Rant: Linux vs Windows Expertise Availablility

Recently at work, we’ve been being "audited" by a firm to help us determine the cost of operations in our department, and how we measure up to other organizations of similar structure and size. One of the comments that came back to us is that we could potentially be saving on cost of ownership if [...]

Overcoming ODBC "Invalid character value" Error in UPS WorldShip

If you ever run into this error when trying to export data from UPS WorldShip:

ODBC ERROR: State = 22005 Error = [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Invalid character value for cast specification
…here’s the solution. The "defout.mdb" file that exists on your source installation is corrupt. I’m assuming this, as what proceeds seems to solve the issue. In [...]