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Recently, I went to lunch with some friends of mine from the DevelopMentor Software days (wow, *that* was a long time ago) and they accused me of "radio silence" for the last two years. "What?" I said. "I blog all the time!" "Oh yeah? What have you been working on again?" "Uhhh..." I've mentioned my work on this blog in passing as "model-driven" this or "data-driven" that, but never the details. And I still can't tell you those kinds of details. But what I can tell you is how I spend my days, because they are *glorious* days. Have you ever had one of those jobs where you're energized about coming to work every single day, because whatever you're doing,...
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I friend of mine dropped a book with a funny cover in my lap and said, "Hey, check this out." I threw it on my pile and didn't get back to it for a few days. When I did, I didn't know what to make of it. It was like The Grapes of Wrath by Rory Blyth, with illustrations by a drunk Salvador Dali. It took a few pages, but I eventually figured out that "Shoes" was a cross-platform GUI framework for Ruby and this 52-page book was a tutorial for it. By page 15, I knew the major concepts. By page 20, I could write my first program. By the end, 30 minutes after I'd...
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Don turned me onto the Walking Dead series of "graphic novels" (I'm too proud to call them "comic books!") and I loved them. I read volumes 1-4 in one day when I should've been doing other things. Don thinks that they're good enough for a Lost-esque style 10pm cable TV show and I agree. The interplay of characters and watching them fall apart under the pressure is fascinating. The zombies are there, but it's mostly a background thing, like IRS agents when you forget to include the check (I wrote it! I swear I did!). Anyone know anyone that needs the story for a new TV show? We'd watch and buy tons of advertisers' products!
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If so, fill in this survey and tell the WF team what you want. They *really* want to know.
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Quetzal Bradley is a software development engineer (SDE) on my team with *tons* of experience in all manner of infrastructure stuff including the requirements of real-world software testing from the trenches at Microsoft. Q gave a talk about what comes after unit testing to my team and I was blown away, so I sent him to tell Scott about it so that you could hear it, too. Enjoy.
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If I have time to read the web, I go to digg.com first, computerzen.com second and very little after that. Just this morning, I enjoyed Six Months in the Inside - Am I evil yet?, Amazon Kindle and LINQ to Everything - LINQ to XSD adds more LINQiness. The Kindle review was especially enlightening because it was the first one I've read that actually a) covered the stuff I care about and b) pushed me off the fence about whether I want one (I do!).
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*blush*
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Wahoo! You love us, you really love us! : ) When a book goes to another printing, 100% of the time, there's a list of "errata" (aka "mistakes") that are fixed in the new printing. In this case, neither Ian nor I have any fixes to apply. So, it's official -- the book is perfect! : ) Thanks for reading.
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My 1997 master's thesis came online today (he says, trying not to flinch). Here's the abstract: Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) is the dominant object model for the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems. COM encourages each object to support several views of itself, i.e. interfaces. Each interface represents a collection of logically related functions. A COM object is not allowed to expose multiple interfaces using multiple inheritance, however, as some languages do not support it and those that do are not guaranteed to do so in a binary-compatible way. Instead, an object exposes interfaces via a function called QueryInterface(). An object implements QueryInterface() to allow a client to ask what other interfaces the object supports at run-time.
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On 1/16/08, Microsoft announced the ability to download some of the .NET Framework source code for debugging. This download process was only supported inside of a properly configured Visual Studio 2008. 21 Days Later: Kerem Kusmezer and John Robbins released a tool to download the source code en mass. Frankly, I'm surprised it took so long. : )
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And so I did the only thing I could to do increase my odds -- I actually played the lottery. (I blame my inability to apply this strategy for my lottery losings in the past.) I did a little research and then went to two local Plaid Pantries to purchase the Oregon Lottery "Trio." At the first Plaid Pantry, an thin, stringy haired older lady behind the counter blinked in surprise when she saw me and then laughed to herself. "I just saw your geek pin. It's so subtle... geek..." she said. "I wish I would've paid more attention to geeks when I was growing up. I only paid attention to the rockers." "Well, that's pretty common," I said. "But...
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I'm not a big poetry fan in general, but notable exceptions are Poe's The Raven (especially the Simpson's version), Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein. However, I have to admit a certain fondness for the lowly limerick. I've done some composing, but the subject matter is often not something I'd want to post on my blog ("Hi, Mom!"), so when I ran into the rare clean one, I had to share: A Limerick packs laughs anatomical
In a space that is quite economical
But the good ones we've seen
Very seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical I've seen geek poetry, geek activities as song parodies, programs as songs (genius!), but I've never seen a geek limerick.
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Shawn Burke has released the details to set up VS08 to debug into the .NET Framework source code, including the following assemblies: mscorlib.DLL System.DLL System.Data.DLL System.Drawing.DLL System.Web.DLL System.Web.Extensions.DLL System.Windows.Forms.DLL System.XML.DLL WPF (UIAutomation*.dll, System.Windows.DLL, System.Printing.DLL, System.Speech.DLL, WindowsBase.DLL, WindowsFormsIntegration.DLL, Presentation*.dll, some others) Microsoft.VisualBasic.DLL Others are coming. Thanks, Shawn!
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Wahoo!
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Does anyone have both the Anderson WPF book and the Griffiths/Sells WPF book? If so, have you read Don's forewords in both books?
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I just saw that Mr. Petzold is re-publishing the paper that started computer science and annotating it so that even I can understand it. I can't wait!
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OK, just after all my friends are on FaceBook, now I'm getting the requests to join Spock.com. I don't know what Spock.com is, but after the address-book thingie, MySpace, the high school alumni thingie, Friendster (?), the Google ork-something, the business thingie and most recently FaceBook, I'm all done. All I ever do on these sites is approve friends requests! Isn't there supposed to be some value to it other than that? Oh, sure, I've had a few messages from people I haven't heard from in a while, but email works for that. In fact, email works for a helluva lot of the internet apps I see today. Plus, most of them just forward web form results to my email anyway! Why...
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Thanks very much "ET" on the Canadian Amazon. I can think of no higher compliment. : )
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In the same way that .NET manages memory for you, Windows Home Server manages storage. All you have to do is tell it the names of shared folders you want it to have and which computers to back up and it will spread it and duplicate it across however many HDDs you have, without you worrying about which actual HDD your "Music" folder is on or where your wife's computer is being backed up to. Plus, if you have more than one HDD and you have "Enable Folder Duplication" enabled for a shared folder, the data in that folder will be shared across multiple HDDs, effectively giving you the benefits of RAID without the config muss and fuss. (It's my...
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This is what happens when my relatives get together and the wine flows freely... : )
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Not all was gloom and blackness this XMas. Among the new things in our lives, several of them rocked*: Our new HP MediaServer running Windows Home Server is awesome. As a Microsoft employee, I got a killer deal on this server appliance, but knowing what I now know, I'd have paid full price -- a whopping $550. In fact, I recently sunk another $200 into it for a memory upgrade and a 750GB HD, bringing it up to 1.25TB.
WHS keeps all the computers in my house automatically backed up, keeps shared folders duplicated across multiple HDs which can be added via the slide-out drawers in the front of the unit (no muss, no fuss) and serves it...
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I brought my son a Sidekick Slide cell phone for XMas this year and I've come to the conclusion that it sucks, or at least the way T-Mobile sells it sucks. When I purchased it, the T-Mobile salesman offered me unlimited data and text messages for an additional $20/month on that line. The phone was an upgrade on our existing family plan, which already has 3000 minutes/month and unlimited text messaging and I don't really need my son surfing the interweb during class, so I declined. He never mentioned that the phone wouldn't actually work without this extra money, or I never would've purchased it. Then, XMas morning rolls around, my son is super-excited and plugs his SIM card...
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Interested? Drop Doug a line.
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The form factor is cool, the OS is fine (although I'd prefer Windows) but the chicklet keyboard is worthless. I can literally type faster on my t-mobile dash smartphone. Anyone want an OLPC laptop PC for $200 + shipping?
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In 2006, I purchased an XBOX 360 bundle from CostCo for about $550, including the console, a game and two wireless controllers. In April of 2007, my 360 caught the "red ring of death" ("Ring around the rosy, pockets full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"), at which point I brought it back to CostCo and exchanged it for the bundle they had available at the time, which was $475. They refunded me the difference! Net return: $75 in one year on an initial investment of $550. Earlier this month, my new 360 also caught the plague and I returned it again to CostCo, where the holiday bundle now costs $400. Net return: $75 in 7 months on...
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