The Daily Parker

Yesterday I complained that some combination of factors had made it impossible for me to evaluate an expensive tool for my day job. The manufacturer responded overnight:

First, we want to express our apologies for experiencing login problem. This is really uncommon and is usually related to OS restrictions. We also want to thank you very much for your interest in Telerik products. We are sure you will be able to build beautiful applications with lots of rich functionality really easy with guaranteed support, demos and documentation, etc.

Back to the login problem. The trial installer is an application that provides web login flow. This means that when you click on Login, your default web browser will be launched landing on the login page. If your system is configured to block applications to launch the default browser, the flow will be interrupted. From the provided error, we can see that System.Diagnostics.Process.Start fails to launch the browser. This information, however, is insufficient to know what the exact reason for this failure is.

We did a quick research and found a solution for a similar problem - OpenWith.exe error. Could you please let us know if that resolves the problem on your side?

Well, then. That's helpful and articulate. They suggested a few options, one of which is simply to use their private NuGet feed, so I will try that first.

For my real job, I'm evaluating graphics packages to report (informally) at tomorrow's sprint review which ones I think we should investigate further, so that at the next sprint review in two weeks, I can recommend which one we should buy. These packages cost between $1000 and $6000 per year to license. You would think that helping me choose would top the priority list of everyone involved in the demo and trial process.

With that preface, here is the bug report I filed with Telerik earlier today:

When attempting to install a trial version of the Blazor UI controls, I am unable to progress beyond the Login step. This is unfortunate as without the trial I can't make the case that my company should spend thousands of dollars on Telerik instead of, say, Syncfusion. I have to say this experience is not encouraging.

I examined the conversation between the installer and the mothership using Fiddler. The endpoint dle.telerik.com:443 responded with HTTP202 (Accepted) to this POST:

POST https://dle.telerik.com/metrics/v1/events/errors HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json
Authorization: Bearer {snip}
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Content-Type: application/json
Host: dle.telerik.com
Content-Length: 1211

{"Type":"HandledError","SessionId":"f2ee3acd-37dc-487a-b5ea-1b2647a2eeb3","Source":"Installer","SourceVersion":"2023.3.1012.0","Timestamp":"2023-10-23T21:10:19.7047547Z","OS":"Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit v.10.0 ","CLR":"4.8","MachineId":"6uI7wmYbX4Q9h0+vgpSj5xbBF4o=","Exception":{"OS":"Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit v.10.0 ","CLR":"4.8","MachineId":"6uI7wmYbX4Q9h0+vgpSj5xbBF4o=","Message":"The system cannot find the file specified","Type":"Win32Exception"},"ErrorDetails":"   at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)\r\n   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()\r\n   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)\r\n   at Telerik.Sso.SsoClient.MakeAuthorizationRequestInBrowser(Int32 port, String appProtocol, String appName, String productCode)\r\n   at Telerik.Sso.SsoClient.GetAccessToken(String appProtocol, String appName, String productCode)\r\n   at Telerik.CommonInstaller.DataAccess.RuntimeServiceClient.GetAccessToken(String appProtocol, String appName, String productCode)\r\n   at Telerik.CommonInstaller.Application.Services.AuthenticationService.Login(String user, String password, Boolean rememberCredentials, Boolean useRemembered)"}

HTTP/1.1 202
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: application/json
X-Frame-Options: DENY
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 21:11:55 GMT
Content-Length: 0

So, something is throwing an exception and keeping me from evaluating whether to give Telerik money.

One thing which may be important: the installer requested local disk access that required me to run it as a local Admin account. That account is not the domain account I used to register for Telerik. Not that it should matter; since the admin account has never seen the Telerik account, I would expect that the installer would ask for credentials instead of trying to use non-existent cached credentials.

It occurs to me that a better response to a login failure with cached credentials might be to ask for new credentials. Otherwise the end user might get frustrated and file a very snarky bug report.

Please advise. I'm expecting to give my informal evaluation to my team tomorrow at 3pm CDT/20:00 UTC. I'd hate to exclude Telerik from consideration merely because we couldn't load the free trial.

In other news, Syncfusion (which is more expensive but just requires a set of NuGet packages) and Infragistics (which is about the same cost as Telerik but lacks one feature we really need) have moved up in the rankings.

I'm naming the vendor because my tolerance for bugs in software may be higher than the average user's, but not when I'm trying to install the trial version. Then you get no mercy.

An old friend stopped by today on her way from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, and insisted we take our dogs to the dog beach. It's 14°C and sunny. What do you think I did?

Yeah:

Fortunately it's the middle of the sprint, and I have a metric shit ton (a shite tonne) of PTO hours, so this was my afternoon.

If you're my boss and reading this...I swear, this is not what I planned for the day.

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head:

• Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into authoritarianism and ethnic entrepreneurialism has died, but unfortunately his ideas haven't.
• The US and Qatar have agreed not to release any of the $6 billion of Iran's money that Qatar currently has in escrow for them, which will no doubt make Iran yet another country demanding to know why Hamas attacked Israel just now.
• The Chicago Tribune digs into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's $16.6 billion budget.
• In the wake of huge class-action settlements, two major Chicago real-estate brokers have changed their commission policies, but we still have to see if they'll change their actions.
• The History Channel blurbs the origins of Oktoberfest, which started in 1810 and ends for this year today. Und nächstes Jahr, ich möchte nach München zum Oktoberfest gehen!
• Jacob Bacharach says the core problem with Michael Lewis's recent biography of Sam Bankman-Fried is that SBF is just too boring to be the subject of a biography.

Finally, Chicago's heavy-rail operator Metra formally proposed simplifying its fare structure. This will cut my commuting costs by about 11%, assuming I use the day passes and individual tickets correctly. It will have the biggest impacts on suburban riders who commute into the city, and riders whose travel doesn't include the downtown terminals.

I could have worked from home today, and probably should have, but I felt well enough to come in (wearing an N95 mask, of course). It turned that I had a very helpful meeting, which would not have worked as well remotely, but given tomorrow's forecast and the likelihood I'll still have this cold, Cassie will just have to miss a day of school.

I have to jam on a presentation for the next three hours, so I'll come back to these later:

• Alex Shephard says this is the week Twitter finally went totally evil.
• Bret Stephens says the American anti-Israel left really needs to sit down for a minutes.
• Julia Ioffe decided to take the risk of getting yelled at as she mourns the chance for any peaceful resolution to the millennia-long conflict in the Levant.
• Yair Rosenberg interviews his friend Amir Tibon, who describes how he and his family survived the Hamas attack on Nahal Oz on Saturday.
• Yoval Noah Harari draws a line from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and right-wing populism to Saturday's attack.
• Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz (Blue and White) have agreed to form a wartime coalition, excluding the crazy parties on both sides, and to suspend routine legislative activity.
• Speaking of crazy parties, House Republicans have nominated Steve Scalise (R-LA), "David Duke without the baggage," to take over as Speaker. He needs 217 votes to get elected, which means any 4 people in his party can send this game to overtime.
• As soon as that's done, the New York delegation to the Republican House Caucus plans to introduce a measure to kick out Rep. George Santos (R-NY). This will probably succeed as the seat will certainly go to a Democrat next November if he stays, but only probably go to one if the GOP can run someone else.
• In a filing with the court overseeing the XPOTUS's classified-documents trial this week, the US said it can show why he took the documents. ("Vell, Donald's just zis guy, you know?")
• Speaking of fraud, Molly White takes us through the first half of Caroline Ellison's testimony in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial.
• Speaking of corruption, US Associate Justice Clarence Thomas (R$), the subject of thousands of press reports that he took bribes in every form but bags of cash from billionaires before ruling on their cases before the Supreme Court, once again called on the Court to do away with the Sullivan rule that ensures the press can find out when Justices are on the take.
• Caltrans fired its deputy director for planning and modal programs for advocating against widening I-80 through Sacramento, even though widening I-80 through Sacramento is one of the worst ideas currently proposed by Caltrans.

Finally, no sooner did it open than the new Guinness brewery in Chicago is for sale. It will stay a Guinness brewery, just under different ownership. The Brews and Choos Project will get there soon.

Just a few:

• US Representative George Santos (R-NY) faces another 21 felony charges in New York, with prosecutors alleging he stole donors' identities and misappropriated their donations.
• Isabel Fattal attempts to explain Hamas, the terrorist organization that attacked Israel on Saturday.
• Alex Shephard is glad the news media have gotten better at reporting on the XPOTUS, but they've still missed the biggest part: he's a "singular threat to American democracy."
• Jason Pargin pays homage to celebrity worship, and goggles at how weird it's gotten.
• Molly White explains the evidence presented at Sam Bankman-Fried's trial yesterday that (allegedly) shows how they perpetrated the fraud in code.
• McSweeney's has a helpful template for right-wingers who are upset with Taylor Swift.

Finally, National Geographic gets cozy with the history of bedbugs and their relationship to humans. Fun evening read, y'all!

A rainy cold front passed over Inner Drive Technology WHQ just after noon, taking us from 15°C down to just above 10°C in two hours. The sun has come back out but we won't get a lot warmer until next week.

I've had a lot of coding today, and I have a rehearsal in about two hours, so this list of things to read will have to do:

• Mother Jones's Russ Choma thinks the XPOTUS doesn't really want to win his fraud trial.
• Robert Wright interviewed Brown University professor Lyle Goldstein, late of the US Naval War College, about what lessons Ukraine holds for Taiwan.
• Michael Tomasky salivates over the prospect of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) becoming Speaker of the House, which Josh Marshall understands.
• The Post details a gruesome Tesla crash the NTSB partially blamed on "over-reliance on automation."
• The Chicago City Council approved a plan to end the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers in Chicago.
• At least 960 migrating birds smacked into the side of Chicago's lakefront convention center yesterday, a new record.
• Poet Jesse Nathan sighs over the loss of poetry in Baseball.

Finally, for the first time in 346 days, the Chicago Bears won a football game. Amazing.

One of my colleagues at another office sent an email this morning to basically everyone in the company with a screen shot and a brief cry for help. One of her customers had an app with our company's name on it that had stopped working, and could anyone identify the app or where it came from? Also, it seems to run on something called "ANSIC" which no one in the customer's office knows.

I should at this point mention that the dialog box was from a Windows NT 4 or 2000 computer, and was version 2.0.415—so it probably started life on an even older version of Windows. And "ANSIC" means ANSI C, a language almost as old as COBOL. So even before we get to asking whether my company can still support it, I have to ask: how is the computer it's running on still working?

To me as a software developer this is like meeting a 30-year-old dog on the street.

Update: the author of the email got back to me, after hearing from someone who recognized the app. Its author died years ago, and the only other person who might have worked on it retired in the 2010s. The only thing to do, then, is to reverse-engineer the business process and start fresh.

You know, I still have code I wrote in Applesoft in 1981, but it's on printouts. The oldest runnable code I have is from 1986, and I need to spin up a DOS 3.3 virtual machine to get it to run. I hope that my craft has matured enough since then that the code I write today will still work in 15 years, but 30? No way. I've recently had to give an old client some bad news about their 16-year-old app: we either need to re-write most of it, or I can only keep it alive for 4 or 5 more years, because Microsoft will stop supporting the language (.NET 4.7) someday soon.

I haven't had the most productive morning ever, but I should get back into coding after I take Cassie on her lunchtime walk. Meanwhile:

• California governor Gavin Newsom (D) has announced he would appoint Emily's List president Laphonza Butler to serve out the remainder of the late US Senator Dianne Feinstein's term.
• The XPOTUS has shown up to his fraud trial in New York today, in what Michael Tomasky hopes will utterly ruin the man.
• In the Post, Michael Lewis examines the last year of Sam Bankman-Fried's life in the Crypto game.
• US Representative and clownish dingleberry Matt Gaetz (R-FL) threatened to call a vote on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) tenure, but since just about everyone in his party can't stand him, the threat is going nowhere. But as Aaron Blake points out, my party won't save McCarthy either.

Finally, just look at this wonderful creature who got a bath yesterday. She actually climbed into the tub on her own, and seems to have figured out that getting a vigorous whole-body massage with warm water, followed by an equally-vigorous toweling off, actually feels pretty good.

It's only Wednesday? Sheesh...

• The Writers Guild of America got nearly everything they wanted from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e., the Astroturf organization set up by the big studios and streamers to negotiate with the Guilds), especially for young writers and for hit shows, but consumers should expect more bundling and higher monthly fees for shows in the future.
• Josh Marshall suspects that the two competing storylines about the XPOTUS (that he's about to return to power, but he's also losing every legal battle he fights) are actually just one: his "current posture of bravado and menace – while real enough as a threat – is simply his latest con, concealing a weaker and more terrified reality."
• Jamie Bouie marvels that Justice Clarence Thomas (R$) wins the trifecta: "We have had partisan justices; we have had ideological justices; we have had justices who favored, for venal reasons, one interest over another. But it is difficult to think of another justice, in the history of the Supreme Court, who has been as partisan and as ideological and as venal as Thomas...."
• Melissa Gira Grant profiles US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (R-NDTX), a Christian nationalist who rose through the Federalist Society pipeline to a lifetime appointment where he will push his Victorian-era views on the people of Texas for the next 30 years or so.
• North Korea vomited up US Army Private 2nd Class Travis King, having used him for the little he was worth after the soon-to-be-dishonorably-discharged soldier illegally entered the kingdom in July.
• Kelli María Korducki worries that "in the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major," not realizing, perhaps, that the most effective programmers are and have always been liberal arts majors.

Finally, yet another fact that will make everyone I know feel old: today is Google's 25th birthday. And yes, the Daily Parker has been around longer trillion-dollar search company. We just haven't had our IPO yet.