Archive for January 25th, 2002


A cheap plug….

Today, Symantec Corporation made public:

Norton Utilities v 7.0 Beta (OSX NATIVE)

Information is available at This link

The Beta can be downloaded here.

Personally, I think it rocks. 🙂

Here I am on can # 5 of Dr. Pepper for the night.

I had this nasty bug reported to me about 4 weeks ago. Nasty bug in the professional world == Crasher.

Of course Crashers come in different shapes and sizes.

(Suddenly I find myself feeling like Ray in Ghostbusters)
What we have here is a type 3, free floating crasher, Real nasty one

But as always, I digress.
Crashers can:
1) Make your program lock up
2) Make your program crash
3) Make your computer lock up
4) Make your computer crash
5) Invoke the equivalent of Das Blue Screen Der Death!

Happily in the world of OSX, a normal program doesn’t rise above a level 1 crasher.

My little baby tonight…as I said, was reported to me 4 weeks ago. It was considered “Unreproducable” So we ignored it.
Today, someone managed to reproduce it. And after fighting 1 bug until 12:30, I tried to reproduce it.

Fun, Fun, Fun. I found the little S.O.B.

Remember, when they told you, “Knowing there is a problem is half the battle.”?

In the world of Programming knowing there is a problem just starts the search for finding where the problem is. After that comes the disastrous fear of trying to figure out how to fix the problem.

I’ll give you an example. Your car goes “Wheeeeeemmmmmmm”
Okay…You know you have a problem. You open up the hood and see a spray of steam from under some large metallic thing.
K, now you know where the problem lies. Now you have to get to someone who can figure out if they have to take out the engine.

Well, here I am; the mechanic. Actually the auto designer trying to figure out why the engine keeps going Wheeeeeeemmmmmm. I know what’s not connected right….

Now I have to figure out if I can attach the loose hose to something else.

Blathering ramble at 4am