Erroneously uninformative

First of all, forgive me for this work related rant. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, or rather the guilty.

Throughout the IT world, it is generally accepted that errors will occur. Sometimes due to sloppiness, sometimes due to unforeseen events and some just cause the error Gods get bored and decided to spice up the lives of all the IT drones. The cause of errors are varied but the one thing that is usually fairly standard is that the error will tell you what went wrong and allow the developers or maintainers of the application to fix it.

One group of people we have been working with for close to 5 years now have a Web Service which we query several times a minute to retrieve data. In this 5 year period there is one error which we frequently receive that has never been fixed.

"What is this error?" you are probably wondering. Well ... honestly, I wish I new. In fact, we don't even know that it is just one error. The reason being is that ever so helpful error which the application returns to us is:

Server was unable to process request. --> Index (zero based) must be greater than or equal to zero and less than the size of the argument list.

Useful, to say the least. The whole point of error messages is to be informative and help you diagnose what went wrong and then fix it. This error, in effect, is saying "There was an error in the web service". As to why, or where, well if it is being logged the customer is being very quiet about it.

We know the error is coming from the customers web service. They claim it's our application. We want to get it sorted for numerous reasons, they don't seem to care. One possibility is they don't know how, as I believe it was a contractor that wrote the web service for them, but they certainly won't admit that.

So basically we're stuck with the error occurring (seemingly) at random. All we can do is monitor it and our end and each time it fails continually re-try the request until it magically starts working.

The customer is always right? Yeah, that'll be shining bright!

Lazy weekend

Once again it's been so long since my last entry that I really should insert a semi-plausible excuse in here, but you must have figured it out by now. If not, allow me to spell it out for you. I'm lazy. Deal with it.

Having said that, the last wee while has been rather more hectic than usual. Work aside, I honestly can't remember the last weekend when I had nothing planned. In reality it probably wasn't that long ago, it's just that thinking about it I seem to have been busy in one way or another the last few months.

This weekend was different. I had absolutely nothing planned. Zip, zero, nil, nada. Friday night was a visit to the local pub, the Minibar, with Stephen and Thomas. Mr Andy was absent for the second week running, apparently laid up at home with one of the longest man-flu infections known to man. Much drinking was undertaken but there was a noticeable absence of pool-playing, meaning I couldn't partake of my usual floor-wiping with my opponents.

For a weekend with nothing planned, and a plan to do nothing, it has been remarkably productive. The flat is tidier than usual, the fridge is better stocked than usual, bills have been paid and a tax return has been sent off. I even gave the ole' blog a facelift, so it's looking purty again! Not only that, but for the first time since I moved in the windows have been cleaned. Well the outside of the living room and kitchen windows anyhow. When it gets to the point whereby even Andy comments on how dirty they are then something needs to be done ... even if it is 2 weeks later.

Naturally, however, the plan avoid any sort of work work was never going to happen as our customer SQL Server took a turn on Sunday morning and required some looking at. A quick-fix(tm) was put into place, and an investigation of what went wrong will be undertaken tomorrow, since blatantly I don't have enough to do at work right now.

So, as darkness descends over Glasgow after a remarkably sunny day where I managed to avoid stepping outside, all that remains to do is veg out in front of the TV, get something to eat and have an early night. For all too soon another working week shall be upon us, and with Christmas fast approaching it looks like it might be quite a while before I find another weekend where I have nothing that needs done....