TCP/IP Mysteries and user support

It's not clear, actually, if this involves a TCP/IP "Mystery". What it may involve is a simple lack of ability to communicate. Or something.
I got this question:
"Request help w/ finding a reference or you can post a blog about how you can you have 2 oracle servers …
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Manual Testing -- Bad Idea

The question of testing came up recently. The description of the process sounded like manually "testing" some complex web application. When trying to work out manual "testing", I find it necessary to use scare quotes. I'm not sure there's a place for "manual testing" of any software.

I know that …

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Computers, Power and Space Heaters

Just a safety note for folks who use a lot of electricity. In the winter, you might have computers and space heaters. Or you might (like me) live "off the grid". We use an inverter with a transfer relay to switch between battery power and grid power. Recently, we had …

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Apple's Feckless Download Protocol

For those of us who live mostly off the grid, with inconsistent WiFi through hosts that flake out frequently, Apple's AppStore download protocol is absolutely infuriating. It's the most brittle damn protocol I've ever seen. When there's any disruption, it simply discards the data it has and starts again. How …

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Mac OS X 10.9 and Python 3.3

Finally upgraded to Python 3.3.3. The ordinary maintenance release fixed the problem with the previous release.

The previously documented patch ({filename}/blog/2013/10/2013_10_25-mac_os_x_109_mavericks_crashes_python_patch_available.rst) is no longer required.

Time to start incrementally installing all the various add-on components: docutils, PyYaml, Django, Jinja2, SQLAlchemy, etc.

Also, time …

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