Tuesday, April 27, 2021
A quick note about the GNU Debugger
Just a quick note here—you can still debug a program using gdb if the debug information exists in the executable,
even if gdb doesn't have access to the source files.
It will still print out filenames and line numbers,
and you can still examine the contents of variables.
I just spent an hour with TS debugging an issue with “Project: Lumbergh” on our lab machines,
running gdb in one terminal,
and an editor in a second terminal following the files and line numbers given by gdb.
Not quite the optimum experience, but at least it was doable.
I'm also not sure what it says about “Project: Lumbergh” that the issue turned out to be a configuration issue—the configuration was legal at one time, but not with a newer version of the code. I think the codebase is slowly turning into a big ball of mud.
Friday, April 30, 2021
An update on the enterprise time tracking system the Corporate Overlords make us use
I fill in my time card once a week. I've finally convinced myself not to be annoyed by The Process because they pay me to waste my time with a less-than-fast input process. But the latest wrinkle in The Process is logging in. Each time, I get the “Remember this computer” option once I log in, and each time, I hit “Remember this computer.” I don't know if it's the site itself, or the Windows laptop I have to use being so locked down I can't change anything, but the site never remembers the computer, and every week, I get an email from the time tracking system that it registered a “new login” from an unknown computer and that if it wasn't me, contact the IT desk blah blah.
Every-freaking-time!
And here I thought computers were supposed to make our lives easier …
