John Croson's Blog Home

Wow, talk about a news reader on steroids... I happened to stumble upon this VERY cool news reader. From their site, the quick description: MarkMail lets you search millions of emails across thousands of mailing lists Search using keywords as well as from: , subject: , extension: , and list: constraints The GUI doesn't yet expose it, but you can negate any search item, like -subject:jira . Subdomains are list constraining, so tomcat.markmail.org searches tomcat lists Use "n" and "p" keyboard shortcuts to navigate the search results You're going to want JavaScript enabled You can stay current with the MarkMail blog What I think is really cool, is that MS docs are also included in the mix. When you find them, it pops them up in what looks like a Thickbox/JQuery interface. VERY nice. It's very intuitive, IMHO. You perform a search, and are presented with a match list of messages. Clicking on one "slides" the thread to the left, revealing ...

Well, NOW I know why I've not gotten any mail from my recent subscription to the R:Base mailing list. GoDaddy must be blocking these, as I've not received one, but after signing up via my Gmail account, 2 have hit my inbox. Turns out if you perform a search on "GoDaddy email issues" you will get many results. *sigh* I thought we'd get decent hosting out of them, but this is just unacceptable. Reading a few flames of them reveals that they have taken steps on a genocidal level to control spam. I even found this smart article outlining a method of using Google Apps to host your mail, instead of GoDaddy!

...in this hemisphere that is using R:Base. Although I'm sure if the other person using it reads this, I'll get flamed. I've posted a comment to the "mailing list", and have further convinced myself I'm the only one, next to the list admin, that has subscribed to this list, as my post rendered no comments, and I've not received any messages over a 72 hour period. Since this version (6.5) has few functions as compared to that of some other programming languages I've used, and interacting with the data in the form I've been forced to, I will admit to learning more about fundamental SQL data manipulation, use of Cursor's, SQL functions, etc. I'll have to say overall it's been a satisfying experience, in that it has exercised my brain. Without the luxury of having peer support or newsgroup forums to draw from, I've had to rely solely on the sparse documentation (few examples), and my past coding experience (few examples).

I've been tasked this week to review an R:Base database that is used to parse data from one of our clients, and output it into a usable form for our Misys Tiger server. It's had many little menu items added to it to perform data manipulation over the years, and never really been used to it's full potential. I'm more of a VBA/VB guy, and would rather get this done using Access, but only have a couple of weeks to clean it up before the poor guy that currently has to use this goes on vacation, when I will presumably step in to "scrub and screen" data for interfacing into Misys. Wow, what a clunky piece of stuff. I'm using v6.5, which is quite old, circa 1999 I think. Lots of functions and methods to learn, which is doing to my eyes what pouring salt into would do just quicker... ;-). I'm finding virtually no newsgroup info, and they've removed most legacy application information from their website. *sigh* Guess I'll have to post my questions t...

I'm soooo embarrassed about this, but compelled to share it. I have an eBay account, like many of us do, which is linked to PayPal, which in turn is linked to my bank account. My wife and I share my eBay account, because it seems to make sense, since we share everything else in our lives. Today she was checking her email, and it was from eBay, with a message about some item she bid on, and she'd be reported if she didn't respond. I thought this was strange, since her email account isn't listed on our eBay account, but thought we'd check it out. *This is where my brain was simply not engaging correctly.* My wife, however, did say, "Honey, why would I get this email?", and "Isn't this strange?". WHY DON'T I LISTEN? Testosterone? Age? No, just plain STUPIDITY... The links in the frighteningly familiar email went to a cleverly crafted website that asked for user/pass information to the account. "Strange, that password isn't wor...

Wow. I've really had LOTS of hits generated on this blog, since I posted some info about SEPM and my related issues, so I've decided to share some tips and other interesting findings. My guess is that many of you that hit my blog don't have the luxury of having a DEV environment to test in, so PLEASE do yourself a favor, and if you do nothing else, follow #7 and #8. This will prevent you from having to invest in the Hair Club for Men after you yank all yours out. Tips: SEPM doesn't like to be installed on custom HTTP ports, but it is possible. See 'Configuring the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager to run with a custom HTTP port' Document ID: 2007111212591048 here . It's a pretty simple process. SEPM will not show graphics from RDP sessions....seriously. So don't put yourself in a situation as I did, and hang on the helpline-from-hell with someone that didn't know, nor did the knowledge-base. DOH! If you have to upgrade SEPM, God help you. I used...

So today I'm trying to clean up a Symantec Endpoint Protection client install that went bad, and here's what I get during the uninstall process... Is it really gonna take this long? Can I make a pot of coffee stretch that far? Will my kids start college before this completes? In truth, this quickly went to 11 M$ minutes, then to 1 M$ minute. First time I've EVER seen anything like that before.