Category: Other

  • A FoxPro to Python Quickie

    [Today in the #ThatConference #ThatTrivia Slack board, there was this math question: “Identify a multi-digit number such that when each digit is raised to the power of itself, and the result of each of those is added together you get the original number.” eg: 274 = (2 ^ 2) + (7 ^ 7) + (4 […]

  • Quick Utility to Compare DBF Schemas

    I recently revisited a project that I had dropped about 6 months ago. The client sent me an updated batch of data to work with, and I remembered the first thing I needed to do was massage the new data to get it back to where I could work with it again. The problem was, […]

  • Eric’s Completely Unironic Best Practices for Password Management

    Based on Real World Examples I’ve Seen. Seriously. Write your passwords on post-its and leave them on your monitor. Share your passwords with everyone on your commute. Then if you forget you can ask almost anybody and they can remind you. Use your firstborn’s entire first name, not just their nickname, as your password. Use […]

  • Southwest Fox 2017 Recap

    Southwest Fox 2017 is in the books. Here are my thoughts: Smaller, younger crowd When I walked into the keynote on Thursday night it was clear that this was a smaller crowd than years past. We were told to expect this because the folks at Alaska Software are taking the year off from conferences to […]

  • Windows Update and the 0x8024401F Error

    I’ve just spent quite a bit of team sifting and winnowing through the internet trying to get to the bottom of a Windows Update error that I’ve been getting for the last few weeks. StackOverflow.com, my preferred answer site, had nothing. If you’ve ever had to try to navigate the awful awful answers.microsoft.com, technet.com, spiceworks, […]

  • New (Old) Phone Number

    What a way to start the new year. I managed to break not one but TWO Samsung Galaxy phones over the weekend. The glass on my S5 was becoming unglued so I bought a replacement kit on Amazon and tried replacing it. I have done this successfully on two phones already, so I liked my […]

  • How to Hack a Database

    Do you ever hear about a database hack and think “Wow, whoever pulled this off must be some super-smart hacker type with access to advanced technology and supercomputers?” Well in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Database hacks are accomplished with a combination of readily available tools, a dash of readily available know-how, […]

  • SBT Flashback

    I got a call yesterday from another tech support guy who was at a place that was having trouble with their custom-written application. He had figured out that it was a problem with a FoxPro table, but not knowing how to fix those he searched “Madison FoxPro” and found my name. (Thank You, All in […]

  • Testing the “Duplicated Shuffle” Odds in SQL Server

    I recently became aware of the (kinda mind-blowing) fact that the odds are essentially zero that the order of the deck of cards you just shuffled has ever occurred before in the history of Earth (we’ll discard other planets for now as that variable is not quite yet known). According to this fascinating thread on […]

  • Good Riddance 2013

    I haven’t blogged in a while. In fact I haven’t done much of anything that can be considered creative or original for quite a while which is kind of a problem when you write code for a living! I’ve been pondering this post’s possibility for a few months, and finally having been inspired by other […]