“Man sues Lynx after failing to get girl” (news.ninemsn.com)

If it sounds strange that someone would/could sue the makers of a deodorant because it failed to get him a girlfriend in the last 7 years of use, then you’d be right – it was a hoax!

The original story came from the Faking News website and it wasn’t just ninemsn that reported the story – I saw it on all the major TV stations in South Australia and it’s also appeared on news sites in the UK – see the DailyRecord for example. (By the way, the original ninemsn article has been removed but the cached version can still be read via Google links.)

It just goes to show you how much unfounded faith we put in our news broadcasters. The reason I bring this subject up again is that so many people were saying how amazing it was that a person could sue over something like this….well, he didn’t and that’s why it’s amazing.

I suppose if I were a MS Vista user (I staunchly refuse to move from XP which I think is actually OK, being as it’s based on Windows NT – the best Windows OS ever released) I might have been interested…I would also be a very tired person right now: up since the crack of dawn to secure a copy and then spending the whole day trying to install it and getting it to work (alright, I don’t know it’s a pig to install, but I bet there are some hardware issues with older machines i.e., >year).

What’s so exciting?

Really, it’s difficult for me to justify writing this post because I’m not going to try Windows 7 for some time (not until the first Service Pack has been released at the very least), however, the reason I’m under-whelmed is because I really don’t see the benefit given the list of things MS says Windows 7 does. Most of the new things I’ll never use and most of the things I’ll want to use will be a pain to use (I’m sure this OS will be just as restrictive as Vista – just in different ways).

Even by taking my own advice and looking outside the corporate MS marketing bubble, I’m still not convinced.  My fav site (Lifehacker) provides a great Complete Guide to Windows 7, but this just reaffirms what I already thought….most of the stuff is just fixing what made Vista so annoying to use!

Hey, I might be proved wrong, but for power users I still don’t see what any offering from MS can offer that we haven’t had for ages in Linux…Bah! Humbug!

Typical Reactions?

The story quickly spread through radio and TV and other media outlets with predictable comments for and against. Given the average Australian’s relaxed view of the world, most crys seemed to favour “The world’s gone mad” camp and “This is PCdom gone crazy“. From what I heard, the TV & Radio networks certainly took the “banning hugging is as ridiculous as banning walking” stance.

But, was all what it seemed? I’d have thought that most people would find it strange that any school would try to enforce a complete ban on friends hugging – after all, even though schools have had to ban certain [possibly] dangerous activities because of possible lawsuits, Hugging hardly falls into this category!

Find Out For Yourself

I don’t want to go into too much more detail on this story, except to say, it’s not a general ban on hugging, rather it’s a ban on displays of affection between boyfriends and girlfriends – so as not to set a bad example to younger children (you can read the statement from the school principal on The Advertiser’s website). Now that doesn’t seem quite as ‘mad’ does it?

My Point?

Well, I’m always so amazed at how many people are happy to believe whatever is put in front of them (via TV, radio, newspaper, internet, colleagues, friends, etc.) without questioning it. Ok, so people who know me would say I never believe anything until I can prove it *, but think about it. How often do you just believe something (and repeat it) without finding out if it’s really true?

Most things you can get away with not verifying before you rush on in e.g., “I heard there was a sale on at such & such“. After all, the exercise it takes to get to such & such might do you good even if there isn’t a sale sign in sight when you get there.

But what about all the things that do matter? Surely believing a story such as “School bans Hugging” doesn’t really matter? Well, I think it does…and it matters a lot.

Failing to question any story that, when you think about it even a little bit, goes against what you feel is right, simply enables the endless sensationalism that comes our way each day.

Without questioning what we hear & see, we allow politicians to work for themselves rather than us, news to be just stories, and governments to do what they want rather than what the nation wants.  Without questioning what we hear & see, we allow people to be hurt by hearsay, convicted by what we think they’ve done rather than what they’ve actually done, and suffer when they should never have suffered (e.g., WMD).

Extensive debugging of the new code shows absolutely no issues – in fact, the “Bad DLL calling convention” error occurs when a new function returns a perfectly acceptable Boolean….what is going on?

The Problem

Running my ‘perfect‘ code, MS Access gives me an Error49:

“Bad DLL calling convention“

However, debugging tells me this error is incorrect…unless returning a Boolean from a function is now a terrible thing for a DLL that doesn’t even exist??

Obviously, because it’s MS Access, these sorts of things happen every once in a while, so you reach for your standard toolkit of:

Tools->Database Utilities->Compact and Repair Database...

Surprise, surprise this doesn’t make any difference at all (and now I’m getting really annoyed cos Access keeps crashing and I have to keep firing it up again). So, thinking about the problem more carefully (which, of course, you should do in the first place), what does the error tell me?

References?

Well, the obvious place to start looking for a real solution is in the Library References (just in case you’re new to this, open any Module and then go to: Tools->References...). It’s possible that, for some reason, a reference to a library has broken and is displaying ‘Missing’ at the beginning.

Suffice to say, all my libraries were properly referenced and there didn’t seem to be anything untoward going on. Now I’m at a loss. Just what is going on and how did this happen ‘out of the blue‘?

The Solution

Thanks to Luke Chung & Dan Haught (and their post on their FMS website), the solution is actually pretty straightforward. Luke & Dan give this outline of the problem:

Unfortunately, over time, the part of your Microsoft Access database that stores VBA module code can become bloated, and in some cases, trigger strange errors such as Bad DLL calling convention. As you compile and run code, VBA leaves behind old versions of the code that are no longer valid, but it is not always removed from the database. Database Compact and Repair only addresses the Jet tables in your database, and not the code. That’s why it has no impact when this error arises.

Ah yes! Code bloat! I should have guessed. Checking out the size of the application I’m working on shows that it’s grown from a usual 45MB, to a whopping 240MB even after a ‘Compact and Repair‘ – I’m productive, but not that productive!

What’s needed is a clean up of the code so any old compilations are discarded and we’re left with a clean version of the current VBA. To achieve this:

1. Start Access from the command line (using full path) with the /decompile switch, eg.,: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\msaccess.exe /decompile"
2. Once Access opens, just go through your usual compile routine (i.e., open any code module and ‘Debug->Compile‘) to clean up the codebase.
3. Finally, Compact and Repair Database...

It works! Once finished, my app size was down to a very respectable 25MB (the smallest I’ve ever seen it).

I was looking for a more in-depth explanation as to what’s going on with the /decompile option, but according to Microsoft’s KB Article ID:819780, the /decompile switch is undocumented (there is certainly no reference to it in the help system or in any of my reference books). If anyone has more information, please let me know.

Additional Resources

You may also find Allen Brown’s discussion on Recovering from Corruption useful as well as Microsoft’s KB Article ID: 279334 (on ‘Repairing a damaged Jet3.5 DB‘).

I’ve been meaning to share a little problem I had some months back, when for no apparent reason, Outlook wouldn’t run when I tried to start it.

The Problem

When starting, Outlook failed to open with the error:

"Outlook: Cannot open Outlook window"

Nothing I did with the settings would make it run, and no-one else on the network was having any problems. I even thought about removing my profile and re-creating it – there had to be a way around this?

The Solution

After much searching, I stumbled across a post (really sorry, I made a note of the source but I’ve misplaced it) that suggested the problem might have something to do with a screwed-up Navigation Pane (i.e., the window pane that displays the tree-view of your mail folders and includes the tabs for Mail; Calendar; Contacts; Tasks).

Outlook Navigation Pane

In the end the solution was easy: use the command line (Start->Run) to start Outlook with the /resetnavpane switch:

outlook.exe /resetnavpane

In fact, exploring the possible command line switches for Outlook throws up some interesting options. What about:

outlook.exe /sniff

which starts outlook, finds any new meeting requests, and automatically adds them to the calendar (pretty cool eh?).

Want more?

Check out Robert Sparnaaij’s “How-To-Outlook” site, which provides heaps of useful tips & techniques for getting the most out of (let’s face it) a mail reader you’re forced to use!

Of course, if you have the choice, then please, please, please dump Outlook altogether and get:

• Thunderbird – brilliant for your standalone PC.
• Zimbra – de facto Exchange replacement but also desktop version available.
• Zarafa – new kid on the block (relatively speaking) for a replacement/alternative for MS Exchange.

Well, today I knew where the thing I wanted was…it just didn’t work! How can something as simple as transposing data (swapping columns for rows and vice versa) be so difficult?

The Problem

Transposing data in Excel is easily performed (all versions) by selecting all the cells containing the data you want to transpose, copying the cells (usually using ‘Ctrl+C‘), selecting the start cell where you want to copy the data to, and selecting the ‘transpose‘ checkbox from the ‘Edit?Paste Special...‘ dialog box (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Excel 'Paste Special...' window

There are a couple of caveats you should be aware of:

1. You have to ‘copy‘ rather than ‘cut‘ the data you wish to transpose and
2. The cells you are copying the transposed data to cannot overlap the cells with the original data in.

However, when I tried this on a set of data, Excel 2007 responded with the error:
"The Copy area and the paste area are not the same size and shape. Try one of the following:
- Click a single cell, and then paste
- Select a rectangle that's the same size and shape, and then paste."
Seeing that I only had a single cell selected, the advice was pretty poor!

The Solution

It seems that Excel 2007 is not so happy performing certain tasks when the worksheet is in “compatibility mode”. In other words, Excel would not transpose the data because the workbook (file) I was using had been originally created in a previous version of Excel (Excel 2003 to be precise – I had created it on a secure server and was manipulating it on my local machine).

The solution then was to save the workbook in 2007 format (as an .xlsx file), and then perform the transpose on the data. Why Excel didn’t provide such information in the error message is beyond me, especially as such compatibility issues cause a serious amount of angst.

Mini-Olympics

The mini-Olympics comprises of 4 team based events, and my group (trained by Heidi) managed to come 2nd overall (out of 15 teams). It was a great morning and I’d definitely do it again next year.

Now PuffaFish is back, all I have to do is keep it updated. I don’t really have a blogging plan, but I expect I’ll write about software engineering, people and life – mainly I suspect it will be used as an outlet for all the things that fire me up.

If you don’t know me, and you’ve just stumbled across PuffaFish by accident, head straight to the About Me page to find out where I’m coming from….hopefully that information will help you understand why I say the things I do.

Overall though, I hope the information you find on these pages is (1) useful and (2) entertaining and if something happens to be both, then that’s great. Feel free to leave any comments on any of the information I provide so I can improve what I offer. Have fun!