Category Archives: Technology

Toodledo: Rekindling an old flame

08/01/2017 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

Many moons ago there weren’t a lot of options for good web based task management systems. Being the nerd I am I tried a few and fell fast for Toodledo. Not because of it’s pretty face, or exotic sounding name, but because it does just about everything and more.

But, time moved on and I couldn’t get my wife to understand and appreciate this fling (that, and the collaboration functionality is a paid feature). So, to make peace we decided to use Wunderlist (i.e. it was the only one I could get her to use) which was great for a time, but then it was bought out by Microsoft, the site started getting slow, and the announcement was made that they would pull the plug and force everyone over to their new todo app (which to date doesn’t have a fraction of the features of Wunderlist).

So, lost in the woods and dragging my tail between my legs I logged back into my Toodledo account after being gone for too long. There was the fast, no-nonsense, easy to use task system I loved from the beginning. And new features had been added since I ran off in the night like lists and habit tracking.

Now, I’m back in love with the features that are sorely lacking or overly burdensome in most of the task management systems available. Things like start dates, start and due times (yes, imagine that – things need to be started or completed at specific times), duration planning, timers, priorities, status, and so much more! Add in the ability to create custom saved searches and it’s the engineers dream.

In addition, with the new habit tracking feature there’s one less app that I need on my phone, and because Toodledo “gets it”, the functionality is also available on the web and in the app.

In the end, if you’re tired of feeling like a sad sack with your trailer trash task management system that only lets you track tasks, and due date, and maybe a description I would strongly suggest you check out Toodledo and start up a new flame!

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Disclaimer: Thoughts and opinions are my own, and do not reflect the views of any employer, family member, friend, or anyone else. Some links may be affiliate links, but I don't link to anything I don't use myself.

DB2

DB2 Ownership Transfer

10/03/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

If you ever get an error in DB2 along the lines of…

SQLCODE=-727, SQLSTATE=56098, SQLERRMC=1;-551;42501;MARKJ|EXECUTE|XX.PROC_P

…but in your code are executing the proc as another user (say “USR1”) instead of MARKJ, it may be that MARKJ created the proc and until recently still had the necessary access for executing everything in XX.PROC_P. Subsequently permissions were “fixed” and now stuff starts blowing up all over because MARKJ no longer has access. How to fix? Well, like all things I’m sure there are a million ways to do it, but the easiest in this situation was to have MARKJ transfer the ownership on everything he owned. To determine that, the following SQL was run to generate the commands, then the commands were run…


SELECT 
CASE ROUTINETYPE WHEN 'F' THEN
    'TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF FUNCTION  '||
    RTRIM(ROUTINESCHEMA)||'.'|| ROUTINENAME ||
    ' TO USER DB2DBA PRESERVE PRIVILEGES; '
ELSE
    'TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF PROCEDURE  '||
    RTRIM(ROUTINESCHEMA)||'.'|| ROUTINENAME ||
    ' TO USER DB2DBA PRESERVE PRIVILEGES; '
END
FROM SYSCAT.ROUTINES 
WHERE OWNER = 'MARKJ' 
WITH UR;

Linux

OwnCloud webapp not reflecting true list of files

06/06/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

If you’re using OwnCloud and have a process whereby your add or remove files from directories via some sort of server process, you may find that you need to force OwnCloud to update/rescan the file listing. To do so you can manually run the following command…

sudo -u username php /path/to/owncloud/console.php files:scan --all

You may also want to consider adding it to the crontab for “username” on a daily basis.

Thanks to this site for pointing me in the right direction.

Linux

Sendmail isn’t sending to domain.com : Linux

06/02/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

Say you’re using sendmail to relay email on a web server that you own that’s named “domain.com”, and email is being delivered fine to any domain except domain.com. What could be the problem?

Rename your server. No server should be named with an actual domain name.
Change /etc/hostname to the new name for your server
Update /etc/hosts to remove the domain name and replace with the new hostname
Remove the domain name from /etc/mail/local-host-names
Restart sendmail “sudo service sendmail restart”
Restart your server “sudo reboot”

Once you’ve done that test sendmail out like so…

echo "command line test" | mail -s "Sendmail test" me@domain.com

Linux

Improved Linux command history

04/03/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

With four lines setup one time you can type the beginning of a command (ex: “ls”) then press the up and down arrows to see the most recent commands containing the text you typed (ex: “ls ~/scripts”) making it much easier to find what you’re looking for. To make this happen, create a text file called .inputrc in your home folder and put the following four lines inside:

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set completion-ignore-case on

Perl

How to find and replace text in a string using Perl

02/25/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

To replace specific text in a string with other text, using perl, the syntax is…

$fullString =~ s/$findString/$replaceString/;

Apple, iPhone, Security

Apple vs FBI

02/18/2016 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

So my mom asked my opinion on the current standoff between Apple and the FBI over their insistence on building a back door into the iPhone “just this once” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). As I said to her…

I completely agree with Apple’s stance. Once they create such a method to circumvent the security on the phone, I guarantee it will be ordered to do so from now until eternity. That is unless you believe everything the government and law enforcement tell you. In that case, then yes it will be just one time (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Let’s also address certain politicians insistence on “opening up” security and “using our heads”…

START: Sarcasm and Contempt
Yeah, let’s open up security all over the place. In fact, then no one will ever be able to transmit anything securely ever again. Hint: “open up” just means lets build in a vulnerability, a bug – intentionally!! You didn’t want your credit card info submitted securely now do you? Probably should let the gov’t be able to scan all your photos and financial documents, and travel plans, and basically anything that’s stored digitally. Not like that’s everything now a days.

Not that hackers or “bad guys” would take advantage of that or anything. Gahh!!

END: Sarcasm and Contempt

Windows

Access a Console (including CYGWIN) from Notepad++

10/12/2015 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

If you’re regularly in Notepad++ you may find the NPPConsole to be a huge help. With it you can access a windows console or even cygwin if you prefer (I do). To get started…

Download the NPPConsole Plugin
Extract the dll to your n++/plugins directory
Restart Notepad++ if it was already running
Use the Plugin Manager to make sure the plugin is available

If you want to just use the Windows console (DOS) you should be all set. To integrate with CYGWIN…

Choose Plugins -> NppConsole -> About…
In “Command to run” enter: C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe ${–login -i}
In Line number pattern after file name enter: :${LINE}

Apple

iPad 2 Black Screen Of Death

09/07/2015 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

Tried to turn on our iPad today and got nothing but a black screen. If you would take it into a dark room you could tell that the back light was going on and off, but other than that it was just black. Tried a hard reset, and even did a full factory restore from the PC to no avail.

Then, I found this helpful YouTube video, and apparently the secret is just to beat the thing! Watch and see. It worked for me.

Windows

Windows Batch File (.bat) Not Running

09/01/2015 Mark Jacobsen Leave a comment

If you’ve ever accidentally set batch files to open in a text editor, and now are unable to run them anymore you have to use the registry editor instead of the Control Panel file associations. As pointed out in this article…

Click on “Start”->”Run” and type in “REGEDT32” and press Enter to start the Registry Editor.
Find the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.BAT\UserChoice
Delete the key named “UserChoice”