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2002-06-11 Entry: "New Job, Same Problems"

Being the only guy on the new code now, it's interesting to see that all the same problems can occur - evidence them trying to give me permissions on the servers over there (so I can work remotely and we don't miss error fixes in some transition in the middle).

They requested the account be set up to match the UK one. Confirmation mail arrived. Logging in failed. They reset the password. Now I could log in and set a new password - which had so many rules restricting what it could consist of it was frightening. Passwords either had to have a number in the middle OR at both ends (huh!?), and it had to be no more than 8 characters (well, that's darned secure now isn't it?! You could probably try all 8 character combinations in less than a day... of course, I'm probably not increasing security by revealing all these details but they started it...). Oh, and passwords couldn't start (as one of my potential candidates did) with alb (as apparently, it means it's derived from the word "bla" - what word?!!! Does that even exist?!). I did finally hit on a variant of one of my usual passwords that is now impossible to type at speed due to having to sit and think while my fingers remember where the number keys are - it would have been more secure to let me hammer it out as I usually do - it's not as if I use real words (for the record, all my passwords are straight out of fantasy - although the fantasy they come from exists only in my head so they're pretty secure compared to the dog's name).

So that resolved getting into the system. Then I had to get hold of their software - which I tried. Apparently, as I'm on a slow connection, some operations cause their database to lock them all out while I'm busy, so I can only use it before about 2pm.

Which left actually compiling something - which sort of works. It won't do any sort of parallel compilation (which it should as otherwise I'm there all day) - I've tried every suggestion under the sun - presumably they've forgotten to give me permissions to something...