Ahhhh....

Running SpinRite.

Meanwhile, I can do some work on my personal PC. Not real work, but at least i can browse webpages and read manuals. I.e. learn. Which was actually what i was doing when these reliability problems (3 hangs, and OneNote data lossages) happened.

I may already have noted this, but:

A few months ago I read an article in some CEO or Entrepreneur magazine. (No, I don't normally read such; it was the best choice while waiting for my shawarma).

Rough title: "habits and tricks of web CEOs".

Of special note: of circa 10 interviewees. 3 or 4 said that one of the best "tricks" was having extra PCs. So that when one Pc was hung or rebooting, you could work on the (or an) other PC.

Which is basically what I am doing now, and have been doing since this flurry happened: rebooting and/or doing preventive maintenance (SpinRite) on one PC, while continuing to work on another PC.

I'm using physical PCs.

I wonder if virtual PCs would be similar. E.gl. I wonder if I worked in virtual machines on top of my main PC, if a useful fraction of bugs would occur in one virtual machime - which I could reboot, while working on the others.

Versus, bugs that hit the VMM itself. On the host.

I suspect that it would be useful. There will always be bugs on the host. E.g. display driver bugs. But I suspect that most bugs are due to application or OS (guest) problems. (Although perhaps not today, if my fear about hard disk sectors going bad is conformed by SpinRite.)

Best if the guest VMs are isolated. But nobody wants full isolation. E.g. ultimately I want all of my work to be in one place. Especially if using cloud apps from either guest VM: the cloud apps could be a single common point of failure.

It might be nice is work was done into a replicated, distributed, version control system. Like git. Then work separately, and merge when (if) both mguest VMs are up.

OneNote bug

While I am ragging on OneNote, a bug reprt - NOT the lossages reported earlier:

When I hit alt-i r
to cut and paste a screenshot

sometimes it works
and sometimes (like now; actually, like 1 minute ago - NOW it works; anyway, the bug):

all screens/displays go blank, and can see nothuing to cut and paste.


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Now let's figure out where to reporrt this bug to,

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Everyone needs a personal bug tracking system.

E.g. I report bugs to my issue tracker, and then send it to the cpmpany selling the product.

A federation of issue trackers.

Tearing up the AAA Parking Lot

Workers were tearing up the AAA parking lot this morning.

No big significance. Just seemed like a bon mot. AAA = American Automobile Association. Building next to where I work. Lobbyists for many automotive related issues, often speaking out against using gas tax for anything other than highway construction.

Dell Docking Station Power (Non)Problem

This morning had trouble getting the docking station for my Dell Latitude 830 laptop (the docking station sports model number PR01X) to power up.

This was bad, because all of my USB monitors and keyboard and trackball and numeric keypad are driven through the docking station.

After thrashing - rebooting twice, etc. - realized there is a simply fix:

Unplug the docking station AT THE DOCKING STATION (not at the AC wall plug). And then replug. This causes the docking station lights to get all happy and green.

Why this should be, I do not know.

Excel file: URL hyperlinks cannot have parameters? :-(

Messing around with hyperlinks. Want to make it easioer to read a who;e slew of documents.

Tried to hyperlink to URL's of the form

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/aglew/Desktop/Javascript%20Hacking/patent-links.html?patnum=1234567

These links work from Firefox. Works from Internet Explorer. (IE7)


But they don't work from Excel. Office 2007. Whether using the HYPERLINK functions in formulae, or the hyperlink cell type obtained from Insert / Hyperlink.

Excel does me the "favor" of stripping off everything after the ampersand.

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Gosh, I hate it when software does me favors like this.

Microsoft OneNote and AutoHotkey Intefere

Last Friday I was plagued by a problem where, when I clicked the highlighter pen in Microsoft OneNote, I then became unable to click menus, etc. Ultimately I had to power cycle. Multiple times.

I have since figured out that the problem is an interaction between Microsoft OneNote and AutoHotkey. Probably not AutoHotkey in general, but one of my AutoHotkey scripts that intercepts certain button down and up events, so that I can use chords on a trackball to navigate without using the mouse or keyboard.

If OneNote hangs in this manner, I am usually able to click to the taskbar area that shows rfunning programs, and shut down AutoHotkey. Then OneNote, and the rest of Windows, seems to work. Curiously, if I subsequently rerun the AutoHotkey script, all seems to be well.

I.e. the problem seems to be when AutoHotkey is run before Microsoft OneNote.

I conjedcture that OneNote may be loading "mouse bitton bindings", and not necessarily handling any prexisting bindings. Or vice versa (although my money is on OneNote having the bug).

TBD: experiment with my bindings.

Although the current workaround is sufficient for my needs.

Work and Personal

This blog, http://andrew-f-glew.blogspot.com, is for blogging both from work and home.


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Never fear! I will not really be blogging from work.
No opinion pieces.


Rather, these posts will only contain things like bug reports for widely used software - things that I want to archive, and also share with others, particularly others who may be able to help me fix or avoid the problems.


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The rationale for this blog is similar to that for the corresponding email account:

I have set up the account Andrew.F.Glew@gmail.com for “professional” email – email that I may wish to receive at work, but which I also want to receive on a personal account.

E.g. I am considering paying, with my own money, for a Microprocessor Reports subscription including email advisories. Since I am paying my own money I want to be able to see this on my personal email account; but since this will be really useful to me at work, I want to be able to access it at work.

E.g. many of my professional subscriptions, such as IEEE and ACM, currently go to my personal email account – but I wish to be able to access these at work.

In the past I have set up forwarding accounts such as ag-work@patten-glew.net or ag-work@glew.ca. These work fine, and I want to continue to use them. But, they are limited because I try to be very careful not to use my personal email account at work, from work, using work computers. E.g. I may be dealing with patent applications from former employers that I cannot allow my current employer to look at. (And I must assume that everything done at work, whether IV or Intel, is monitored.) E.g. I may be working on my own inventions on my own time with my own resources. By keeping the simple rule of never accessing certain accounts from work, it is easier to ensure this security and integrity.

Hmmm… maybe I should call this account andy-maybe-at-work@glew.ca? Or andy@work-and-personal.glew.ca? But, I can’t set those up at the moment, not until I get home.

Simple forwarding isn’t, therefore, always what I want. Sometimes I want to look at the archives. Or control settings. Or log in to report a problem. Or ...

So, this is what I have done: Andrew.f.glew@gmail .com is a gmail account that I can access both from home and work. Complimenting my personal gmail account, andy.glew@gmail.com, which I can access only outside work, and my work account, which I can access only from work.

I must be careful never to put anything work-private on this account. But I can start using it for my IEEE and ACM and other professional subscriptions.

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I may use similar accounts for bug reporting, etc.