jk

Post Windows XP SP3 hangover - or - where's my address bar?!?!?!?!

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:29:00 -0500

I'm an address bar kind of guy. I constantly type in command line or web site urls. Start -> Run is just not as convienent. I don't do much Microsoft-bashing but I don't really see the logic in taking away the address bar in the Windows XP SP3 update when it is still available on other Windows-based OSs. It is supposedly due to an anti-trust ruling (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/itproxpsp/thread/6748d140-cde9-4705-9612-7013a6bcd910/)...but I digress.

Thankfully our friends over at muvenum.com have created a free app called MuvEnum Address Bar to replace this feature. You can find the download here: http://www.muvenum.com/products/freeware/

I've been running this tool on my personal laptop since Windows XP SP3 came out. I am installing it this morning on my client desktop workstation (XP SP3 is in the process of being rolled out here).

cheers

Going well means going fast - going fast creates bad code

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:22:00 -0500

Most projects end up in crunch time. Here's a gem I ran across recently. I didn't look to see who did it (hey, it may have been me), but nevertheless it needed fixing (the code here is not verbatim, but the meaning remains)...

		if (!someBooleanFunction(comparisonData1, comparisonData2)
		{
		   return false;
		}
		else
		{
  		   return true;
		}

			
		

The if statement has the ! (not) operator. I find negative logic difficult to read
This could have been solved by just doing a return on the output of the function!!

Cheers to good code! jk

Team communication and whackamo

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:06:00 -0500

What's the most difficult part of a software project? Requirements? Testing? Development? Support? No, no, no, and no.

Communication is the most difficult aspect and here's an example.

First, I need to describe the team.
- The team I'm currently consulting on is comprised of 8 developers; 4 consultants and 4 FTEs.
- Generally, the consultants are the 'old guys' and the FTEs are the 'young guys'.
- A majority of the team was born and raised in the United States.
- Some team members went to college (ComSci/CIS/EE) some did not.
- In this case, all develoeprs are male.
- For the most part, the team is pretty cohesive and gets along well. Eveyone cares about writing good code (I've been on teams where that is *NOT* the case, which is far worse).

A couple of months ago, one team member pulled out a colloqualism Whac-a-mole while describing a development scenario. If you've ever been to a kid's birthday party at a pizza place with games or an arcade, one of the games is typically Whac-a-mole where you use a foam mallet to hit the mole which pops up from a hole. (See the wikipedia link for a far better description...). While the colloqualism was quite funny, one of the developers on the team didn't know what Whac-a-mole was, but didn't bring it up (probably in fear of getting teased, but that is a different issue).

About 2 weeks later, I was refactoring some code and ran across a comment related to this scenario. Here's a reproduction of the code (the variables and source has been changed to protect my client and the developer).

string s = DoFunkyLogic(); //WHACKAMO

The developer who didn't understand the colloquial language actually put this comment in the source code. For all I know, WHACKAMO might be a colloqualism for something else (urban dictionary didn't show me anything), but nevertheless, a communication schism exists for this scenario.

This particular instance is pretty benign, but if a simple example like this shows us anything, it shows that even something 90% of a team understands, the other 10% don't understand and this miscommunication could cause issues on the project (misunderstanding a feature, offending someone by accident, etc...)

Please, be a good teammate and don't WHACKAMO on your team!

An honest job description

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:22:00 -0500

I found the text below in a Monster.com job posting...I like the honesty in stating "Screen Scraping" is a required skill. I haven't seen any certification tests or books on it. Maybe there is an untapped training/authoring niche to fill in Screen Scraping™?

Minimum of 2 years experience in Microsoft .NET; Microsoft SQL Server 2000/2005. Preferred experience includes 5 years C# experience, 5 years SQL Server 2000/2005; exposure to Screen Scraping, SQL2008.

Please don't screen scrape my feed; subscribe to the RSS/ATOM feed instead! :)

Random text feature of Word 2007

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:27:00 -0500

Check out this new feature of Word 2007 - you can now add random placeholder text! I can already smell the productivity gains :) - Thanks for the tips Logan!

cheers

6. Add random placeholder text.

Sometimes you need to add random text to a document as part of a demonstration or to get a feel for a new layout. The designer's standby is lorem ipsum, a block of Latin derived from Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil).

The lorem ipsum text has no meaning for modern readers, which makes it perfect for not being distracted by what the text says, so you can instead focus on what it looks like.

Place your cursor where you want the random text to start and type:

=lorem(x,y)

where x is the number of paragraphs you want to insert and y is the number of sentences each paragraph should contain. When you hit Enter, Word will insert the desired chunk of text. For example, =lorem(1,4) generates this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim.

Prefer your dummy text in English? Word 2007 will also insert English text, drawn from a Word 2007 tutorial, by replacing lorem with rand, like this:

=rand(1,4)

(Interestingly, in earlier versions of Word, the =rand function inserts repetitions of the classic typesetter's dummy sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The tutorial text that Word 2007 uses is longer and more varied.)

From: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Software&articleId=9128449&taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=3

Faking digital signatures

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:29:00 -0500

A coworker (thanks James) found this article about how to fake a digital cert on a web site. The quote below is from a related article: Researchers Use PlayStation Cluster to Forge a Web Skeleton Key

A powerful digital certificate that can be used to forge the identity of any website on the internet is in the hands of in international band of security researchers, thanks to a sophisticated attack on the ailing MD5 hash algorithm, a slip-up by Verisign, and about 200 PlayStation 3s.

"We can impersonate Amazon.com and you won't notice," says David Molnar, a computer science PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. "The padlock will be there and everything will look like it's a perfectly ordinary certificate."

stay safe out there :)

Turk the bastey - or - how not to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:02:00 -0500

Here is my personal favorite Thanksgiving joke, re-posted here for convienence... :)

enjoy and happy Thanksgiving!

How To Cook a Turkey

Go buy a turkey
Take a drink of whiskey, scotch, or JD
Put turkey in the oven
Take another 2 drinks of whiskey
Set the degree at 375 ovens
Take 3 more whiskeys of drink
Turn oven the on
Take 4 whisks of drinky
Turk the bastey
Whiskey another bottle of get
Stick a turkey in the thermometer
Glass yourself a pour of whiskey
Bake the whiskey for 4 hours
Take the oven out of the turkey
Take the oven out of the turkey
Floor the turkey up off the pick
Turk the carvey
Get yourself another scottle of botch

Friday fun time - What American accent do you have?

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:29:00 -0500

Time for some friday fun -- What American accent do you have?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The Midland
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

The funny thing is, I _hated_ the movie Fargo, not for the accents, but just for it being such a stupid story (I never did get that 98 minutes of my life back...grrr) :)

enjoy the quiz and happy friday!
jk

jk on Tour!

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:38:00 -0500

only if it is on the XBOX 360 :)

I picked up Guitar Hero World Tour over the weekend and finally played it tonight (see this post for more detail). So far so good; the game play is consistent with previous versions of GH and similar to Rock Band. The singing is fun, they give you points for 'vamping' and I LOVE the new wirless guitar; the strumming is very solid and 'feels' good.

I've only played a few songs on guitar (level = hard) and sang 2 songs (level = hard). 'Beat It' had some suprisingly fun riffs to play and 'About a Girl' was fun to play guitar and sing on. I also crooned out 'Band on the Run'. Hopefully my XBOX will stay on the up-and-up :)

cheers

XBOX 360 Freezing issues - notes

jk.nospam@nospam.jeffknutson.net (jk) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:01:00 -0500

The last couple days my 360 has been freezing up on me (checked screen and total lockup). I'm writing this just in case someone else runs into similar issues...

It is amazing how many articles about freezing are available online via your preferred search engine. I've had this system almost 2 years now with very few problems to-date.

some theories -

1. Overheating system - i purchased a cooling system (the 3 fan variety), while that didn't help me directly i'm sure it is part of the issue and i plan on keeping it. My system and power supply were moved into a more enclosed tv stand a few months ago; that + it being cold in MN and the furnace running might also have an effect.

2. About the same time I moved TV stands, i changed from the standard R W Y cable to the R G B cable. I read someplace online that increasing from 720 to 1080 (or whatever the common dpis are) makes the system work harder and can contribute to overheating as well...so tonight i moved back to the standard component R W Y cable. we'll see how that goes.

3. The Microsoft support link below said to perform 'maintenance' by following some arcane settings...i did that and it _may_ have helped?

4. I had a couple of stalled downloads of demo games. i deleted all of those from the hard drive as well..

i'm considering moving the whole thing to the basement which should help it stay cool...i just don't want to move my TV down there too :)

some articles i found:
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907586
- http://pardontheinteraction.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/xbox-360-freezing-problem-how-do-we-fix-this/

I'll write more once i give this some time and find out more... :)

cheers