When buying something from the internet I appreciate being informed of things during the process. When ordering something that requires the dispatching of a physical item, then you need to ensure that the customer can safely determine what the state of their order is at any point.
There are two normal mechanisms to support this. The first is an order status page. This page contains information about the state of the order. For example, when a company accepts the order it is flagged as ‘Accepted’. Once someone is taking the item and putting it into a box it should be placed in the ‘Processing’ state. When it has been given to the delivery company a state of ‘In transit’ would be appropriate. When the delivery reaches the destination and has been signed for, then a state of ‘delivered’ would be appropriate. This covers the company, who can be happy that the order has been satisfied, and the customer who can see what state their order is in.
Some companies would combine the Processing and Dispatch state, some companies don’t have confirmed delivery. These things need to be factored into the equation.
For companies that don’t maintain separate account pages, you have the status email. This is sent out once the item has been dispatched from the company. This allows the customer to feel some connection to the order that they have made without needing to confirm the location of their item with a customer service representative.
A few simple steps and you can help your customers feel happier with your service, and as a result more confident in their feeling that you are not some fly-by-night operation.
As the tag says, communication is the key to a successful relationship, be it business or personal.
Least Significant 1 Bit
This can be useful for extracting the lowest numbered element of a bit set. Given a 2’s complement binary integer value x, (x&-x) is the least significant 1 bit. The reason this works is that it is equivalent to (x & ((~x) + 1)); any trailing zero bits in x become ones in ~x, adding 1 to that carries into the following bit, and AND with x yields only the flipped bit… the original position of the least significant 1 bit.
Alternatively, since (x&(x-1)) is actually x stripped of its least significant 1 bit, the least significant 1 bit is also (x^(x&(x-1))).
Integer Selection
A branchless, lookup-free, alternative to code like if (a<b) x=c; else x=d; is ((((a-b) >> (WORDBITS-1)) & (c^d)) ^ d). This code assumes that the shift is signed, which, of course, C does not promise.
Integer Minimum or Maximum
Given 2’s complement integer values x and y, the minimum can be computed without any branches as x+(((y-x)>>(WORDBITS-1))&(y-x)). Logically, this works because the shift by (WORDBITS-1) replicates the sign bit to create a mask — be aware, however, that the C language does not require that shifts are signed even if their operands are signed, so there is a potential portability problem. Additionally, one might think that a shift by any number greater than or equal to WORDBITS would have the same effect, but many instruction sets have shifts that behave strangely when such shift distances are specified.
Of course, maximum can be computed using the same trick: x-(((x-y)>>(WORDBITS-1))&(x-y)).
[Listening to: Queen Bitch (live) – David Bowie – RarestOneBowie (3:15)]
Dual-Linked List with One Pointer Field
Normally, a dual-linked circular list would contain both previous and next pointer fields and the current position in the list would be identified by a single pointer. By using two current pointers, one to the node in question and the other to the one just before/after it, it becomes possible to store only a single pointer value in each node. The value stored in each node is the XOR of the next and previous pointers that normally would have been stored in each node. Decoding is obvious.
Unfortunately, using this trick in C is awkward because the XOR operation is not defined for pointers.
[Listening to: Space Oddity – David Bowie – Changesbowie (5:17)]
Cheap at twice the price
Well, I was performing the usual ‘tech geek’ duty this afternoon. I was fixing up a friend’s computer. It was a real mess. It had originally been split into 4 FAT partitions (that’s not FAT32), with a lot of wasted space on the disk. Using partition magic, I upgraded them to two partitions – one for the Windows 98, and the other for Windows 2000. Then I fixed the modem so it would work in Windows 2000 – it needed a driver download from the Gateway web site. Once that was completed I installed Zone Alarm (personal edition). That fixed an immediate problem – there was a computer somewhere on the Eircom network that was just barraging the machine with SMB packets – virus or hacker I don’t know, but it was causing 100% processor utilization and was killing the machine while it was connected to the internet. Mairt was of the impression that the fan was internet noise. That confirms my opinion – firewall first, the rest is just ornamentation.
What was my charge for all this work? An Indian meal, complete with a bottle of beer! I really am cheap tech support.
Internet noise… what next?
I can’t connect to the internet
A hint for all you windows users out there who can’t connect to the internet… don’t forget that the number they ask you to dial in the dialer box is not your own phone number of your house, but instead is the service providers telephone number. I just spent 20 minutes on the phone trying to tech-support my sister through the dialup effort. She was repeatedly getting number in use errors. It turns out that she put her own number in the dnumber to connect button. At least she wasn’t using call waiting, otherwise it would have kept disconnecting here every time she rang.
The fix is as always to use the real phone number of your ISP. I spent 10 minutes trying to get her to the eircom.net phone number, but accidentally gave her a pay-use number. The eircom number is 1892150150. It takes any username ans password, which makes it really easy to use.
Well she’s sorted and I’m off home now.
Disabling / Reenabling compressed folders in XP/ME
Disable Compressed Folders (Windows Me/XP)
Windows Me and XP include a built-in feature to manage compressed ZIP files and folders. This tweak allows you to disable it and install a third-party application.
To disable the compressed folder feature click on Start -> Run and enter the following command:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
To enable ZIP folder support run this command:
regsvr32 zipfldr.dll