Optimists

Why as an optimist do I get rained on? I think its not going to rain but it does.

BTW another build with XMPP emoticons, saving of emoticons and bug fixes. This is trunk now:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20050530/pidgin-2.5.0devel-no-gtk.exe

I should learn how to package debs, that would be helpful.

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Windows Server and the Task Scheduler Error Code 0x3

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Wow, so again this is me documenting a problem I've had. Recently I was asked to diagnose a problem with a Windows Server 2008 on which its scheduled tasks were failing with the helpful error 0x3.

So what does 0x3 mean? Well according to Microsoft it means:

"The system cannot find the path specified."

Hmm...

Given that the paths were there and that up until midnight the tasks were running fine this lead to a problem. So I checked the following:

1, Can I run the task manually?
2, Can I run the task in the "Only if user is logged on" mode
3, Has the anti-virus done something?
4, Is there anything in any of the event logs for the last 24 hours that relates to this?

Nothing appeared to offer a reason for the failure. I ended up doing the thing I hate the most and that was scheduling a reboot. Once the server came back up the tasks sprang into life. If anybody knows what happened, please let me know.
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The living wage failure

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There has been growing talk of paying a living wage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27981975

The concept irks me, businesses voluntarily paying good wages is like businesses volunteering to pay tax. Many millionaires have stated they don't mind paying more tax, just they don't want to pay more then their peers.

The living wage is the same problem, you've either got to make it the national minimum wage or not bother.

Personally I would prefer to see the wage increased so we can do away with Working Tax Credit which is at the end of the day a benefit from the state to the shareholders of low paying companies.
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IDE's and speed

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I am a big fan of the the command line and keyboard shortcuts, however the one thing I've never managed to  do it move away from a graphical development environment. Eclipse, Visual Studio, Notepad++ and in the last few years QtCreator have all delivered exactly what I needed. However I always felt they might not help me work at my best, I always ran compiles via the command prompt and always had a strong grasp of scripting and the ability to reproduce my steps for a build machine.

Editors like vi and Emacs always seemed non-intuitive to me, holding legacy with keyboard sequences such as :w! always grated at me.

So for 2014 one of my new years resolutions will be to find the right text editor for me, starting with the one I use the most nano. I've found some cool syntax highlighting and I've just got to find function lookup or code completion to make it ideal.


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