Very Odd Bug

-So, I'm working on this ASP.NET web applicaton. On a particular page, when you click on a item, you sometimes get an error. This bug has some very peculiar behavior.

-The error arises only when the browser is Safari for the Mac, and only when the user is looking at the live site.

-It doesn't happen with the exact same code on the dev site.

-It does happen with assorted iterations of the code, in different locations, using slightly different config files, on the live site.

-It doesn't happen using any other browser we've tested with.

-The text of the error itself is "The data area passed to a system call is too small." This is a Microsoft error, but it's not a terribly specific MS error.

-So. Since it happens with different iterations of the code on the live site, it's a quality of the server that's causing the error. This is reinforced by the fact that code identical to code we're testing on live, when placed on our dev server, doesn't cause the error.

-The error is an MS error, so it's almost certainly not being generated client-side (in Safari on the Mac).

-This could imply that it's happening all the time on the live site, even when we can't see it. When we're using IE as a browser, the error is hidden from us somehow.

-Or, alternately, the data that Safari is sending back to the server is different from what IE sends back, and the difference is causing an MS error.

-Hmm.

One is a Monkey, The Other's Insane

-Honestly, I think the most surprising thing to come out of DC's Infinite Crisis, was them taking Morrison's fifteen-year-old throwaway gag about Monsieur Mallah and the Brain being a cross-species gay couple, and making it into a serious, tragic plot thread.

Books: Space Viking, Urban Wizard

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

-Despite the title, this is mostly a book about political science, economics, and tactics. The hero leaves his quasi-feudalistic planet to prey on the worlds of the collapsed Federation, and ends up saving a pseudo-democracy from a neo-Hitler. Along the way, there are many arguments about how to govern people, with the end conclusion being, "You do your best, and when things fall apart, you try something different."

-I've read Space Viking three or four times before; I had decided I deserved a break from my to-be-read stack, and picked up one of my old favorites, which I consider a space opera classic. (This book is also one of the major inspirations for the RPG Traveller; the Sword Worlds are in here by name, even.) If you like a dose of recycled history in your SF, highly recommended.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

-This story of a wizard in modern-day Chicago borrows liberally from Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker, and is quite readable (though he does tend to explain things too much). Some things are set up too blatantly, and he definitely believes in the "when things slow down, have two guys come through the door with guns" plotting technique but, on the other hand, I grew to like the hero, and Butcher has definitely nailed the Spenserian "as hero gets more beat up and exhausted, he becomes more formidable" motif. Moderately recommended. (And thank you, asciikitty, for recommending it to me. [kiss])