News from the home front

I found myself with an unexpected night off, so I set to a task which I've been wanting to tackle for some time: doing a bit of organizing in the basement. Part of it was my mess, and the other part wasn't really "mess"; rather, it was a bit of consolidation of some grocery items. I had a vague plan when I started out, and it came together with hardly a hitch. I did discover one thing which I had suspected but had never known for certain- that is, the ends of fridge packs (a long cardboard box containing soda cans arranged 2x6) are not square on the ends! Armed with this new-found knowledge, I did just a tiny bit or rearranging and I had very neat bunch of soda. Its always nice when one can scratch an item off of the "honey-do" list, even if that list is only in your mind, and its what you think your honey wants done.

Another item, and this one was on the "real" honey-do list, was installing two software packages on Jennifer's PC. I should probably explain a bit about the division of labor in our home. While she is completely capable of doing all sorts of things to and on her PC, it is within my bailiwick to maintain, upgrade, service and have the final purchase responsibility of all things PC (we're talking personal computer here, not something else). So, I put the software into the optical drive and the software started to do its thing. This was not an ugly or painful install, with constant user intervention; no, rather, it was a lengthy install- close to forty-five minutes, which surprised both of us. A few days later, I tackled the second software package. And, in case anyone is wondering, these two truly qualified as packages, having many capabilities and being quite multifaceted- one was a home graphics suite, and the other was an optical disk/data management package. Whereas the first one was simply the digital equivalent of watching paint dry, the second one was straight out of Reboot City. I think there were three reboots, but who's counting?

I inserted the disk into the drive, and immediately our Avira antivirus decided it was time for an update. Stuck between a rock and a digital hard place, I clicked "Okay" and Avira updated. This did not seem to interfere with the installation- it just added time to the process. A lot of time when one is watching a progress bar. Finally, it was done. I turned my full attention to my installation, and the install manager informed me that before proceeding, I would need to get the latest updates to the program. No biggie- sometimes the updates occur during the install, sometimes when it is finished. Okay, let's get the updates and get this puppy installed.  A web browser opens, and I an informed that, before I can get the updates, I need to update Java.

Aaaaarrrrggghh!

Have you seen Iron Man 2? He has a cameo. He's something of a Silicon Valley bad boy, as well as the CEO of Oracle Corp.  Who is he? Why, Larry Ellison, of course. Oracle is one of the world's enterprise database powers, and Larry is The Man At Oracle. They also are the folks behind Java ("write once, run anywhere"). Well, a few weeks back, a Java security hole was announced, and all of the I.T. pundits, gurus and masterminds said either get rid of Java or don't update, as the patch seemed to make things even worse.  Being an on-top-of-it semi-I.T. gonk, I heeded the advice and did absolutely nothing with Java.

Until I needed to install this software. You see, Java is used by a lot of other applications, like the one I needed to get my updates. So, ... I updated Java. As far as I know, nothing bad happened, and the world is still spinning in its customary orbit. I finally got my updates, and a reboot or two later, I tested the program. All was good.

Finally, after a week, the database is officially an Access 2007 endeavor. I've only done a little with it since then- nothing new, just updating the titles from the new table. I think I'm going to put all data entry aside until I get this part of the project completed, as it is normalization related.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.