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"Pure evil"? That's pretty harsh. D-SQL does have a place - perhaps not in asp.net, but it most certainly does in VB.net. I challenged you to write some of the search engines I've written *without* D-SQL.
W Hoover: I appreciate your post yet I stand by my position. Perhaps in the past, DS wasn't 'pure evil' b/c dynamic queries were necessary and stored procs weren't a real one size fits all solutions. However, there's nothing that you can do by concatenating strings to build a SQL Statement that couldn't be done using 'dynamic' yet Paramaterized queries. If you can concatenate it into a string, you can just as easily use a Parameter. The only exception (sort of) is using an IN Statement. However, as I wrote in this Article, that's easily dealt with. I'm wondering if we don't have a definitional difference. By “Dynamic SQL” I'm referring to building the variable value into the string, not conditionally creating a SQL Statement but using parameters. Drop me a line though, I'd love to discuss this further.
I would be happy to contribute the excel code if you like. Did you see my Word version? I know I know I should know better than to use dynamic SQL but it was an internal application (within my network) and I didnt really feel that that was too much of a threat. Crystal Reports - UGH I hate it. It caused some very adverse effects on folks computers especially the Windows 2000 computers. I don't like the limitations it puts on me. Sometimes I feel like I have to learn another language. And to be honest, I love learning how to do what Crystal seems to make so easy. I don't want a tool that does everything for me. Call me crazy I guess.... By the way I am clicking on your site reguarly today.....:)
Hey while you are there in the next ADO.NET update it would be nice if they would make the table.select and table.compute methods more flexible. You can show them that thread and ask them why filters were being ignored.... Just a thought.
Hey Scorp: I posted these a few days ago, but it's not in relation to the code you showed me ;-). Looks suspicious I know, but it's been a pet peeve of mine for a while. I actually have the code and it's definitely on my priority list. I've also found that AVG on an INT column has all kinds of rounding issues and I've yet been able to use a cast/convert effectively (even though the documentation says you can). Even if there is a valid work around, I know this has given a lot of people a lot of grief and the documentation needs updated. I'll be in touch later this evening and let you know what I find out. Thanks again for writing and if you think of anything else, let me know. Cheers, Bill
Scorp: Have you had a chance to look at SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services? It's free, is extremely intuitive and allows you to flip from Design to Preview like Crystal Reports used to let you do. I got to play with it at DevDays last week and since then quite a bit. It's very very cool, and if you are doing a lot of reporting, it's well worth looking into. When I get back Saturday, we'll talk some more about the article, but I think your code would be great and we can mix the Word stuff with it (and XML) and have ourselves a great little article. Cheers, Bill
Very cool plan. You ae so lucky I bet you are having a blast. I suspect a lot of people will turn on to this just because working with Excel and Word are so integral to our tasks in companies. Reporting is my life such as it is. Is there a sample app in the 101 vb.net samples that demonstrate the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services?
Thanks Scorp. Yeah, i could definitely get used to this sort of thing..too bad there aren't any really high paying jobs who's onily requirement is attending these things. I'll have some more info posted later today. Cheers, Bill W.G. Ryan MVP www.knowdotnet.com
Hey Bill, Sounds like you're having a good time! Say hi to Casey for me. Cheers Derek
We were just talking about you...all good of course. Also, I was talking with Rob Tiffany who wants to get a hold of you regarding advertising. I think I mentioned the new Management console he has at http://www.hoodcanalsystems.com but it's one of the coolest products I've seen in a while. And his pricing is too good to be true. I'll give you a call a little bit later tonight, lot's of good stuff going on.
Hey Bill, Giving props to InfoPro...and your guys there on the I.T and Programming side... SWEET! You all are such GENIUSES.. InfoPro is so lucky to have you all!
in case the other post didn't make it, bring me back one of those nacho and cheese platters from 7-11, i'll pay ya' back. if you read the news, Uncle (racetrac gas) may lose his property- new highway cloverleaf coming in, taking out the skate rink-waffle house- checkers etc ............ start some time later this year.... call me ...
when you get time read this: http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3328131
i'm telling my girl that is was your idea :)
Guess Casey doesn't realize how much I actually pay attention to his website... followed the link here... gotcha, boy. :)
The Girl: Please note that it was all my idea. I blackmailed Casey (who was busy studying the newest features of XML web services or something) by threatening to tell his girlfriend he was out photographing the booth babes if he didn't come with me so he had no choice. And don't worry, after seeing those male cheerleaders, we both wanted to gouge out our eyes and never look at anything again ;-).
what's up ,,, no report in 3 days, andrew is here- still no cobras, and he's working in your cubicle- is sabotage in order?
Hi Bill, I enjoyed your rant on super bitch, I too have had this problem with a friend that my girlfriend had (as I'm sure other guys, and girl have had too - there are guys out there that will do the same thing to their girlfriend). I thought that you might find this interesting, it's a list of "Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast" by comicbook author Dave Sim, his comic Cerebus is amazing, but sometimes he gets a little crazy on his ranting about women and why they are destroying the world as we know it. (I agree with some of his thoughts, but others are just plain wacko). If you want to read the full essay, which is 20 pages, check it out here http://www.tcj.com/232/tangent0.html 1)A mother who works a full-time job and delegates to strangers the naising of her children eight hours a day, five days a week does just as good a job as a mother who hand-rears her children full time. 2)It makes graat sense for the government to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its mother - who pays perhaps 2,000 dollars in taxes - can be a contributing member of society. All you husbands and daycare daddies are just nodding like crazy. "Makes sense to me, Dave." "Gotta have it. Government-Funded Daycare. No way around that. Gotta have it." "A woman's right to choose! A woman's right to choose!" 3)A woman's doctor has more of a valid claim to participate in the decision to abort a fetus than does the father of that fetus. 4)So long as a woman makes a decision after consulting with her doctor, she is incapable of making an unethical choice. 5)A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership. 6)It is absolutely necessary for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that there be "women only" environments from which men are excluded. 7)Because it involves taking jobs away from men and giving them to women, affirmative action makes for a fairer and more just society. 8)It is important to have lower physical standards for women firepersons and women policepersons so that, one day, half of all firepersons and policepersons will be women, thus more effectively protecting the safety of the public. 9)Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be maintained now that more women than men are being enrolled, in order to keep from giving men an unfair advantage academically. 10)Having ensured that there is no environment for men where women don't belong (see no.6) it is important to have zero tolerance of any expression or action which any woman might regard as sexist to ensure greater freedom for everyone. 11)Only in a society which maintains a level of 95% of alimony and child support being paid by men to women can men and women be considered as equals. 12)An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 mlllion for each year of the marriage and probably more. 13)A man's opinions on how to rear and/or raise a child are invalid because he is not the child's mother. However, his financial obligation is greater because no woman gets pregnant by herself. 14)Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you anti-woman and/or a misogynist.
Bill, Beer! Great idea! I had this great counter argument about my ADD, but my hands won't stay on the keyboard long enough to type it out. ;-) Glad you had a good time at the summit! Thanks for attending, - Chip
Bikes rules, Bill :-) Is it a mountain one?
Hahaha, yes. 90% of questions are like that. IMO the problem is, that people don't know how to search the newsgroups (Google Groups!) or they don't care at all. And you can write articles, but it won't soleve the root of the problem (though you'll just post a link instead of full answer).
Hey Miha, how's it going? Actually, it's a trek 5500 road bike. I definitely need to shed a few pounds before I can really enjoy riding it again. How are you these days?
I agree with you 100%. I think of it kind of as Refactoring. I can rewrite the same stuff over and over and it'll do essentially the same thing. In a few place it'll be better than others but essentially the same thing. I may also not post b/c I may be in a hurry and don't have time to write it out. Posting a link is a lot more convenient. It'd be really cool if they had an ADO.NET FAQ for instance (and a similar one for each group) at the TOP of the forum. I know many wouldn't bother, scrolling to the bottom or a page (now) is less work than clicking a link and looking for your question's answer (proposed), but it may have the desired effect. BTW, have you seen the microsoft.public.handheld forum? It is the freakiest thing I've ever seen.
Totally agreee, totally cool links! I gotta go read through the rest of links! Thanks !
It was refreshing to see someone with a worse case of it than me but I can still give you a good run for your money. After listening to your presentation, I really REALLY had a new appreciation for how hard getting software out the door is. Every turn you're going to piss someone off and there's not a d@@@ thing you can do about it. Writing code is very simple in comparison, and there's at least one less person that will be griping about when the next service pack is coming out ;-)
Thanks for support Bill. I am also really frustrated that all these companies are sponsoring "antitrust" lawsuits here and abroad. It's ironic they depend heavily on the property rights they are attacking, and sooner or later it will come to haunt them.
I couldn't agree with you more.
It's not a matter of perspective and the "whole Antritrust thing" is not a joke--it's deadly serious and it's costing consumers dearly already. This Atlas is awfully close to shrugging. ~km
Here's the text of the post.... "http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7554 The question for the Free Software community to ruminate is this: Is supporting Mono supporting our own desktop downfall? A statement attributed to Steve Ballmer at a party a few years ago would support this possibility. To paraphrase, when asked about Mono, he shrugged it off with a statement alluding to the fact if Mono got too popular, that's what lawyers are for. Mind you this is friend-of-a-friend kind of hearsay, but it is worth noting regardless. Because Mono works off the ECMA spec for C# and the CLI, and because Novell has the legal resources to make the idle-lawyer threat less effective, I don't think this is some long-plotted submarine trick designed to disrupt free software adoption. In the long run a healthy Mono that can run .Net apps natively is as important to Linux as a good JVM is--that is to say, very important." Nonsense by any other name is still nonsense
Hi Bill, I want to try to answer your question about bundling media player hurting consumers. I don't know how it hurts consumers but I can see how it hurts the smaller companies that are trying to make media players of their own. 95% of the people who use computers at home are running a MS OS. Of those, probably 90% of them don't know that you can use 3rd party media players and don't have to use the MS media player that comes with Windows. They just use the MS media player because it's there. If the MS media player wasn't bundled with Windows then those 90% of people would be in the market for a media player, and that's a lot of people! MS could ship Wnidows with a link on the desktop where a user could download and install their media player, and other companies could work out deals with vendors to do the same for their media players, that way users could have a choice. Yes, most users would choose the MS media player because it would be free (I know I would!) and most of the other media players cost money. But in doing this MS would not be misusing it's huge market share to take advantage of the typical users, and the fact that they don't know that they have a choice for the media player that they want to use. The media player is not an integral part of the OS, and that's why MS is getting in trouble for bundling it with their OS, and not allowing 3rd party companies to make deals with vendors of PC's to put their media player on Windows machines when they are built and sold. I also don't believe that you can remove the MS media player from Windows, so even if someone wants to use a 3rd party media player on their PC, MS media player is still there. Just some thoughts, skicow
>> Well, if litigation instead of innovating is wrong, then it's wrong. Agreed. 100%.
Hi, You have some valid points here and I'd like to reply to each one on it's own. I agree that consumers benefit when two companies compete with each other by lowering prices and such, but if one company has the advantage of having their product (MS media player) already given to the consumer, how are other companies supposed to compete with that? How is there supposed to be a 'price war' when MS is not selling their media player, but giving it away for free? I also agree with you 100% about the downloading phobia that some people have, and I would also love it if I didn't have to download and install anything. MS has lots of great talent, and I agree that their products are nice as well, but I would like to also say that there are 3rd party apps that are better than some MS apps. ZoomPlayer is, IMHO, a much better media player than MS's media player. MS also has the benefit of knowing their Windows code and how it runs so that they can write apps that will out perform other 3rd party apps with ease, not because MS programmers are better than the 3rd party programmers, but because the 3rd party doesn't have access to the OS code, and can't 'tune' their code in ways that MS programmers know they should. Please note that I am in no way 'slamming' MS programmers, this is not the intent of the previous sentence, I just wanted to state that MS programmer have an edge over other 3rd party programmers when programming for the Windows OS. This is the main reason that I feel the 'playing field' is not level between MS and 3rd party programmers. As for your final statement, I too use Google, and always have, they are the best search engine out there IMO. I think that the other instances that you provide are not part of what we are talking about, or at least what I'm talking about, the 90% of users who use their PC's for email, writing documents, and listening to music. They don't use IIS/Apache, etc. or even Quicken/Money on their computers. I believe that the reason that MS has not killed Apache/Quicken/Oracle, is because the people who use these are people who know that they have a choice of what to use, they know that there is something else out there other than IIS or SQL Server. The regular PC users don't know that there is another media player out there that may be better for them. I'm not saying that it's MS's responsibility to educate the normal user of their choices when it comes to media players, but I do think that MS should let 3rd party apps be installed on new PC's by vendors. I love Windows, and I don't think other OS's like Linux are any better for the home desktop PC. I'm a big MS user, I can't believe how amazing VS 2003 is for programming VB, it’s a work of art. But I want to ask this question: How does MS being sued benefit the government? I don't think that the government hates MS and is judging unfairly against them for any reason. What reason would the government have to do this? And in the end, it's the judges that decide if MS is in the wrong. skicow
<Agreed. 100%> Thanks Mike. Too bad more people don't hop on the bandwagon, it's really a pretty obvious thing to point out. The old phrase "Any government powerful enough to give you everything you want is also powerful enough to take everything you have" ought to be considered. Today's David's are often Tomorrow's Goliath's so you could be next (you referring to those who don't condemn litigating your way to success as a business practice). It's kinda funny/disgusting how situationally some people role with this issue. You doing it to me is bad. Me doing it to you is ok. That's some seriously old school thinking.
Intellisense is the greatest thing since sliced bread! Long live the ability to mouse over a variable and know what it's been dim'ed as! No more having to call variables 'strCompany'
Amen to that. What about intellisense in the debug Window - that was the greatest feature in the 1.1 framework...hard to remember life without it.
Your comment about MS letting other vendors install stuff on new PC's, well, I totally concur. MS shouldn't interfere here if they want to claim it's all about competition. And hardware without software isn't worth a whole lot, particularly the OS, so ms can defintitely throw some weight around unfairly in this regard. And to that end, I agree with the vast majority of your points with a few small exceptions As far as the price war... nothing is really free. Value is the metric here. A thrid party vendor could make a much better product than Microsoft's Product X and even at say $40.00 for instance, still provide a better value. Think of it this way, if I spend $0.00 and get something that provides $20.00 worth of value to me, or I spend $1,000,0000 to get something that provides $1,000,000,000,000,000 I'm much better off in the second case (i know, asssuming you had the million bucks in the first place, but you can use any numbers you want, just make the ratio larger on the one side). Since nothing is really 'free' the ratio isn't really 20/0 vs 1,000,000,000,000,000/1,000,000 it's more like 20/0001 or some other non zero number. And the math works out. I'll agree though that it's darn hard to fight battles like this because it's hard to often create value like that . As far as the source code issue. Look at Infragistics UltraWinGrid vs. DataGrid. Light years ahead of it. Look at how many third party controls there are out there. Even with a late start, they can kick butt in many segments. Other ones are a lot different, but having an Advantage doesn't mean a guaranteed win and there are a lot of examples that bear this out. the fact MS has lost some battles pretty much proves this don't you think? As far as the government. They get fines and revenues. They get free publicity. Look at the Celebrity David Boies for instance got from the MS trial here in the US. Joe Klien etc. They used litigation to further their careers and in this instance, they are the government. There's an Anti-Spitzer law that congress put in place just to stop the abuses of Attorneys General like NY's Spitzer. He wasn't this aggressive without getting something in return. As far as the judges go... well, they work for the government. It is common practice in law to "judge shop' wherein you find one friendly to your cause. Moreover, being a judge doesn't inherently do anything to make you less susceptible to outside influences. Every supreme court justice out there got there by voting record. And every aspiring judge knows this. Sure many of them keep it real. Many don't.. But siding with the govt all the time will surely have some benefits. Thanks Skicow, I really appreciate having a pleasant dialog on stuff like this. Too often it gets really hostile in public forums and it's nice to hear an intelligent opposing option (although we probably agree more than disagree) expresed politely! Bill
All about IP*Works
Casey Chestnut har tiltrukket sig en del opm
Hey Bill - GREAT post(s)! Thanks for your support of Casey. The things that you've said about him & the things that I've read that other people have posted about this issue make me realize this exact behavior on his part is exactly one of the major reasons I love being around him. :) Thanks again for starting this "bandwagon" for Casey support! TS ps - I tried to send this thru your "contact" email, but it won't let me. I get this message: Your message could not be sent, most likely due to a problem with the mail server.
Amen to that! I read Casey's site daily. He's got some awesome stuff he's done in his articles. He's funny and he shares my view that you don't have to be 5'3" weigh 125lbs soaking wet and wear horned rim glasses to be an intelligent developer. So he posts pics of TS's butt on his site?!? It's his site, it's his girlfriend and she doesn't seem to mind or she'd let him have it in the comments for sure. I definitely thought the car show girl was hotter than the booth babes though. I'd like to b!tch slap that HR person who wrote that e-mail, "descrimination based on personal web content", now there is a humdinger of a law suit waiting to happen. Plus he's got it in writing. Actually b!tch slapping them raw would be more satisfying than a law suit but either way would make me happy. Here's an Amen from one more developer who thinks Casey rocks!
http://www.cadencoding.net/blogs/users/cornbread/permalink.aspx?id=19
http://www.syringe.net.nz/PermaLink.aspx?guid=5b835b5a-5a8e-4eb0-bc9b-958350d323af
http://www.lazycoder.com/weblog/index.php?p=82
Hi TS: Try bill@devbuzz.com, I'm not sure what's wrong with the other one. As far as the bandwagon, Casey started his own bandwagon by having a cool site and doing what he does in the community. The thought that he was getting criticized for such silliness I think struck off a nerve b/c it's hard to imagine people missing everything else about B & B just b/c they don't like a piece or two of it. Every comment and every email I've gotten is in agreement on this issue and I'm glad!
Welcome to reality. You can talk all day about the way things *should* work, or about the way you *want* things to work, but the cold hard facts of life are that people will make assumptions about you by looking at your web site. ""descrimination based on personal web content" " - Yeah...you do that..Please, let me go with you when you present the case to a lawyer. I want to record that little exchange for America's Funniest Videos. The guy is obviously a bright, talented developer. He also frequently comes across as a boor. Which is fine of course, but he should fully expect that some companies will see this and and choose not use him. At 28 years old, it's time that he learn the difference between a professional and personal life. Wanna post shots of your girlfriend's butt? Wanna have a lengthy discourse on topics that some people find offensive? Then go post it on your personal web site. And *MOST* importantly, don't give that personal website as a reference when you are looking for clients.
ADO.NET 2.0
AniltJohn
Dude, why are you giving this douche bag any ink? www.brains-n-brawn.com Rules!
This is just too funny... It's amazing that you, and your sycophants, can't seem to grasp the basic concept that people hire people for more than just the skills mentioned in the want ad. People look for maturity, professionalism and judgement in addition to good development skills. If you're going to be interfacing with clients, then your maturity and judgement is going to be considered just as much as your development skills. I can't even believe I have to explain this. Clearly, Casey lost a potential job or gig because he didn't understand it. Now perhaps he does. Oh sure...you can rant about "the system" or "the man" or whatever euphemism you wan't to apply, but unless you don't need an employer or clients then you play by their rules. ...and their rules, for those that aren't listening, is that people will frequently look at your personal life to gauge what type of person you are. If they find something they don't like, then you might get passed over. And that's reality. Sorry if it offends you.
<<It's amazing that you, and your sycophants, can't seem to grasp the basic concept that people hire people for more than just the skills mentioned in the want ad. >> I never said they didn't. I guess I still need to say it again. It's absolutely their right to hire/not hire whoever they want. It's also shortsighted. That's my point. Who are my sycophants btw? I can't tell if you are talking to me or Casey here from the context of your previous posts and this one. <<People look for maturity, professionalism and judgement in addition to good development skills. If you're going to be interfacing with clients, then your maturity and judgement is going to be considered just as much as your development skills. >> Again, show me an example where he's ever had a lapse of judgement at work or caused ANY negative issue for a company that's employed him. You're implicitly stating that what he writes at B&B has anything to do with his behavior at work and It doesn't. Again, my point is that if you are going to judge "judgement, professionalism " blah blah blah based on a few flippant comments on a web site particularly in light of the quality of the content there, you're being shortsighted (which is my euphamism for DumbA55 and the only one I use. Where do i reference the man or any such stuff? Nowhere! And what about my contention that sending out emails to people explaining why you didn't hire them is 'bad judgement'? One attorney I work with looked at their comments and commented that it was 'really not smart' to write someone with that information, particularly with all the ambulance chasers out there. Actually, you didn't respond to any one of my points and you mischaracterize the ones I made. To that end, how could I get offended? There are certainly intelligent arguments one could make counter to my points, you just haven't posited any.
Bill, I think this dude is just jealous b/c he obviously has no skills, no balls (or at least not enough to put down his name) and probably no girls. He's probably one of the losers they'll settle on instead of KC and he's pissed b/c he can't get first billing.
"Who are my sycophants btw?" Sorry, singular. Sycophant. But it looks G. Amato is trying out for the fan club. " Again, show me an example where he's ever had a lapse of judgement at work or caused ANY negative issue for a company that's employed him." That's not the point. The point is that if you direct potential employers to a website that they might find offensive, then you run the risk that they will find you lacking judgement. "based on a few flippant comments on a web site particularly in light of the quality of the content there, you're being shortsighted" See, I don't really disagree there. My entire point has been that just don't be shocked or upset when a potential employer or client has shortsighted. Most of the people making hiring decisions aren't techies and wouldn't understand anything Casey says anyway. But they sure as hell understand a girls butt on his web site, particularly after he directed them there. "And what about my contention that sending out emails to people explaining why you didn't hire them is 'bad judgement'?" How is that pertinent, anyway? Let's say it was bad judgement on their part...So? How does that relate to Casey losing an opportunity based on his web site? Lots of people make bad judgement calls? Do you really want to chronicle each one here? Bottom line: Everyone has the freedom to post whatever they want on their websites. But, if you are going to direct clients to your web site, then having anything that might be viewed as offensive or questionable is really not a terribly bright thing to do if you are needing clients. If you don't need clients, or have such high demands then hey, whatever.....
It doesn't take a sycophant to realize you are wrong, but it's a cool title. If I get some time, I'll start a Casey's Sycophant Club. I remember being at PDC in San Fran a month ago when he was giving his speech, everyone was really impressed so I know there'd be quite a few members. Thanks for the idea From start to finish, I was criticizing their hypocrisy and short sightedness as illustrated in the two emails that Casey references. Yes, i do see some irony in someone criticizing his judgement when there's is ostensibly worse,. <<That's not the point. The point is that if you direct potential employers to a website that they might find offensive, then you run the risk that they will find you lacking judgement. >> Where did I ever argue anything to the contrary. I think I"ve acknowledged this, I just said it's shortsighted. The same couild be said for things they come across incidentally that you didn't direct them to. What about all that tripe you were spewing about "he should do it on a 'personal' web site. It is a personal web site. The fact that he pointed them to it doesn't make it not exist. And the fact that he says stuff on his web site that is said in every company every day and that someone is too dumb to look past it is Stupid. <<My entire point has been that just don't be shocked or upset when a potential employer or client has shortsighted. Most of the people making hiring decisions aren't techies and wouldn't understand anything Casey says anyway>> Who's shocked or upset, I just think they're stupid for doing so. <<My entire point has been that just don't be shocked or upset when a potential employer or client has shortsighted. Most of the people making hiring decisions aren't techies and wouldn't understand anything Casey says anyway>> Simple. Their contention is that he has bad judgement. Mine is that he doesn't. If bad judgement is a metric at their company, then they fall quite short but WRITING stuff that could easily be used against them. You also made a point earlier that there was nothing dumb about there emails from a legal perspective..remember America's Funniest Home Videos? Well, I'm saying that this is prime fodder for frivolous law suits and stupid. <<Bottom line: Everyone has the freedom to post whatever they want on their websites. But, if you are going to direct clients to your web site, then having anything that might be viewed as offensive or questionable is really not a terribly bright thing to do if you are needing clients. If you don't need clients, or have such high demands then hey, whatever..... >> Are we in the same conversation? The Bottom line is that what they did under the sanctimonious guise of 'good judgement' and professionalism is stupid, exhibits bad judgement and isn't very professional. And all my point has been is that they are stupid for using this as a metric and even dumber for acknowledging it. This whole stupid argument has been you dancing around things I never said or implied and backing away from what you did say, which from the looks of things would make you a prime candidate at the HR offices he referenced.
fun fun fun
Tripe that I was spewing? It's so refreshing to see someone as open-minded as you when dealing with those that have an opposing viewpoint. First, I'm a "buttmunch" and now "I'm spewing tripe." I bet you're a lot of fun to have in design meetings. We disagree. The fact that you get so very emotional, angry and resort to name calling over a disagreement inclines me to believe that I'm just wasting my time trying to explain to you. Or said another way: "When arguing with fools, don't answer their foolish arguments,or you will become as foolish as they are."
Oh, please accept my apologies. I didn't realize Buttmunch was that harsh of a word and to be honest, I thought it was kind of funny and fitting at the same time without being too serious. It's similarly refreshing to see someone get so sensitive over something so trivial. But you obvsiously aren't going to acknowledge anything that I was discussing. As far as your final statement goes, I have to wonder, don't you have anything original to come back with? That quote was old was old school when I was in 5th grade, right along with Welcome to reality and Get a life. Hopefully you have a bit more creativity in design meetings...
Ok so Not Me say I develop a porn site in php on a contract to the company that wants a porn site. Three months later I get a job offer to do Php development and I point them to that web site and say "I developed this, here is an example of my work.". They get offended and say we aren't hiring you because you developed a porn site. That's descrimination based on their personal moral ideals. Casey points people to his site for examples of his work, specifically the articles and site layout/design. To desrimate against him for the content of the blog on that domain is retarded. No, I am not shocked that some HR person was stupid enough to do that. What I am surprised at, is that they were dumb enough to put it in writing. If you think that is a lawsuit that can't be prosecuted clearly you have never worked in a corporate environment where stupid lawsuits are the norm. IE the entire west coast. And they win. Descrimination is against the law, it's clearly against the law to descriminate against people for what they do in their free time. Gays have proved this time and time again. Descriminate against them for something they do in their free time and the ACLU will be more than happy to sue you for everything you have. It is not against the law to show your free time projects as proof of concept when applying for a job. I do it all the time, in my spare time I write programs for special needs children and their education. So if on my site I post a picture of a special needs child it offends somebody and the don't give me a job because of that, that is stupid and if you want to press it it's also illegal. In the realm of free speach their is no difference between a picture of a special needs kid and a picture of TS's lovely backside. They are both content on a blog pointed to as proof of concept. I hate arguing on the internet because it's just dumb but when you say things like welcome to reality maybe you need to wake up and smell what you are shoveling. Just because it's reality doesn't make it wrong and stupid to descriminate like that. The Berg incedent was pretty gruesome reality but it was still wrong to chop off his head. Just because something is reality doesn't mean we need to be quiet about it and say "oh well it's reality so just deal with it" go tell that to Nick Berg's parents and see what kind of reception you get. The inceddent's are not similar in severity I am just iterating a point. We are speaking out against descrimination against a friend. I don't give a flying fuck if it's reality or not, I won't let it go unchallened, or remain silent while someone maligns a friend.
Well said Andy, and I couldn't agree with you more. It's funny how this guy launched into all of this and doesn't once address my original points. It's not that they aren't allowed to discriminate or judge, it's just that if they do, their being foolish. The dude gets all mad, calls everyone here sycophants, then says it's just me, but I call him a Buttmunch and his feelings get hurt. Then he starts whole "Reality" stuff. I'm really glad the world has him to tell us how it really is. And he's so into reality that he repeatedley misstatements my arguments, doesn't answer anything rebutting his nonsense and takes it back to the old school with a quote that wasn't nearly as funny or profound as he thinks, even when it wasn't cliche. Since he can't speak to one point anyone made, it shows how vacuous his whole arguement is...hope vacuous doesn't hurt MeToos tender little feelings. Anyway, I'm glad you posted, you make a lot of sense and MeToo was getting really boring
"Ok so Not Me say I develop a porn site in php on a contract to the company that wants a porn site. Three months later I get a job offer to do Php development and I point them to that web site and say "I developed this, here is an example of my work.". They get offended and say we aren't hiring you because you developed a porn site. That's descrimination based on their personal moral ideals. " If I'm not mistaken, the reason given in the email to Casey is that this job had something to do with interfacing with their clients. From what I read, that's what they were concerned about. Maybe they were concerned that Casey might be sending pics of his girlfriend's ass to their clients. I dunno, but I don't think it was that they were personally bothered by his choice of pics. So I think it boils down to they had questions about his professionalism, not his taste in photos or his viewpoints. Whether or not their concerns are valid has been done to death, so there is no point in arguing that. I'm a consultant myself and a handful of my clients are stuffy Fortune 500 companies. I can absolutely guarantee you that many of them hire soley on perceived professionalism. I could be a raging alcholic who abuses his wife and molests little children, but as long as they don't see that and I appear to fit within their mold then I get the job. Does the suit and tie I wear make me a better developer? Of course not, but I wear it because if I don't then that would set little alarm bells off in their tiny little HR heads. And that might cost me a gig. So, it's a small price to pay. I got a family to feed and career to tend to, so I present myself according to what they want to see.
Yes, this is quite simple and you are absolutely right. The whole point of all of this was that the criteria were silly. I'll also bet that you don't get written emails describing why they didn't choose you, they just politely bow out. That's what annoyed me about MeToo. It's pretty clear the discussion was centered around the validity of their concerns. You see it, and so did everyone else but MeToo. There was another email that didn't reference interacting with clients, but that's not really the point. Casey even points out that later in life, he may need to change but for now, being that he's without wife and child, all he has to do is feed Casey and KittyKitty so it's all good. And to be honest, and Fortune 500 company or other company that doesn't hire him really needs to look over to the right hand side of his web site to see why that's a poor decision. Thank Mike.
How many of you guys are doing this on "company time?" :) Looks like a lot of effort/time, but (I may be biased) for a good cause! I commend you, Bill & Andy & anyone else that has added anything in support of Casey. And I never imagined my butt would cause such controversy! I kinda like it. :) I also wanted to add to a point that Bill made... Casey is actually on a contract right now for which he was hired because he was noticed at his impressive presentation in SanFrancisco. The guy was present and approached him afterward. He must not have seen his "offensive" website, but it must have been enough that he knew talent when he encountered it!
Hi TS. Nope not on company time here, speaking for myself anyway. :) I've been at home during this whole thing on temp leave helping with a friends funeral. So I've had plenty of time to post. That being said if we ever need small device work done Casey will be the first person I recommend for the job, hands down.
TS, thanks for pointing that out, seriously. I mean, getting a speaking gig at MDC isn't little league. Getting TWO MS MVP awards isn't little league either. MeToo would have everyone believe it's b/c he's got a bunch of uncritical adoring 'sycophants' like everyone here. He's all about explaining why Casey got shot down two whole times but has NO (0) answers as to why he gets hired all the time. Before he went to Milwaukee, my company wanted to hire him based solely on the stuff at B & B because it was undeniable his game is strong. It really sucked when we found out that he was already hired. There's not a person that saw him speak at MDC that wouldn't recommend him for a job and that Buttmunch MeToo seems to get lost on all the positives.
It's true. Linux makes average Aunt Sophie the user go screaming in horror. I don't care what Balmer says Developers don't drive desktop technology. If they did we'd all be using *NIX because that is what most Comp Sci majors learned on in school. Users drive desktop technology. If the users don't like it, it's not going to fly. The users make me money, I cater to whatever they want, it's their machine. Does that make them stupid? No, of course not although many *Nix zealots seem to think so. I could counter with "well Mr. Zealot then you are dumb because you don't know what the headspace and timing for a .50 cal is" they usually come back and say something like "why would I ever need to know that" and I would say "exactly you don't need to know what the headspace and timing for a .50 cal is and Aunt Sophie shouldn't have to know how to read binary or work in a console to look at baby drooley's first birthday pics". Windows is wining because of Aunt Sophie and millions like her and will continue to do so until the *Nix movement pulls it's head out of it's @ss and starts writing software for users, not software for developers. Because last time I checked Aunt Sophie doesn't want to have to write the driver so she can install her new 50,000 features in one machine printer, copier, fax, and scanner.
This reminds me of that Dilbert cartoon where a fat/balding/suspender wearing guy is talking to Dilbert and Dilbert recognizes him as a Unix user, then said Unix users says to Dilbert 'Here's a nickel kid. Get yourself a new computer' (not sure if that's exactly how it goes but you get the gist of it). This, to me, was a jab at the *nix community and how high and mighty they think they are, BUT if you do a search on the Internet for this quote you will find that most of the places it's found are *nix friendly sites....so basically some people in the *nix community didn't get the joke and thinks that the cartoon was a jab at the people not using a *nix system. See here for an example http://www.thebeachfamily.org/software/software.html
Andy, you are right on about what drives development. We'd all be writing in A33embler and C++ too. Not to beat up on Frontpage but it's the best example I know of. All developers hate it. Most professionals shun it. But half the world owns a copy and uses it. Not everyone wants to understand the nuances of HTML and Javascript just to get up a simple web page. another example is Flash vs. PowerPoint. Both are easy to use but Flash is one of the realest tools out there. But there's no way you'll see large scale adoption in the non developer community b/c it's, well, intended for developers and not hobbyists and recreational users. Calling all of these people stupid might give really insecure folks a feeling of superiority, but it begs the question, if you are so smart, why are those dummies richer than you. And this will drive the OS guys nuts ever time it's asked.
Skicow: I haven't seen that cartoon, I only saw the one about Unics programmers where the boss was going to send the company nurse to visit Dilbert. If you can find it, please send it to me, I'm going to try to find it now. Another thing, have you seen the personal web sites of a lot of the COLA guys? Does sticking 50 goddamned earings in your face and tatooing your neck make you smart or something? Thanks again man. Bill
No, I haven't seen any of the COLA personal websites, but now that you mention it I might have to go take a peek. I guess they pierce their faces to show how cool or hardcore they are. Don't get me wrong, I know a bunch of guys/girls that are like this and they are really nice people, I love the type of music that usually comes with doing this to yourself (punk, straight edge, etc.) and hang with them, but I never really understand why they do it to themselves, I guess it's just things kids do (damn I can't believe that I just typed that!! I sound like an old man)... I'll see if I can find that Dilbert cartoon... skicow
http://www.liamslider.com/ Is one of my favorites. It's a shame his site is down right now (which it is quite a bit) b/c he's the epitome of Wanker. John Bailo (a funny albeit delusional Microsoft hater) once posted in the dotnet.general group. I asked him what his post had to do with .NET. He had cross posted to COLA so Liam hops all over me with some nonsense about Mafia$soft and a bunch of other incoherent ranting. The fact that he can't post with using a $ for an S or all that other oh so cliche' garbage speaks volumes. As far as the Tattoo stuff.... I didn't really mean to dog tattoos or piercings. It just kills me how many of these 'noncomformists' all look alike. If someone wants to be a nonconformist musician/computer dude, why not keep it real. Get a haircut, head over to Brooks Brothers and get some cool duds and stand out in your crowd. If that's their thing, good for them, none of my business. But it often fits into that whole "look at how nonconformist I am" look that is, well, tired. A lot of this is youth of course but when you're like 30, it starts to look a bit dumb. I really wish old Liam's site was up but regrettably it's not. He's probably reconfiguring his kernel or something 'cool' like that. It's actually too bad Gates and Ballmer are such nice guys b/c it'd be really funny if they use their alleged superpowers to force all COLA guys to get a Windows Tattoo across their asses. As always, good to hear from you, you always have a cool perspective.
Some people just have no shame. I mean, did Vinod not think that he would get caught? Did he think that he was the only person to see the original code on www.kjmsolutions.com? and therefore no one would catch him posting the code on the biggest VB site on the 'net? Buttmunch is too nice a word ;) more like buttslam... BTW Bill, your blog is getting to be like bnb.com....aren't you worried about losing potential jobs if a HR person sees you expressing yourself freely? ;)
Wow. I think I have seen blatent plagerism that bad one other time. The individual belonged to a subscription knowlege base for developers. They took the code out of the knowlege base and verbatim posted it on a programming forum as their own code. Same comments, variable names etc. Not one single change. It wasn't VB code though it was C++ so it's not like VB where a lot of times there is only one or two correct ways to do something. He could have chosen to write any number of solutions he just choose to steal instead. WTF is wrong with these people? Who let them into the gene pool and where the f#ck is the life guard so we can get them thrown out? If you like somebodies code post a link to it, or if their server won't handle the traffic well then post the code and a link to where you got it from. I absolutely hate people who think the rules for common decency don't apply when they are on the web. Didn't their mother teach them stealing is wrong?
Thanks for the compliment Bill, I always enjoy reading your blog...you and Casey have some great stuff to say. I agree with your statement about all 'noncomformists' looking the same, but it's just a thing to do when you are aged 14~29 or so...hell I did it too! I look back when I had hair down to my a55, wore nothing but rock shirts and only wore Doc's...We all looked the same, but we didn't look like our parents which was what it was all about (for me anyways)...but now that I'm over 30 I've changed, I still listen to the same music, hang with the same people, and all my casual dress shoes are Doc's, but I cut my hair (though it is still down to my shoulders). Wow, Mafia$oft, that's a new one to me! I guess I'm not hanging out in the cool places and using vi to edit my scripts enough to know that eh?
Hey Skicow: This is about as shameless as I've seen. I don't know why he tried changing that one line of code and nothing else... that doesn't make it any less wrong. And the worst part is that he proved he's a dumbass b/c his change didn't make any sense. It's soo easy to change the code substantially and come up with your own implementation that one really has to wonder what the hell he was thinking. Think about it, he could post scorps code and give scorp credit. Then he looks like an honest dude helping someone out. He could change scorps code and cite it, just like Scorp did. He'd still look like a good guy. But he steals his code, implies its his and then makes a retarded change... if his goal was to look good he only looks like a total a-hole. Actually, Casey is 50 times the developer I am, so if this is starting to look like his stuff it'd actually help me out ;-). I don't really point anyone over here and if it came up I'd just mention that it's all done in the context of my personal life. If they held it against me then it's probably somewhere I wouldn't want to work b/c I actually try to keep my big mouth under control here. Fortunately I work in a great environment and all is pretty cool. I like ButtSlam too, good word. I was thinking of DillWeed or one of the other Beavis and Butthead words. Then I started thinking SouthPark style, "What would Cartmen say" But that would invariably get me started and I'd no doubt end up saying someting I regretted. So even though MeToo got offened with ButtMunch, I figured it's neutral enough . I appreciate the compliment and your feedback. Thanks again, Bill
Hey Andy: It kills me how some people don't consider this stealing. Some other dude actually got on my case about posting this stuff b/c he thinks I should do it offline. My whole point was to expose Vinod and expose people that do it. If I accidentally did something like he did (which isn't an accident and not something I can ever imagine doing directly, indirectly or any other way), I'd be glad to have the author tell me about it so I could fix it. I'd also want an opportunity to apologize. But being that I make my living by writing code, I can't stomach this stuff. I mean, even if you post your own stuff in a NG, if you got a cool idea from someone, why not give them props? Stuff people posts is viewed by others as what one is capable of doing. So if you can't do it, you're just screwing yourself. And now, Vinod has the fact he's a plagairist and a Stupid one at that, immortalized on a bunch of different servers. The only thing I disagree with you on is that he did change one Line, from "A2" to "A20". This is the icing on the cake b/c the comment (which was Scorpion's) is that he's starting there to leave room for the header row. But no header row takes 19 rows. Even if he wanted to make a claim that he was leaving room for a header, this is pretty obviously BS. There's no Range.Merge(); or anything else other than PURE, OLD SCHOOL THEFT! And this is the type of dude that probably lies (Just my opinion, I'm not stating this as a fact) on his resume, claims skills he doesn't have and points to his contributions online as testimony to his skills. So some poor company will hire him only to find out they hired a FRAUD. Reminds me of some lyrics from Ether by NAS Vinod's a ".. a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, " http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/N/Nas/Nas%20-%20Ether%20lyrics.htm# Anyway, I was a little pissed when old boy told me to take it offline even though he was nice about it. I think the forum where the crap is posted is EXACTLY where you should post proof of the theft. If other people don't like it, than they should get mad at Vinod, not Scorpion for pointing it out or me for looking out for a friend. Vinod did it, not anyone else. And this stuff is immortalized in the forums so why not take it public so everyone can see who's work it really is. Check this link out if you would and let me know what you think http://vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=67309
Just as kind of a side note to what you are saying someone posted a response to you saying there was no copyright notice etc. So yeah some really do think it is not stealing. The man may have a point I am not sure. I have never seen a case where someone copied code and used it and then there were any consequences for it. The only time I have ever seen this come to pass is in the SCO/IBM fight. Fighting over open source is pretty hilarious to me incidentally but oh well........Maybe we need a ethical test you have to pass to get a "programmers license". :) Nah scratch that.......government involvement never did help anything........ Awesome space you have here bill.......
Incidentally that statement was at http://www.wimdows.net/articles/article.aspx?aid=15 sorry about that.
I agree with 100% it's stealing and it's wrong. However I also don't believe in arguing in forums. You posted that in the right place. The argument that will probably follow is what I try and avoid. It reminds me of this thing somebody e-mailed me as a funny the other day. Here it is copied from my e-mail ( enjoy :) ): How Many Form Members....does it take to change a lightbulb? 1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs 1 to move it to the Lighting section 2 to argue then move it to the Electricals section 7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs 5 to flame the spell checkers 3 to correct spelling/grammar flames 6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another 6 to condemn those 6 as stupid 2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp" 15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct 19 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum 11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum 36 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty 7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs 4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's 3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group 13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too" 5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy 4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?" 13 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs" 1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.
Ok, I'm sold! This has to be one of the best posts I've ever read, you rock. The guy clarified what he meant and it was mainly that it should be brought to the attention of the admin as opposed to starting something in the NG. I defintiely see the point now. Thanks again, Bill
Awesome, I am still laughing......
.......and then if the admin does not do something about it then the offended party has the right to say something? Or are you thinking it should be just let go?
" If I have to stand behind people in line discussing the nuances of yesterday's NASCAR race, complaining about “the Mexkins” stealing their jobs all the while spending their last bit of cash on lottery tickets, cigarettes and beer, I'm going to scream." Hehehehe..Well said, Bill!
I bet the admin will do something about it. If not, start putting up web pages and flame Vinod off the internet
Thanks Mark. read my newest post, I have some prime fodder (thinking about starting to post pictures)
I think I found him but I cannot prove it just yet. See your email. If I am right this guy didn't need to steal. He should have been able to teach me or even possibly you how to do this.
I really doubt it's this guy. He has way too much of a pedigree and is much to smart to pull a cheesy change job like that. I could believe it's someone of his skill that maybe forgot to post the credit, but that change to A20 makes it highly doubtful that this was an accident and this guy has too much talent to pull a script kiddie stunt. I'd be shocked if it's him.
oh man, I've been laughing my a55 off at this post for about 5 minutes now! Great stuff man...but since I'm originally from Canada and live in New York state now I have to ask, what the hell is CheerWine and Grape Nehi? Some weird pop (or soda, or soda-pop, or whatever it's call in different parts of North America, go here for an example http://www.popvssoda.com/ )? As for 'poor' people that can't really be called poor, up here in Toronto Ontario there are panhandlers (or beggars to be blunt), which I'm sure all bigger cities have. There was this one lady who would always sit at the same corner of the street and ask for money with her little sign saying 'God Bless Everyone and thank you for any money you can give'. Then a newspaper or a TV news station did a story on here and followed her home from her daily 'job' of begging for money. They found she lived in a $750+ a month apartment with a 50" projection TV, and nice new leather couch, plus many other nice things that I would LOVE to have in my apartment but can't afford. Then there was a study done that found panhandlers can make $500+ a DAY!! DAMN! I'm in the wrong 'job' I think...Now is this a good thing or a bad thing? It shows that as a population we are very considerate of those less fortunate then us and help them out when we can, but it also shows that there are people out there that will screw you to the wall if given half the chance... Ok, rant over! later.
Nehi is this repugnant fruit flavored soda that comes in like Grape, Orange and Strawberry. It's like carbonated syrup and a favorite or Lottery patrons. Cheerwine is like a CherryCoke, but the fact that it has a brand name of Cheerwine pretty much says it all. As far as the name for many of these folks, panhandlers, beggars etc, Dr Walter Williams, head of the Economics department at George Mason University uses the technical term "Bum". I'm quite fond of it. I grew up in Miami which is usually #1 in both College Football and number of Bums. It's very easy to be a bum down there b/c of the weather. One nice thing about Canada is that it snows up there, making the economics of being a bum unfavorable. I get grumpier and grumpier about the 'poor' every day. I have all the compassion in the world for people that have bad luck and need some help. But what I can't take is people that are 300 + pounds, all of which have a blingy cell phone, expensive shoes and cable, whining about how unfair life is. It's even more galling to hear about the lack of opportunities. The most notable juxtaposition is the Vietnamese community down in Miami. There was a fair amount of people from Vietnam down there who had just gotten here and came without just about anything. I used to be a reading tutor so I'd be at the library three times a week. The library was always full of bunch of Vietnamese families reading with their children, working on the computers together, studying english together and the like... Just looking at this was inspirational and you quickly got the feeling that their lack of financial means wasn't going to last long. There was NO way any of these familes were going to have multi-generational poverty (which is Sociologist speak for Family of Losers) This same area downtown was considered one of the worse parts of Miami. Two of the highschools there traditonally had been known for their excellent athletic programs. It was amazing how many parents could take an active role on Friday nights or Saturday Afternoons when it came to sports but had little to no interest in academics. I don't recall ever seeing any of these people or their children at any of the football or basketball games. In the same library there'd usually be more than a few 'homeless' people in there, with newspapers over their faces laying in the couch asleep (and not smelling very good). They couldn't be thrown out b/c they 'have just as much right to be here as anyone else' and even though they were sleeping, they'd claim they were awake and reading the newspaper. As such, I never seem to get lost in the irony here. If you look at the work ethic of the immigrants mentioned above, it's hard to imagine anything but success in their future. It's no wonder 'they are all good at math' and why they do so well academically. Not surprisingly, I can't ever recall seeing an Oriental person coming up to me giving me some BS story about their car running out of gas and asking if I had $5.00 that they could 'hold'. Don't ever remember seeeing an Oriental or Indian person with a "Hungry, please help, God Bless you" sign or a "Will work for food sign". My guess is that they were all already working for food, helping their kids learn or teaching themselves stuff. However, I have struck up a conversation with more than a few bums. At the MVP summit there was some dude with the "Haven't eaten in 2 days, starving, Please Help, God Bless You.". I had young lady hit me up in front of the W for "$30.00 for the hostel, otherwise I'll have to sleep on the street" . The dude stood out in front of the CheeseCake factory and the whole time looked like he was about to cry. I didn't eat half of my food (which is not normal for me) and I offered it to him. He took it but clearly wanted some money. I told him "You look like you could use a few drinks" and handed him a $5.00 bill. I asked if it was enough for a Six pack. He said that he could get a six pack of 16 ouncers for $6,19 so I gave it to him. He immediately got up and headed over to the convenience story. He took about 15 steps and realized that he forgot the food. He then said "I appreciate the food but I was really looking for some beer money so you can go ahead and keep it. Thanks again Brother." If you'd have seen how serious and pathetic the dude looked right before this, you'd have thought he was actually down on his luck. Anyway, I don't like Fat Poor people particularly ones that have cable TV, cell phones, Air Jordan Shoes, have customized stereo's or custom rims on their cars or that smoke, drink or play the lottery. (I have no problem with smoking or drinking or playing the lottery as long as you don't mooch of anyone else to pay for it) I also don't like people in the US with "No healthcare" It's ok for me to say this b/c there's no such thing as either of them. No healthcare means at worst, no insurance. If you have enough for Cable TV and the rest, then you have enough to feed yourself. And don't even get me started on the BS 'Digitial Divide" Of all the trailer parks I've driven by (and we have a lot here in the South, A LOT), I always see digital antennas outside. Always see some pretty nice cars too. Funny how people in trailer parks or the projects can afford a TV and cable but can't afford a computer and internet even though computers and the internet are now cheaper than their tv/cable counterparts. Well, I've probably just pissed off half the Homeless advocates and a whole host of other folks so I should stop now. Thanks again Skicow
Yep, everything is relative I think. Lots of people in North America don't know how good we have it here, so they think they are 'poor' or 'have no health care'. They have no idea what it's like to be poor or have no health care (I don't either but at least I have some perspective to look outside USA/Canada - yes people, there is a world outside the US and Canada) and see how truly lucky we are to be born here. I try to appreciate it everyday....try going to another country and see what it's like there, pick pretty much any country in South America/Africa/Asia and you will see true poverty, and true imbalance between the rich and poor population...like you say Bill, in no other country will you see fat poor people. BTW, I do understand that there are lots of people who are homeless that do their best to get back on their feet, and do use the government projects they way they were intented to be used. But there's always people who will try to screw the system and that just pi55e5 me off... Damn, you grew up in Miami? you lucky dog! I grew up in Niagara Falls Ontario. I love Canada, don't get me wrong, but I HATE SNOW!!!
Bill and scorpion53061, It seems there's another one of those 'this world sucks so screw everyone' type guys over at http://www.wimdows.net/articles/article.aspx?aid=15
Where do they come from? I think one of the dude's that stole scorps stuff was a Wimdows poster too... I guess you can't get away from them.
This is great stuff, Bill! Although I'm a native Texan, was raised in the country and my Texas drawl sends Yankees scurrying for earplugs, I still chuckle at some of the redneck behaviors I see. Not sure about Georgia, but here in Texas we've kept a state income tax at bay by instituting the Idiot Tax, er lottery. I'm all for it. Most taxes are designed to take money away from those that are harder working. The Idiot Tax is a perfect instrument for taxing foolish people and allowing the other half of the population to keep more of their money. (FWIW, I don't consider casual playing of the lottery to be the definition of stupidity. But if you're spending your grocery money on lotto tickets, then I'd like to extend a special thank you for keeping our state's tax coffers full and the tax man out of my pocket.)
Yeah! Fat people are funny... guess that's why the world doesnt think much of americans?
Mark, I'm with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with playing it here and there (although I don't personally do it) , it's no different from wasting a dollar any other way. However, wasting time every day in a line, boring people you dont' know with your theories about how all 6's are bound to pop up b/c you were 6 minutes early for work, have 6 pennies in your pocket and had lice six times when you're a kid is a whole different story. I'm kind of torn about the taxation part of it. On the one hand you're right, we usually punish people for being productive and successful and finally it's the other side that's getting it stuck to them. But we don't really hold them accountable for screwing up, so they waste their money /pay their fair share of taxes for once, and that leaves less money for Air Jordan's, Cable TV, Rims for their Cars, Cigarettes and beer. As such, they don't tend to reduce their consumption so the aggregate effect is that they are broke even quicker. Then of course they can claim they don't earn a living wage, say crap like "How can I feed my family of 9 children on minimum wage", protest against WalMart and comment about how brillian Ross Perot was for his comments on Nafta. At the end of the day, they still suck the blood of productive people and regrettably, Eugenics isn't legal so they breed en masse and there's nothing that can be done about it. So in principal I like the notion of making Stupidity and ignorance more expensive. But the end result is still the same, they lazy and unmotivated live off of the productive and wastefully consume resources that would otherwise go to people who were in a bad situation b/c of things beyond their control. I'm all for helping the handicapped, mentally ill, elderly etc. But I just can't think of someone as poor if they have cable tv and can afford to drop $100.00/wk on Lotto
Hi Jim: Actually, my point was that the notion of "fat" poor people is funny and America is the only country with them. I didn't realize that's why the world doesn't like us though. All this time I thought it was because we have more wealth, more freedom and hotter chicks. You have to be kidding about the part where you insinuate that all americans are fat (or at least that appears to be your insinuation) though. It depends on where you live. I don't recall every seeing anyone overweight (other than me) in Miami when I lived there - no one. All the chicks were hot, everyone had lipo and a boob job, it was great. Same for LA. I think thre's a lot of playa hatin out there with regard to the US and the reason the world doesn't 'think much of americans' is because they wish they had our wealth and power. As much as they say we are dumb and don't deserve it, it seems we keep hitting home runs
Last time I was in France was 94' and we were way out in the French countryside. There were wild boars in the woods and trout in the streams. We went to the local town and drank all the beer that their one and only pub had. I think the name of the town was Bellue(sp?). The bartender/owner had to order more beer that next day then he normally does in a month. Everybody in the tiny town was super friendly. I had always thought of France as being like Paris until we went there, it's actually mostly rural with a lot of Mountains. The people outside of Paris were really nice, technology in the rural areas was literally 30 years behind including automotive technology. Ancient tractors were the norm. Though not as far behind as rural Ireland was by comparason. All in all outside of Paris I would say it was like visiting rural America and the people were just as friendly as what you find in rural America where I grew up. I would go back but I'd want to learn French first because we met a lot of people who were very nice but could only speak to us through our platoons translator. Most of France is very different from what you see on the news that's for sure. Everytime I see the news and hear French bashing going on I wonder what those folks in that tiny little town think of it all, do they know? do they care? what would they say? because to me they are what I envision as France and Frenchmen now when I think about the French. It would be interesting to send a news crew to those towns and see what they think of all of this.
I think that news crew could really shed light on stuff. All you see on TV is bunch of anti-Americanism. Many people attribute it to the bias of the US Press. However, the US Press IMHO is terribly biased toward the left. However, from CNN to Fox, ostensibly the two extremes of the pendulum, you definitely get the impression that Europe doesn't like the US. It's doubtful that CNN and Fox would collude in this regard but not in any other. I think it's a natural tendency of the press to cover the fringe elements of any culture and I think they play up stereotypes. I remember heaing a statistic that to date, under 10 abortion providers have been killed by pro-lifers. While that's still a large number, one certianly gets the impression that the number is much much higher. This probably isn't the best example. If you look at any gay/religion issue, you always see the most flaming guys and the most homophobic religous folk. Most gays that I know don't act like that, nor do most religious people hate gays. I think the press really plays up stereotypes. People are people though and I've yet to find a group of people that didn't have a lot of cool folks, usually more cool ones than the jerks. This whole Europe/US thing is probably the best example. I know I sure as hell don't want to be judged by Michael Moore or John McCain. For the most part, most of the Americans that are featured in the press, particularly the international press, aren't folks that I agree with on a whole lot of issues. Some yes but not all. Something tells me the same holds true for people on the other side of the ocean too. The MVP summit really brought this to light. I had the privilege of talking to other MVPs from all over the world. Kind of amazing how much we agreed on just about everything. Proof positive that I have a heck of a lot more with a Compact Framework MVP from the Netherlands for instance, than an attorney here in the states. They probably don't like lazy people or their equivalents of lottery players I mentioned the other day any more than we do. The bottom line is that there are some cool cats everywhere, and anyone that wants to knock down some nutbag Radical Islamist's web site (the same holds for nutbag Catholics or any other religion) is cool with me [provided of course that they do it legally - God knows I would never advocate anything illegal even though I might laugh at it]. Thanks for the posst.
No offense meant...just a little light humor. http://63.252.11.73/images/French.JPG http://63.252.11.73/images/smonkeys.JPEG
Those are great. Not too long ago at a MS DevDays, there was an ASP.NET 2.0 demo. The guy doing the demo was showing how easy it would be to make an online auction site with ASP.NET 2.0. His first example was "French Rifle, never used, Dropped once" All in good fun.
Sure they aren't all bad, for the good reason that I don't think I'm bad (maybe my english is, but I am just a poor froggie...). Being a French citizen, I would like to react to the first reply presenting an idealistic vision of French little villages: You shouldn't consider that France is divided in two parts, I mean that between the highly technologic, poluted, cultural, polyethnic, whatsoever Paris and the desertic countryside there exists large and middle cities and even DSL wired towns of less than 1000 unhabitants. Little villages unhabitants are not 'by design' more sympathetic than cities ones: at the last presidential elections, the fascist party obtained many voices in these very little towns: people had heard of Ben Laden, of insecurity, of ghettos and rap music, and therefore were extremely frightened thinking outlanders could invest their village. Note that for most of these people, you are an outlander when you are born 50 km away, and for most of them the only algerians (our major minority) they have seen are, on photographs, ones who faught during the 1st world war (and at this time Algeria was just another French state...) About war: I must admit that I'm not a fan of Bush and I think the 2nd Gulf war is totally illegal, but I don't admire Jacques Chirac for not having sent soldiers in Irak: our beloved president is just an opportunist, and would he had thougt he could gain something in this war, that he'd have driven himself the troops trucks to Bagdad. Finally, all that I could say about americans would be non pertinent and you could reply to me the sort of things I've just wrote about France. I've been once to NY (and fell on my ass), loved it (I could go to the top of WTC just one year before it doesn't exist), but I would never say that I know american people because I've spent a week-end in ManHattan. And remember, Paris isn't located in Texas :-), and it isn't like in an American in Paris (which is a film I appreciate... I also love the 3 musketteers with Gene Kelly, but this is another story). PS: I've landed on this site coming from microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp; so as you said I think we have maybe more interests in common that with my neighbour. PS2: you can check http://usgohome.free.fr/humour/joke_integrisme_us.htm to get some funny (to me) images... ;-) PS3: did you know that Woody Allen was considered half a god in France by many film enthusiasts? But he's not an american, he's a jewish new-yorker (I think this is a very specific ethny like Masaïs or Inuits) PS4: "We will save the world, for God is with us". Who said that? Ben Laden or Bush?... Bush of course: it's said in English... just for fun!
I really appreicate your comments. I agree with most everything you said and I think it's gotten so silly how the media on both sides have worked up all of this animosity. Americans, or the French are hardly this monolitick group. I bet if everyone was interviewed, we could easily find more people in our own respective country's that we dislike than people overseas. And C# Developers from anywhere are more likeably than many American Linux Advocates. The worst part of the whole thing is that I found out French Fries weren't actually French. I really love them. I really love ROQUEFORT cheese too, that stuff is the best. And like I said, I have yet to meet a French person I didn't like. I've met a few Germans that really got on my nerves, but that pales on comparison to the number of Americans that piss me off. There's just too much to lose when you paint groups with those broad brushes. And i'm glad you wrote me b/c you seem like quite a cool guy. If you ever need any help with C#, .NET, ADO.NET, well, most things .NET, or SQL Server or Oracle, please let me know...I'll be glad to help. One thing though, what's up with Michael Moore winning all that? French dudes are supposed to be really good at picking up hot chicks and all, and he has to be the most disgusting thing in the world. He can't even fit in the average camera lens! Quentin Tarantino and his totally kick a55 Kill Bill Series should have won ;-) Cheers my friend, Bill
Bill, Found that Dilbert cartoon, but can't find an email address to send it to you, so here is the URL http://forums.sudhian.com/messageview.cfm?catid=82&threadid=58095 Enjoy :) skicow
Yes, it is truly statistically amazing just how many people are continually asked for help with transferring large sums of money on a daily basis by some person from South Africa (or wherever), how many offers claiming to increase the size of body parts are sent each day, and very curiously, why is it that I receive nearly daily announcements that my mortgage loan has been approved, when I don't even own a house? Hmmm...
I agree, I'm all about having the bi663st P3ni5 that I can have, but If I have to increase my breast size too, well, just not sure I can live with that.
About Cannes Film festival. I have to say that its enormous reputation is mainly due to medias feedback, and to me it's just a big mondanities show with a layer of vomitting intellectualism. I must admit I didn't see neither bowling for Columbine nor his last movie so I may not judge it, but there's something shocking me: to me, Moore's work isn't cinema: documentarie, reports, OK, but not cinema movies. So, only talking about the formal aspect, Moore should present his film in documentary films festivals rather than Cannes. For me it's similar to descerning the award of the best word processing program to VStudio and the prize of the leading IDE to Word... I know that Tarabtino (who for the first time in Cannes' history had to explain his choices) said to the press something like that: "No, no, no, this isn't a political choice, I really found his film was great cinema art..." Why did he immediately inform us there was no political reason to descern Moore the 1st prize if there really wasn't? Well I'm not saying a film should only be judged on its form, but at the least should it be a real film. About Roquefort: it's a little village (with plenty of sympathetic unhabitants looking like Jose Bove (u know, he's the silly alter-mondialist with the big mustaches :-)) in the south-middle of France which speciality is... blue goat cheese (the cheese is blue, not the goat, and this is due to 2 or 3 very specific mushrooms (well moulds in fact). My girlfriend visited the cellars where the cheeses are refined. She told me there were laboratories in which the moulds were cultivated, cropped, transformed, studied: maybe the french government is preparing an invasion of genetically mutated mushrooms that with the help of specifically selected cheeses will transform the whole population into half E.T. half zombies... well, I don't care, it is so a good cheese! All this to say that I had heard that US were thinking of stopping importing french products like some sorts of cheese, "foie gras", wine, in fact all the products that don't meet some sanitaries requirements (the European Union also tried to impose some norms). I think this is silly: of course you won't find bacteries in industrial cheddar, and will find some in Roquefort or in wine: but these products are made of bacteries. A bordeaux without bacteries is just raisin juce and Roquefort without these little mushrooms isn't blue any more and just smells milk of last week. And when I'm speaking about laboratories, it's not because of my XFiles mania, it's true: everything is really controlled and very clean. If one is sick of having drunk Bourgogne aligoté, it's because he's drunk too much of it. Olivier Mulder DALET The truth is out there: yeah, it resides in Roquefort - France
Very much looking forward to the article. :)
About Michael Moore winning the Palme D'Or: Nearly half of the judges were american.
I HATE going into those stores, and I agree Comp*** has got to be the worst. You walk in there and are inundated by staff members wanting to 'help' you. I understand that for 95% of the population that are not computer geeks (like us) this is a good thing, but the staff doesn't get the hint when you tell them you know what you are looking for and ask where you can find it. I mean it doesn't take a person with half a brain to figure out that 'Hey, this guy/girl knows what they want, and probably knows more about it than I do. Maybe I'll just show them where they can find it.' BUT NOOOO the salesperson in them is still clicking away and they believe that the customer doesn't know what they want, and they can 'help' him/her to see the error in their ways....why would you want a Tablet PC when you could have a laptop? *slap* They just don't get it. One thing that I can't stand though is when those salespeople give bad advice to a customer who doesn't know anything about computers! I know they have to sell-sell-sell, but it still pi55es me off. My Aunt went in and wanted a PC to e-mail and surf the 'net with, and they sold her a top of the line PC with an ATI 9800 Pro card in it!! WTF does she need the best graphics card on the market for? I know that the stores make pretty much dick on computers because the mark-up is so low, but there is a sleaze factor in there...ah well, it's no different than any other business eh? Be it auto repair, plumbing, etc. It’s buyer beware.
Amen to that. The thing that's so annoying is precisely that the other 95% doesn't need this help... all they do is prey on people's ignorance. I mean I had the damned phone in my hand and he's telling me 1) That's it's definitely a T-Moblie phone although it's not 2) That it's impossible to have a camera in it for battery reasons 3) Personal Media Centers are for sale on their web site , and this isn't by far the most egregious, it's just the most proximate. I've lost all of my patience with them - I don't even know why I go in there. I mean it's cool if it weren't for the employees, but they're all like that. They all know everything! They know it all, everything , every last bit of every topic. Never do you hear "No, I don't think I've heard of that" or any such honesty. Yes, I don't want to develop on my GD Tablet you morons but maybe I want a real machine to test one? Best *** is scarcely better but at least they run from you if they see you know what you're talking about. I'm sure I'll have some more fodder in the near future, but if you have any, please elaborate, I'm sure it will be good!
I know, and the fact that Tarantino was one of them is the most heartbreaking of it all. Being forced to watch Moore, even for like 10 seconds on a commercial should be considered a war crime. I was only half serious about my comment on Moore, but do you really think all that Cheering was because his movie was so good or b/c it was Anit-US? Seemed like dejavu of Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize.
Oliver, that last post ruled. Especially about the blue goats ;-). That whole Boycotting thing was so silly. I mean, every time someone gets pissed off about the US they start attacking Starbucks or McDonalds or something. We do the same crap over here which is just as dumb. If the Cheese manufacturers or StarBucks or whoever is doing something you don't like, then I guess it may make sense. But if you are pissed off about Chirac or Bush, neither of them own all the industry in their country so what sense does all of this make. It just polarizes people unnecessarily. I love Roquefort cheese, and the thought of blue goats makes me like it even more.
I won't go near them at all. I have a friend who was working at one while getting his MCSE. He said everyday he wanted to kill his fellow employees because they were so retarded. He eventually quit but not before he threatend to kill the manager and use his skin for a summer windbreaker. My friend has some aggression issues (we were served together in Africa) but it still goes to show that Comp*** is a sh!thole and only the stupid stay on there for very long.
Why is that though? No matter which one, in whatever state, they are all the same. How can it be instiutionalized like that?
Check out this guys rant on Comp***, and while you're there check out the rest of his site, it's freakin' great! http://maddox.xmission.com/
That linked Rocked, Thanks!
#6 should be ... Get paid by an ex-stripper :) also, if you are paid by a male porn star ... then you are kicked out.
awesome find ... i physically hurt from laughing so hard
Same here. I'm a Christian and proud to be one but I wasn't one for a very long time because of Bible smashers like the ones Rory spoke of. My Dad told me once (he's a christian too) after I got saved that if Jesus didn't talk about it, it's probably not that important. Jesus talked about the stuff he cared about and was important and that was getting people saved and into heaven because he loves them. If it wasn't about that then Jesus really didn't cover it. Last time I checked all Jesus's friends in the Bible were Terrorists (one of his disciples was a zionist, who were considered terrorists by the roman empire), Hookers, and generally the scum of the earth of that day. So if you put him in today's world you would have a: "Middle eastern short brown guy, that hangs out with Terrorists, Hookers, Bikers, Drug Dealers, Gays and Strippers. Who preaches love, tolerance and humilty. When he does preach he does so either out in BFE or in a private house and invites people to come only if they want to. Other than that lets people make their own desicion about him based on observation of his life. Doesn't want to hold any kind of public office and generally just accepts everyone for who they are." You realize that Bush, and Ashcroft would probably arrest Jesus quicker than sh!t and have people taking pictures of him face down in another guys nut sack. So would most of today's religious right Bible smashers. So what would Jesus do about all the stuff today's religious right screams out against? Probably tell the people doing all that stuff he loves them and they can come hang out with him anytime they want. He would probably tell the religious right folks the same thing he told the religious right of his day "get out of my father's house because you have defiled it." The best way you can witness to others is by living a life in keeping with the values Jesus taught. Then if they get curious why you are different and ask you can tell them. By the fruits of their labor shall you know them. Nobody ever argued or bashed somebody into believing in Jesus. Keep your mouth shut and do the right thing and people will notice. I have yet to see in today's religious right community, including our President and his adminstration, anything that resembles anything along the lines of what Jesus did himself or instructed his followers to be like.
I couldn't agree more. It's a says a lot about the Bible thumpers when Christians find a whole lot more in common with Atheists who are mocking religion than many 'fellow' Christians. I'm completely embarassed by many of these jokers. And in all of thier comments, I didn't feel one iota uncomfortable or bothered by them. I hate the same stuff they do. They are dead on in their analysis and I don't like Used Jesus Salesman either. I think Casey and Rory have a killer sense of wit and do a killer job of keeping these clowns in perspective.
Me too, but B & B has the same effect. When I saw that Sacreligion stuff, I just burst out laughing. I can't imagine what would happen to my car if I put one of those on it. It certainly wouldn't be "Christian" behavior though.
Hmmmmm... works for me....
Whoops... thought I was commenting on my blog.... darn it all!
It does ask nicely though. It looks more like a suggestion than something one would actually say. I'm sure a couple of people may remember it, but the majority of people will say screw Samsung and intentionally mention nothing. At least it's an option, not forced by law.
I honestly don't think this man has it in him to repent or have any clue that anything he does is wrong. I honestly don't think he's ever admited any wrong-doing on his part either. I know these types of people all too well. When you don't believe anything you do is wrong, you twist the life around you to fit your view. This is how he uses the Bible to promote his message of hate and how he turns his children into mindless drones. I'd hate to see that house when he dies because the ones left will either suddenly realize they can finally live now, or will have nothing left to live for since thier whole entire existence was based upon serving his needs. This is a cult, plain and simple. It may have a lot to do with the Bible with messages that may seem genuine but it's nothing more than David Caresh(sp?) or Jim Jones have done. It's truely disturbing that this can go on for so long but I honestly pity him. I think he'll be joining all of those people he's condemned in hell and it's sad. It's sad to think your fight is just only to realize that when you're dead and answering to God you forget the most important part about Christianity: accepting Christ. Without that he's no different than the gays he hates so much.
Good Point
I've heard his children and grandchildren speak to the media before. He had a Six year old granddaughter on last year that was talking about how she 'hates fags' because 'fags' engage in the most blasphemous of sin and she hates sin. I wouldn't let anyone in my family near this guy, but I'd be a lot more scared of him alone with a young boy than I ever would with a girl. He protests wayyyyyy too much.
I feel your pain except I run a lot and still have trouble keeping my weight down. I have always been a pretty big guy. I got down to my smallest while serving in Africa, if you don't count the one time when we got stuck without food and not a whole lot of water. I came out of that at 148lbs. I'm 6'1" so that was a bit scary. Not counting that my lightest ever since I quit growing upwards was 175. Generally I'm around 195. Lately I've been creeping up the scale though even with running 3 to 5 miles a night. I'd say I'm probably around 215 right now which is way to big for me unless I'm doing a lot of weight lifting. I guess I just have to run more and eat less. Either that or go talk to the Dr. and have him tell me it's cause I'm getting old. That was his official diagnosis last time.
Little by little it's gettiing easier. It's a virtuous cycle b/c you lose weight, you can do more, do more, lose more weight. I got a ways to go before even 215 but I think I'll be there pretty soon. You're doing 3-5 a night? Whew, definitely got a long way to go before that. Glad to hear I'm not alone. Witha little work though i guess we'll both be doing our part to stop the porking up of America.
Do not get me started on VB users of any kind. Notice I do not say VB programmers or VB developers. It's because they aren't programmers or developers generally. If somone is using VB all the time it's probably because that's all they know and at least from what I have seen in the workforce 99% of them are self taught VB users who started by using VBA inside of some office app and progressed from there. These people are not developers they are macro writers with a power tool they don't understand. So far to date I have met one VB programmer that actually knew what VB was doing behind the scenes on the machine when he wrote in it. All the other VB users out there I have ever met have been the "well that didn't work and I can't google it so you must not be able to do it". My absolute most hated VB user is the dreaded "corporate analyst" who knows just enough to be really dangerous. They say things to their boss like "sure I can have a CRM application that uses Sql Server up and going in a few weeks" deadline comes and they have their basic connection code up and going and not much more. So they come downstairs to the lab where I work and see which research developer they can try and con into helping them. If that fails shortly afterwards their boss will go speak to our boss about "getting someone to help them out with a small project they are having trouble with". Our boss will have us go take a look and we come back and tell him that not only is it not a small project what they have so far is a VBA app in Excel that populates the wrong part of a spread sheet with the wrong data from Sql Server. Yes, that's right they tried to write it in Excel VBA. Think I'm joking I can e-mail you code straight out of their stupid projects. I save some of the really bad stuff to use as examples of what not to do. Such as If Then Else statements nested 18 deep in a time critical loop, etc. That doesn't even touch on the mentality of these stupid individuals. I get things like "hey that's a cool thing how do I do that in VB?" and what they are asking about is a multi-threaded app that runs animations in separate low priority threads on forms during batch processes to let the user know the form is busy. Beats the hell out of just changing the cursor. And I say "well first you learn how to do more than record a macro in Excel, then you learn a little more than how to write table bang field queries in Access, then you go to school for four years and learn a real language, then come back and ask me again and I'll show you." The depths of my loathing for VB users knows no bounds.
What about try catch? Do I have to use try catch?
Try/Catch, are you kidding? No, of course not. On Error Resume Next or use a Goto if you want to get fancy.
I started programming in VBA if you want to call it that and I quickly realized if I ever wanted to do real programming work, I was going to need to head back to school. I can't imagine doing much if I didn't. We've obviously worked together in the past though, because you couldn't have described my previous two jobs so well without working at one of those places. Here's a day in the life of my last job. Co-Worker: "Hey you're the new guy Bill right? You work in Software Development? " Me: Yes Co-Worker: "Well, I'm an Access programmer" Me: "Cool, I never really learned Access" Co-Worker: "Do you know any database?" Me: "Yes, I've worked with Oracle from early versions of 7.0 up through 8i" Co-Worker: "Ok, then you'll be able to use Access without much help. It's the same thing as Sql Server" Me: "Umm, that's really neat, but I'm a little to old to be learning new tricks. I'm probably going to have a lot of trouble learning Access. Maybe I'll just work on the Sql Server projects like they told me when I got hired" Co-Worker: "Well, whatever but there's a lot you won't be able to do if you don't use Access so you'll probably want to polish up on it. I'm pretty much regarded as the db Guy around here and I don't think Sql Server or Oracle allow you to be as flexibile as Access" Me: "Ok. I'll tell you what, I probably do need to learn it,. I should probably start where I'm most familiar. How do you whip up a OLAP cube in Accesss" Co-Worker: "A what?" Me: "An OLAP Cube" Co-Worker: "I don't know what that is but we don't really need anything like that. We do a lot of Macros here, do you use Macros?" Me: "I did before I learned how to program" Co-Worker: "What do you mean before? " This is not only true, it was probably the worst day in my life. Next favorite category anyone who "Knows how to prgarm, I can even make a SwitchBoard in Access" They take one class on Access and proclaim themselves to be design experts. "Normalization of overrated and it just slows stuff down". Sure it is. I've seen a lot of tables in my day, and I have yet to get burned b/c I overnormalized. I've taken it in the a33 a bunch because of people that were too smart to normalize. So don't forget to include access programmers in the tirade, they are the worst!
Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Big deal...so here we have a shining example of someone who claims to be an expert, yet has a crappy website and probably can't back up his claims of expertise. ....so? I've seen a bazillion outfits like this and every time the market has a wonderful way of removing these types of companies over time. You're gonna give yourself a coronary if you get this bent over someone who talks bigger than they are. They've been around since the beginning of time and chances are, they'll be around until the end of time.
Speaking of Access programmers...actually not all are bad some are forced to use Access. We have one here. He was regular developer that got hired on and then told they were only going to buy Access for the stuff he was going to do. Not in my dept but he works close by to us. He eventually did convince them otherwise but all his early stuff here was done on Access but I know the type you are talking about. I have to write all my database stuff here in raw C using ODBC because it has to be portable. They only want to have to change the driver type and have it work. So all my database stuff is in C and ODBC. So when the VB yutzes ask for something I just use my existing libraries rather than write something totally new for them. I had a Dba from another dept tell me that I couldn't use ODBC to write a control for his stupid VB project because it wasn't available anymore for SqlServer. WTF!!! Funny his little drag and drop control seems to work just fine. You see sometimes when the VB idiots run into a problem they can't solve here they ask us to write a control that gives them the functionality they need for their project. I can pretty much write controls for VB in my sleep now. It has however, not improved my view of VB users at all. Half the stuff they want to do VB can do they just don't know how and the other half is stuff you shouldn't be using VB for in the first place. I think to date I have had about one legit request for a wrapper. So what happened on that worst day of your life? You kind of left off mid-story.
Yep, you're right. I wast just in a bitchy mood and kept reading a bunch of the anti-programmer stuff in HATT. Then this jackass comes along and just reaffirms it. I'm in a bitchy mood today though. Low blood sugar and all. All of my posts are negative today. I'm actually quite glad you pointed this out b/c I didn't realize that I was being so negative. Then I looked at all my posts and realized they were whiny. I'll cheer up tomorrow. Cheers, Bill
Which post? No link.... SQL Injection Attack means something like the following. Usually web based string uname = txtUserName.Text; string pword = txtPassword.Text; strSQL = "SELECT count(*) FROM Users Where UserName = '" + uname + "' AND Password = '" + pword "'"; if ((int)ExecuteScalar(strSQL) > 0) LetUserInside(); Now to inject attack this I might do something like passing in Username: H4x0r Password: ' OR true = true -- This let's me log in as any user Alternativly if said gumby develper is running as a highly priv'd account against SQL Server I might do Username: H4x0rGonnaReallyScrewYouThisTime Password: '--DROP TABLE USERS
I grabbed it from the microsoft.public.framework.adonet, sorry about that. The guy finally saw the light, fortunately. I'm still at a loss how you can be a developer and not even heard of an injection attack but I see it at least 5 times a week. It's terrifying.
actually i thought it was hilarious. it's sad that this is representative of so many developers. you should listen to this guy bitch...http://caustictech.typepad.com/caustictech/2004/06/i_know_everythi.html
I agree, if you're forced to use it, no problem. I'm talking about the secretary turned 'Software engineer' after taking one MOUS course on Access. I've worked with three of them and they'd never shut up about how smart they were and how stupid all of the programmers at their last job were . Absolutely true story on this one, but I got so sick of dealing with one of them b/c basically she'd come over, ask me a questions or two, then go around and tell everyone about her great new idea. Her and my old boss came over and asked me about implementing WinHelp. Anyway, they were telling me that it was impossible to implement HTML help in the app I was using. So I told them it was. But being a bit sick of both of them I told them that you had to delete Kernel32.dll to make it work. I told them it wasn't a problem though b/c Microsoft was doing away with Kernel32 in the next service pack so we had to delete it either way. They both told about six people in the office the same crap until my buddy in the next cube over heard it. He immediately burst out in laughter and that pretty much let the cat out of the bag. As far as my worst day... It sucked. I took this job that I was shakey about. The money was good and they made a bunch of promises but something was fishy about it. I get to work and immediately find out that the president of the company has a few 'rules'. Among them was that if you come in after 8:00:00 then he'll send you home, at a minimum he'll make your life hell for the day. I told them that I've always worked at least 50 hrs a week where I worked and said "He won't be pissed if I have 15 hrs OT in and come in at 8:05 right?" I was told that yes, the 8:00 thing is in stone. Then I found out that if you walk on the grass outside he'll flip out. I was hired as a OOP Developer and that's all the recruiter kept mentioning, OOP, OOP. Well, they had me in design meetings at first and I found out I wouldn't be working with Java like they told me. I woulldn't even be working with a language I ever heard of, instead I was going to work with this sh1t calle DataFlex. I made a really bad mistake b/c I moved all my stuff and signed a lease (which I'll never do again) so I wanted to try to make the best of it and see if I couldn't change things. I was told that my fellow programmers were all really experienced "Assembly" language programmers. I was thinking hard core low level device people. No. Two of them had a lot of talent. The rest of them were all 2 year technical college grads who barely made it out of their program. Although they all knew "Access" and "VB", none of them ever heard of a Relational Database. I find out that the "DB" they use is a fuc**** ISAM text file. Each thing had like 120 fields in it. Later on someone found out I was Catholic and you'd have thought I had Ebola and coughing all over them. I heard about how I was going to hell and everything. Only one person there had ever done OOP and they all thought it was stupid. I was told you can't put anything on the walls of your cubicle and all sorts of other stupidity. I was young and naive back then (stupid) and won't ever get in any shit like that again.
CS, you rock! That made my day!
Wow! Talk about a job from hell! Wow! Wow! Wow! I cannot imagine how bad that would be. I mean I b!tch about some of the other depts where I work but holy cr@p! That has to be my worst nightmare that I would accidentaly take a job like that.
It really was, and that's not the worst part...I'm debating on posting the rest.
They really said the "going to hell" stuff? *sarcasm* I had forgotten in the Bible all the places where Jesus said catholics were bad. Why there must be more New Testament verses on why Catholics are evil than any other subject. So I'm sure they were correct seing as how the Bible expressly says judge everyone here on earth cause God gives you that power when you get saved by paying money to a tv preacher. Yep pure scripture there.*/sarcasm* So what's the rest? I'd like to hear it so long as it's not like something they are going to try and sue you over for posting it in your blog.
Actually, yes, they did tell me I was going to Hell. I totally didn't fit in but I made a few friends there little by little. Every other day, no exaggeration, every other day I used to get a chain email about "Send this to 10 people, there's tracking software and Microsoft will send you a free $10.00 gift certificate to Cracker Barrell" or wherever. We got the "Send this to 10 people if you love Jesus", which of course, I'd get five copies of b/c everyone sent it to everyone else. Think Circular Reference or recursive loop with no exit condition. This went on daily. We had the most incompetent network administrator and he was so terrified of getting the president mad at him he would do nothing. So we got busted by BSA b/c they were pirating software and a disgruntled employee ratted them out. So after telling the Network admin to start formatting hard drives, a rule was put in place about software, we couldn't even install Demo stuff. There was really no end to the stupid bs that went on. The company secretary was Super Baptist. Bleach blonde, fake tan, gossipped about everyone. She was married and shortly before I got there she was caught blowing a dude at work. But she liked talking about everyone else. Anyway, I was dating a girl I worked with there and the president called her in one day and started throwing a bunch of veiled threats at her b/c she wouldn't go along with his concocted story about how the software piracy issue came up. He decided to just blame it on the former network admin and play stupid. The ironic thing is the Former admin had a MCT, MSCE and refused to install stuff without a license. That's why he quit. So she quit after this and things got progressively more tense. The parent company gave out a pretty big bonus every year so i was waiting for that and I was going to bail. Anyway, when we were looking to update the web site, one of the tech writers noticed that we didn't register any of the other names of the site... we had .net, but not .com, .org and none of the deviations of our name. He told me about it and I told my boss. He thought it was the stupidist thing in the world, registering domains that sound like yours. I told him about it like 6 times, three of which were in memos. They said they didn't want them. So I registered one of them. At that point I was going to build a part of my app with a web service, use that domain (b/c they were too scared to have any interactivity on the main web site) and hopefully after I proved how easy it was to do this, we could get cracking on the web initiaitive that I was hired to build in the first place. At this point I got my yearly performance review and was rated excellent on every regard except for occassional tardiness. They also asked that I actively mentor people b/c of my positive attitude. Two days later I came in and after about an hour, got called into the VP's office (the same one who gave me my review two days earlier). He accused me of sending Pornographic email to two of my co-workers (two of which I hated by the way). I denied it. He said I 'must' have done it. I asked to see them because I didn't believe him and he refused to show them to me. He then told me he knew about the web site. I said "Right, I only mentioned this about 6 times and have the memos in my drawer. " He picked up the phone and had one of the dudes that I supposedly sent the pornographic email to to go into my desk and see if they were there. He then said, NO BS, that he knows "for a fact that you wrote the Klez virus and have spread it around our network". (Note, we didn't have Anti-Virus software b/c we 'didn't need it', no proxy server nada) I told him this was stupid and if I could write Klez, I wouldnt' be working at "this dump". That set him off. He made some comments about my girlfriend and like an Idiot I made some comments back about his mutant daughter. Anyway, they wouldn't let me take the memos with me and wouldn't give me copies of them. I left and they told a friend of mine that they were going to fire him if I didn't sign over the web site to them. They refused to pay me for it. Before I left, I had made it known about the web site and told two other people there, including my boss, that I'd gladly sign it back over if they ever wanted it. Anyway, he freaked out and begged me to give it back. Against my better judgement I did. Since I was a lead developer there everyone was wondering what happened. I heard from a few of my friends that I supposedly wrote a virus which got loose inside the network. This is the Klez virus incidentally. I was getting sick of this crap b/c they kept claiming I wrote many viruses (the love bug too). I made a quick web site on Freeservers mocking all of this. I accused the president of being a homo (he was married so of course he couldn't be a homo if you catch my drift). He freaked out. He then called the local authorities and claimed that because I used www.companyname.freeservers.com that I had hacked the network. I sent him an email with the return address GayW@companyname (he went by AW). So he also claimed I 'spoofed' his email. Mind you this was a software company with about 70 employees and the president was this unbelievably ignorant.. He claimed that after I left there was a massive attack of viruses, that their exchange server got knocked down and all sorts of other stuff. So I get a visit from the State police and had to go get interviewed in the secret service office. They made me take a polygraph and everything. I know it sounds like total BS but no shit, it happened. I never left a place on bad terms before this so it was pretty rough for me. There's MO is to smear former employees, as was the case of trying to pin piracy on someone who was no longer there. Every single former employee of that company despises them. No one ever left on good terms. They even had a policy that you couldn't get rehired unless you give the 14 days notice but they had a standing policy of telling you to leave 'now' if you put your notice in. It was over two years ago but getting out of there was one of the best things that happened to me. They paid very well so it was hard to quit but I was beyond miserable the entire time I was there. Since then, old GayW was forced to retire and the company is being absorbed by the parent company. I'm just glad all that crap is over. I was pretty naive back then and thought programming was only about code, no politics. All of my other jobs were pretty much OLAP analysis and I pretty much stayed by myself most of the time. I woke up after that and wouldn't wish it on anyone. For the last two years I work in absolute heaven. A cool company with cool people in a cool building. The absolute polar opposite.
The thing about it (I am responding to 'wow' here) is that there really are SO MANY OF THEM OUT THERE. Just about everywhere you go, there's going to be at least one person throwing in a line or two about "when I was in College.." [read: often this means community tech school, ahem] or "during my past 25 years of experience..." There really are tons of different kinds of bullshitters out there. However my absolute favorite type are the ones that like to tell you about the 'Good Ole Days of Punch Cards'. Yep, I remember before there was Windows. I remember when you had to write in dam Binary to make computers do anything & they filled up the whole room, and boy, if you got those cards out of order, you were screwed.... Okay, so why would this make anybody think you are anything other than an UTTER FOOL??? I could go on & on about this, but I think the guy at caustictech makes a better case. He hits the nail on the head. And to 'wow' -- Hey dude, there should be MORE BLOGS, not LESS, about this subject - more making fun of these guys so maybe, just maybe, they'll get the message and shut up until they have some real accomplishments to show!
thanks for the recommendation...i'm glad you enjoyed it! i'm new at this blogging stuff and just getting started...
I have to go to a meeting right now and I'll comment more at lunch time but HOLY F#CK!!!!! That is by far and away the worst nightmare developer job story I ever heard hands down!
New my a33 - you're a PRO! Everyone I've sent it to agress...you rock!
You gotta talk about something and if you can't cut it now, you have to go old school. That way there's no one around to verify your claims. I know a lot of people that mention Punch cards that are great programmers. But ALL terrible programmers that I know talk about 'another' language they knew or the days when 'real programming' happened. I love hearing about how stupid OOP is or how relational databases aren't as good as flat files b/c the overhead of joins. Most of those clowns don't even know Join syntax but they know its slow.
This got me started, I have some funny stuff about one of our Technical Writers/Programming Geniuses.
Yep, I love that site, he used to update about once a week when he opened to site a few years ago...but he's seemed to slow down this past year to once every few weeks. But it's still wicked stuff!
I agree 100% Bill. I don't practice any organized religion for the exact reasons that you state in this post. I do believe that there is someone/thing out there that is bigger than any of us humans can comprehend, but I don't necsisarily think that it's the Christian God, or any other version of a higher being from any other organized religion.
Yep, this person sounds familiar, and one of her big claims to fame was 'knowing Access.' Question: What's the big deal with Access??? Some of the most arrogant people I've ever run across called themselves "Access Programmers," but they didn't seem to know much about anything else...Yet, this somehow entitles them to some kind of superiority. Go figure.
'Stupid Flanders' - Homer
Wow...there's so much hate from a man who claims to be speaking for God. I thought born-again's were bad for being outspoken, this guy takes the cake. I worked with a born-again Christian a few years ago and we were talking about religion and stuff and I asked him why he was so concerned with gay people (he said they were evil and needed to be cured from their 'disease'). I said, why not just let them be and let God judge them when they get to the gates of Heaven? He said that if he, as a good Christian, didn't try to intervene with them and try to show them their wrongs that he would be as bad as they were in God's eyes....it was at this point I just turned around a left.
lol! It's good to see that MVP's also have problems with the simple things in .NET too! I just spent 1 1/2 days creating an msi file that I can use to install my .NETCF app to my iPAQ via the desktop/Activesync. But it works now! woo! Like you said, not being affraid to try new things and fail at them makes it very easy to learn new things.
I'm going to comment up here since the entry that started all this is so far down the ladder now. That job you were talking about has to be the all time worst job of any job I have ever heard of for a developer. My personal nightmare is that I would take a job like that someday where they use some in-house proprietary language and all my skills in normal languages start to fade and I loose touch with current development skills. Then on top of that to have people telling you, you are going to hell for being catholic!!! I can see from what you said that they must be hard core southern baptists. You see certain branches of baptists believe once you get saved you are going to heaven no matter what, you can cheat on your wife, give the boss a bj, and kill your friends so long as you aren't gay your place is secure in the heavenly realms. That is what they think anyway. Man I am so glad I work far, far, far, far, far, away from the Mason/Dixon line. I would just have to start killing people if I started getting e-mails like that. You see my present employer has severely punished several people on my behalf here for sending my those stupid "if you believe in God forward this to everyone in your friends and family calling plan" (oops did I just give away who I work for?) anyway I told them a dozen times to quit sending me those e-mails. So I just started forwarding them all to our HR VP with little notes like "second one today" attached to them. They were disciplined and it stopped (I think they got let go but I can't be sure because HR here won't tell me) you see they were from another market in the deep south a long ways from here. But we have a global e-mail system that allows them to e-mail anyone in the company anywhere in the world. I wonder if some poor dude in France was getting them too. Anyway it saved me a flight down there to b!tch slap the holy living f#ck out of them. Sometimes working for a giant company has it's benefits. Fortunately we don't have big, arrogant, stinky here like the one in this entry you mentioned. My single biggest beef here is probably with VP's who think the R&D department is here to make all their little "stupid idea of the day" stuff magically work across the market. Number one VP who is the biggest trangressor is our Marketing VP. Coolest one is the Engineering and Construction VP he actually comes up with some really cool ideas. Marketing on the other hand hasn't come up with a cool idea since they hired a boat load of hotties. They haven't done anything right since then. Speaking of which I'm going to go wander up and test something up there as my lunch is about to end. I'll oogle the hotties while I'm up there.
Stinky wasn't the worst one there as hard as that was to believe. There was another clown who also used to be an Air Traffic controller. He was one of those dudes who was in the military, got out, and couldn't deal with the fact he wasn't in the military any more. I'll be getting to him shortly. Then there was the Woman Hating Closet Homo Homophobe that ran the company. In 2002 they were still using Blue Screen dummy terminals thanks to his genius. He thought Windows was a fad so never decided to switch to anything else. He also thought the internet was a fad (IN 2002!!!!!) so didn't want a web strategy. When they decided to go to Windows, which was right before I got there, they decided VB was TOO HARD TO USE so they went with this 4GL crap called Visual DataFlex. I can't begin to tell you how bad this sucked. In the manual, it claimed that it 'may well be the best Object Oriented Programming Language ever made" But ready for the funny part - YOU COULDN'T CREATE YOUR OWN OBJECTS. It didn't support multidimensional arrays either, and if you wanted to 'create an object' you could do it only by subclassing an existing object. So, if you wanted to create a Customer object or a Space Shuttle object, you had to create it from an Array. This really elite programming language didn't have inheritance in any sense that we know it because you couldn't override the base classes or EVEN USE THEIR methods. Now for the best part (I forgot to mention this on day one). I complained that this language seemed kind of limiting and my manager told me it was his idea to use it and asked that I gave it a try before passing judgement. Two weeks later, I asked him how I could create my own classes. He said he didn't know what I was talking about. Every ad we had mentioned Strong OOP skills about 200 times so this was a shocker. Then, when I explained it to him he said "You never need to do that, just work with the ones we have" About a month later I got 'caught' using my own objects and got my a33 chewed out. "For one thing", he said, "I told you that you don't need to create your own objects, everything you need is already in therre. For another, No one here can follow what you're doing. We need to work as a team, this isn't the Bill Ryan show and if no one else knows how to create an object, you're just confusing everyone" It was as close to hell as something could get. I was so depressed it was unreal. The money was pretty good, so were the benefits but life was hell. Anyway, I left there, and 6 months later I'm a MVP and they are getting taken over by their parent company. God was looking out for me ;-) It took a thick skull to think I could 'make it better' - some things are just shitty.
What can you say? I don't know what the hang up is with gays. I'll tell you what , given the choice between a dude that showered and the Technical Writer I mentioned above, I'd be gay as hell. And some dude married her! If that's not WRONG I don't know what is.
Skicow, you're in the big leagues with ActiveSync ;-). I'm talking about PadRight. I still haven't gotten it totally worked out. I still can't believe it's messing me up like this. And the best part is I've wasted hours on something that's not only supposed to be simple, it's totally trivial.
Modern Religion really does need to get its act together..
trust me...i have a lot to say about access developers. i'll be posting about my experiences with one soon...but trust me, i feel your pain!
I'm so jealous. I want one.
Funny
I'm still playing with, but it's beyond cool. Apple is going to get smacked around pretty bad unless they really put some effort behind it b/c Microsoft did it right. This thing is the easiest gadget I've EVER seen. It takes 0 brains which is good for me. And being able to walk around with Jenna Jameson on your device is very cool ;-)
Phil, I'm dying to hear about it, no doubt will be quality.
Ahem, if somebody's girlfriend finds out Jenna Jameson is on his device, somebody is going to be in BIG trouble. (Moral: Never blog stuff publicly where one's girlfriend can read it. :-)
Did I say Jenna Jameson? I meant Mother Theresa.
D'oh! Did you just get busted Bill! :P Mmmmmm.....Personal Media Center....*drool*
very funny! thanks also for the links to CausticTech -- great stuff. And thanks for the links to me ;+) cheers lb
You lost me. Who's Adam? He must not be all that bad @ss cause I ain't never heard of him. Unless you are talking about the Adam from the Bible and in that case you really might be going nuts.
Adam's our network Admin. I'm about 99% of the way to completely losing my mind trying to install Whidbey right now and it's getting worse by the minute. Adam got it installed with no trouble this morning and it's driving me nuts.
I know, that's sucks. I'm sitting here watching mother Theresa videos and I get in trouble for it. Life is cruel.
Your site is pretty damned cool too, keep the content coming.
Don't feel to bad. You could work where I do and the chances of seeing any new technology that you didn't write yourself from the ground up are slim to none. The only place I get to play with C# is at home and I wouldn't touch VB with Clinton's d!ck. A cool new OS here is Win2K service pack 4. Our network admins are great but are asked to run on a budget so small that even though we are the largest provider of telecom and fiber optic lines in the world it's faster to go out and download something on our public lines than it is to use our intranet because they do the stuff the customers get at top of line technology and they do the in house stuff is beyond cheap. I'm suprised they don't have us all save our requests to the server on cd's and then take the cd to the server building and load the requests onto the server, burn another cd with the results and bring it back to us. You see that would probably be faster than what we have internally right now and you don't want to give your workers to much speed. You have three choices in our dept. you can write in Assembler (x86), C, or C++ and we don't buy anything. You want it, you write it, if it's not free or d@mn close to free. The exception being compilers they actually buy good compilers and Assemblers. VS2005 heh if I asked for that they would look at me like I was from another planet. Oh yah I forgot COBOL. A language I learned when I was like ten years old helping my Dad with mainframes at his work. We get to use that lovely piece of cr@p language if we are working on legacy AS400 systems. We do that as little as possible because everybody hates it. Want to see a lot of people staring off into space here? Ask for volunteers to add X functionality to one of the AS400 interfaces. So life could be worse, you could work here. That would however solve your install problem. By the time you got around to actually ever seeing VS2005 their would be twenty years of documentation on how to trouble shoot an install of it.
God, COBOL I remember working with that at my last job, about 4 years ago. We had to convert ALL the legacy systems for the Y2K Armageddon that was coming! SO I didn't have it that bad since I was just reading COBOL and not actually coding in it. You would be surprised at the number of companies that still use COBOL...and have you heard of Visual COBOL? check it out http://www.omnisoftcom.com/training/Programming/Vcobol/vcobol.shtml better yet! Why not use COBOL and VS.NET 2003 together!! http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830514 I feel for you Andy! My old job was like yours, this new job is much better but up until last week I was developing my VS.NET 2003 projects on a PII 350MHz... excuse me while I go have a nap while my project deploys to my iPAQ...
The number one biggest factor why Open Source fails to dominate anything other than chat rooms and slashdot is it's inability to give users what they want. Users do not want a console app that's cool "because it's idiologically pure" they want Excel. They do not want to spend ten hours configurings CUPS when they can grab the newest twenty operations in one machine printer from hp and simply plug it in to their machine and it works. They do not want their file searches on their machine to include words like grep or regex. They want to go to "My Documents" and open the last thing they used. Open source fails because of Aunt Agnes (my word). Aunt Agnes wants to use her pc to check e-mail and see the newest pictures of baby goo-goo her neice just had. She wants to go to chat rooms, and then go google "Knitting thread" she wants to be able to flip a switch then sit down and immediatly use her machine after she gets it from Best Buy. Let me make this perfectly clear to all the open source zealots out there Aunt Agnes isn't stupid she has a masters in early childhood education, she's well off, she votes and she gives a sh!t about issues that affect her. SHE DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT OPEN SOURCE! SHE WANTS TO TURN ON HER PC AND HAVE EVERYTHING WORK, WORK QUICKLY AND LOOK NICE. IF SHE SPENDS MORE THAN 1 MINUTE AND 25 SECONDS TRYING TO GET IT TO WORK SHE'S PROBABLY GOING TO HATE IT. SHE WOULD RATHER PAY GOOD MONEY AND GET WHAT SHE WANTS THEN F#CK AROUND WITH SOME OPEN SOURCE BULLSH!T JUST BECAUSE IT"S FREE. Until the Open source gets this through their head they are going to have one market and that market is a very small portion of the general geek community. Like me. I use and contribute to open source projects a bunch and many solutions I give my users are open source but until they are clean, easy and glossy I don't push them out. Linux and Open Source are going to commit suicide by way of ignorance if they keep up the "well if you can't make this distro work you're stupid" attitude.
Yep, I can't add a think you nailed it right on the head. I posted a while ago about some silly comment John Bailo made in a .net.general ng totally unrelated to technology. He crossed posted to COLA and some f^ckface respond "You Wintrolls blah blah blah." By virtue of the fact I disagreed with Bailo on some other issue, I'm a Wintroll. Well, I'm not a mathematical genius, but I know for a fact that people in John Kerry's Campaign, as well as Bush's use Windows products. Moreoever, a whole lot of folks in this country do, well over 50%. Yet the country is pretty much torn over the war and on most political issues, Red States/Blue States. So how the f^ck is it that all 'Wintrolls' think alike, like their some big homogenous group? I know a lot of people who define themselves by groups, Democrat/Republican, Liberal/Conservative, Catholic/Protestant, ProLife/ProChoice and all those things. I have yet to meet someone that doesn't work in IT that seriously defines themselves in ClosedSource/OpenSource terms. I'm sure they exist, but I haven't met any. Seems to me that it's because most people COULDN'T GIVE A F^CK less. Another thing that I find amusing. I have a few friends that happen to be physicians. One of them is a neurologist which typically isn't the domain of stupid people. He got a Palm pilot a while back and started getting into computers. Well, he heard about all the Linux stuff and decided to give it a try. Couldn't get it to work and found it frustrating. He's a pretty determined guy so he bought a few books and got cracking. he finally got the OS loaded but found it way too time consuming. This guy went to school at U Penn which isn't exactly a bottom tier school. He saves peoples lives for a living and does stuff that very few people can do. But he's an 'idiot' because he couldn't configure Samba..... The fact is that there are a lot of 'smart' and talented people out there that use Windows. So that somehow negates all of their intelligence? And what about people who use Linux or some other OS product and just find it lame? Take me for instance. I can use MySQL. I can do just about anything I'd ever need to do with MySql. But SQL Server is a LOT cooler to me, as is Oracle. So I know the products and I still think MySql isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Yes, I'd use it over Access . Yes, I'd probably offer a MySql version of software if I made shrink wrapped stuff. But I still think it blows compared to the other two I mention. So where do I fit in? And Free, I love that. Well, it's free with an Assload of stipulations. Just reading through the license and honestly understanding it takes a while. I know they'll say it's just b/c I'm stupid but the whole FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION exists to catch people violating the license, and many instances where they catch people the violation is unintentional. So if LynkSys is too 'stupid' to read and understand it, chances are other people are going to be too. And what about the time it takes to get the stuff working? Trust me, you can right click on a file and click the Share menu item a lot quicker than you can set up Samba. Free my a33. Cheaper, sure. Free, no.
thanks again for the glowing remarks! i do think andy mentions something that i really wished i had more time to comment on when i wrote the original post...is the fact that the entire oss community has such a complete fucking lack of perspective. they exist totally in a vacuum just to appease themselves. they don't understand that even AS a software developer i'd rather use what works and makes me productive over something that has been written with the express intention of getting other oss developers to start wanking in awe at how clever my usage of pointer arithmetic algorithms are. this is something that they Just Don't Get. writing for the peer respect of your fellow developers is great, but this will not make your software a commercial success even if it is FREE. the fact that oss software adoption rates are not what they would like them to be is concrete tangible proof of this. until they get this through their thick fucking skulls, they are always just going to be footnote in the history of commercial software development...
She's weird, she's lame, and I would sooner read slashdot than her site. I would call her names but I'm everybody else has already. She is the epitamy of the "stay at home mom who reads national enquirer" white-trash steriotype. The best way to deal with trash like that is ignore it.
I subscribed to her blog for a bit. After one week I realized 1) I wasn't laughing. 2) I wasn't learning anything interesting. 3) I was beginning to feel this was some sort of inside joke that I wasn't getting. It's lame lame lame lame.
Shit Bill - that's an amazing story. I thought it was bad when a couple of the consultants where I work came up to me at a company meeting to tell me about their workplace. Apparently they had a strict rule in place that no-one (employees, consultants, doesn't matter) could ever talk to anyone else in the office. I thought they were exaggerating, but apparently they weren't. Conversations were carried on by email, and meetings booked to have even the smallest of discussions about the system being developed. Personal phone calls (even on your own cell phone) were banned, the Internet was banned, and naturally technology like Instant Messenger was banned. They too had a very rigid start and finish time policy and it would be bad (in an Egon from Ghostbusters sense) if you flounted that policy. And that was all last year. These company's do still exist amazingly. Keep up the good work Bill.
I worked with a guy for quite a while that would always look down on me and everyone else becuase of his "5 years of CORPERATE experience".. He'd always chuck it in the air when there was question to authority. I guess I'm a small business guy and can never manage the brains attained from corperate experience. lol. stupid people.
Did people forget how to request a read reciept? Or is it just to much of a pain in the ass? Time to add spam filtering for anything that contains didtheyreadit.com in the header.
Read reciepts let you know they are being requested and you can refuse them. This happens totally low profile and if people have AutoPreview on, they'll never know a thing. Much sneakier...
Bill, what's this about a GIRLFRIEND filter????! Ahem, you know I can get by any filter :-)
Well. It's not quite funny. And all the posts are mainstream politics so it's not quite educational. But if I were her I wouldn't be bummin to hard. She lists wonkette.com as her dayjob. I wouldn't mind gettin paid to post shit like that. Although it is a little lame considering there are millions of people posting that crap without the pay. Anyway. I wouldn't consider it reason to avoid php you hater.... lol. *php*
I interviewed someone once who claimed to be a C#/.NET Expert with over 3 years in .NET development. I said something to the effect of "so, you know C#?" and the answer was "yea, C#'s just like a mix of Javascript and VB..." They also told me that static methods should never be called from different threads, since the locals are shared.
I guess I missed the part where he said he was a Web site wizard. Looks like he should be reading Jacob Nielson (sp?). I would like to see his source code before ripping him a new one. At worst he is guilty of a lame Web site. Cut him some slack.
I saw her on MSNBC once...she's actually not too bad looking. That pic is just terrible! http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/04/18/fashion/18wonk.1.jpg ...and yes she is annoying!
Yah, she's alright. She tries a little too hard to look both 'EMO' and Yuppie that it makes me barf. She's cute enough but she thinks she's fucking Brittney spears or something and she's not hot enough to act like she does
Found a video of here... http://news.yahoo.com/p/v?u=/wp_av/20040429/av_wp_pl/f36b641ce14be0f949b9f0ca84176ac5&cid=2055&f=96480432
ze_nerd , I appreciate the comments. A while back some goofball really annoyed me yacking about PHP so I never miss an attempt to hate on it publicly. My reasons for this are totally immature and my hatred isn't sincere, but I'm all about bashing it whenever I can. It helps me get closure on the whole issue ;-) My original intent was to hire a OSS developer and then give him a 75% pay cut after he was there for a few months and when he complianed, tell him that he should be working for Free. I'd go on to rant and rave about some dork that dared tell me PHP was better than ASPX because if you search google for the file extesions of each, you'll see a lot more PHP extensions. Instead I decided to head over to Comp.OS.Linux.Advocacy and fire off a couple of Top Posted messages in Outlook express. I'm not really a hater, I just pose like I am. If PHP development started paying 6 figures tomorrow, I'd roll with it. It's just fun bustin balls sometimes.
Scott: That's probably the best description I've heard of that site. I got the same vibe when reading Doonesburry. It's like I understand the point, know what they're talking about, but just don't get the joke. And everyone else does. Excellent way to describe it - and Lame Lame Lame is even better ;-)
J.C. Thanks for the vid link. Is it me or is she trying WAYYY to hard to look like a College Professor? Tell me she didn't used to work at a used books store in Georgetown or something. I wish she didn't have that dog either, I find that endearing. I pictured her for the Siamese cat type, but I guess not. I'll have to ask KC if I can borrow Kitty Kitty and send her over there to kick her cat's a33.
i couldn't agree more...personally my own favorite powerpoint device is the 23 bullet point slide written using 9pt font. you can never have too many of those.
Your mba class is just very lucky they didn't have to do their presentations for E.W. Dijkstra he would have eaten them alive for having colorfull bullsh!t with no true mathmatical explination. In the past before his death he was known to make people explain why they used color in their presentations and what each color meant. If they didn't have a d@mn good reason they were in for an @ss chewing from hell. Power point would have sent him over the wall.
I personally like the people who feel that they are 'programmers' because they created a PowerPoint slide presentation. Freakin' boneheads! Also don't forget about all those annoying sounds that you are allowed to add to each and every slide/text line when they fly onto the page (you have to make sure that all 23 bullet points that causticPhil mentions is accompanied by one of these sounds when they fly onto the screen!). What buttslam figured that this would be a good thing? If anyone uses one of these 'sound enhancement' in a presentation you are legally allowed to karate chop him or her in the throat.
Skicow: I feel you there man. I can't stand anyone running around claiming to be a 'real programmer' because they can do Powerpoint, or Record a macro in word or excel. They are on my LIST which will be up soon..
Andy, I wish they were, that shit was so annoying it made me borderline homicidal.
Michael, I can't believe you wrote that. I was just having that very discussion today.....I tried pointing out that half of the damned classes in the framework are 'thread safe' in their static implementation not the instance implementation but I'm the dummy.... You made my day with your post.
William, Here is link to all of Dijkstra's manuscripts and an explination of who he was. I know outside of CS he may not be that well known but nearly every time you use an online map that does shortest route and time calculations you are probaly using his shortest path algorithm as it is about the most commonly implemented shortest path algorithm around. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/welcome.html
Doug: He didn't claim he was a web site wizard but he did say " In the past couple of years I have found a really strong niche out here in Dallas as the consultant that comes in and cleans up the software development projects. Basically, if you want your system done, and done well, you hire me to get your staff in shape?" This is in addition to a rambling diatribe about how his stuff is so readable, user friendly etc and how so many people don't get it like he does. I'm sorry dude, but anyone that's messed with .NET and is a real developer has got to be smart enough not to say stupid shit like this. So this is the guy you hire to get your stuff done, and done well and get your 'out of shape' programmers in line huh? Well, if that's a sample of his work I don't figure he has much of a business. I know quite a few people in Dallas, and none of them ever heard of this big mouth. The reason I get so bitchy about it is I'm tired of hearing shit like "You know Bill, you're a really nice person even though you're a programmer" or "I can't believe that you're patient with people, after all you're a programmer" or "I really appreciate you making this change for me, I'm really scrared to approach the programmers with any bugs" etc etc etc. What the hell is up with this? Go read HATT where this post came from. You'd think software developers were the f***** Taliban or Nazi's or something. And why is this? Because too many in our profession, particularly ones with NO Skillz, run around and talk big while producing little. This ahole is the epitomy of that philosophy and I felt like bustiing balls. Not all programmers eat puppies and babies and not all programmers have childish ego problems. I got no love for any of that crap and I do what I can to differentiate myself from that primadona crap. With that said though, I know where you're coming from. I didn't want to post all the guys stuff but there's plenty more where that came from. PLENTY More. BTW, do you have a blog? If so send me the link, always looking to read other people's stuff. Cheers, Bill
Thanks Andy. Very Very cool!
The guy who is the director of search quality at google shares your hatred of power points so he did a mockery of one and it's f#cking hillarious. It's of the Gettysburg address: http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/
Andy, you're links are always classics, this one is no different. I'm still rolling from it!
Thanks. If you missed it his explination of why he hates them so much and a really funny rant on the making of it is located here (Particularly interesting is the fact that this type of presentation was banned at Sun Microsystems): http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/making.html
Why do technical people, or 'pseudo' technical people (the ones that use jargon to confuse rather than understand what the hell they're talking about) insist on using this crap. Speak in clear english, especially when dealing with any client. Know your audience and gear your presentation towards THEM. Do NOT gear your presentation towards YOU and how YOU do things. Sure this person may understand all of the words they're saying, but I got lost in the first slide. If I get lost, John Q Public WILL get lost too, period. I deal with almost completely computer illiterate people. They want the bottom line and they want information in clear english. If they need a dictionary or a glossary to understand your presentation, you lose.
imagine the kind of presentation that you just described... taken to the nth level of lunacy (just add about 30 more slides), and you basically have what i dealt with almost everyday on my last consulting job. it's exactly this kind of behavior that makes completely embarrased to be a part of this industry.
Jeremy: I've come to believe it's really simple. If you don't know what you're talking about, you try to compensate. Since you are 'trying' to sound smart, you say things you wouldn't otherwise say. And since you are clueless, you don't know how stupid the stuff you are saying is. You know Powerpoint bores most people so bad they totally zone out in about 3 minutes tops so they aren't paying attention. The slides I mentioned above are REAL, and no one said a word. It's doubtful that a room full of judges, attorneys and their assistants didn't catch the "Ensures Unauthorized use" thing b/c well, Attorney and Jugges pay a lot of attention to trivial linguistic details. It's like we all know this but everyone is aftraid to say "I'm not going to do powerpoint, people hate it, it looks contrived and I want to actually engage them" It's a shame too b/c what I just said would be considered actionable at many companies, at best it would be considered heresy and probably lead to people shunning you. CausticPhil: YOu can't say things like this and not share. I'm accumulating some of the worst powerpoint I've come across that I can still get my hands on - but I'm sure my experience is nothing b/c I don't go to that many presentations. I know you've got some gems, so please please please, share the goods -
A powerpoint presentation is in many ways like one of those boygroups coming somewhere from Florida to make us puke: You can sell the worst music when sung by five sexy boys ("sexy" for the sake of argument). Add to this the spasmic dance moves and whatever BS is going top five.
Fix: That's a damned good analogy - Powerpoint is the New Kids on the Block of Software ;-)
Oh, you guys haven't mentioned the offshore VB users yet. The ones who feel the need to copy their code in 20 places instead of actually writing a function or more appropriately twelve to do the 120 lines of code they just copied the 20 places. I'm sure that happens in other langauges, too, but I always seem to end up owning that code after the little offshore dream bubble bursts. hln
I laughed so hard I almost cried when I read that. My wife keeps looking at me like I'm crazy. This is what you do. While they are jabbering away you hit them as hard as you can and break bones when you do it. The while they are lying there crying you say: "That wasn't the most complex thing I could have done to you. It was simple yet it effectively shut you up. Programming is like that, just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not the most quick and effective way to get the job done. Drag and drop a book into your lap and keep you pie hole shut until something resembling intelligence comes out of it. And by the way Apache is not an editor biiiiitch!" Then you get the hell out of dodge before security shows up.
"And by the way Apache is not an editor biiitch!" That's the million dollar phrase, God I wish I would have thought of that. Since we were in the books section there were only like 15 books on Apache - none on Notepad. Even that fucking Tool would have to be struck by the discrepancy.
man, you have really taken the words right out of my mouth with this one. i can't tell you how many times i've been "approached" in the bookstore while looking for some of the latest tech books (i'm sure you can imagine how well i handle this situation). i'll tell you what, both borders and barnes and noble have really become the mecca for "technical pseudo-intellectualists." sitting there drinking their spiced vanilla chai at the "espresso bar" while pounding out some real hardcore "html code." in addition, the whole concept of the "html programmer" really warrants a whole post. i can't you how many times i've seen that idiocy. personally i didn't know that html was a great way to learn about OO, design patterns, multithreading, etc...especially when i'm being lectured about those things by some moronic frontpager who can't figure out how to modify the frontpage generated markup without his entire site blowing up. allright, now you've done it...i'm all juiced up and i need to go write something that i can post later!
YES!!!!!!!!!!! Writers block kicked in but just reading your description makes me want to go shove Notepad up their asses. I hate the ignorance of these fucks and they always want to be the spokesperson for all developers. Dudes, Cliff Klabin was a dork, he should stick with Post Offices not move into development. Frontpage isn't programming. HTML isn't all that hard and it certainly doesn't make you a hot shot developer. "Technical Pseudo-Intellectualists" is so dead on. And callign yourself a Web Master b/c you made two stinking web pages no one heard of is plain and simple fraud! I CAN'T WAIT FOR your post on this....
HLN, actually I haven't come across this person yet at work but I think I"ve caught glimpses in newsgroups. If they do this they have to have some other 'great' characteristics... please tell me more.
-->Then some of the fields are yellow, some are white, but no rhyme or reason to it. The Google Toolbar does this, are you running Google Toolbar?
Actually no, but I appreciate the heads up.
By enumerate I am guessing you mean iterate over all tables and columns within an SqlServer and collect some property data about those columns and tables? Because if that is the case then those developers need to get slapped upside the head because you can actually do that in VBA if you have to and throw the listing into excel columns and rows for sh!ts and giggles. Here is the article from 2001 that shows how to do it(not the excel part but you get my drift): http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnovba01/html/ManagingSQLServer.asp And they wonder why jobs are being outsourced? You can do the exact same thing through raw ODBC with the SqlServer C API if you want to be really arcane and/or just want to mess around with a very cool C/C++ API. Microsoft has always had a different interpretation of what enumerate means. To all other platforms and most languages enumerate means something like: enum WilliamsBolgRocks{ CasyThinkSo=1, IThinkSo=2, SkiCowThinksSo=3, TheCausticGuyThinksSo=4 }; but if you look historically at Microsofts api's enumerate to them means to iterate. Typically it's a callback to which you feed your static function and it gets called back with every instance of "X". Such as EnumWindows. But it goes a lot farther back than just the 32 bit API's. I know I'm a dork but it would be very interesting to me to know when and how they started using the word enumerate instead of iterate. I'm not being nit picky either I just like arcane facts and if they are about computer history I like them even more. You are correct though those guys need a good b!tch slapping for not being able to do even a mediocre job. I once had a Dba with more certs than Certs factory tell me you couldn't use ODBC anymore because Microsoft doesn't support it. WTF!?! Have we really allowed people into this profession that are that far from knowing what goes on behind the scenes? Who let these people into the gene pool? That's it I'm calling the life guard and then going home to set up my Notepad webserver.
Yes, that's what I meant, pretty crazy huh? You're right about enumerate vs. iterate..over time I've used them interchangeably but they are quite different. You're definitely not a dork, more people need to be like you. Did that really happen with the DBA? That's great. I think we need to egg causticPhil on to write about CertMan. YOu have to have some more good stuff about that dude? You rock! thanks man
Oh man, I love his comments on Oracle, yeah ok, 'Oracle is the most simplistic stuff there is' Did he actually say that? wow...I'm a little different than you on this Bill, I actually *enjoy* when these guys come up to me and start to talk about programming/computers. I love leading them down the wrong path so they start to say things that are really stupid, or play dumb like you did and just see how far they can bury themselves in their own stupidity...I think it's funny as hell..is it wrong of me to enjoy an idiot? I think not. Great post!
personally think you let these guys off a little too easy. i think that being able to research and educate yourself about an issue on the job and under time constraints is one of the most important skills a developer can acquire. it's what saves our asses time and time again. with tools like google, forums, usenet, msdn, etc...you should really have no excuse. i finally started writing a new post. after reading your post yesterday i started writing about "Visual AccessHTML++", but that one is on hold. i saw something on the web that i wanted to make a complete mockery of. i'm the worst writer on the planet, so hopefully i'll be able to finish it in time for the weekend, or at least by monday morning.
I usually don't like Tom Cruise movies, mostly the ones you and Maddox mentioned, but I did like Vanilla Sky and Minority Report...probably because the premise for both of those movies weren't saturated in the Americana crap that Top Gun and A Few Good Men where...and because the stories for both movies were not created in Hollywood either. Vanilla Sky was a remake of a Spanish movie 'Open Your Eyes', and Minority Report was based on a book written by the brillient Philip K. Dick....or maybe it's because I'm so freakin' jealous of Mr. Cruise because of his ex-wife Nicole....MAN is she hot...she's one of those rare women that actually get better looking as the get older...like Kate Beckinsale and Diane Lane...Mmmmmm....Nicole...*drool* OK, you can see where my mind is going! time to stop now.
I agree with causticPhil, they really have no excuse to not knowing what they are doing. I've been a 'programmer' for about 6 years but I only started programming in VB about 1 year ago using eVB (I know it's not really VB:P), and I'm totally self taught, I learned with one book 'Pocket PC, Handheld PC Developer's guide' and all the info on the 'net, mostly from Devbuzz. Then my work wanted me to upgrade our app to .NET so I taught myself VB.NET and had our app up and running better than ever in a few months using one book and the 'net again to teach myself. I would personally be embarased if I had to tell someone that I didn't know how to do something that was asked of me, and I would make it my mission to find out how to do it. I think the problem might be that these types of people have no pride in what they do, call me a geek for being proud of what I can do WRT programming, but I love doing what I'm doing.
Leading them down the wrong path is not only mean, but it's therapudic as well. These types of people NEED to chase their tails for days apparently. I don't consider anything that uses a runtime or a scripting mechanism "programming". .NET almost falls under the category and VB5 I even went as far as to say wasn't programming because of those damned runtime files. I don't consider javascript, perl, or php programming. They have a lot to do with programming but they're scripting languages, not programming languages. If you can't compile a standalone EXE in your language, I don't consider you a 'programmer'. That's just me though. Personally I think everything should be complex yet simple. This way anyone can use it and don't bug those of us that actually know what they're doing. If I had a nickle for every time I got suckered into helping a family member out of a computer jam, I'd be rich. I don't think any product should require certification or college level courses to run it but again that's just me. I want people to use their computers so that I'm not there picking up their peices. I'm tired of covering other people's asses because they either don't want to learn, or the companies that make their software require you to be a rocket scientist before you understand how to install the application.
I have a knack for searching the web. That's the only edge I have over the people here at my work. They can't solve a computer problem yet within minutes I've found the answer and fix by doing some well places google/yahoo searches (I like yahoo but when I can't find something, I google). Anyone here could take over my position of they knew this, but I'll keep them in the dark for now. "They use a very expensive development tool there that does all sorts of stuff, but it appears that it also insulates you from knowing what the hell is being done under the hood." Are they using SalesLogix? When you said this that was the first thing I thought of. It uses SQL and Oracle as a backend and makes tables using it's 'Architect' but if you want real SQL help you're screwed. I could rant for days about SalesLogix too, so I won't get started.
Jeremy: No, they aren't using SalesLogix, I don't want to post it b/c, well, I'll send you an email with the name of the thing. It's unbelievably expensive, made by a major software vendor who IMHO is becoming a nobody as time progresses but used to be a big time somebody about 10 years ago.
I'm going to comment in a while but I have to write it out. I'll include the full story behind the ODBC doesn't work with Microsoft cert boy dba too. I am actually printing out this page of your blog because my kids are outside in the back with the kiddie pool so I need to be out there but I want to read this too so, printer it is.
I ranted about something similar that I think gets at the heart of the same argument in http://www.myshoggoth.com/Articles/HighLevelLanguages.html where I talked about people using high level languages as crutches so they don't have to understand how, fundamentally, computers work. Using a high level language or tools is about enhancing the productivity of people who already know what they're doing and how things work, not a substitute for it.
*Warning what follows could be the worlds longest comment but here is the Mr. Certs story* There is a Dba where I work that sort of knows his stuff but what he doesn't know he bullshits instead of just admiting he doesn't know wtf he's talking about. He worked in our IS dept at the time of this story. I worked in Engineering, I still do. Our marketing dept decided that they wanted a whole bunch of GIS data to go into their CRM app to help them do better analysis on their data. A legitimate request so since the marketing manager at that time was a friend I told him I'd do the GIS part if they could get somebody to set up their CRM app to interface with the data once it was pushed onto their server. Since he didn't know the database part he asked this Dba from IS to do it. He said ok and we were set to go. I had him give me the password and permissions my app would be running under. Well after about a week of writing I realized that this app was going to produce a metric assload of data that they would then want pushed onto their server into the datbase their. It was/is a SqlServer datbase. So I go to this dba and say "listen you're the database person, the GIS side is going to produce a million plus records every week. How do you push a million records into an SqlServer database across the network in a timely fashion?" I had no idea, I just knew an Insert Into in a loop was going to finish executing about the time the sun goes dark, and my great grandchildren are telecomuting from mars. His suggestion was "Use an Insert Into in a for loop". I was like "you stupid ass, I just said that would take forever". He asked what I was using to connect to the database. I said the raw ODBC C API, I have a class I wrote for this very purpose so I can write to multiple databases on multiple platforms. It has always served me very well and it's screaming fast. He says "Oh you can't use ODBC Microsoft doesn't support it for use with SqlServer". I was like "Dude WTF did you just say? Because I may not do database stuff very often but ODBC is a standard and I'm pretty sure Microsoft supports using it." I wasn't sure though because this was the first time I'd ever dealt with SqlServer. So I downloaded the SqlServer API and the development stuff and read through it. Sure enough it supports ODBC really well and it's a very well documented API. So now I'm at the point of "Do I go back and tell him he's a fucking moron and risk slowing down the project or do I just shut up and get it over with". I chose option two, but I still had no idea how to push all those records in a timely fashion. I tested 300,000 or so records and because the servers for engineering are in one location and the marketing servers are in another (as in, almost different timezones) it was taking about 1 to 3 seconds per record with an Insert Into. Definitely not acceptable. If I turned off the part of the code that actually executed the insert into the whole thing ran in about 15 to 20 minutes. So back I go to Mr. Certs he came to us from a huge corporation (almost bigger than we are, *hint they make cpu's), so he was really supposed to know his shit. I asked him a different way this time. I said "you know how SqlServer can import a million line text file across the network in just a couple of seconds right?" he said yah he knew it could "then I said well how does it do it? It can't be doing a line by line read and Insert Into", his exact words were: "It's an internal Microsoft thing they won't tell you how to do that, it's not like it's open source." About this time I'm thinking he bullshited his way into the IT/IS world but you know he an MCSE/MCSD/MCAD/A+/ and about a million other certs. That why I call him the Mr. Certs factory. They are plastered all over his wall at work in his office. I know MS doesn't just give that shit away so he must know something, right? Wrong! I found out later how he actually got all those certs but at the time I didn't know that info. So I gave up on him and started digging through the docs thinking surely somebody else has wanted to push a huge stack of data all at once into SqlServer so there has to be something on it. Sure enough there is and it's not the friendliest API but it works fantastically well. It's called the bcp API. So I try it out and sure as sh!t it pushes half a million records in about 18 seconds. I'm ecstatic, so I go tell him I got it working and we can start into the testing phase so could he please schedual my app once a week and I'll have it write to his servers log it's progress and notify when it completes. So he wants to know how I did it. I showed him, his exact words "why do you always have to do stuff the hard way?" WTF do you mean the hard way!!!! He said Marketing never would have known the difference if you let it take three days to run with an Insert Into. THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT YOU MORON I'm screaming in his face at this point THE POINT IS, I WOULD KNOW AND I TAKE PRIDE IN WHAT I DO AND IF I SLACK IT THAT IS NO DIFFERENT THEN STEALING FROM MY EMPLOYER. THAT WOULD BE USING BANDWIDTH AND RESOURCES THAT OTHER PROCESSES NEED AND YOU JUST WANT ME TO SAY FUCK IT???? LET IT TAKE A METRIC EON BECAUSE THEY DON"T KNOW IT CAN BE DONE BETTER. Needless to say we didn't get along so great after that. Then a few months later he writes this app that updates some data going into a legacy AS/400 billing system. Well it's pulling info from a proprietary third party source so they were only given an API to connect to that source with rather than the raw data. His app takes (and no I am not making this up) five weeks to run and it uses four machines. My friend from that dept came down and asked if I could take a look at it some night when Mr Certs is gone and see what I can do to speed it up since it's a COM API and I know COM really well ( or at least I like to think I do :) but there is still a ton about COM I've never even touched ). Anyway I say sure and I take their API with it's ocx and I bin dump what I can, Assembly debug some other stuff and find out that yes they have simply wrapped a much cleaner C API for VB and their wrapper is slow and buggy. So then I start going through his code OMG! it's horrible, it's like a textbook case of what not to do. End result was I re-wrote it for them. It takes 15 to twenty minutes and uses one machine. No I am not joking, down from five weeks and four machines to 20 minutes and 1 machine. Shortly thereafter they shifted him to a non-IS/IT dept. Now he really doesn't like me but his old dept sure does. So the new Dba shows up, real quiet, very nice guy. I'm like "ok I'm going to go ask him just for shits and giggles how to push a million records fast into SqlServer". So I meander down there and ask him. His exact words "nearly every RDBMS system on the planet has an ODBC bulk data API, SqlServer's is called the bcp API", then he told me what the API's were for Oracle and MySql too in case I needed them. He even sent me a copy of the API docs in case I needed them or couldn't find a copy. I think quietly to myself......WHERE THE FUCK WAS THIS GUY 12 MONTHS BEFORE WHEN I NEEDED HIM!!!!! Why the hell did they hire the other yahoo first??? Anyway the Dba that knew it off the top of his head without even having to look it up is now the Master Dba for the Market I work in and that makes me a very happy camper! So that is my Mr. Certs story. You want a classic example of exactly what you are talking about being wrong with sorry ass programmers. Mr. Certs could be a textbook on the subject.
Bill g
I'll never have the ego this guy has. I'm convinced every other developer knows more than I....LOL
Exactly! You've hit the nail on the head with this blog post. I'm a committee member of a "local" Perth, WA design and developers community and we're in the process of actually getting the awareness out among the industry. One of the issues that we're trying to raise is that since we don't have an industry recognition program (ie, you still can't study at uni to become a web developer) the people in the industry are made up of a large range of skill sets (and levels)..unfortunatley in the business world you rarely want to pay the top dollar for a service if you know you can get it cheaper elsewhere. This is the battle that's constant here. Too many backyarders with less brains than wet cardboard are ripping off clients and making a small fortune - simply because there's not enough industry education available (in laymans terms) for people to read and get an idea of what is involved. Then there's also the other side, where small businesses are sprouting up with a home setup of XP Home, Notepad and MS Paint suddenly finds themselves having to provide a top service and failing. leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the client and voila - getting that client back on track is back braking. Anyways, on an ending note, i'd like to link to this post and have people from our community read up on it..this should have been said a loooooong time ago!
Nice Andy, I loved it.
Hi Andrew: That's a killer piece. I didn't read it until know but you have a cool blog and I loved the article. I guess it's not as rare as I thought ;-)
it boils down to 2 simple things... 1. laziness 2. arrogance it's these 2 things alone that contribute to egotistical programmers who couldn't even take the time to properly learn something. i mean, why take the time and effort to learn something when you know everything?? the fact that these two character traits are prevelant in a majority of developers in the industry is just disturbing...again, it's why i finally took it upon myself to start blogging. it's upsetting and embarrasing. anyway, great post...it you keep posting shit like this, i'll have nothing to blog about!! andy - what's most unfortunate about mr. certs is that he is not by any stretch of the imagination unique...the industry is running rampant with imbeciles like him. these clowns make it almost impossible for us to do our jobs as well...
I'm with you 100%. Minority Report was very cool and Vanilla Sky was a kick a33 flick too - wierd as hell but cool. He was also pretty good in Interview with a Vampire, but I don't mention it b/c all the "Vampire Wannabees" that sprung from Anne Rice books get on my nerves. What about the Firm, did you see that? It was a pretty decent book, but the movie was pathetic. While it could have been great, the ending was sooooo terrible it ruined everything. (Due to BlogReading Girlfriends all I can say is:) Nicole isn't really that hot, unless you are in to superficial traits. I only like women because of their inner beauty and their minds or some crap, I mean stuff like that. Nicole is so shallow and Vapid that I would never even consider dating someone like her, or Jenna Jameson or Janine or... oh never mind, I'm going to burn in hell if I lie anymore. You're right, Nicole is the BOMB. Too bad Cruise was too busy with Scientology and drooling over Val Kilmer to enjoy it. Kim, if you're reading this, I just said the last part to sound cool. I really only appreciate women because of their inner beauty and their minds and crap, I mean stuff like that.
Hi Brian: Thanks for the kind words, and please, include me in the distro list. I hate this crap more than anyone and would love to get involved in ridiculing this stuff. Too many people are out there faking it and that makes it much harder for honest people. It doesn't affect me much now, but it did for a long time b/c until you have a long client list and a lot of references, all it takes is a client having met one of these aholes and getting the contract can be a real pain. I think it makes it really hard for new people who are honest and hard working to get started in the game. I'd love to find out more about your group, please let me know more. Thanks again, Bill
Hey again Bill, "no worries" as is said here in aussieland...a bit of info on the community itself.. it started originally as a designers community but with the interest spreading (or people realizing that development is essential in any internet driven business application) it started picking up the odd developer. We're about 300+ members now and are in the middle of moving the community into a industry recognised association (with all the legal trappings/bindings that follow). you can find us at www.port-80.net it's still a small community but growing fast, especially as we run industry related events with speakers and presentations..plus we have the obligatory "networking" night where you meet face to face over a couple of beers. the forum is probably the most "important" part of the community, all free, and it's there that we "discuss" everything under the sun...from bitching about companies, discussing techniques and overall just "socialise". if you drop by, send me a message ..i go under the nick deprecated-cruelty.. have a good one and keep spreading the gospel. cheers
CF: You are dead on about this and I think it's completely healthy for folks to expose this crap. What I think we ought to do is keep bouncing these around, getting more and more feedback and then get one Definitive guide type post. I definitely don't want to do anything that keeps you from posting b/c you are the Master. I was too timid to even bitch about stuff I hated until read stuff like your's and many of the guys that I rap with on this blog. Another idea that might be cool - "causticPhil reflects on the Industry with a bottle of Jack Daniels" BTW, you mentioned GlenGary Glenn Ross. I never saw it but based on the fact that you liked it that much, I tried to go get it. None of the video stores have it b/c I live in the Country's Bunghole and they don't have anything older than 3 years here. I'm guessing it's worth buying but just wanted to confirm with you, it's definitely a good flick right? Sometimes I think that something that bugs me is isolated or something, that it's just a statistical fluke and that it doesn't happen everywhere. The fact that it's not explains a good bit of your site's popularity. EVERY Single person I've referred keeps referring it to other people and talking about how dead right you are. I think you've touched upon stuff that everyone thinks (who's cool anyway) but for one reason or another just accepts as inevitable. I'm not seriously implying that you can save the industry or anything like that, but I am Saying that one blog like yours can effectively define the difference between professional programmers and professional bullshitters - and to that end, you ARE doing the industry a favor. That's not to mention that it's funny as hell and any time people laugh, it's a good thing. I haven't really fun across too many of the Mr Certs types but I can tell there's a lot of people that have. MOst of the people I ran across like the Sysadmin where I work now, had a lot of game and just took the certs to put a notch or two in their belt. This is also the Case with Casey (no pun intended) Chesnut. On the other end I've worked with a few people, one in particular, that had Certs, no talent, but no confidence either. He was afraid to do anything. But i hear those A+ dudes at CompUSA talking up certs every time I"m in there. I'd REALLY like to see a Phil/Andy Roundtable on the Mr Certs. Another good one would be Mr Newsgroup Know it All. I'm sure there are a ton of categories that are still compeletely untouched.
The thing that really bugs me aside from what I already mentioned is the arrogance and laziness factor Phil is talking about. Unless you work in a very few types of position at a software company we are support. Let me say that again we are SUPPORT. Not every developer at software companies is a front line coder many of them are support coders and testers too. I am however talking specifically about enterprise developers working in house at large corporations which generate their revenue by doing something other than producing software. For instance I work in an Engineering dept as the GIS developer for our market. I am support, what I do does not generate revenue, it saves money by making my users more effective at their jobs by giving them tools and applications to boost their productivity. They are the ones generating the revenue. Some of the people I support have 2 to 4 times the education I have, we are talking double Phd's in things like physics. These are not stupid people by any means. Many are definitely tech. challeneged for sure, there is one engineer who has been working for us for around 30 years, he routinely breaks pc's. I have no idea how but he does. He can break any application he touches. So I use him as my beta tester for that dept. Garaunteed if there is a bug he'll find it. I am support for his position if my applications don't make him more effective at what he does or if my application routinely breaks or slows him down, it could be the most beautifully coded piece of art on the planet but it's a complete failure. My boss (a truly excellent Director, I used to dream about working for somebody like him) completely agrees. I have a saying "it doesn't matter how much code I have to write or what I think, the application has to do exactly what the user wants, exactly how the user thinks it should or I failed". I don't have to use my applications, they do, it's them that's important, our company lives or dies based on their ability to be effective. They are not dumb and developers who get arrogant and lazy on their users need to get fired for what my Dad calls GTBFYB. "Getting to big for your britches". I grew up in this industry. My father worked on one of the teams that developed the first commercial mainframes. He is mostly retired now but he still works in the computer industry although he is a VP now. I remember as a child helping my father do nightly reel to reel backups and then drive the reels off site to another building. I remember Oracle 1.0 on a reel. I remember using his Cobol book as a booster stool so I could type on a Mainframe console. I remember when x86 Assembler was a new language. I remember when SCO was first founded as a consulting company for UNIX porting. I remember my father explaining to me how BOS which loaded from punch cards originally was very different from this new thing called DOS. I remember when a five KB program with no layering was a massive thing. I DO NOT HOWEVER, REMEMBER WHEN IT EVER BECAME OK TO CONSIDER OURSELVES BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE WE SUPPORT. It is a disturbing trend. If you are a corporate developer or an enterprise developer of any kind and you users don't think you are the best thing since sliced bread you are doing something wrong. If somebodies Excel breaks and even though it's IS's job they call you and ask you to come take a look at it because they are comfortable doing that then you are doing something very right. If the first words out of a users mouth when a computer problem springs up are not "let's ask InsertYourNameHere I bet he'd know" then you need to take a serious look at your attitude. That's my opinion anyway.
andy - when you are talking about developers working FOR a tech company vs. developing in house applications for a company whose business has nothing to do with the tech industry IS DEAD ON...there is a big difference in mentality when your being paid out of overhead vs. being directly billable. i'm actually going to do some writing about this in the future. i'm really, really, glad that there is somebody else on the planet that understands this. bill - i'm glad i opened up your "inner-rant"! you're also dead on as well. i can't tell you how many times over the years i've thought to myself, "jesus, i can't be the only one experiencing this kind of shit." there is so much shitty software being written, and so many shitty practices being followed in our industry, it's amazing that the world hasn't just decided to do away with this shit altogether. i've always wanted to put together a book that covered what kind of shit really goes on in this industry from war stories to marketing disasters, stereotypes, environments and all the different kinds of characters in the middle of all this. finally i thought, "you know what....i can just blog about it instead and see what happends..."
bill - i forgot...as far as glenngarry glenross goes i think it's an amazing film (i happen to be a huge film buff). however i need to warn you that it: 1. has no action 2. no "hot" chicks 3. no sex 4. takes place all in the same room (for the most part) 5. no explosions or things that go "BOOM" if your ok with that, you should definitely check it out. it has the best dialog ever, and it's the dialog (it originally written as a play) that really keeps the film moving. there is no "hollywood" fluff or bullshit in this movie. also, keep an eye out for the scene with alec baldwin. he's only in one seen, but everybody should learn how to deliver a browbeating like he does!
Thanks Phil: As far as movies go, it sounds dead on. In general, 'action' is often quite boring. I only really get into hot chicks if they happen to be making out, short of that it's kind of like, been done already. And as far as "Boom", I'm probably being a heretic here, but any time you ask people if a movie was good and all you hear is that it had great 'special effects' it's almost a sure thing it's a stinker
Ok so now we are all seeing that this isn't isolated cases. We've all run into it and from the feedback we aren't the only ones. Now what do we do about it? I mean we can complain all we want and I think it's good to get it out in the open and let people know all developers aren't like that. But how do we make a difference? I'd like to hear suggestions for legitimately making a difference and policing our own profession so to speak. I know nobody appointed us judge and jury but somebody needs to draw a line in the sand and say "the bullshit stops with me". I know it bugs me that there are people like this out there but that only cuts so much water. I will try and think up suggestions too then maybe we could put them all together in a list with "this is the problem, here are some suggestions we have come up with for making our profession a better place" and post it to our blogs, and every list and board we belong too and see if other folks pick it up too. What do you think?
Someone approached a programmer to be in his Amway business, now that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Hasn't he figured out that programmers can't talk.
Hi Dave: Actually, I sort of misspoke but not by much. Amway is now called http://www.quixtar.com/ and that's what he was pitching. I guess they are now web enabled and have 'changed for the digital era' if I remember the quote correctly. Anytime someone approaches you in a bookstore with some really stupid generalization, you can almost bet the bank that they are trying to get you 'saved' or are trying to sell you something. So I'm in the computer books section, have my laptop sitting next to me on a table and a bunch of books + my bookbag next to it and you hear "Computers huh? That's got to be a interesting area to work in. Are you a student or are you in the business". At that point your mind should be saying "Oh Fuck, run for it". In these situations I always try to lie and come off totally incoherently so that they don't think I"m worth messing with. So the generic response is something like "My StormTrooper Garrison wants me to try to build a web site. Since I haven't been able to get a job for a long time now, they figured I'd have the most time." Now if you've ever seen some of these losers http://www.501st.com/default.html, or these ones http://www.sca.org/ , you'd understand why this should be an effective strategy. But the couple of times the Amway dudes have cornered me, they never heard of this stuff. Another thing I've tried is the "Well, my 12 step group wants me to try to work on computers because maybe it will help me in relating to people. I'm really bad at relating to people and they make me just want to get drunk and blah blah blah (insert victim routine here)." I agree though, hitting up programmers probably isn't the approach of choice. Chiropractors, from what I understand are always the best Amways salesman, next to preachers of course. Not sure why that is but each time they've tried hitting me up (and when I waited tables or bartended in college - they approached me like 6 different times) they always want to show me a cancelled check from some Chiropractor or Preacher that's making zillions through Amway. I guess the whole thing is that Amway isn't a business. The only real product you try to sell is pamphlets and video tapes to other suckers trying to get rich quick. I"m not sure what part of a dude with a bunch of books around a laptop comes off looking like some dumbass who's all about get rich quick schemes, but I guess I must have the look or something. I hate Amway worse than almost anything. I actually hate it even more than code where people have Option Strict OFF (which I REALLY HATE) or use Dynamic SQL
Hi Dave: Actually, I sort of misspoke but not by much. Amway is now called http://www.quixtar.com/ and that's what he was pitching. I guess they are now web enabled and have 'changed for the digital era' if I remember the quote correctly. Anytime someone approaches you in a bookstore with some really stupid generalization, you can almost bet the bank that they are trying to get you 'saved' or are trying to sell you something. So I'm in the computer books section, have my laptop sitting next to me on a table and a bunch of books + my bookbag next to it and you hear "Computers huh? That's got to be a interesting area to work in. Are you a student or are you in the business". At that point your mind should be saying "Oh Fuck, run for it". In these situations I always try to lie and come off totally incoherently so that they don't think I"m worth messing with. So the generic response is something like "My StormTrooper Garrison wants me to try to build a web site. Since I haven't been able to get a job for a long time now, they figured I'd have the most time." Now if you've ever seen some of these losers http://www.501st.com/default.html, or these ones http://www.sca.org/ , you'd understand why this should be an effective strategy. But the couple of times the Amway dudes have cornered me, they never heard of this stuff. Another thing I've tried is the "Well, my 12 step group wants me to try to work on computers because maybe it will help me in relating to people. I'm really bad at relating to people and they make me just want to get drunk and blah blah blah (insert victim routine here)." I agree though, hitting up programmers probably isn't the approach of choice. Chiropractors, from what I understand are always the best Amways salesman, next to preachers of course. Not sure why that is but each time they've tried hitting me up (and when I waited tables or bartended in college - they approached me like 6 different times) they always want to show me a cancelled check from some Chiropractor or Preacher that's making zillions through Amway. I guess the whole thing is that Amway isn't a business. The only real product you try to sell is pamphlets and video tapes to other suckers trying to get rich quick. I"m not sure what part of a dude with a bunch of books around a laptop comes off looking like some dumbass who's all about get rich quick schemes, but I guess I must have the look or something. I hate Amway worse than almost anything. I actually hate it even more than code where people have Option Strict OFF (which I REALLY HATE)
What do I think? I think I just read pure wisdom in your last post. Keepin it real has always been cool and always will be, and you're on to something. I bet if we kept an ongoing list of Programming "Keeping it Real" ideas, there'd be both a ton of contributors and a ton of readers. I remember reading a book a few years back called "True Professionalism" (I'm 95% sure of the title) that covered a whole lot of what most of us get pissed off about. It doesn't afflict our industry exclusively by any means, but since our industry is young as hell and not everyone uses computers, a lot of people think of it as magic and wizardry--- that's why the phonies get to do what they do. The Securities industry suffers a lot of the same sh1t...how many wannabe stockbrokers are there out there with all kinds of ideas on why shit like Space Shuttles dotcom is a good idea "Yes, they're going to sell space shuttles on the Internet. You'll have to provide your own shipping, Fuel and Astronauts, but isn't it a great idea? i can get you in on the IPO since you're one of my best customers..." We really need to start working on the list
230/211!?!? Bill, that's f***ing sky high!! 230 (systolic) sounds like a normal reading for a person with severe hypertension, but 211 diastolic!?! You SHOULD be dead! Normal is supposed to be around 120/80... People are supposed to start on medication when it's consistently higher than 150/110. I've never heard of a diastolic reading over 200. I suppose it's possible if a reading is taken during extreme physical exertion at the point of fatigue... Are you sure??
On my Dallas trip to visit Casey, I noticed how MANY people are zooming around and cutting people off with those vehicles that have God fish on their cars. It's funny how Casey has TWO of those anti-fish symbols on the back of his car & he's always letting people in & waving to thank others for letting him in. I wonder if those people notice it.
response to casey: you still would not qualify with THAT revision of #6. :) Remember, "girls don't pay for anything, just have the obligation to repay in other ways." I suppose in that respect, if you're not speaking monetarily ("other ways" like cooking meals & stuff, right?), you'd be in then.
i would love to be a part of it!
You will need three types of collection/container objects. Club, Car, and Orgy. IE for Club: Club myClub; int iNumHotStrippers = METRIC_ASSLOAD; for(int i=0; i<iNumHotStrippers; i++){ myClub.AddStripper(); } and we need to randomize the .giveLapDance() method of the Stripper object so that sometimes instead of executing a lapdance it randomlly calls the private method .giveFreebieBlowJob(Swallow=TRUE) heh this could be a lot of fun.
Andy is hereby Promoted to co-Software Architect because of his enthusiasm and wonderful insight. Ok, Club is definitely one of our objects and I'm putting you in charge should you accept the assignment. You can handle Bartender, Bouncer Cocktease/Tail Waitress, DJ and Bouncer. This may be a bit much and we can shift resources if need be. I want to work on loser boyfriend or BullDyke Lifestyle partner. I have a clever way to segue into Firefighting that will really ruffle some feathers. Casey will be in charge of Ex Strippers and financial transactions with them. So far I love what I've been seeing .. .we need every bit of hel we can get. This is going to be cooll.
i'm no King-Mullah-Worship-Me-i'm-fawkin'-Great...but i'd contribute!
good for you...but...#1 ?? you got more ? :-) also, you're fairly active here (as well as elsewhere) so i'm not surprised.. so, give it up for da b35t girlfriend!
Bad choice of words but the sentiment is still there. LOL ;-)
Brian: Neither am I, it's just sounded like a pretty cool title. I remember back when the Taliban first came into power, there was a dude, Supreme Grand Mullah Muhammad Omar. I thought the Supreme and Grand together were a bit pretentious but what the heck. He was the dude that had a patch over his eye and had the Buddhist statues (that had been in Afghanistan for forever) knocked down b/c he thought Allah was getting all f----d off about them. I challenged Clinton to a duel in the town square one time when he got pissed off at the US. An interesting approach to diplomacy to say the least. Anyway, due to events that happened 9/11, goofing about the Tabliban, even in a pre 9/11 sense seemed kind of in bad taste. Then I thought screw it, if some dork like him and call himself Supreme and Grand in one sentence, Words that are usually used with either "Nachos", "Burrito" or "Chalupa" in any other context, I can do. I don't have a patch over my eye, never made love to a camel and I like to shower regularly, but I was just goofing on the whole title thing. Don't even get me started on Supreme Ayatollah Al J:had Asshole or whatever his name is. So, by virtue of the will of Supreme All-Knowing Software Nerd/Mullah Bill, and in the name of Allah of all Software, praise be his name, may Brian be included in our religion of cool programmers and good software design. In order to stay in good graces, all member must declare Jihad against the following: 1) VB Programmers that don't use Option Strict 2) .NET Programmers still using Dynamic Sql and not using Paramaterized Queries 3) Hungarian Notation 4) People who use "I have x years of experience" in an argument every time they've been defeated logically 5) Buzzwords 6) Technical Writers who care more about documentation than the product 7) Everyone else in Caustic Phil's list, both present and future I will continue with the list as Allah's will becomes known to me (and you have to promise not to tell anyone that when I'm talking about Allah's will, it's simply a fancy word for Pet Peeves Me or my Friends Have, just with a cooler name).
Don't forget Lonely Lapdance Debtor-- the guy who gets talked into lapdance after lapdance and runs a tab on his card -- Obsessed Stripper Fan -- The guy who only goes when his favorite girl is there, and she has to be walked to her car by the bouncer at night. Actually, that guy could just be the base StripperPatron object, but with ObsessiveTendencies == true; and KindaCreepy == true;
in the spirit of andy's comment: StripperPatron loser = new StripperPatron(); Bouncer biff; ... while(lapDance.IsFinished != true) { if(loser.ObsessiveTendencies == true || loser.KindaCreepy == true) { biff = stripperBabe.GetBouncer(BouncerBehavior.Belligerent); biff.TossOutOnAss(loser); } }
ex-strippers ... bastards :) hey Bill, i definitely remember making the '.NET for strippers' comment, but i just searched the articles and cannot find it. do you have any idea where that originated? i'm actually thinking that i might have stripped (pun intended) that out to get some big name person to link me back then. kicking myself if thats the case :( will have to do a grep on my archives to be sure
That's pretty funny Bill, you seem to be having a battle over your inner feelings there....you should get that checked out! :P No, I never did see the Firm, I don't like 'drama' movies that much, I'm a geek through and through, I like SciFi and Comedy movies mostly...sometimes I have to sit thought a chick flick for my wife, but I usually try to make sure the chick flick we see has a bunch of hotties in it so I have something to do while the movie is droning on. My wife is actually cool with Jenna or Janine movies, she will watch them with me...
Phil, good call on the BouncerBehavior enum. That's going to be key.
Casey: It was one of your first articles and it was something written prior to January of last year. I'll see if I can find it. I remember that I read it the same day that I read what was either an article or interview with you where they described your job as something like "When Casey is not writing code he's busy working on revolutionizing the porn industry" or something really kick a33 like that. You were living at the Pennsylvanian at the time too (I know I probably sounds like some sicko Stalker but it just stands out b/c I thought it was soo cool to see an ultra early adopter that was in to so many cool things). I may well have a copy b/c I know that I saved the text of Freespeech and a few others so I could read them on my PDA. Well it looks like we have some major Talent getting in on the project. We've got to create an ExStripper Class too and of course a Developer with a GetsPaidByExStripper property. Phil and Andy have already shown some real initiative and we need to keep fleshing this out, but I think we may be sitting on a OOP Tutorial that will generate a lot of interest. Plus, I'm thinking that if we include enough advanced theory/concepts, we could get 'serious' people pointing to it as long as we don't go too far over line. I oriignally had a Class Property (bad choice of words for a property, I know) that would be an enum, Goddess, HighClass, GarbageBox, PimpledA33, StickPig, TotalSkank. Then for total Skank I was going to have VDType. Then I thought nah, be specific so I could like have ChlamydiaType - Festering, CheeseAndSmegma etc. But although this could be quite funny, probably a bit too 'over the top' for most people (I've been told that I'm over the top qutite a bit so I ought to keep it somewhat tame.
Phil: I'm loving your concept there. Let me ask you something though (this is actually a design meeting that won't bore me to death). I want to implement this is a pretty thorough discussion of OOP that will be humorous, advanced and technically correct. I definitely see how TossOutOnAss would be implemented as a method (that's the most natural fit). Wondering though if it should be static or if we should restrict it to instance. All Bouncers throw out dumbasses. Then I was thinking, we need some events. So the stripper could raise, DumbAssPinchedMyAss and consequently, OnDumbAssPinchedMyAss(). Now, when this event is raised, the wealth of the patron will come into play. So we need a Intoxicated Enumeration as well as Wealth b/c that's how we'll be able to automatically dispatch the bouncer. DumbAssPatron needs to have a BeerMuscles property (true/false?) or something similar. And we NEED to include full support for Bathroom Pissboy. Although these guys are usually really nice and all, we could still have a lot of fun here. We also need a StrippersUglyFriend class and a few others I can think of. So if you would, do me a favor and think of any other objects we need in our Enterprise. When we write it up, we'll do it totally seriously, and speak of the Enterprise instead of StripClub and then discuss how we wished the Stripper's Architecture were a little more "Service Oriented" We could even delve into Aspect Oriented Programming and use Attributes store our metaData. The most ridicule needs to go to dumbass drunk dude, Hard Ass Wannabe, StrippersUglyCockBlockingFriend, ChumpLosingAllHIsMoney etc. You always have great insights so please, if you can think of anything let me know. I'm going to start drawaing the UML diagrams tonight in Rational Rose (Microsoft will probably break my neck if they catch me doing this with Visio) Oh yea one other thing.. .Just to piss off the linux guys, we'll have an implementation for Mono - This can be really brutal. We can also have "LinuxUser" as the bottom of the barrel on one of the Loser Enums we have for stripper Boyfriend (and of course, this guy would only be the LoserBoyfriend of Male strippers). Keep the good ideas coming - you guys rock.
bill: as far as TossOutAnAss(...) goes, you could do it either way. the difference depends on how far you'd go with the Bouncer class. obviously if it's static TossOutAnAss will more or less be the same fo every Bouncer instance. however, if we decide to have a ClubEmployeeBase base class, and then implement an IBouncer interface (and also have IBarTender, IWaitress, etc... which is good, because than you can do things like have some girl implement both the IWaitress and IStripper interfaces... which might provide a decent example of how to use multiple interface inheritance or interface-based programming and some polymorphic behavior as well.), the method would then have to be class based. this would definitely give you more flexibility because then you can have TossOutAnAss throw the guy through the window, or take all his money first, or put the guy through a wall...(depending on whose implementing it)you could have definitions like: public class ExFootballPlayer : ClubEmployeeBase, IBouncer {} public class ExConvict : ClubEmployeeBase, IBouncer {} This way you can have some common methods for every club employee, but than you can mix and match their roles. We could use the same pattern for patrons too. i also think a novel approach might be using a decorator pattern for constructing some of the strippers. might be pretty cool too (instead of attributes) this way you can have your concrete class decorated with different kinds of features for each stripper like tattoos, different kinds of props, acts, or different kinds of "special talents." i could also be going over the deep end here....(kind of like how the IO stream classes work)
Phil, so staying in the same vein, we would have ClubPatronBase class, which would give similar data to all patron types like bool runTab, and cashOnHand. Then, we have a few interfaces like IPervert, ILoser which leads to public class LoserBoyfriend : ClubPatronBase, ILoser {} public class Stalker : ClubPatronBase, IPervert, ILoser () To what Bill was saying, I think the ClubPatrons should raise events that the ClubEmployees consume. So, ClubPatron fires the CashRemovedFromPocket event, the Stripper is listening for that event and on seeing it the WorkHimForALapdance method goes off. ClubPatron raises FinishedDrink and Bartender fires Refill(). Similarly, if the ClubType does not allow for touching during a lapdance, the Bouncer should really be listening for the ClubPatron firing the GrabHerAss event when his arousal iterator reaches a certain threshold so that the Bouncer can react to the event, because the Stripper may not care about that event herself and let it just bubble up. Maybe there is room to work reflection in here (although that isn't strictly an OO topic)...the bouncer is going to have to load the patrons into memory and make decisions that way.
scott: exactly. i like the events too. we could make a custom strongly-typed collection that holds types of ClubPatronBase and this class would be a member in the Club class itself. that way when a call is made like: Stalker linuxGuy = new Stalker(); LoserBoyfriend openSourceZealot = new LoserBoyfriend(); DeadBeat iWasOutsourced = new DeadBeat(); patronCollection.Add(linuxGuy); patronCollection.Add(openSourceZealot); patronCollection.Add(iWasOutSourced); foreach(ClubPatron in patronCollection) { IBouncer meatHead = new ExCon(BouncerBehavior.ExtremePrejudice); if(patron is IBroke) meatHead.TossOutOnAss(patron); } that'a one possible way of de-coupling the patrons from the bouncers.
Crap sweetie, it was a typo again. I meant to type Anti-Gilrfriend Filter. That would be the opposite of a girlfriend filter in which everything from a female that's nt yhour girlfriend will be filtered. And everything from your girlfriend would immediately be SMS'd t your device's special "I llove Kim Folder"
Skicow: "she will watch them with me..." You are the luckiest man in the world .
true - it's the thought that counts ;-)
praise be the allmighty Mung Bean! urgghhfff...i never thought i'd see the day when somebody of like mind would profess to have intelligence..but..can't help myself!! 3) Hungarian Notation arggff...i'm in shock..caustic shock...i've just started at a new place and one of the concerns i had when starting was that there was no coding conventions, no structured architecture planning or just general nonsense on how to keep development at a standard everybody could understand.. so, i set out on a holy mission to relieve my brethren-in-development of this mistake and created a documented development plan, through the entire development life cycle - including of course, coding conventions...and here i had to battle with a "old" java programmer and a .Net convert/VB6 guru...now...funner enough, both gave me their feedback (the rest was happy as campers) and noted that i'd slipped up a bit...hungarian notation...ouch...bad bad bad habit of mine (well, i'm a peasant so what do you expect) and eventhough i've been at .Net for quite some time i hadn't manage to get rid of that habit (i gave myself 65 lashes!). Now being a convert and a smart one at that, i've thrown my beliefs over the cliff and dropped them.... so what meets me...first project after that needs a bit of clean up..i get hungarian notation all over the place!!!!!!!! spewing!!..anyways - we're all off the habit now, on the road to recovery and generally feeling pretty good about ourselves (except the java programmer who's still not seen the light and converted to .Net).
just on a different (but with a touch of likeness)...something that irks me a little bit more than lame-arse-programmers-that-doesn't-know-shite (can i say shite here??) is project managers who tends to have the "It's an internal project so we wont bother with proper project management, lets run it by the ear and see what happens, eh chaps?"... never had any more time consuming projects than "infernal" projects where the total document scope is based on "do the google-thing" and if you're lucking, you'll find something that might resemble what we're trying to put together though with time it would be really great if you could make it completely re-usable [insert thought of foot processing funny bone here] and commercially viable!
Brian: Of course you can say Arse and Shite. That internal project comment had me rolling. A buddy of mine told me about one he worked with and they were going to bring Payroll inhouse, after all, how hard can it be? So it got squeezed in with everything else. Needless to say their Project Manager sounded like the guy who would be featured in Super Project Manager Magazine or Super Dumba33 Magazine, depending on if other Project Managers or Programmers did the voting. It was such a disaster that employees were threatening to quit. The best part was that the manager insisted everyone be moved to it, except of course him and his superiors. can you imagine the animosity this must have created? I never saw the rule either that just because it's internal means that it doesn't have to follow the rules of nature or good programming, but they must teach you that in PM college somewhere.
Brian: After reading your other post, you officially get a membership to the Casey Sycophant cult. I'm currently the cult leader and it's a pretty cool cult. You have a be a good programmer to get in, but you have to have some humility. If you've ever gotten paid by a stripper that helps too. But the main thing is having a sense of humor, being down to earth and knowing that you don't know everything. I've also given Phil, Skicow and Andy memberships too. If you haven't checked out their stuff yet, click on their links b/c they all kick a33. And of course, so does casey. we are starting a revolution of cool programmers and jihading against all pretentious/know it all incompetent programmers with big egos. It's cool and after reading your post, I've come to the conclusion that so are you!
Hey, you get 1000 cool points plus one month free of no complaining from me about you sitting at your computer all the time. OK, make that two months :-) Luv, daGirlfriend :-)
Ok, the namespace on GotdotNet will be on GotDotnet tomorrow. This is going to be cool. Very open design processes.... just want the stuff to rock.
Allright I'm in. On your descrition you may want to change "properl coding techniques" to "proper coding techniques" just to be all pc. ;)
muther f#ck, that should read: Allright I'm in. On your description you may want to change "properl coding techniques" to "proper coding techniques" just to be all pc. ;)
already signed up...just waiting for the king mullah to accept.... waiting.....waiting.....waiting.....waiting
cheers bill and thanks... now, before i go on typing here i'm fetching a beer (it's 11pm btw!)...ahh..that's better..got myself a Crownie.. first off..checked out the other guy's stuff...damnit! you're right - cool stuff..i especially like the "press release". Pissed myself laughing! onto another moronic semantic brainfart...i got to get a blog set up that's NOT danish! any pointers guys? (sorry to be off topic here, but human nature [read: jealousy and lust] took over)
damnit..didn't see the first resposne from you Bill...SHITE!! what happens...i get thrown onto an internal project today...SharePoint Portal Server 2003 setup + a couple of web parts on the go...documentation...what documentation!?!?!? all i got was a two page sectioned description of what "would be nice to have".. Anyways...things are improving..i've ganged up the rest of the dev team and we've finally gotten things more or less under control (i've been there only 7-8 weeks and already stiring up shite!)..
I'm hopeful that many are welcome in contributing? -J
uhmm..it says "Bill" at the bottom of that post...errrhmmmm...you DO have a girlfriend don't you?
That's Because I was at her computer this weekend and the username stays logged in. I know I probably look like a flamer or overlord of masturbation at this point. The worst part is that she didn't sign it Kim which means that there's no way in hell shel'll sti their quietly whil I"m on my computer. She really needs to fix this.
Yeah right, this guy just happens to push all your buttons in one conversation. This is BS.
programmer's girlfriends, computer etiquette, a cluttered desktop, uninstalls not quite cleaning themselves up and busted systems...i think you might have given me inspiration for my next 3 or 4 posts! although you should see my fiance at the controls...she could have a fucking cray super computer begging for mercy in 5 minutes...of course, she now threatens to start posting to my blog under my name...(can you imagine that?..."cauticPhil goes handbag shopping")
<This whole thing was parody and only half serious. I'm freestyling a little here just b/c it's fun. It's not really as egregious as Im making it out to be> Keep her away from Kim. She'll start with chaning your Normal.dot which she insists won't change anything. Then, after the problem keeps cropping up, she says it shouldn't and doesn't know why it does, maybe it's something wrong with your version of Word. But NOTHING, I MEAN NOTHING, Gets her excited like a Directory Tree with only 10 or 15 directories, a Desktop with only 3 or four icons and a Color Printer full of paper with a new color ink cartridge. I used Mental Telepathy one day to find out what she was thinking .... "Ohhhh my God, only four icons on the desktop, if I don't hurry up and install some lame ass shareware from ZDNet on there God might get mad and inflict his wrath on the world. Oh My God, there are only 20 topmost directories on this 80 gig harddrive, If I don't hurry up an dcopy all my shit from work into a new directory, the world will stop spinning. .... I know I just created a new directory but I can't find it, why don't I just create a new one, what happened to that last directory, maybe I can create another one. Oh shit, all this stuff I copied can't be opened because Bill doesn't have WinZip on his Server. Who in the hell does he think he is? Anyway, there's a bunch of space on it, I'll just delete it afterward. And while I'm add it, I better installl every fucking plugin in the world, and CoffEE CUP. And God help that bastard if I catch him not smililing as I tell him how much better CoffeeCup is than Visual Studio. What's this? Flash MX 2004? How in the world does anyone expect me to do anything with Flash MX? Why does he get to be on the Advisory Board and get perks like this. HE doesn't deserve them, Looks like I'm going to park on this computer today. And if he gets on it while I'm in the shower, I know what to do. I"ll wait around and not tell him that I'm waiting for him. When he offers me his laptop, I'll just tell him "That's Ok, I don't really feel like working now" Then I'll wait 20 minutes, right when he's in the middle of helping someone on the newesgroups and I'll throw a fulll fledged "You don't respect me, you don't think my work is important. You are a selfish dickhead for helping people on the newsgroups when you should have read my mind and new that I wanted to use the new server and not the laptop or the other desktop" And wait a second, all of this shit that I used to do in Office 97 - I can feel a glitch in the Matrix - If I don't do it over in Office XP then the world will implode. I MUST USE XP and I must use it on his machine. I must add directories. I must install utilities that make me more productive - he's a dickhead for calling it spyware - he only says that b/c it's my idea and he can't respect a strong woman. I know he's very polite and respectiful to women, but some angry bitch I work with told me thta some immature guy I work with has a problem working for Strong Women (and I guess weak women like herself). So that must mean that Bill doesn't want me adding directories all over his new server or installing shitware on it because ---- He can't stand the thought of a strong woman." Well, when someone reads this I'm probably going to have a foot so far up my a33 that I won't be able to sit for a while - but it was fun.
please... use... paragraphs..
Justice: Yes, by all means please feel free to join. The more the merrier!
CAUSTICPHIL GOES HANDBAG SHOPPING! I love it! Seriously...this is what I used to do with my (now ex) wife. She gets her own computer. It isn't on the domain. She has no domain account. She has no way to get into my computers or servers. She has no ability to guess the passwords because they are stronger than I even use for my bank account. I treat my current roommate the same way. He doesn't have admin priveleges on his box, and I have the local admin password. I run the network therefore I can be the BOFH. Then again, maybe if I had made the wife a power user on the domain she wouldn't have divorced me...
Mike: Sorry about that, I was actually posting with Mozilla - our stupid Proxy server blocks my blog if I use IE and Mozilla screws up the formatting and rendering of .aspx files.
Not a big deal... lost my place a couple of times :)
OK... so if this is to be a good 'case study' type application for CS students then how about we turn it into a simulation type system. Such that we can use it to simulate all sorts of things to do with a club (olr a group of clubs). E.g. we could use our model to simulate the economics of a club... or the spread of a contagious disease. etc... We could maybe use some agent modelling techniques...
he hehe..now that's a story to connect to.. I've had the same issues earlier in my "career" when i wasn't really earning much and my jobs seemed to be harder on our marriage than on the clients (yes, they too got a bullocking at times).. What happened with me was this: i got a contract job (one of my first ones) with a dubious bloke and he provided me with a 2k server and, at that time rather flashy, 1Ghz AMD..my wife had a 233Mhz Gateway laptop which she loved...after a couple of months she still hadn't used my stuff (or rather my bosses stuff) but that changed when the powersupply cooked the motherboard in the laptop..then it was sharing time...suddenly the machines i used for work was "hers" as well...no matter, i gave her access to the desktop but none to the server..she eventually noticed that i did an awful lot of stuff on the server and wanted to play along...i restricted her access via group policies and hell broke loose (same as you lucky man!)...i eventually quit the job, got rid of the two machines and went back onto my 400mhz trusty AMD (which i'm still using today, sad really)...we got her laptop fixed and she used that for a while...then it broke again...and voila...back onto my machine...but now, at this stage i'd been doing .net for a while and my best defence was always that she couldn't touch anything because it might break some of the .net stuff (which of course it couldn't but it sounded plausible at the time when i broke the news to her).. happily enough, this ended with her accepting a guest account and are now only using it for email, a little surfing and banking)...i've even added a port blocker which has to be disabled before you can dial up..and the dial up can only be run through the administrators account and then shared when logging off... guess i'm the lucky twat here with a wife who doesn't really want to know what my job entails!
Don't forget gaming consoles. Nothing like not being able to finish GTA Vice City because a strong woman has taken over the console to play Crash Bandicoot.
[Scott] again i'm the lucky one...i got my XBox and the mrs doesn't really play games..she actually enjoys watching more than playing... QualityWife objWife = new QualityWife(); try { if (objWife.typeOf() == System.Type.Perfect()) { base.HusbandGetsLaid == true; } } catch (UnImaginableException ex) { // do nuffin' }
Chris: Well here's the deal. I finally got my girlfriend to more or less agree to do the documentation in HTML Help, and we're all still in the brainstorming phase. I think the main purpose is to do somehting amusing and funny. In so doing we can create a project that will have the side effect ot teaching .NET in an intriguing way. Once the objects are created we can do all sorts of stuff with it. The idea of simulation is pretty interesting to me. I mean, with a solid framework in play you could easily modify the thing and build it such that some groups are made in a class each one representing one of the parties in the program. THen you could give them a bunch of rules and they are free to build characters within those rules and guidelines. You could employ some simple Game THeory scenarios using Chamgpagne Rooms for instance - a simple modification to something like the Prisoner's dilemma as an example. You could also do use Linear Programming to show optimization... I have $100.00 - what actions would I take to maximize the number of drinks I got and the number of dances etc. The possibilities are endless. However the core task is building the base objects and showing the desingn and analysis part of this. I had a lot of fun in economics and econometrics and I can easily see that you could make a game implementation based no a framework like this. That will be a separate projects(s) but I'm absolutely interested and would love to get working on some of those implementations once we get everything rolling. I'd love to hear any ideas you or anyone else has. Let me know what you're thinking and we can start looking at ways we can build stuff to ultimately accomodate this sort of functionality. Also, we could do some basic probablity with it (If you were a bouncer, what are the chances that everyone you work with will be having PMS on the same day) We also need some female involvement. I mean at present, we're going to have a bunch of Virgin BiSexual Stripper objects with perfect T & A and only love .NET programmers. Then the club will be filled with really good looking studly C# prorgrammers who also have really funny blogs. To this end we probably need some diversity b/c the way things are looking, there are going to be a bunch of Linux and Mac users that the strippers ignore so they can come talk to the C# guys. Anyway some female perspective could be pretty funny and make a great addition. So by all means if you know anyone that wants to participate, let me know.
hey guys..sorry to be off topic here...anybody know of a blog community in english, with .net as main course who's currently taking registrations?? again, sorry to be a mung bean and break your blog but doing the google-thing is proving rather inadequate atm!
Bill -- Ha ha, yep, that was funny. To set the record straight, I figured I'd just describe briefly something I like to call "The Fortress that is Bill's Work Area." Here's the truth about what Bill actually has set up in his apartment. Brace yourself...It isn't pretty: 1. Bill has a configuration of multiple (at least three that I know of) PCs networked together in such a complicated fashion that I don't think the combined talents of all the students at MIT could figure out. To switch between his PCs while working, you have to stand on your head, stick out your tongue, and press Ctrl+Alt+F1+Insert with the right toe of your big foot while farting yankee doodle dandy all at the same time. Not that I would ever try getting on his PC. Noooooo, I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing. 2. Secondly, in some unfortunate round of "I AM A NETWORKING DUDE," Bill set a strong password on his main PC the likes of which not even the pentagon uses. I am not kidding. It's something like this: jdk01?#239d7hrtewuycbeu34125549o...##%@Qs Sure, this is normal behavior.... NOT!!! 3. As a result of several evil little experiments with his PCs, the remants of unfortunate computer parts which did not fare so well surround Bill's work area. Add to that a tangled mess of wires, cords, cables, empty Diet Coke cups, and 5 million paper balls, and you get an idea of what it is like to be in Bill's office. To date, Bill has lost at least three pairs of shoes, four Diet Cokes, a set of keys, a telephone, five notebooks, and a PDA in the tangled mess. It is also reported that several small children entered his office, never to be seen again. 4. Finally, I'd like to mention a certain incident with a Canteena, of which my cat was reportedly the cause. Bill had obtained some sort of metallic Pringles can which supposidly would allow him to sit downstairs by the pool and still be on the Bill Fortress Network. Supposidly this Canteena was sitting all by itself, not in the middle of all the office mess, when my Cat out of the blue decided to kill it. This, at least, was what Bill said. I in fact believe that the something very bad and very evil in fact lives behind Bill's PCs...Somewhere in that mass of wires, a monster must have sprung up and tried to attack my poor cat, which was not doing anything at the time. I'm sure that the Canteena was just a victim in the fray. And that's all I have to say for now. But if I hear anymore about the truth of me and computers, I will have to devulge a few more secrets about Bill... HA!!!!!
Plain and simple. This is what I tell my wife. Here are the 10 simple rules: 1.) If you are using a pc or laptop behind my firewall on my network you will not run under any profile which allows installs of any kind ever. You will be lucky if I allow you a text editor, a browser, bread and water. 2.) I will set your password, you may not change it, you may not write it down, it will change at random. 3.) You want something different then you build your own d@mn pc's and servers like I did and start your own network. You can do whatever you like with that network, but do not call me or ask me for anykind of support. Oh you don't want to do #3? Well then you are stuck with what you are given. 4.) If you want something installed then ask because if the machine detects any kind of install under your promission level it will shut down and keep shutting down everytime you log in until I reset the security service. This will suck if I'm at work because you won't be able to use anything until I get home. 5.) If it is freeware or shareware the answer is no anyway. 6.) I don't play games, I can't stand computer games of any kind they are the most horrendus waste of graphics development ever. If you want to play a game go to someone elses house and play. It is an even draw between them and slashdot as to which is a greater waste of life. 7.) There is never any noise on my machines. If you leave the volume on I will chew your ass out like a drill instructor until you cry. I work in silence, don't f#ck with that. 8.) Periodically things in the house may start doing things on their own, do not freak out and hit them. Chances are I'm testing something and I will be very mad if you smack it and ruin my latest experiment. 9.) If I need wires, solder, or components of anykind anything is fair game for salvage. Do not complain I pulled apart your "InsertDeviceHere". If I never pulled anything apart do you think you would have ever gotten your toaster which plays "Winnie The Pooh" when the toast pops up? Don't worry if it was important I'll get you a new one. 10.) If I am in front of my machines or working in my shop do not bother me. I do not know when I'll be done. Go do something domestic and be happy because if you bug me again I'll sic the dog on you.
Everyone, please note that both my mother and Girlfriend are notorious for lying about things that comes to me and technology. So let me set the stories straight. Lie 1: "To switch between PCs..." --Ok, what she's referring to is called a KVM Switch. They are pretty common in most parts of the world other than backwoods SC. Simple technology like a KVM is very rare up 'thatttawayz' because they spend all of their resources on other high tech goodies like WWJD shoelaces. Anyway, all you need to do it press the "Home" button twice, and then either the Up or Down Arrow. Or you could do it the hard way and hit the 'switch' button on the KVM. I know that all that crap like if God wanted you to use two computers simultaneously he wouldn't give you gay people to wrongly persecute (I'm not sure exactly what their opposition would be to KVM Switches back in Spartanburg, Maybe Harry Potter uses one - but they are against virtually everything but the King James Bible and What Would Jesus Do Bling Bling so i'm sure they're against KVM''s) but you need to have multiple computers in your house. As far as diet coke and paper balls. I am probably the most obsessive/compulsive ADHD person in the world. Rolling paper balls and drinking diet coke is one of my favorite things to do as I set around at the computer. It's nothing for me to roll about 1000 paper balls a night. It drives everyone nuts but i find it realising it. It's also true that I have a ton of wires, USB Devices, books and stuff like that in my living room - and best of all, NO CAT. I have a Cuckoo Clock in my living room and the cuckoo comes out every hour and tells me things. I also have some stuffed animual cuckooz in my house that often take over my mind and make me do things. "Bill, listen to us, you can not resist. Visit Club Jenna right now. Bill build a Kat a Polt and see if you can fling Kim's kat across the highway. Bill, go buy that new Tablet PC. Bill, Phil Hendrie is now on XM 152, turn him on now. Excercise is for losers, go eat some Lortabs and drink diet cokes. Let's call up Jenna and Janine. It's terrible to have those birds living in my house with me, but what can I do? Lie 2: "in some unfortunate round of "I am a networking dude". --I have never been through this phase. Me and handy man stuff just don't mix. If I ever tried to get the A+ certification, all I would do is succeed at causing some serious electrical fires. My networking skills are quite strong, but that's only because they consist of calling my Friend Adam. Yes, there is no networking problem I can't solve, as long as Adam is in the neighborhood. Now, you may be aware of the perennial ego battle between programmers and networking folks. You may also be aware that I have natural talent at talking trash and infuriating people. So I've provided my company's network administration the perfect opportunity to push Group Policy to it's limits - Yes, in our corporate network, I have my very own OU. Actually, it would be better described as a FU b/c that's what it feels like every time I log on. First it welcomes me as "Lil Willie" Then as it's applying my settings, the Audio file of a dude squeezing out a nice hard dump plays. I have a minimum 16 character password that needs changed every 30 days (for a while he made me change it every two days until I grovelled and promised to never disrespect his Domain Controller again). As such, I got really good at creating and whipping up strong passwords. So I actually applied a similar policy at home, just so I could get useed to it at work. My last password (that Kim's referring to was) JkDF99MP**sw0a!!(=+)Uzs . So kim decided she was going to be slick and memorize it by looking over my shoulder, hoping I wouldn't notice. Didn't end up workign that well. It's organized enough that I can find everythign quickly but i can always pretend that I forgot where I placed something when I need it.. "Gee honey, I don't know where those tickets to the Waiting to Exhale Film Festival are. I really did buy them, I just can't find them. Maybe one of the cuckooz took it." Lie 4 "Finally, I'd like to mention the cantenna". Ok, here's the deal. She decided that my life woudl somehow be better with her stupid cat in it. It's the worst cat I've ever met. And I'm not alone. Someone (smart) tossed it out at the county dump where it belonged. Some idiot she works with found it and decided that it needed a home. Well, she decided it needed a home with someone else. So just like an Amway salesman, she tried to find some sucker to pawn it off on. In comes Kim. So kim asks me to take care of it for a week. One week turned to three months. Only after I told her stories of the medical experiments I was conducting on it did she decide to take it back. "Yes dear, Kitty is fine. I put her in the microwave for 15 whole minutes and she was fine. Yes dear, I took Kitty 'Bobbing for Mr Hankey" in the commode today, she loved it. Yes dear, did you know you can swing a kat by it's tail and smack it's head into the wall and it will always land on its feet" So she started to get the hint. Well her cat had EVERY Annoying habit a cat could have... and I'm an animal lover. But I hated this cat with every bone in my body. I used to pray for an hour every morning that God would do something really mean to it for eternity b/c I couldn't think of anything mean enough. Then the Cat crossed the line. It Jumped up on my new Cantenna which i just ordered and only had for two days. She broke the Cantenna's mount, the Pigtail and the piece that the tripod went into So I stuffed the cat into the empty cantenna which was touch. I had to snap a few of its limbs but I finally got it in there. Then I sawed the cantenna in pieces 1/8 at a time. Just when it got fun I woke up. Unfortunately the only thing that was dead was my cantenna. (It's worth mentioning that the cat tried to kill my wireless router about 20 times.. So if you know of any good Cat Exterminators, please let me know, I pay top dollar. http://www.cantenna.com are cool and loving beings and should be treated with respect. In general, cats are too. But this stupid Abby, should be ground in a meet grinder alive, one limb at a time and then brought back to life just so more things can be done to her. She never even apologized for hurting my little Cantenna. So please, help me avenge my Cantenna's honor.
Kim do you hear this? Andy is a REAL MAN and he's totally cool. And from no one, This is how it's going to be. If you want the rules, read Andy's post. So there
William, For the cat. Get a water balloon launcher and put the cat in it. They do land on their feet. Unfortunately shortly afterwards their feet follow the rest of their legs out of the their back as they flatten into the pavement.
Damnit Andy, what's the deal with your RSS feed? Oh yeah, and hell yeah about the network rules. Bill man, throw down on Kim. You gotta protect your network bro. I mean...what happens if she somehow stumbles on the .NET for Strippers code repository and starts adding weird methods like ClubPatronBase.RespectsTheLadies()? ;-)
Scott, I'm not sure. So far hurricane portal really sucks for me. It periodically just stops formatting code and links, the RSS dies, etc. I have to call B.C. where the server is and have them reboot it. This usually solves the issue. It has been nothing but problems from day one. But the blog space was free a friend wanted me to move my blog from the Apache server it was on running php and give aspx with the Hurricane portal a try. So far to date I give it an F-. I had zero trouble on the Unix server of his and nothing but problems on the Windows server. I am going to do one of two things when stuff at work calms down. A.) Get hosting and run a full site with blog too on an Apache or IIS server with php on it because I want to put up a web mapping application that only runs with php or B.) Turn my home server into a web server and register a domain and host my blog locally. Frank thought it would be so cool to try out this new hurricane thing. It's been a pain in my ass ever since.
I was talking about multiple conversations that have occurred over about two years. Let me guess, you are either a Quickstar salesman or one of those hot shot NotePad pros?
Scott: That's an excellent point. Fortunately, she's convinced Visual Studio .NET is evil and that Coffee Cup is the only Web Editor out there. WEll, she likes Dreaweaver too, and I shouldn't bring this up, but one day she started the biggest fight with me b/c I use Visual Studio .NET to edit my HTML with instaed of Dreamweaver.
isn't visual studio .net the only REAL tool out there to use nowadays? i mean, what else is there to use? Dreamweaver is evil....fundamentally as incorrect, both technically and morally, as frontpage.. i don't know how many times i've had to tell my dear web designer x-colleagues that Dreamweaver is useless..hell, default values for pressing enter while in design mode is a paragraph tag with a non-breaking space in it...and it clearly lacks the intelligence NOT to use font tags either. on another note, sounds like your homelife is anything but trivial .. he heh ehehe
Hi Brian: Well the Girlfriend is a great girl, this is just one of those issues we fight over when we're bored - the argument is too stupid for there to be any other reason. She's had a bunch of aholes that she's worked with claim to write all of their code in Notepad - and of course none of them have URL's that anyone can see. Either it was a private Intranet (isn't that always a convenient one) or they can't tell the URL because of noncompetes or some stupid unbelievable stuff. Anyway, she got the idea that using VS.NET for HTML editing was like using Word for it - this was a while ago and she has since seen the light - she's even started using WebMatrix. The thing is that she's damned good at Flash and has natural talent at Graphics. This has always been a roadblock for me b/c I know my way around Action script, but if you don't have some cool graphics, your effects are going to look as lame as the Microsoft Paint that you used to make them. I've been pushing her to ASP.NET for a while and with Web Matrix, it's a start. She'll be using VS.NET before long. She's been told by more than a few Cobol programmers that she couldn't do stuff like ASP because she's not a programmer. I think after a few years of it it wounded her confidence. I've pointed out (since I worked with some of those same clowns) that she can do more with Flash than they can with Assembler or Cobol, and in the end, that means she's a better programmer even if she doesn't work as a programmer. So I think with a little more work we'll have another ASP.NET developer in this world. If you would, please feel free to mention to her that it's not nearly as hard as some would have you believe (and the people that told her this couldn't write VB code, let alone ASP.NET to save their live). I keep encouraging here b/c she'll be good at it and then maybe she'll even be better than me (which won't take much). Then the Dreamweaver battle can finally go away.
Andy: I've got to get a SlingKing - You always have some great ideas!
quote-"none of them have URL's that anyone can see" This is a huge pet peeve of mine with myself. Anytime I want to show anyone my web stuff they have to come in to work with me on a weekend because it all sits behind a firewall. I don't generally even tell people I do web stuff because it's vapor ware to them unless they are close by to where I work. That is my other reason for wanting to get my own stuff set up, along with my blog problems. So I can show people what I can do with web apps. Until then though I just have to bite my tounge everytime I want to say "hey I know a cool way to do X thing on the web". Raaaah I wish work would slow down so I could get my stuff set up.
Andy: that can be a real pain in the butt. You can tell the people I'm referring to b/c the almost always have some big sounding title professionally but can't 'show' you anything. Most of the ones I know have worked with me and have these big stories about what they used to do. I had some trouble before where I work now b/c I was learning web services and couldn't really deploy the practice stuff on our production servers. Our Sysadmin is pretty cool about stuff but he's got to take stuff seriously b/c there's too much too lose if he doesn't. We've had a few people try to hit us and had an incident with Sendmail that could have been pretty bad. But it's hard to test stuff on your local network b/c you can't really simulate what it's like in the 'real' work and you can't test it outside of work if it's behind the firewall. I set up a brinkset account which was pretty cool and they supported ASP.NET. One of the guys I worked with used Stargate before and we host knowdotnet.com on them - it's like $7.99 a month and we have a SQL Server Database plus ASP.NET support which is pretty cool. What kind of stuff are you working on? Have you used any third party tools for the web? I've used Spread and Infragistics, both of which are really cool. Figured if you are doing anything it's probably pretty cool so I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Hi Brian: Have you tried eBlogger or Blogspot? www.blogspot.com .I think .NETJunkies still has some too. If you are active in .NET Development, Derek is still taking people over at www.Devbuzz.com and if you are interested, let me know. We are primarily a CF site but we are expanding to all things .NET so let me know. Cheers, Bill
William, We have a full on intranet behind our firewalls that rivals the regular internet. You have to remember we own most of the telecom lines world wide so our intranet spans the globe. So testing things isn't really the issue it works on our intranet the same as the regular web. My problem is I can't show it to anyone outside work and that is just lame. I do side work and I'd like to show prospective clients what I can do. Saying "well I've done some cool sh!t but it's behind a firewall" cuts zero weight with a client so I really need to be able to show fully deployed web apps so they can just get on the web and see my work when I send them a link to it. Most everything I have ever done for the web minus one app has been for mapping and spatial asset managment. A lot of dispatch apps where the dispatcher is talking to someone in the field be it a law enforcement officer or a utility worker and is dispatching them to a location based on earth coordinates. One of the coolest ones I've ever seen I only helped on, I didn't write much of it just the aerial photo stuff. What it does is when doing crime analysis it pulls up the aerial photos as you progress across the face of the map. Like I said though the main logic and such for that somebody else did. I only did the part that rectifies, indexes, and brings up the correct photos for that area. It was for the Suffolk county sherrif's dept (Long Island). GIS mapping apps is what I do primarily and I can show people samples of my rich client apps but I really need to be able to show them the web ones too. The one I'm doing right now maps utility assets like poles, signal direction, power generators, telecom lines, customer locations etc. for 11 counties in North Western Oregon. It has to run on Linux, Unix and Windows and it's a mother but it will be very cool when I'm all done. I have about five months left to go. I already wrote the piece that pulls all the info out of their CAD drawings, reprojects it to a better coordinate system for spatial managment and into a GIS format once a week. They have two apps one rich client that goes into the fields with the techs on their laptops and radio phones that uses the data. I am done with that app too. It's in the field being tested now. I have about two weeks before we sign off on it for production use. The web based side for the dispatchers and customer reps is the last and hardest piece. The whole kit and kaboodle was writen from scratch it relies on zero third party tools. So that is why I'm so busy but as soon as I'm done I'm going to take the web templates for the mapping system and put them up on my web site to be with a bunch of data in it so folks can play with it and get a feel for what I can do. The only other web stuff besides mapping apps I ever did was a tiny thing that formats a page of links out of a directory of drawing files for companies that have a lot of CAD so they don't have to manually link the drawing files. It can viewed here: http://www.afralisp.com/lisp/html5.htm Don't laugh to hard. Yes, I actually can write in Lisp. The application they rn that out of has a built in Lisp interpreture so I wrote it in Lisp so they wouldn't have to buy anything they can just run it when they are done drafting.
Bill: I've yet to read any books from AW but by the sounds of it their at the top of the hierachy. The only thing i wouldn't/couldn't touch would be CF - a platform i absolute hate..after being forced to touch it at my previous workplace it felt like going a step back...just like doing vbscript when C# was available. But i'll certainly look out for their range of .Net related books. thanks for the heads up!
Hey Brian: You have me really intrigued about the CF - What don't you like about it? I know it can be a pain but I haven't come across anyone with that strong of an opinion about it. It has a long way to go though, no doubt about it and it's weird b/c in some areas like System.Data, it's almost identical to the full framework, but in other regards, you have to P/Invoke everything or build it yourself. While we're on the subject of books though, what are some of your favorite .NET titles? Phil posted some of his and I have to agree with his suggestions. Nowadays there are quite a few excellent .NET books, it's hard to keep track of all of the good ones.
bill: aw happens to be my publisher of choice as well. however, i think they have published much better books on patterns than the one your talking about. i was real anxious to pick up CT's book when it was first published, and when i received it i was real disappointed. if i remember correctly, there is some intro stuff that could've been taken out, along with some basic web services stuff too. i thought it was more of a tutorial for cetain aspects of .net development than a patterns book (for example...the 1st chapter on exception handling was more like a tutorial on basic exception handling and setting them up properly, the "Notifying Thread Manager" pattern reads more like "how to execute asynchronous operations in winforms clients", and then there is a whole section devoted to persistance which reads like "how to build a O/R mapper." i didn't think it was a bad book, i just didn't think it was a good patterns book. f your still learning or want to review basic patterns (things like observer, bridge, decorator, facade, composite, etc...) there is always the classic GoF (Design Patterns) book. Just recently Steve Metzger released a C# version of that classic which is called "Design Patterns in C#" i've picked it up and it looks good, but i haven't gone through it yet. also covering the patterns in the GoF book as well is shalloway and trott's "Design Patterns Explained" (also published aw). this book takes a much more conceptual approach to get the reader thinking in terms of a "pattern mindset", it's also a little bit more abstract, but it will definitely get your mind focused on the right issues and concepts when dealing with patterns. in addition to the books above that cover the "classic" design patterns, there is also the "Pattern Oriented Software Architecture" (otherwise known as POSA) series of books. i think they have 3 volumes out now. these books cover more advanced patterns and go beyond the patterns introduced in the preceding books. the 1st covers more patterns along the lines of the original GoF book, but covers much more ground (like the double dispatch pattern) while the second volume covers patterns that are geared towards concurrent and distributed environment (proxies, messages, etc...). i really ike this series. of course there are also the martin fowler books. his books tend to be a little more abstract than the usual pattern books. "Analysis Patterns" covers recurring themes that appear in different business domains rather than by software architecture. it's a little dated, put it's still excellent. there is also IMHO the seminal "Patterns of Enterprise Design", which everybody developer should read. the knowledge in this book covers all aspects of software architecture (persistance, transactions, laying, etc....) that everybody should at least have some kind of working knowledge of. i really couldn't recommend this book enough. these last 2 books are not about patterns per se, but the cover how patterns are integrated in domain models, and how objects collaborate together in the "bigger picture." the 1st would be wirfs-brock's "Object Design." this book looks at how object's are derived from a domain by roles and responsibilites. it also goes into great detail about object discovery, design, and collaboration. it's definitely one of the better books on OO design and analysis. there is also information on how patterns fit into the above activities. the last book would be evan's "Domain Driven Design." like the fowler book above, i think this book is just one of the best. it takes all of the above topics (patterns, objects, domain modelling), and ties them all together better than any other book at there period. it will make anybody a better software designer just for reading it. i don't think there has been a better book written on software architecture yet. of course i could be wrong, these are just my own opinions!
Hey Bill: My dislike of CF is rooted in my genes i think...starting with the typical "first impression" which was Spectra (probably not a good start though as it more or less flunked)... anyways..to start with, i think the language in itself "feels" antiquated..i'm not comfortable with the "tag" like structure/syntax (only place seen successfully implemented is (X)HTML/XSL/XML IMHO)...also coupled with an outrageous resource hog of a (so-called) server, it just ticks me off - not to mention a purdey pricetag.. i'm probably just a bigotted ignorant hick in this regard (now mind you, i'm by no means a CF guru for obvious reasons) so my first impression is probably going to last.. unfortunately....
arggff...before i forget...i'm also very much prejudiced against Macromedia in general and as Cf is now a Macromedia product i stay away from it.. i'm basically a strict MS fanatic and try not to wander too far from the path of the righteous! If i could afford it i would buy everything under the sun that they release...but alas, the moon isn't made of cheese and i don't have an unlimited supply of cash around.
erhmm..isn't there an oxymoron in there somewhere... i mean... CF...Brilliant...?? heh ehehe..couldn't help myself... LOL
Brian: I know this is a dumb question, but I saw a reference to cold fusion as well. With the CF, are you referring to the CF or cold fusion? At first I thought it was the CF you were referring to but then I thought maybe it's Cold Fusion. I haven't used Cold Fusion so I can't comment on it but obviously I'm a bit biased about the CF and it's basically the child I never had. (Actually, ADO.NET is the child I always wanted but never had, and the CF is his/her cute little brother). Kim - if you are reading this, please note that the whole Kid thing is just a metaphor -- please don't get any ideas ;-)
Hi Brian: Well, I have to admit that I also have a sort of a bias toward Macromedia b/c I'm on their Advisory board. Flash and Breeze are the only products I'm very familiar with though and I know cold fusion was originally an Allaire product. As far as DB's go, I was bred an Oracle snob, and probably on the really obnoxious fringe. I had some trainging with SQL Server 2000 and i learned under a MS SQL Server MVP (Wayne Synder at Ikon) and he was just amazing. Being that he could do everything I threw at him regarding Oracle without breaking a sweat, he convinced me that SQL Server is a first rate product and that the SQL Server team did a great job on it. If still think Oracle is probably a bettter choice if you are talking about HUGE rollouts over like 50 locations and that it's a better tool for OLAP, but I'm starting to rethink that position. However, for in house apps and most applications that I'd ever encounter, SQL Server has all the power you need and it's much more fun to work with and administer. If SQL Server was a Porn Start it'd definitely be a Vivid Girl and I'd probaby make her Jenna Jameson or Terra Patrick. Oracle would be someone still really hot but more 'rode hard and put up wet' like Ginger Lynn or Jewel DNyle. Then again, I've obviously went wayy off on a tagent ;-) Sorry about that.
Phil: Wow, many things I'd like to comment on. I haven't gotten through the whole book I mentioned but I REALLY appreciate your suggestion. I tried reading the original GOF book and I could just never stay focused with it. I think if I saw some more examples as I was reading it it woudl have kicked in but I had a lot of trouble with it. I have the Metsker book coming already but it's good to hear that you liked it. I have the C# Design Patterns by Cooper, but I found a lot of glaring technical mistakes in there, some of which are unforgiveable. When I see something in a book that's wrong, I go with the assumption that I'm missing something at first. You really have to b/c otherwise you'll chalk everythign you don't get up to a typo. But I've found a few things there that I've confirmed with other people - but not like I needed to, some things are just absolutely wrong. That happens though and I liked the book over all. As far as Fowler goes, I have yet to read a line of his work that I didn't think was brilliant. I got his refactoring book a while ago and it just plain Kicks ass. The guy can really write and he gives you a very good why behind every should. I love the guy's work. As soon as I'm done replying i'm going to go through your list and head over to the book store. I wasn't a CS major and although I went back and took a bunch of CS courses after I got my MS, my concentration was in RDBMS theory so I missed out on a lot of stuff like Patterns. Not that I have any regrets, but I just want to get up to speed on them b/c I'm a LOT stronger on dealing with Data than I am on design. Fortunately I acknowledge that I don't know everything about OOP which makes me a lot better at it than many people I've worked with - nothing worse than someone who's in LOVE with every object they ever designed (although I DB design suffers from the same malady - way too many DB guys fall in love with their table designs no matter what - and that's a terrible trait to have). Thanks for the recommendations, and while there are a bunch, I dont' ask people for suggestions unless I intend on following up on them. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do but I think I'm finally starting to 'get it' as far as patterns go (with both Refactoring and Patterns I realize that a lot of what I thought were 'good habits' already encompass much of this, it's just now it has a name and obviously now there's a lot more of it). Thanks again, Bill
bill: a few things... 1. tera patrick forever 2. i would definitely agree...most of refactoring and patterns translates into just good common sense 3. never having the benfit of graduating from college (and for the little time i was in school it was for music) i've really had the benefit of learning all this shit the hard way (which means really good mentors bludgeoning m to death ceaselessly and relentlessly on the job with this shit). i can't tell you how many times in my career i was reduced to a quivering mass of tears for "not getting it." 4. the cooper book is probably the biggest piece of shit ever written (just burn the fucker). 5. tera patrick forever 6. tera patrick forever
Tera is the BOMB, no doubt about it. And the cool thing is that the last time I looked, she didn't trash herself all up with Tattoos. Janine has really diminished an otherwise first rate package with tattoos on every part of her body including her neck. Jenna's Heart Breaker on her a33 was still pretty damned hot, but since everyone has tattoos these days, the only way to be a non-comformist is to not have one. Tera has definitely done it right - I might have to go grab some of her stuff for my Personal Media Center. As far as 3... It's weird b/c most of the time i worked with people that didn't get it either but thought they did. So I was buried in books and magazines and that really helped. The more you read and the more code you look at, the more abstract concepts that you may not have learned start to come together. THere's no training like work related stress ;-) As far as refactoring - it's really interesting b/c it really does just come down to the culmination of all of the design rules you've learned over time. But it's an ongoing practice - you've got to refactor relentlessly sa the extreme Programming crowd always says. Phil Hendrie is on right now and has me about to fall out of my chair. Damn he's funny -- http://www.philhendrieshow.com/
i sense a lack of knowledge here...been reading up a little bit on refractoring and also following some of the newsgroups i subscribe to and the term pops up frequently. now, mind you, i'm by any means a techhead in english (should probably just point out that i'm originally danish and have only lived in an english speaking country for about 4+ years) so the term in itself doesn't seem to mean shite to me. there's currently a large ongoing discussion going on at aus-dotnet newsgroup but i've kept my ignorance hidden so far... anybody got any links which would enlighten me a bit?
Brian: No worries there, I had heard of it before and unknowingly engaged in it, without knowing what it was. However, I recommend <a href="http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0201485672"> Fowler's Refactoring Book </a>. For a good site, check out <a href="http://www.refactoring.com/"> Refactoring.com</a> or our <a href="http://www.knowdotnet.com"> site</a> . We have a Refactoring Add-in for Visual Studio .NET that supports both C# and VB.NET . It's still work in process but a lot of it is done. Anyway, the short of it is taking existing code and making it better just by restructuring it. one could say it's the culmination of all of the good habits you were supposed to have picked up in school or read in books. But part 1 is fixing your existing code and part 2 is continuing to keep it clean as you go forward. You could refactor for months and write two methods carelessly that could easily need refactored. The end game is making your code clearer, more efficient, tighter and more maintainable. Highly recommend Fowlers stuff. My two articles on knowdotnet broach the subject but I have a long way to go as far as covering the issue there. I think I have a good grip on it, but writing about it and coming up with good examples is a whole different beast. Let me know if you have any questinos.
Bill: hey thanks for the info..took a look at refactoring.com and it's impressive to say the least. also took a quick look at the add-in you guys have made on knowdotnet.com . Tried to find minimum requirements for the install but didn't find any..does it work on VS.Net 2000 or only on 2003 ?
Hey Brian: I think that version is for 1.1 but it's originally built on the 1.0 framework, I'll be glad to send you a copy tomorrow.
Andy, that is some seriously cool shit. I guess that stuff Gene Hackman was saying about the phone companies in Enemy of the State was true? I can't even imagine what all is employed in that GIS stuff. The closest I've seen (and it's totally lame compared to what you're working on) is some GiS stuff that they use at the Savannah River Site. If you saw The Sum of All Fears, that's the place the bomb was supposedly originally made. Some of the channels to the savannah river run along the perimeter and even though it looks like the god damned everglades, it's very secure and if they catch you taking pictures, Armed men from Wackenhut come and say hello to you. mind you that this is in the total wilderness but they have hidden cameras watching all the traffic on the river and stuff. Some guys I know where showing me some GIS software (not the actual images from the site but just the software) and how it's used to track stuff , do dispatches and the like. It sounds like the stuff you are working with is that stuff on steriods, all grown up. That's amazing the whole thing is home grown. Weren't you telling me a while ago that your shop doesn't buy any third party stuff at all, even for other projects? That has to be a pretty serious code base. This http://terraservice.net/webservices.aspx sounds like something you might be interested in playing with although you probably already are hip to it. I know what you mean about the behind the firewall stuff. It sucks b/c every asshole out there that made one page in Frontpage but is a wannbe programmer is running around claiming web master skills. It's the same shit I originally wrote about. Then when you ask them about their links they say "It's not up anymore, it's for clients only or it's behind a firewall." So I know your situation because even though you're telling the truth, that's a warning sign for most folks when they hear that. Unfortunately it's the same thing with being a 'contractor'. It's true for many people and you can easily provide references but lots of folks that can't keep a job (or get one) use Independent contractor to fill in the gaps in work. I had 6 months as a contractor and one HR person told me to just use the company name directly, like I worked for them and then put (Independent Contractor) b/c many people I guess will chuck out your resume if they even see that. Anyway, you should be good to go, you probably just need to start putting stuff up. When we were going to do KnowDotNet we talked about it for like 4 months. Then we finally registered the name and it took another 4 months to 'launch' it. Once we did it magically seemed a lot easier to get stuff up b/c you look at the site and you want content on it. You definitely got your act together though and you're stuff will no doubt be totally kick a33. What are you using now to build your web parts with, rather, are you using ASP.NET yet? I've been trying to learn Flash for a while, but my lack of graphics ability is killing me. ActionScript is so much like C#,Java, C++ etc that it's scarry, there's very little learning curve there - it's just that using the visual tools and getting graphics is a bear. I played with ASP before but ASP.NET is probably the coolest stuff web wise I've come across - although Flash, even being a different technology is quite cool too. I'm trying to get accustomed to ASP.NET 2.0 right now (got a class starting next week) but I'm trying to leanr the whole 2.0 framework so that's a lot to do all at once. You sound like you have the coolest job in the world though - I'm definitely impressed.
yeah, i was stopping at those places for the convenience factor. not many healthy options. along the lines of burger king, sbarro, and cinnabon. have to admit i've tried the mcdonalds salads, and i like them!
Well I just benched 185 on the incline press and am down two pant sizes b/c I got inspired by B & B. Got a long way to go but the last thing I need is you going to prayer vigils at Ice Cream shops and greasy spoon restaurants. Might be good for your soul but bad for my motivation ;-). Listening to that sh1t has to get annoying, my heart goes out to you.
Thanks for the props Bill. I love my job it really challenges me. Wish it paid a little better but if it came down to be bored and making more money or staying and being challenged on a daily basis. I'll pick stay every time.
Andy, I can't wait to show my co-workers your post. Every now and then simple line counting can get tough b/c some places will have stuff that like ignores double spaces or more, counts punctuation but not duplicates, stuff like that. A walk in the part compared to the precision you are dealing with. It's definitely got to keep you on your toes.
Well since you are in the transcription business I have a question maybe you can answer. Do you get into OCR much? I think I have an idea that might be worth doing but I don't know much about OCR and I need to ask somebody who does know quit a bit about it some questions regarding the feasability of my idea. Also maybe somebody has already done my idea and I can just go buy an off the shelf solution. Basically here is the idea. I have a disabled son as you know already. He requires a special diet. There are like 600 possible ingrediants on labels that contain things that might affect him badly should he eat them. I'd like to find an app or code one that uses OCR to scan the label and bounce it off that list and pop up a list of everything on that label that matches any of the 600 bad ingrediants. It would save me tons of time at the grocery store but I know zip about OCR so I don't know how hard or easy this would be to accomplish. Any thoughts or ideas on it?
.NET For Strippers
LLBLGenPro
Hey bill, again, an excellent overview of ADO.NET's plain vanilla datareader object - though on one issue i simply cannot hold back...typed datasets are EASIER to create than nearly anything else..seriously..make the tools work for you...by using VS.Net and the inbuilt DataForm Wizard you can be up and running with typed datasets in less than 5 minutes, and that would include seperation of dataaccess, xsd creation and two-three small methods to fill the dataset.. i wrote (as a virgin article writer, lacking technical flair) a small how-to/article on how to create typed datasets in less time than it takes to have sex....now, mind you - i'm definitely not the suave writers you and phil are so don't go chopping my balls of for this one : http://weblogs.dotnetforum.dk/deprecated/articles/typed_datasets.aspx << my first attempt to convert all heathens to typed datasets...also, it was written a little while ago, before i really got into it...comment if you like or slag the shite out of me for ruining a perfectly stable technology.
Thanks! I just checked out your article, it's great, give yourself some credit!
Bill: thanks for the feedback - i'm a great article writer..he hheeh - hopefully all heathens will see the light one day and notice just how wonderfull easy typed datasets really are to work with.
I'll be satisfied when they notice that you need a constant connection when using a dataReader and that when a DataSet doesn't HasChanges, then calling update isn't going to do anyting.
You evil bastard! Quit telling us how sweet PMC is! Some of us programmers don't get paid the big bucks, or we are married and therefore are income-impared, and can't afford a PMC...and you going on about how ace it is isn't helping! Just kidding...I just have to convince my wife that I *need* a PMC...I was able to trick her into letting me get a nice PPC h2210 (said I needed it for work since I do program in the CF), I was also able to be allowed to get a nice GPS add-on for it too since I do a bit of traveling as well for work..but I think getting her to believe that I need a PMC for work will be a tough sell....ah well, I *need* one of these bloody things no matter what...I wonder if I told her that work gave it to me for free she would believe it? nah, she's too smart for that....in the words of Stewie "Damn you foul woman!"
Actually, It was free and I have to give it back at some point. I just want to keep the links to it coming so that it gets as much exposure as possible. We have a PMC Section over at Devbuzz and have been getting a bit of google props there but have a long way to go. The things so damned easy to use there's not much to write about until they open up that CLR and let me install my programs on it. I'll keep you posted about them though and i f you are interested in them, you ought to post over to the links at Devbuzz and we'll see if we can't get you a loaner.
Cool, Thanks for that little bit on using the column index rather than the column name when using a DataReader...I was using the name to make my code more readable, but now I'll create an enum for each query I have. Could I also use constants to hold the index of the column instead of creating an enum? I only ask because I've got 30+ queries in my app and creating 30+ enums would be a pain...come to think of it, creating 100+ constants would be a bigger pain in the a55! As for the typed DataSets, can those be created with an Oracle database? I'm sure I could but I've not really found any info at Oracle's website (is it me or does their Oracle 9i Lite information suck the big one at MetaLink and OTN?) Can I add my Oracle database to the server explorer in VS.NET even though my database is on another server? I've never tried using typed DataSets, I create the sql statement as a string, add it to the command object, and throw it at the connection object. (yes I use parameters so don't kill me Bill - that's almost a movie)
Limited user accounts are the way to go, period. I use them now on all of the machines I manage except for the few laptops we don't own as a company. I let those users get the wonderful priveledge of having spyware all over their machine or the added bonus of using AOL (which I won't support, ever). If me and my girlfriend lived together I would give her the same account I have, which is restricted. I've turned on some access mostly so that I can do things from my account. The big stuff that needs admin rights are gained by using a the password, a lot like sudo in unix. I won't operate as admin any more on any windows computer especially since I won't operate as root on any of the linux boxes I support. You restricting access is not really just for you to be a hard ass. It's for your protection as well as your woman's. I have somewhat of the same mentality where I create a lot of directories and have certain mentality structures in my work. I have tons of duplicate files and use programs to try to weed those down and I've finally gotten to a decent level. I've stopped rethinking things and started using things I have as a base for anything new. Rather than create 15 new directories, I'll go look at old ones to see my mental logic. I'll duplicate or change what's needed so that rather than reinvent the wheel I only change it slightly to suit my needs. There's one thing to mention about uninstallers. Uninstallers are only as intelligent as the programmers who made it. Most uninstallers ONLY keep track of what they installed. So say your program creates registry entries that your installer HAS NO CLUE ABOUT. Guess what? Your uninstaller won't remove them. The only way it'll get removed is if you create subkeys and your installer knows to remove say Blah\ which will remove Blah\Settings (Settings created by your program). Most programmers are oblivious to the way un/installers work so there's almost ALWAYS stale information in the registry. I hate this with a passion. Plus it's like even if you were to find EVERY SINGLE stale entry your registry is still going to be slow as dirt. It's as if you're fine if you put nothing on, but the second you install and uninstall something you lost 5% of your speed for the life of the OS until you reformat and start over. At least I don't deal with this in linux, even though I do have to find every damn file known to man if you're even lucky enough to have an uninstall.sh. Good post, just don't be too hard on the lady. It's the way she's worked and it's severely hard to retrain those bad habits. I have many of the same bad habits and I'm trying to develop a decent working style. It's come down to me making a program that'll help me most likely, though I have no free time because I'm spinning my wheels using these bunk habits. It's pathetic but at least I make money, strangely enough.
Skicow: You can definitely use Typed Datasets with Oracle - or no database at all for that matter. They exist in System.Data .. so they are independent of any implementation. DataReaders on the other hand, inherit from IDataReader and are implemented through the respective client provider libraries. You can (should be able to anyway) add your Oracle db through VS.NET, if you have any problems, let me know and I'll walk you through it. Under your scenario above, using GetOrdinal may make more sense, but if you can, opt for Stored Procs too - that will make part of it easier. If you don't change your column names very often, you won't have any issues. I've found that you will change aliases (which will break named references) more than you change positions so the enum method can be the most robust depending on the circumstances. P.S. I'm glad I got the reputation for screamign about Parameters. It's probably ok not to use them here and there, but as soon as you say that, every VB6 programmer out there decides that he wants to write his new ASP.NEt app the 'old way he used to do things" and use dynamic sql and Access - and then complain when everything breaks. Glad to hear your using Params ;-)
I've not seen the most important aspect of the Stripper: cocaine if(lapDance.IsFinished = true) { stripper.DoLine(2); if(stripper.LinesDone = 10) { stripper.GoToHospital } } You also have to put in those rare instances when if you give 'extra' money you get 'extra' 'service'. Or also those other rare instances when you don't have to pay, a stripper takes a break, takes you to her car and bangs your brains out.
i like vaugn too... i'm definitely not a ADO.NET guru or anything like that, and as for my own personal preference i just use the indexer. however, i'm surprised that code maintenance hasn't been mentioned. we know that the using the column names certainly makes the code easier to read, but another strong factor it has in it's favor is when you need to add or remove a field to your stored proc, sql statement, etc... when this happens all you indexers are moved, and you've now more or less broke your app. you'll need to go back and touch all the code that uses the indexers. if it's a large app, that can be a real pain in the ass and a maintenance nightmare. generally most of the code doing that shit anyway should be localized into your data access layer or objects, but if your developing against a database that doesn't have it's schema fixed yet, GetOrdinal and column names make sense. after all, once the database has been fixed, you can always just switch over to the indexers if you need to... and we all know what they say about premature optimization...
While you all make some very GOOD points, ones I agree with totally, two things become clear: 1) No magic bullets - what works well in one approach may be a disaster in another 2) Performance isn't everything - we often lose track of this in the fight between maintainability nuts and performance nuts, and I've fallen into both sides. Balance is the solution 3) Phil's reference to premature optimizations is Priceless. They should be done at the end, when everything else is in place. The more you change, the more you change (boy am I smart) and that means a lot more potential problems. But my blood is getting hot after a few NG answers I gave last night, I'm getting really close to shoving a Concatenated Dynamic SQL String (without parameters) up some VB programmer's ass if he keeps posting about problems he's having with it and access. THEY aren't well suited for the web you iditot, get over it. Anyway, great discussion guys.
THanks J. I'm not beign too hard, it's just a goof. She runs the show in the house, I just talk tough. Thanks though ;-)
I agree with Phil and Bill, there is more than one way to skin a cat (am I going to get in trouble with the SPCA for saying that?) but there is definately more wrong ways to do something then right ways. And that's why it's good for me to listen and learn from all you guys. I've only been programming in VB.NET for about 6 months, and before that it was about 6 months of eVB, and before that about 5 years of PL/SQL. Sure I took OOP in school, but the difference between school knowledge and real world knowledge is insane...I was doing what Bill is getting pissed about in his previous comment of this post a few months ago, 'Concatenated Dynamic SQL String (without parameters)', left over from my eVB days, but now I'm using StringBuilder and Parameters, and my queries have sped up about 50% in my PPC 2003 app. Thanks for the offer of help with getting my Oracle db into VS Bill, I'll try it out myself and if I can't get it I'll give you a yell.
yeah GMail is cool...1GB of space...lol...think of all the spam you can get there without having to delete it!! he hehehe.. i got invited a couple of days ago as well..all set up too
Skicow: As Mr. Caustic pointed out you can use typed datasets with anything..typed datasets gets their schemas from XSD files (XML schemas) so as long as you fill it accordingly you can put any source to it. The .Net framework uses XML as an underlying structure/data container for most of it's work...that's what makes it such a beauty to work with. i even managed to run it against MySQL (ok, shame on me, but it's a work hazard as we do use it at work!!!)..
Bill: finally got set up...dotnetjunkies seemed a good place..thanks for the tips guys. and you know my beliefs on CF..i stay away from it...but thanks for the offer anyways
Yah, I'm loving it.
YW bill. Sure enough the space is nice, although the one thing I would want to use all that gig for, sending and receiveing large attachments, doesn't seem to be working...
Bill & Co... for your info.. http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express << Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition...beta though, but nice concept!.. Now, to simplify my life and install ASP.Net 2.0...perfect!
Hmm - if you ever get any invites to share I'm gmailess..... :)
That's pretty funny! Here's what mine says: You come to grips more frequently and thoroughly with yourself and your environment than do most people. You detest superficiality; you'd rather be alone than have to suffer through small talk. But your relationships with your friends are very strong, which gives you the inner tranquility and harmony that you require. You do not mind being alone for extended periods of time; you rarely become bored. I could be wrong but I think it's saying that I would rather play with myself than be around other people! ..'come to grips...with yourself...', '...rather be alone...', '....rarely become bored.' It's quite true for me though (not the playing with myself thing, but the over all gist of it)...cool!
Yahoo has made their free email a little better to combat the GMail thing. They have 100 MB of storage space, and allow attachments of upto 10 MB per email now. Not as good as GMail but I've had a Yahoo account for over 5 years and it always sucks to switch your address...and I find that Yahoo is the BEST free email account for SPAM, I haven't got one piece of SPAM since I've had my account. I will give GMail a try when it comes out! it looks sweet and if the SPAM is low I'm probably going to switch!
Skicow: Yes, the new Yahoo is great. Hotmail needs to follow suit. It's a shame that they took this long. I'm still getting spammed to death on Yahoo, but then again, now that they gave us more space it doesn't fill my mailbox. So far the GMAIL looks extremely cool. It's amazing but they are going to have to recoup the cost somehow, so hopefully the advertising will work for them. i can easily see getting hooked on it.
ROFLMAO
whoohoooo....what can i say...it's still downloading!! he hehe... 174mb gone (total of 219mb throughput just to get that)...gotta love peasant dial up!
thanks Bill...downloading it tomorrow at the office..haven't had a chance to really beat the other version up since i've been doing CP for the last three days... finally completed it today...arggfff
that's CR not CP...lol..sorry
if any invites come along just send me an email and i'll put you on my list of "recipients"..csharpdotnet@iinet.net.au..cheers
here's mine: You demand a free and unattached life for yourself that allows you to determine your own course. You have an artistic bent in your work or leisure activities. Your urge for freedom sometimes causes you to do exactly the opposite of what expected of you. Your lifestyle is highly individualistic. You would never blindly imitate what is "in"; on the contrary, you seek to live according to your own ideas and convictions, even if this means swimming against the tide i'm a rebel..my wife agrees....i'm not too sure though but she knows me better than i do....
That's brutal - I think I'd die without broadband - it's hard to remember the old days. What all are you downloading?
Brian: Will do!
Andy, sorry for not getting back earlier, I just saw this. Anyway, we do a little OCR but not much. There are a good many OCR components but I'm not sure which ones have an API. Let me check it out and I'll get back to you. As many as there are there'd have to be some with an API Exposed. The label size might make it a bit tough but it's been getting better and better. I'll be back in touch shortly.
Brian: You never got back to me on the CF issue, is it the CF you hate or Cold fusion?
Cool deal, sounds like you have a lot of excitement there ;-)
Mmmmm....intellisense.... *drool*
Bill: You get SPAMed at your Yahoo account? That's surprising to me...you must use that address when filling out on-line stuff, am I right? I have a 'dead' account at hotmail that I use whenever I'm asked for my email when downloading software or signing up for an account at a forum. Then once a week I go in to the hotmail account and scan what's there are delete about 99% of it.
Thanks Brian!
I agree, APress is great, I've got a few of their books and am looking to buy a few more. I also have a couple of O'Reilly books, but as I said in the comments at Phil's I think that O'Reilly may have turned into a publishing company that pumps out everything they can get their hands on.
I am with SkiCow on the O'Reilly stuff. It used to be really good. Their nutshell books were great. Then came the new stuff. C++ in a Nutshell licks transvestite nuts. How can you have a "comprehensive guide to the C++ language" that doesn't cover virtual destructors? There is a bunch more but I am to exauhsted to type much. Today I had to write everything in pure C not lovely C++ but clunky old, barely better than assembler C. Tommorow looks to be more of the same. Work days have been going from 5:30am to 6:30pm. I would kill to have the time to even read a bad book.
Remember my Mr. Certs story? The bcp API from that story is what you are talking about. I was using it via ODBC in raw C. Apparently they must have wrapped that API for ADO.NET now. Remember how I was saying I can now push 500,000 to 1,000,000 records into the database across the network in around 20 seconds? That is because of that API. I think the bcp API has to be one of the coolest features in Sql Server it's nice to see they wrapped it for .Net now too. I wonder if they fixed the permissions issue. When I was first doing it you had to connect as a datbase owner or it would give you an error saying the bcp API was only available to be run by owner level connections. Can you do it in ADO.NET with permissions less than owner? If you can that means they changed the underlying API and I can reconfigure my connection protocols. I hate having apps that run as owner, to much bad sh!t can happen if you f#ck something up. But then again I can understand the logic behind that setting though. Do you really want somebody pushing a million+ records into your database if they aren't an owner?
Yes, definitely remember that. I think he interviewed here yesterday ;-). I haven't played with the permissions b/c I was doing it at home and just using ADMIN. I'll have to tinker when I get home. It's definitely got the potential to wreak havoc in an idiots hands - no doubt about it - and for that matter - SO DOES ALL OF THE NEW STUFF. Literally, all of it with very few exceptions.. YOu get some SERIOUS new power and a LOT Of rreally cool functionality - but put it in the hands of a dipshit that thinks he can just wing it without understanding how it works, and KABOOM. MARS seems like the best candidate as does notification services but there's plenty more. About the only thing they won't get in trouble with if they use wrong is the BinarySerialization of Datasets ;-)
Andy: My heart goes out to you. I only used C in school, never in the wild. Sounds pretty rough though and I remember debugging and finding errors was a nightmare. I'm with both of you on the publishers. Don't understand why OReilly did this..just didn't make sense b/c they had a very good rep before.
thanks!
Thanks, Bill. It took me a long time to rid myself of techno-lust for this the last time you posted about it. Now you had to bring it up again.
I gave up fighting it. I just started to notice how much techno gadget stuff I have in my place and it's f****ing ridiculous. You know you have a problem when you have 10 USB ports on a machine and you have them all filled up. Then, like a dumb a33, I decided to log in to www.audible.com and spent TOOOOO much time downloading new books onto the PMC. At least I use it to jog with and between it and my iMATE, are the main reasons I've stuck with working out.
Actually I get killed there. I have the exact opposite experience with hotmail. Originall it was the other way around but I set my hotmail to only accept stuff from people I knew. One day I responded to an audiobooks email @yahoo and ever since then it's been a disaster.
Dynamic Sql
WebCastStreams
Best of luck, kick some a33!
i have no doubt you'll do a hell of a job...good luck!
Much thanks to both of you!
Demeter
Angel
PMC
Chen
I just tried to sign up for the .net for strippers workspace and got the following error: The .NET Passport service is currently unavailable at this Web site for one of these reasons: • The site may contain an error or be experiencing a problem that affects the .NET Passport service. • The site may not be an official .NET Passport-participating site. === I will keep trying periodically. There are only so many times in a man's life he will be able to implement "No sex in the champagne room" as a business rule.
Good luck to you Bill! I would have posted this sooner but I've been to sick to even make it to the computer the last two days. Will you make a copy of the broadcast available for download?
Jekke: I guess Passport is having a problem. If you don't mind, try again in the morning and I'll make sure you get authorzied. ChampageRoomSex.None; //sounds like a great enum... Cheers, Bill
Transscope
Thanks Andy. Hope you're feeling better. From what I understand, it will be posted on MSDN with the archived Webcasts and I should have acopy of my own
PPT NAZI
" If you are a developer, and you've told users It can't be done more than once or twice, you are full of shit" Nothing truer ever stated!! 100% Fact!
Fucking geeks or what! I searched for "funny shit" and it came up with this! This isnt funny, it's a loser claiming to be big. >:(
I am currently working with Developer Express' XPO in combination with Code Smith and I have to say that it is an excellent combination :-). I guess I can live without OS for the time being.
It's nice to hear! I think there are a lot more developers of our mindset than the LameA33's - it's just the lamers seem to interact with the rest of the world more, hang out at the water cooler more and all that good stuff. It just gets irritating when people get shocked that I'm a developer and I'm not a total asshole and I actually like doing stuff for them. I have yet to figure out what exactly it is that sucks about writing stuff that people like or making stuff for people that makes their lives easier. Thanks again, Bill
Well, I know a really sharp developer that tipped me off to Code Smith and I ahve to agree - it's great. Same goes for <a href="http://www.devexpress.com/">DevExpress</a> . OS will be cool when they get here, but I think a few folks are still getting used to the whole disconnected model so it's probably best they hold off for a while.
I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately I don't have any control over what your search engine links to and if it pulls up my site, I"m sorry. Did you head over to Phil's stuff though and read it? it's classic!
Good luck Bill, and I will be looking for an archive of your webcast just like Andy, to see what I can learn about ADO.NET from you!
Mmmmmm .... Creative Zen.
Scott, check this out - http://www.samsung.com/DigitAll/GlobalExhibition/Exhibition/ICES2004/ppk/YH999/ppk_YH999_over.htm , it's the Yepp - looks very cool too. Posted a bunch of pics over here http://www.devbuzz.com/content/zinc_adaywithpmc_pg1.asp - I might be able to get you a demo since you're as interested in the things as I am. Drop me a line at Devbuzz (Bill AT Devbuzz DotCom) and I'll talk to you a little more about it.
Wow, Phil's site is wicked!! Thanks for the link Bill, now my many hours in front of the computer have increased! I love reading about all these people who use circumstantial evidence as fact to work through scientific ideas...They need a good bonk on the head! *bonk*
While reading that I came across her link to this excellent article also: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software07072004.asp?frame=true
Damn, Sonny's sure one lucky bird! and a dirty one at that from what he's watching on the Zen Player.
You spotted that huh? Good eye. Figured it was blurred enough so it's still not too over the top.
Thanks for the link - it's definitely a good read. I try not to like him b/c he's anti-Booth babe - but that's just me being juvenile. However no real programmer should ever ever ever do antyhing to reduce booth babage at shows.
Kim, if you read any of this, remember, that's Sonny's stuff on there not mine.