New Hosting For Covalentia.Net Community Portal

We are in the process of moving the contents of our lame server to a real hosting provider, from BolehLand to VPSLand.com. The previous provider wasn't real, our server was hosted under a FREE plan not available anywhere else in the world :) Unfortunately, some network guy in the company which happens to be the largest ISP provider in Malaysia, audited the network and detected our unused-and-not-supposed-to-be-there network and decided to close it down.
Fudge.

Oh well, in any event, this migration process will take awhile, perhaps a week or so. I've never used a Virtual Private Server before, and I think that it's kinda cool. So, why not try it out. And the price isn't that expensive (I can still afford it, well, may be I have to skip a few breakfasts and lunches in a month, that'll do) at USD 38 per month, equivalent to approximately RM 136.80 per month.

Donation anybody? Help us out so that we can continue to provide FREE Covalentia. Stay tuned ;)

To Err is Human

To really fuck it up, you need a computer :)

Well, we got a new job at MOCCIS Trading (Malay Officers Cooperative Credit And Investment Society). But, it's not the kinda job I had in mind. The previous developer, Meridian Diversified, which provided a Java solution for day-to-day operation at MOCCIS decided to pull out two weeks ago and refused to hand over the source codes properly. However, the biggest problem isn't the source codes, but the complex month-end back-end reporting services executed via scripts which sat on one of their workstations. And the workstation was taken away.

Hmm. So, Covalent was called in to solve these problems by performing some miracles. Reverse engineering in less than 15 days? Yeah right. Whatever source codes that they left were not documented. The codes really suck. And, I freakin' don't understand their naming convention. Some LF_SHIT, SF_SHIT, what the heck is LF? SF? The connection strings and schema names were hardcoded which have to be changed and recompiled every single month. And guess what, they're still using Corba, and IBM DB2! Oh geez, it couldn't get any worse. Tell me, how do you truncate a table in IBM DB2? You can do it easily in MS SQL, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Just one sql statement "TRUNCATE " or "TRUNCATE TABLE " would do. Oh wait, IBM DB2 doesn't support this. We have to drop and re-create the table or load it with an empty fuckin' dummy file. IBM DB2 costs around RM 50K, and it can't even do a simple truncate function. Fuckin' hell.Do you know how much this Meridian Diversified which apparently doesn't even have a website charged MOCCIS Trading? RM 50K a month since 2004, just to execute some silly back-end services that they refused to automate. And the development work? I heard a fuckin' RM 3 Million for such a lowsy java solution (with hardcoded connection strings, fuckin' stupid developer) using IBM DB2.

And how much would Covalent charge? Well, we're going to charge 'em, let's see, hmm... RM 15K a month for performing miracles, and redeveloping the whole thing using ASP.NET. Cheap eh? Yeah, we are cheap mofos ;)

If anyone of you out there thinks that I haven't done enough community or national service, well, think again!

Bull

We're in the news - Software giant to help local ISVs.

First of all, The Star spelled the company's name wrongly. It's supposed to be Covalent Technology Sdn Bhd, not Covalent Technologies. And, secondly, we're not a public listed company (Berhad).

What help? The only thing that I got was one free lunch with that Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director and that Boyd guy at some lowsy restaurant. That's about it. And I had to listen to all the entrepreneurship bull plans which will never materialize for an hour or so. And let's not go into MDeC. I will not waste my breaths on this super bull organization. The way I see it is that we're the one who's helping them to come up with some bull events and programs (which some other people make a lot of money) and to show the rest of the world, and their bosses that they're doing something to help (bull) the ICT industries in Malaysia.

So, who's helping who? You're not helping entrepreneurs. How can you tell entrepreneurs what to do when you're not successful entrepreneurs yourselves? You rely on the government, and get paid every bull month.

Stop this bull, and find us some real jobs.

Mr IP Address 66.249.65.171

The upgrading work for Covalentia Portal is pretty much done. However, if you encounter any error or missing links, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at support@covalent-tech.com. I plan to add more features, but that can wait. I still have other things to work on, especially the Danial Portal (a local cartoon series in Malaysia, please tune in to RTM 1 every Tuesday at 7:00 PM GMT +8).

Now, I received a lot of errors from this guy, Mr. IP Address 66.249.65.171. If you do a look-up here, you'll find that he's from Alma, Michigan. And I can't seem to reproduce these errors. The portal is working absolutely fine on my laptop. So, what could go wrong? What exactly is going on here? What version of IE or Firefox is Mr. IP Address 66.249.65.171 is using? My outlook is clogged with e-mails (error log) because Mr. IP Address 66.249.65.171 doesn't seem to wanna stop browsing Covalentia.Net Portal over and over again (man, he must love this site so much), even as we speak. Well, I don't mean to be rude (no pun intended), but for the love of Mother of Ganja, could you please tell us what you really are doing oh dear Mr. IP Address 66.249.65.171 so that I could fix these errors? Sometimes, the IP Address changes to something else like 65.55.209.141, 65.55.209.140, 65.55.209.133, 65.55.209.134, 60.51.164.249, 207.46.98.74 and so on. Anybody?

But, if you're a web crawler, hmm, well then just forget about it :)

A Lil Upgrading Work

Currently, I’m busy upgrading our Covalentia.Net Portal. I receive quite a number of minor errors everyday (it’s now running on the old version 2.0), and I’d like to stop all these annoying e-mails immediately. On the Danial Portal, I’m still waiting for the designer team to give me the front-end so that I can do the integration part which shall take a lot of my time.

I’ve nothing else to tell. Well, not really. I'm working on another project, but it has got nothing to do with IT.

It's hmm.. a secret ;)

Have You Seen It?

If you haven't, check it out. The latest Covalentia Version 2.2 at http://www.covalentia.net ;)



Oh, by the way, here's a reply from exabytes regarding the previous hosting issue:

I wrote:

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Dear Exabytes,

I think you should clearly state in your website that the MySQL supported is version 4, and not the latest version 5. Version 5 has been around for quite sometime. If you only put just 'MySQL', a lot of people will assume that it is the latest version.

In regards to my client's hosting (www.danial.com.my), my app runs on ASP.NET 2.0. So, to host on Linux is not an option. My solution now is to advise them to either terminate, refund their money and look for another hosting company, OR pay an extra RM 380 per year for your Microsoft SQL database service. We'll let you know then.

Reply:

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Hello Cozta,

Thanks again for your feedback.

I have reported your suggestion to our management for further review.

Hope to hear for good reply from you.

If you have any enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact. Thank You!

[Censored]
--------------------
Customer Service Manager
Exa Bytes Network Sdn Bhd

Web: http://www.exabytes.com | http://www.exabytes.com.my
Helpdesk: http://support.exabytes.com

Yeah. Whatever.

When a Good Day Turns Ugly

Of late I’m working on two projects – The Great Hunt Community Portal and Danial Portal (www.danial.com.my). Both portals will be running on my latest version of Covalentia Version 2.2 which I haven’t released. The Great Hunt Community Portal, a new Employment and Project Outsourcing Portal, was initially scheduled for a soft-launch today. However, due to the recent upgrade of Covalentia (due to the recent release of ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX 1.0 RTM), I have to postpone the proposed launch date, hopefully before the end of this month. And, I will post the project’s source codes on our Covalentia Community Portal. Yes, you heard me right, I will reveal everything, how it is done etc. So, stay tuned ;)

As for the Danial Portal (www.danial.com.my), if you’re in Malaysia, switch your TV on to channel 1 (RTM Satu - Saluran Info Anda ie. Saluran Propaganda BN), and watch the new local cartoon series, Danial, every Tuesday at 7.00 PM GMT +8. Covalent Technology has been awarded by MediaCal (www.mediacal.com.my) to develop this portal using our Covalentia platform. Everything is going well until today after we signed up for a web-hosting solution from exabytes.com. Well, they claimed that they’re the no. 1 web-hosting company (don’t they all do so?), but still they can’t give me what I need. I need ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX 1.0 and MySQL Server 5.0 to run Covalentia. If you look at their website, it is stated there that they do support MySQL (without stating which version that they support). And it turns out to be MySQL Server 4.1.22. I could switch to Microsoft SQL 2005 instead (since Covalentia supports both Microsoft SQL 2005 and MySQL 5.0 as well as PostgreSQL 8.1+), but I have to pay extra (which they don't tell on their website too).

I admit that it is partly my mistake. I should’ve asked first before signing up. But, being a customer (in this case I am when usually I’m the vendor), and a customer is always right, I think exabytes should highlight CLEARLY in their website what version of MySQL that they support. And they should put the extra payment that I have to pay to use Microsoft SQL 2005 too. I just hate hidden charges. I mean, what’s wrong with putting all the information up there? It’s not like somebody is gonna get killed if you tell the whole world how much you charge extra or if you use the old MySQL Version 4.1. And you claim you’re the no. 1? Geez.