Highlighting in Windows command window suspends running programs

I use the command window quite a bit in Windows and have noticed that with some Windows versions, highlighting requires you to explicitly choose Mark and then select the text while other command windows you left or right click and highlighting happens automatically.

Automatic highlighting seems to be easier to do in more recent of versions of Windows; especially Windows 2008 Server, R2.

At work, I almost always run our principal application through the Windows command prompt as Administrator.

The problem though is that I would highlight and cause our BATCH application to suspend, without me knowing that I was going into suspend mode.

And learned as of yesterday, to un-suspend, the user needs to hit the ESCAPE key or use the keystroke CTRL-C in the command window.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles (and buses)

Went to Chicago for 36 hours last weekend.

Besides a short trip in my car I used mass transit to get to and from my friend's wedding.

Here's the breakdown:

1) Drive to the Table Mesa Park and ride. Cost to leave car 48 hours > $2.00
2) Bus ride to downtown Denver on BX bus: free using Eco-pass (I worked for a few hours at my desk)
3) Bus ride to Denver International Airport (DIA) using the AF line: free using Eco-pass
4) Southwest flight from Denver airport to Midway airport: $219.xx
5) Bus ride on the 55 Garfield route close to my parent's apartment: $2.25 but only had $3.00 so paid $3.00 since no change given.
6) Walked to my parent's place. About 2 blocks from the bus stop.
7) First night of sleeping: free
8) Bus ride to train station in the afternoon: $2.25
9) Train ride using the red and brown line: bought a $5.00 transit card before getting on the train.
10) Time at wedding. Fun!
11) Return on bus line around midnight: free since part part of $5.00 transit card purchased earlier.
12) Bus ride on 55 Garfield line: also free since part of transfer using $5.00 transit card used earlier
13) Slept second night at parent's house: free
14) Bus ride using the 55 Garfield to airport: $2.25
15) Southwest flight back to Denver: part of airfare stated above
16) Bus ride back to park-n-ride where I had my car: free using Eco-pass card

Cost of using public parking and public transportation: less than $20.00 for a day and a half in the city.

Total cost of transportation: ~$232.00

I'd say using mass transit with a commuter card and transfers saved me quite a bit of money. If I had taken a taxi to the wedding it would have easily cost $60.00 to $80.00 dollars both ways.

Celsius to Fahrenheit simplified

I was certainly taught Celsius Fahrenheit conversions in the past but would forget the actual conversion math.

What was needed was a better, simplified method to remember the comparison of the temperature grades by using a simple rule than trying to remember the math. Then learning a few data points on the Celsius scale would make it much simpler.

For me, a good first step would be to remember that every 10 degrees Celsius would be 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then I realized that I wanted to concentrate on every 10th degree Celsius: 10, 20, 30 and 40 degrees.

So for: 10 degrees Celsius it would be 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

20 degrees Celsius it would be 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

30 degrees Celsius it would be 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

40 degrees Celsius it would be 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

For me, this is easy to remember quite quick and fast.

Remember the KISS acronym.

Great quote from Kung Fu Panda

you are too concerned with what was and what will be. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that's why it's called the present

Need to reference a JAR for your app in Tomcat 6.x?

One way is to place the JAR in the lib directory and then add the reference to the shared.loader property.

For example:

shared.loader=C:\Apache\Tomcat\apache-tomcat-6.0.32-windows-x86\apache-tomcat-6.0.32\lib\.jar

That was it...

Don't forgot about iptables if certain ports are blocked

Sometimes you might encounter a internal network configuration setup by your local network admins where certain ports are blocked.

If you can't access a certain port though and the network admins say everything is open you might want to see what iptables is doing.

I'd forgotten that iptables can limit certain ports from being used if you're trying to access you're Linux server from another server.

Here were some command I had to use to stop iptables and permanently disable it - if I needed to reboot my Linux box:

1006 netstat -ln -A inet

1007 ifconfig

1008 iptables --list

1009 /etc/init.d/iptables stop

1010 iptables --list

1011 chkconfig --list

1012 chkconfig --list | grep iptables

1013 chkconfig --help

1014 chkconfig --level 2345 iptables off

1015 chkconfig --list | grep iptables

1016 history

ATDD with Cucumber

Did a day long session exploring Cucumber for Acceptance Test Driven Development.

Seems pretty cool so far.

Seems we'll be using feature files to create scenarios and then coding step files in Java using Selenium with tie ins to cuke4duke libraries.