wowexe.exe
January 15th, 2005 by Sarah KingI’ve always known just what this wee gremlin was but haven’t been able to control it. Now, a ray of hope. I’m blogging this because the page appears to be new, hasn’t been cached etc and I want to help it get noticed by googlebot et al because it’s been a big problem.
When this program gets out of control it will always have a space infront of it’s name when you view the system processes. Sometimes it will spoof other process names, but the leading space is the giveaway. Proper processes don’t do that.
We use a very, very old contact management system, so old that it’s a 16bit system but it’s highly customised and upgrading it hasn’t been a priority. With the advent of open source it’s looking more likely that I’ll be able to find a system that suits. It’s not just the ticket price, it’s the access to customise the way I need to which is so often denied in the licensed world.
Anyway, I don’t run it so often but I’ve found that other programs still trigger the process, a key suspect being Mozilla’s Thunderbird email progam. I guess it might be part of the tapi/mapi thing but really it’s so new I’m surprised it needs WoW. Other times I’m not doing anything that I haven’t been doing for the previous hour or so but you can feel it kick in, everything grinds to a halt. Luckily it’s easy to kill.
StopKaz.com
January 9th, 2005 by Sarah KingThe gumption of cons to prey on others never ceases to amaze. Whether it’s those preying on the victims of the Tsunami or people like this Kaz creature. Quite incredible.
Luckily I meet so many people so unlike this that the Kaz’s of this world are just abberrations.
Read more about “Dr. Kaz deMille Jacobsen” at StopKaz.com
One of her claims is to have been a senior NZ politician. I think if that was true, and everything else had happened we’d have heard of her before now!
User’s Country Identification
January 6th, 2005 by Sarah KingUser’s Country Identification – have I ranted about this before? Probably elsewhere…
I have a pet peeve about visiting sites and even though my primary email is a dotcom my IP address isn’t masked and sites shouldn’t be fooled into thinking I’m american. I frequently get invited to take part in competitions, offers etc and then when I’ve done all the work I find:
- I can’t submit because it won’t recognise my address, post code even if it does allow me to select NZ
- It’s a USA or Canada only thing.
They could have stopped me early on by saying, “hey, you can have a go but it’s only open to locals.”
If the technology wasn’t available I’d have sympathy but it is! Admittedly the database is sizeable but it’s not unreasonable. I use IP checking on my Property Management Software site to control which version of the order form you will get and then default the country in the address section. It’s not foolproof so I give the option to change but it’s a start.
So, if you have anything where a user needs to fill in forms, get filtered data based on geography, try using the users IP address to give them a head start. They’ll appreciate the effort 
– I’ve since been put onto geoIP.dat which is a teeny file (relative to the database file) which does the same thing. I’ll be trialling it soon
My Gotta Read list
January 1st, 2005 by Sarah KingMy reading list for 2005
- Q & A – A novel
- Z by Jonar Nader
- Garlic and Sapphires
by Ruth Reichl
and isn’t it fascinating that the books have different covers around the world? The cover for Emergency Sex is totally different, and the local version is much cooler.
