Check your build scripts

Might be common sense to many out there, but this got me today. A few weeks, month ago, I updated Mac OS X from El Capitan to Sierra. Its been fine.

I've been debugging an issue that doesn't make sense, a portion of code that has been working, stopped today, and I'm trying to figure out why. In exploration, I ran a build script that I haven't changed in forever, and I got this error


Solving it came from this fellow here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26185978/macos-wchar-h-file-not-found. Specifically, that xcode had decided to install command line libraries in another directory. Sigh...

Well a little of

  
xcode-select --install

then

  
sudo xcode-select --switch /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/

And voila! It compiled again. So, yeah, should be policy to run build script right after upgrading OS.

How do you troubleshoot THAT?

One of our customers called us with an issue accessing our website, https://eFinalDate.com.  He was receiving a security issue, "Secure Connection Failed; the connection was interrupted while the page was loading."

First, it took us a couple back-and-forths to get the exact error message.  We ended up with an emailed photograph of the computer screen containing the message.

After that, we started asking about the operating system, browser version, whether it was up-to-date, whether it could be updated, etc.  We were just about to install some screen-sharing software and really dig in when he surprised us with the answer.

"An update to our firewall blocked all websites with the word 'date' in the URL."

Apparently they were trying to block dating services.  As eFinalDate is primarily interested in couples who are "Together Forever," it's probably the worst website on which to browse for singles.  We suggested he ask his IT department to give our site an exception.

But there you go.  One more thing to add to our list of troubleshooting questions.  "How does your IT department feel about dating?"