For the new version of Overseer, the network monitoring software I write, I was adding support for extended event logs– these are the “Applications and Services Logs” event logs below the regular ones in W2K8′s event viewer. I found I had to use the new EventLogSession/EventLogReader API. I found it required .NET 3.5, so I upgraded my software to require .NET 3.5(it was v2 compatible up to this point).

I got things working, and I was able to monitor event logs(new and old style) using the code remotely accessing Windows 2008 and Windows 7 computers. I got an error when accessing Windows XP machines(and I’m sure W2K3 machines, but I didn’t have any to test with at the time). The error was “UnauthorizedAccessException - Attempted to perform an unauthorized operation.”  To most, including myself, this seems like a permissions issue– so I looked into all sorts of potential impersonation problems, etc. I scoured the web looking for anyone even having the same problem, but didn’t find it.

Eventually, I found a reference buried in some forum reply, that one of the API calls that the new EventLogSession/EventLogReader calls is Vista/W2K8+ only. That’s just great– the whole API is now Vista/W2K8+ only… Why Microsoft wouldn’t add a compatibility layer for Windows XP and Windows 2003 is beyond me… But once I found this, I at least was able to move on, realizing that I had to detect the version of Windows running on the remote machine and use the different API’s accordingly… If only Microsoft had included proper documentation clearly specifying this new API was Vista/W2K8+ only, had an error message indicating something of that sorts, or actually did the right thing and wrote a compatibility layer into it, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time on such an unproductive search.

I personally prefer to buy big sets of icons. IconShock has been selling icon sets for years, and I can highly recommend their entire icon collection which is only $299 right now– that’s over 600k icons, for only $300. That’s less than $0.0005 per icon… Or roughly 20 icons per penny. Buying icons in a set like this, it’s fairly easy to find just the right icon for every part of your application, and best of all they have the same look and feel(provided you pull from the same or a similar set).

I’ve also started to make my icons larger in my applications. Traditionally, icons are only 16×16 in menus, toolbars, etc… With higher resolutions on screens, I find it’s far best to use 24×24 icons in menus and either 24×24 or 32×3 icons in toolbars. This provides a larger area for the user to see what the icon is(showing off your snazzy new icons!), identify it with the function in your software, and click.

I just read this article about Perfectionism vs. Success, and it strongly resonated with me. I often try to make things perfect the first time. Often times, I get so obsessed with doing something the ‘right way’, that it keeps me from doing it at all! This is particularly difficult when I don’t have an external force driving me to get something done– such as a client or customer request with a deadline(implicit or not). Recently, I’ve been acknowledging to myself that I have a problem, but I’ve incorrectly identified it as a lack of organization– which has led me to creating organizational tools and processes to “get organized”. While helpful, it doesn’t address my core problem of trying to be perfect.  Interestingly enough, creating my organizational tools went far quicker than expected, as I went into it with a “good is good-enough” attitude– as I know the tools won’t be customer-facing.

So, from here on out, I’m going to try to make a conscious effort to “just do it”, remembering “it doesn’t have to be perfect”– the first time, or potentially ever.

_WARN: config: path “/var/lib/amavis/.spamassassin/user_prefs” is inaccessible: Permission denied

Now, you’d think based on the message that the user_prefs file or the directory above it didn’t have the proper permissions for the user/executable accessing it… That’s what “permission denied” means, right?  WRONG. After hours dicking around, I eventually found that the problem was that the permissions were TOO OPEN… Instead of 700 on the .spamassassin directory, I had it set to 666(and 660 at one point)… As soon as I set the permissions on the .spamassassin directory to 700, the problem went away…

Now, I’d guess this is the amavis developers’ fault at least partly– I’ve seen other linux-based apps say “permissions are too open” regarding file permissions before(ssh key files, for one)… Possibly there’s something in the file-accessing API that you can request that permissions aren’t too open, and they just have a single fall-thru that says “permission denied”…  Either way, this type of thing causes me to waste considerable amount of time, and is the primary reason I’m very shy about adopting Linux for too many things– as much as I’ve tried over the past 13 years… In this case, I was configuring a front-end mail server using postfix+amavis+dovecot+spamassassin, as I don’t know of any good alternative for Windows(MS SMTP front-end is incredibly weak).

Foolishly, I bought into the scam, and paid the $19 to make a reasonable offer for overseer.com. The Email I got back was demanding $9500 for the site– which is incredibly over-valued. I countered with $1000, and the seller refused to negotiate further. I then found that the overseer.com cyber-squatter was actually the OWNER of securedoffers.com, and therefore simply SCAMMED me out of $19 to Email with him…

When it became acceptable for a business to demand money to let you offer them money is beyond me. I suppose it takes a different sort of person to be a cyber-squatter– why I expected them to be anything more than scammers is beyond me…. I’ve disputed the charge with Paypal, but I highly doubt they’ll do anything… Either way, this blog post, a bad review online, and the Paypal dispute is my way of venting and getting some kind of closure. Even the smartest among us get taken by a scam(such as this one from securedoffers.com) sometimes.

While this has been helpful to keep me from being totally idle on my products, I’ve found it’s caused a different problem. I’ll notice late in the week that a number is high, and be motivated to make a release to bring that number down to 0. So, I’ll search my feature database for something I can bang out in a couple hours or maybe a day– tops… If I have a bit more time, I’ll do a couple to make it a more substantial release… The problem with this, is I’m always pressed for time in a week– so only small enhancements get done… The exception to this rule, is when I have a customer specifically asking for features– then I focus all my development efforts on getting the list of features implemented that the specific [potential] customer requests. I feel I get a lot done in this manner, but it often spans multiple periods of my non-contract time. This is good, because I stay focused.

After noticing this pattern and doing some research online, I’ve come to the realization that I can’t continue without a little more structure. I need to start planning software releases– to create a simple schedule. I need to take some time, sit down, and choose a certain few features(big and small) to be included in a release. I then have to schedule out how long that’ll take, and get it done– accepting upfront that this will take numerous sessions– I can’t bang out a substantial release in an afternoon as I’ve been doing…

Regardless, it’s also a major pain to work with. The IDE crashes constantly, the ‘compiler’ can’t catch even the simplest of mistakes, etc… I dread the projects that require me to work directly with VFP(more than tweaking a few lines of code, anyways)… It’s frustrating and slow to get anything done. Speed and efficiency is picked up if you develop with it daily, but if you take a hiatus for a while to develop in a contemporary language(such as C#), coming back to it will just be very frustrating…

While VFP is a pain for me to work with as a developer, I have to respect the fact that a lot of solid programs are written in VFP. Programs that have been around multiple decades, and still work on modern hardware without tweaking. Many businesses run on software written in VFP, even if they don’t know it. The question for many of the companies with these products is when/if to convert to a modern development environment such as C#/.NET… While every business has to weigh the pros and cons of this, I personally see the Windows operating system support for VFP waning, and it may not run very well 5-10 years from now… Personally, I’m curious about the .NET Compiler for Visual Foxpro, which lets you compile VFP code to run on the .NET development platform. This might ease the pain for some software companies looking to make a transition. For the others, they’ll likely have to work into their schedules time to port their VFP code to .NET.

“While IPv6 is supported on all major operating systems in use in commercial, business, and home consumer environments,[3] IPv6 does not implement interoperability features with IPv4, and creates essentially a parallel, independent network. Exchanging traffic between the two networks requires special translator gateways, but modern computer operating systems implement dual-protocol software for transparent access to both networks either natively or using ‘tunneling’ such as 6to4, 6in4 or Teredo. In December 2010, despite marking its 12th anniversary as a Standards Track protocol, IPv6 was only in its infancy in terms of general worldwide deployment. A 2008 study[4] by Google Inc. indicated that penetration was still less than one percent of Internet-enabled hosts in any country at that time.”

12 years, and <1% deployment! This is what happens when you don’t have a good transition plan from one technology to the next– no one adopts it… I personally think it’s likely 12 years from now, IPv6 still won’t be the ‘standard’ used for the Internet… Many IPv6 proponents claim IPv4 is “end of life”, as the IANA just assigned the last big /8 net block– claiming “all the address are used up!” What they fail to understand, is that addresses aren’t consumed– they can be re-used, and they’re allocated by the IANA in huge blocks, and all those organizations that they allocate to, then sub-allocate to other organizations that allocate to end users.