We had a fun episode this afternoon. Amy went to print a FedEx shipping label on her shiny new laptop running Vista, and got this error:

Cannot find
‘file:///C:/Users/Amy/AppData/Local/Temp/Low/TCQM46RH.htm’. Make sure
the path or internet address is correct.

I did some Googling and found a lot of people with that same error.

In Vista, IE7 runs in a sandbox to keep errant downloads from touching important system files. Sometimes, though, it needs a way to break out of that restricted environment, which is why there’s a “Low” temporary directory with “low” security. Since it lives in the temporary directory, this directory can get erased by Windows’ own Disk Cleanup tool.

To replace the “Low” directory and fix the problem, first re-create the “Low” directory. At the command prompt, type:

mkdir C:\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp\Low

Then, tell the operating system to lower the restrictions on it:

icacls C:\Users\%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp\Low /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low

Alternately, you can turn off Protected Mode in IE and restart your browser. But, this should only be considered as a last resort, as you’re removing an important security function.

I have so many things to blog about today, I don’t know where to start.  And, I really don’t want to spend all day blogging.  So, here’s one thing on the list that really stood out, almost as much as the cat poop recycler from the previous post.

James Shore, an Agile development consultant and author, has a post with the attention-grabbing title The Decline and Fall of Agile.  He laments the number of teams out there who have adopted “agile practices” and ended up with an unmaintainable system.  He fears, as one who makes his living off Agile might, that this will be seen as a failure of Agile methods, Scrum in particular.  Really, he thinks the real problem is that teams are adopting the “fun” parts of Agile, and leaving out the parts that really make it work:

It’s human nature to only do the stuff that’s familiar and fun, and that’s what has happened with Agile. People look at agile methods as a chinese menu of practices, choose the few that look cool, and ditch the rest. Unfortunately, the parts they leave out are the parts that make Agile work. 

The article’s comments are great, too.  There lots of good insight there.  For example:

People want a software, a CD-ROM to install something, a tool, a template, and they don’t understand that Agile is not about a process or a tool.  
 
It’s a cultural change.  
 
Different mindset.

The discussion reminds me of my post, The Process is Your God Now, where I talk about the need to treat the less fun aspects of programming like rituals.  For example, treat checking code into source control like saving in a video game:

Now, back to my game, what if I come to a fork in the road.  I can go left through the ominous looking sewer, or I can go right through the abandoned city.  Well at this point I’ll go and save my game with some sort of name like “Taking the sewer”.  That way I can continue playing, quick-saving as I go, but I can always get back to that fork if it turns out I made a mistake

I was googling around for information on “control-break” loops to document some of my code, and I came across the Autumn, 2008 syllabus for CSCI 465, “Enterprise Application Envionments”.

The description from their undergraduate catalog reads:

465. ENTERPRISE APPLICATION ENVIRONMENTS (4). File organization, job control language, file access methods and utilities. Security. High throughput data-intensive applications. Extensive laboratory work. PRQ: CSCI 360 or consent of department.

That sounds like an interesting class, actually, and very relevant.

Read the syllabus, though, and you’ll learn that it’s really a COBOL and mainframe assembly language class.

Sure, there are places still using COBOL and IBM 370s, but let’s be reasonable. That’s not the norm anymore, and NIU continues to do a disservice to their students by offering such tripe.