paid to do so. Keeping up with what is out there is part of being in my trade.

I have worked for stock, which often wound up being $0 in the end. Working for a dream that might not come true is a risk. However it does come true for some companies. So many people wind up working for $0, but that was not their goal.

After some time the dream is gone. Some people realize its not panning out. There was prospects of wealth when they started, but now they have to move on. Like a miner trying to find the mother lode they flock to the latest rumors of a field of gold.

It would be my wish that some philantropist take pity on me and shower my world with wealth. For having a lot of money is nearly as bad as being broke. Most folks just can’t handle it. The lotteries have proved that. It is difficult to build and maintain a money machine. So the majority of us squander what we have, when we have it, thinking the well will never go dry.

The funny thing is even if that happened. Say I got an email from Mrs Moneybags offering to transfer into my account the sum of $35,450,000.00 . It would be lost amongst all the scams. Not even noticed as dutiful robots sort that type of email directly to the bulk trash. Even if I were to peek with curiosity into the bulk trash, how would I distinguish it as a real offer? I know I would not.

But I wander from my point. We all work for some reason. Even when no money is gained from the effort. No one pays me to shower or bath. To dress and tidey up my things. To get rid of the trash I need to pay someone to haul it away after I have worked to bring it to the curb! Many, not enough of us, do a daily work out and exercise because we wish to maintain our health and appearance. So in that sense, we all actually do work for $0. But when it comes to our jobs,

We do NOT work for $0!

I did not know there was such a thing. I found a site on internet that explains it pretty well.

http://www.businessknowhow.com/money/elevator.htm

It is a pitch that could take place in an elevator ride about whatever you are trying to sell worded so that anyone could understand. The website gives you six questions that should be answered in your pitch. It also suggest that you have a hook, continue for no more than 60 seconds (about 150 words) and ask for something at the end.