Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
Have you ever gone on a date only because you feel like you have to in order to carry on a relationship that you think is over, but you’re not quite ready to drop it yet? That’s what writing yesterday’s entry felt like. And that’s what today’s feels like. I just re-read yesterday’s post, realized I didn’t complete a number of thoughts in it and only said about half of what I intended to say, and found myself not caring in the least.
Moodiness is a big part of who I am, and right now it’s showing big-time.
I probably spent a total of three hours on the phone yesterday, troubleshooting an ACT! problem over the phone. ACT!’s an extremely finicky program, caring about things it shouldn’t care about (for instance, you can sabotoge ACT! by putting it on a LAN with a PC that has an apostrophe in its computer name–ACT! isn’t even supposed to use Microsoft Networking for anything!), and an ACT! database can become corrupt as Warren G. Harding’s cabinet just from simple use. Sometimes the built-in tools can recover, and sometimes they can’t. Corrupt a database, and you start a vicious downward cycle. ACT! crashes because the database is corrupt, further corrupting the database in many cases, making future crashes all the more common and all the more destructive. Making matters worse, ACT! seems to affect other apps as well. When ACT!’s unhappy, the whole computer’s unhappy.
Career advice: If you want job security, learn ACT! It’s extraordinarily popular, and maybe it’s extraordinarily good for the things people use it for–I have no idea, since I’m not in any of the businesses that seem to be addicted to ACT!–but it’s also extraordinarily finicky and easy to break, and therefore extraordinarily profitable for anyone who sets out to learn how to fix it. I’d be willing to bet SalesLogix makes more money off recovering corrupt databases than they do off new ACT! sales. I know a lot of consultants charge upwards $400 just to run ACTDIAG.EXE (included with the program) on mildly corrupted databases and get them back in business.
Anyway… That was my day.
Gatermann sent me some of the pictures he took last week when we were up on the roof of Gentry’s Landing and elsewhere. They’re pretty spectacular. His site’s acting up so he can’t post them right now, but presumably he’ll send me a link once they’re up. They’ll definitely be worth a look.
And I’m wondering what would happen if we ever teamed up his camera with my words. Would we work well together? Could we find a project that brought out both our best?
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
If you wanna know someone who "religiously" uses ACT! then ask Christian label Mightyhorn Records. When I worked for Computers of Cleveland, they were one of our clients. I can’t tell you how many problems we had with their ACT! software. I know we made a lot of money fixing it every week. *grins*
I begged and pleaded with them to allow us to make them a custom database solution built on Microsoft Access ’97 (installed on all of their computers). It would have been so easy. I can have quickly integrated that in with Outlook ’98 (also installed on all of their computers), and I doubt it would have crashed very much!
They never bit, so we kept going out there on a weekly basis to "un-corrupt" their database. *sigh*
By the way, does that first comment mean you "carry on a relationship [with this website] that you think is over"?
Please pray for all of the people involved in and connected to this horrible tragedy:
Late Wednesday, a 36-year-old wife and mother from Houston, Texas, was charged with capital murder for systematicly drowning her five children (ages 6 months to 7 years)in the bathtub.
She had been taking medication for post-partum depression, which is a serious mental condition characterized by depressed mood, difficulty concentrating, sleeping problems, fatigue and guilt that women giving birth sometimes suffer.
Her first bout with post-partum depression took place after giving birth to her fourth child, in which time she tried to commit suicide in June of that year. The second took place after giving birth to her fifth child.
The father and three of the children had attended a birthday party at a neighbor’s home over the weekend, but the mother had stayed home with the other two children.
The neighbor had lived across the street for about four years and hadn’t ever socialized with the family before the birthday party and seldom saw the mother outside.
Dave, I think that if we put our minds to it, we could come up with a joint effort to do.