End of week

Another odd week has ended, and upgrade we started a few weeks ago for a client has exposed several bugs in SAP, and each time we thought we fixed it with another upgrade to another part, it exposed something else. In the end it turns out that one more upgrade was required to fix a bug that surfaced in July this year.

It's a nightmare, there are many components, and each component comes in multiple versions and multiple patch levels of each version. Each patch level of one version of one component has dependencies on other parts of the system, and comes with it's own list of fixes and problems. Sometimes a fix to one thing breaks something that you didn't know about or a new version introduces a new features which breaks something you were doing. The result is each upgrade cycle means loads of testing, and various fixes and tweaks to put things back together. The general result is that companies are highly resistance to change, as it's expensive, and very rarely do you get anything better for your efforts.

Today's flower Friday back blip is one of the dahlia's that has survived the recent storms. They are fun and seem to be happy in our garden.

COVID cases here in France continue to go up and up. The testing regime is much better than in the spring, and the tracing while not good, is much better so the percentage of positive tests is higher than the spring, so they are actually identifying people better. So far I gather than our department is running an infection rate just into the top 25% most infected departments, but in context that's still one third the rate in Paris, and mostly in our capital of Rennes, and not where I am. On the positive note, hospital admissions outside the hot spots are okay, and mortality figures are still low. In Paris and Lyon/Loire I gather hospitals are full and at capacity already... Not so good.