/bill's House O Insomnia : Me

And you thought I just some moron

William — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:37:36 GMT

Many folks north of Miami-Dade county have never heard of El Chupacabra. And if you try tipping them off to it, they laugh at you like your some kind of moron. At least that's what they did when I told them. I've been warning people of the dangers posed by the old Chupa and I typically got responses like "Yah Bill, well, next time I get a pet goat, I'll make really sure that I don't accidentally let it outside at night." Because of how I was often treated, I can truly sympathize with our former vice president who was horribly mistreated for trying to warn the world about ManBearPig . Well, for those of you that laughed at me, thought I was a moron, all of the above, Who is the moron now?

Create a Mobile office with Windows Mobile

William — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:23:20 GMT

With such a compelling title, I figured the article would be quite intriguing.

I've had a lot of phone drama recently, dropping my WM 6.1 Dash and breaking it, leaving the replacement on the roof of my car and driving off, buying another imate but dropping it into a diet coke. So I reverted back to my old beloved Voq. A coworker of mine got in iPhone and hacked it up so it would play relatively nice with T-Mobile. He wanted to get rid of it though so I ended up buying it off of him (I can almost hear Sahil gloating now). Shortly afterward, I received a Samsung i780 as a gift so I've mainly been switching between the two (I still can't get the iPhone to work with my T-Mobile data service which gets frustrating). I mention this b/c while the Dash was a pretty nice phone, it really didn't perform all that well. In fact, it was often frustrating. The 6.1 Flash made it a lot nicer but it still was rather slow compared to an iPhone. I had gotten rid of my original iPhone before I really got a chance to use it b/c at first, i didn't like it. After using it regularly for a while though, I'll admit that its usability is very impressive. Its frozen up on my twice in about a month and a half (with heavy usage) compared to the daily freezes I experienced with the Dash. The comparison isn't completely fair b/c hardware wise, the dash is a lot cheaper. And so I guess I'll just come out and concede that Sahil was right, with respect to consumer features, the iPhone provides a much better experience even when you factor in hardware differences. 6.1 mitigates some of that, but there's still a way to go.

Although the iPhone's screen is quite responsive, I think I still prefer an actual keyboard. Unless I'm extremely careful, I almost always spend more time correcting stuff then I do typing when what I'm working on is more than a sentence. Away from that though, there's the Push with Exchange and Sharepoint integration (which surprisingly, I find myself using quite a bit). B/c I don't have wireless Internet on the iPhone, it might be a bigger deal than it should be but AFAIK, Push/Exchange isn't available on iPhone yet. Another really annoying thing w/ iPhone that makes Windows Mobile more 'business friendly' is copy and paste. I never realized how much I used it until I lost it. And I guess I end up using copy/paste much more when I'm mobile then at work b/c typing is still not much fun but being able to quickly edit Excel sheets and paste stuff from word to Outlook and vice versa is huge. And I don't know if it's a true iPhone limitation again b/c I don't have my gprs, but I don't see any way to do internet sharing - from what I can tell, it's not doable with standard USB or Bluetooth.

As far as development goes, well, I'll give Apple some props for the iPhone SDK and I can't say I've spent more than a grand total of 15 hours trying to build stuff with it, but all else being equal, I still think that if I had to build any sort of critical business application, the compact framework not only makes it an easier trip, but it opens up a lot more doors. I don't want to run my big mouth too loudly b/c some of what appear to be limitations may just be limitations with my familiarity of the SDK, but I'm pretty sure that WCF integration is off the table with the iPhone, as is MapPoint / LiveEarth. Same seems to be the case for connecting w/ Sql Server or Oracle although the local db solution offered by Apple does the job pretty well.

At the end of the day, i can say I've really grown to like the iPhone and well, I already like Windows Mobile, even with some of the performance issues that would drive me nuts at times. But I find myself using them for totally different purposes other than of course, to talk. In the same way that I use my UMPC totally differently from my laptop, I find myself switching between these phones the same way. It'll be interesting to see how things develop b/c there's no doubt Microsoft is going to use Silverlight to greatly enhance user experience w/ Windows Mobile 7 and it's a similarly safe bet that Apple is going to try to make the iPhone better at business applications. For now, I'm just really glad I can swap out a SIM card and use whichever I want b/c having to make a firm choice between one or the other would be a real bummer.

"I don't know" is an answer we should hear more often

William — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:25:01 GMT

We've all heard the adage "It's better to remain silent and be thought of as dumb than to speak and remove all doubt." While this is certainly good advice, I don't think it's entirely correct. Let me digress for a moment...

Tonight, I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping which was the perfect excuse to pick up another computer to use as a Windows Home Server. The sales people were particularly aggressive and every time I just stood there looking at stuff for more than a minute, someone would come by and ask "Can I help you find something?" Each time I said "I'm just looking" , they'd press me. It was honestly like they had a sales quota or contest going on. On three different instances, I had someone try to explain something to me in such clueless imbecilic terms that I doubt anyone would believe if I told them about it. I was 1/2 tempted to turn on my phone's voice recorder and go ask for clarification on a few things I had just been 'taught' just so I'd have proof that I wasn't making up what I heard. And in large part, it seemed to be inspired by one guy. He was the ideally stereotypical computer guy at a big box store. He would walk around and butt into conversations people were having and would then enlighten people with unsolicited advice. This in turn seemed to make the other guys feel compelled to not look stupid, which caused them to play buzzword bingo and talk about things they honestly had absolutely no clue about.

I could only think to myself "Some day, these guys are going to reflect back on their time here and when they realize how much BS they pulled out of their butts, they are going to cringe with shame". In each case, if they had simply answered "I don't know", I would never for a second have thought they were idiots. In each case, I had spent a few hours reading up on the stuff I was looking for and even then I had only a cursory knowledge of the stuff. So if some random guy at a big box retailer didn't have a clue, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least. Instead, I started to think "What a f_______ tool" Not just b/c they were kind of invading on my shopping experience, but b/c they talked with such an air of authority. And I started to think, 99% of the people that come in here are just looking for a good deal on X. They know they want a computer or router or flat screen and want to get one and not get ripped off. Instead, they get these longwinded lectures that invariably makes them feel a little small and in many cases, the guy doing the pontificating is just freestyling. And I started thinking "If you're going to force me to accept your help, can you please just stop insulting my intelligence quite so badly. I mean, being told that Windows Home Server is actually just Windows Vista Ultimate with a few Registry settings changed was bad enough. But when I asked if they had any Windows Media Center extenders and was told "there isn't really any product called a Media Center Extender per se, it's just a generic term used to describe routers that can stream media and then having him point to the router rack and say "All of these are essentially Media Center extenders" - that was too much.

I'll say this, unless you answer "I don't know" to something that you should unquestionably know as part of your job, it's really doubtful anyone will walk away and think you're a moron. Look around the internets and see what people often say about the Geek Squad or FireDogs or whatever. I only found a few examples where people complained that the sales person said "I don't know". But there are zillions of stories about some know-it-all feeding them a ridiculous line of BS. And the point is always "The guy was such an idiot he didn't even realize how utterly stupid what he was telling me was". A few people might be fooled by this routine, but do it enough and you're going to look like a fool in front of most people, and you're not just going to look a little foolish. You're going to look foolish and be thought of as a BS artist - a rep that's really hard to shake once you get pegged with it. In most cases, there's no shame in saying "I don't know" and there's always less shame than trying to play it off when you don't have a clue. If I ran one of those big box stores, honestly, I'd make new employees say "I don't know" 200 times just so they realized they could say it and the world wouldn't come crumbling down. And if done in each case that someone didn't know something, I bet very few people would walk out of my store talking about what idiots I had working for me. (Ok, I wouldn't actually make them say it 200 times, but you get the point).

Business Travel Sucks

William — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:09:32 GMT

I don't remember the details exactly, but at some point in my very early childhood, me and the folks were flying to Pittsburgh for the holidays. I remember pop being really adamant about "flying 1st class so we don't have to put up with all the B__S___". I had already flown a few times with my mom and didn't know the difference but it sounded cool. Until we got on the plane. I remember thinking "This is it?" and wondering what the big deal was. Business travel has been the same sort of anti-climactic event. Except unlike flying first class, business travel actually sucks.

I don't mean when you're 22 and out of college that it sucks. Going places and meeting different people is cool. Until you've done it 20000000 times. Then it sucks. Actually, by the time you hit 4 digits on your travels, business travel will have long been sucking. Jobs involving travel sound cool and important, but seriously, unless you're young and out of school, it sucks.

In case you doubt me, I'm going to explain why in terms I don't think *anyone* can argue with:

1- Airports suck. Going to them sucks. Leaving them sucks. Waiting around for your baggage sucks. Standing in line sucks. Going through security sucks. Airline personnel are largely union which for some reason, makes them hate everyone. Assuming the union doesn't make them bitter, dealing with unappreciative obnoxious a-holes all day does them in every time. Until they make kid|idiot|slow people|complainer free airports, they will continue to suck (trust me, if you're reading this you won't see the day that this will happen)

2- Business travel isn't the same as recreational travel. Unless you don't matter, your home office is going to want you back as soon as possible. So when you leave, you have to come back, quickly. B/c of the travel time, in the 300000 I've been to Seattle, I've only got to hang out with friends about 10 of them. Only twice, and that was when I was self-employed, did I get to go to Portland and hang out with my homie + his lovely better 1/2. You call up friends, say "Hey, I'll be in town" and quickly come to realize unless you can squeeze in lunch or something, chances are you won't get to see them. When you don't, you always look like a douche for not stopping by

3- The only people that drive worse than the people in your city, are those that drive in other cities. Growing up in Miami, it really took a lot to impress me here. Most people had little problem doing 8 lane changes on I-95 and using your turn signal will get you arrested or killed. But you don't sit in traffic all freaking day. In fact, you can't even drive slow in Miami. In Seattle, it's great as long as you don't battle rush hour or get lost downtown. If you do, you'll end up around a bunch of crazed Scientologists, tranvestite prostitutes, drug addicts, vegan homeless kids with laptops and cell phones. It's awful. Pittsburgh, you'll end up going through a tunnel and never seeing daylight until the next day. Boston, well, my good buddy Michael is from Boston so I can't really advocate blowing it up and starting over - but it's not an argument without merit. Minneapolis? Hmmm, I ended up in the hood (scary even by Miami and Atlanta standards) WITH a GPS in the car, got lost every time I tried to get to our office, and got to ride in a taxi with the guy who was voted "Most likely to wage jihad against infidels via his taxi cab". You know it's a bad trip whenever you ask the cabbie "So, you had any famous people in your cab" and he responds "Sure, Keith Ellison and Ibrahim Hooper". "Yah, I was thinking something more along the lines of actors, athletes, models, hot chicks..." and I could just tell by his look and silence that none of those were coversation topics he enjoyed engaging.

More than that though, you have to navigate places you probably haven't been and you're in a hurry. If you do know you're way around, you can't stay anywhere long enough to enjoy it. Ick!

4- Time zones. My family goes to sleep between 9-10:00. I dont' sleep unless it's chemically enhanced by Ambien CR. So getting out of work at 6:00 means it's bed time for the folks at home. 7 makes it late and after that it's getting rude. Well, by the time you get back to your hotel or whatever it's usually too late to call. To make up for it, your loved ones may try to call you first thing in the morning. Which is usually around 4:00 AM

5- Flight delays, cancellations etc are non-billable in most contracts and most companies consider those in the non-billable hour pool meaning you aren't getting much for it. So even in benevolent companies like mine, flight delays get balanced on your free time. I mean, they need me back Monday to be at the client. If my plane is a day late, the client still needs me there. On seasoned engagements, if you can find a way to be billable (usually called VPN + Broadband) than that mitigates it if the client is cool, but the problem still remains.

6- The more you pack the less likely you'll be to get caught without something important. But the more you pack, the more you lug around, the more you have to wait for at Baggage and the more likely something will be broken or damaged. So you'll make tradeoffs and if you're like me, they'll always be the wrong ones.

7- Kids. Ok, if you *have* to fly with your kid, I hereby, just like my Catholic forefathers did, offer you a Indulgence (except mine's free). I'm not talking about the people that fly here and there with their kids. I mean the regular road warriors. And everyone else, all the new age parents with kids with annoying names like "Dakota, Cody, Madison, Taylor" [why are they all lame throwbacks to the wild west or distilled of gender to the point they are completely androgonous?] yes, that's who I'm talking about. I want you to have happy kids. I want your kids to have self-esteem. I really want the best for all of you. But can you do it without your stupid kid yelling and throwing tantrums the whole time right? If not, how about an apology? I know you have to have some pretty powerful sedatives on you, so how about sharing? No, no such luck. Instead, Trevor will kick the back of the seat the whole time b/c of his ADD and mom can't tell him to stop b/c of his self-esteem.

8-Rental Cars - it's hit or miss here. But in the terminals like DFW or San Fran, where you have to drive to another state on a bus before you get to the rental car terminal - yuck.

9- Unhot stewardesses. Ok, the hot comment is childish and infantile but I'm old enough to remember those days. Anyway, they get crapped on. They deal with the world's biggest a-holes at their worst so obviously these people are almost saintly just to be able to make it through a shift. Except the ones that aren't so nice. The ones that are bitter. The ones that - well, like the ones on my flight last night.

10 - Expense reports. REmember to always ask for a receipt. Make sure you got Neat Receipts or you better be orgainzed. Make sure you rush right home and do your reports. Even at places that are fast, the turnaround time is usually at least one pay period. Go racking up 3800k every two weeks like I did, and you can't miss too many of those before people start wondering if you're developing a drug or gambling problem. But you'll forget reciepts. You'll lose them. You'll throw some out by accident. That's when the fun starts.

I'm already funning twice as long as I wanted and I just got started. So trust me on this, Business Travel sucks.

Calling People "Resources" doesn't make you cool

William — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:09:28 GMT

I know I huff and puff about this a lot, but it drives me insane. Recently, in the ADO.NET NG, a recruiter posted the following. As annoying as it is to have recruiters post in public newsgroups, do they have to talk like such tools? Moreover, I understand it's hard to run Spell and Grammar check these days, but if you're trying to recruit people, it might help to at least do a quick coherency check at the end.

Hi,
Please find the requirement below and answer ASAP with updated resume
and contact details....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TPVS Consultant (Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling)

Location: Colorado
Duration: 4 + Months
Rate: Open

********US Citizens only************

We need a very senior and experienced TPVS resource.
This resource would need to travel to Colorado and the engagement is
expected to last till 03/31/08.
TPVS stands for Transportation Planning and Vehicle Scheduling, a
module within the SCM suite of applications.
This is a niche skill set and hard to find.
The resource should preferably have upgrade experience if not
implementation experience in a custom environment would be a close
second qualifying option

Now, if you talk like this anywhere else, you'd sound like a complete tool and in fact, you sound like a complete tool talking like that in the office too. But people seem to forget this. They seem to think that not only don't they sound stupid, but they sound cool.

Let's try some simple substitution to bring home this point

"Honey, can you please call both of our Senior and Experienced Resources and tell them that we'll be spending Christmas in Atlanta this year but will be by their houses on Christmas eve and of course, will have the junior and inexperienced resource with us"

As opposed to "Honey, can you please call both of our parents and tell them that we'll be spending Christmas in Atlanta this year, but will be by their houses on Christmas eve and of course, we will have __________(insert Child's name) with us?"

Sounding stupid is one thing, but sounding really stupid b/c you're trying to sound edgy, hip and cool is another thing altogether. Someone needs to learn how to BullFight

Truer words have not been spoken

William — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:55:13 GMT

Raymond Lewallen posted the following on his Twitter page.

if i get one more vampire bite thingy whatever from facebook, i'm going to kick @CalebJenkins in the nuts! Its seems to have started there. about 8 hours ago from Witty

I know I'm out of the mainstream on this, but having signed up for Facebook a few months ago, I truly don't get it. A lot of times there's stuff I don't like but I can see what the allure is for other people. Facebook isn't one of these though. The little interaction I've had with it was mainly b/c I had no clue what the feature was and just wanted to see what it did. But overall, there's a lot of annoying stuff that doesn't seem to have much value. And unlike MySpace, most Faceboook pages aren't so tacky and laden with piss poor grammar that they provide a good laugh. All the cool kids love facebook so my disdain for it seems to be yet another indication of my unadulterated dorkiness. But a kick square in the nuts from a dork still hurts, so keep that in mind before sending out any more vampire bites.

The internet addiction test

William — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:48:31 GMT

I scored a pretty low 33. I'm surprised, i thought I'd have done worse. However, if they substituted "computer time" with "internet" I don't think I'd have faired quite as well.

Guitar Hero III - Misc comments and a few questions

William — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:54:30 GMT

When I first picked it up, I was really wondering whether or not it would be value added in any way in my life. Like I mentioned before, my TV has virtually no usage on it (until about two weeks ago) and sitting on my couch in front of the TV is not something I felt was missing in my life. GH III has managed to eat up about 45 minutes to an hour each night though. I started on easy and felt like I wimp. Moved up to Medium and got to the point that I could pwn any of the songs on it the first time around (at least in the first three groups). Moved up to hard last night. Since it was Saturday night, I didn't feel bad wasting more than an hour. Literally, I said "this is it, one more game and I'm hanging it up for the night" and I managed to finish - 89% on hit me with your best shot.

Got up this morning and got to where I can finish everything in the first two groups on Hard. Decided to go into Career mode. Moved back to medium for it. Finally got to Battle Tom Morello and got my a55 handed to me repeatedly until I learned to shock him by moving the guitar up. When I get to Atlanta tonight, I'll probably give it a go on hard just b/c I feel like a wuss if I'm not playing there. Winning was cool so far but it was medium so it doesn't really count.

I've found that although it's a waste of time in terms of productivity, it is very effective in terms of clearing the cache. No matter what's on your mind, after a few rounds of intense concentration, you've forgotten about it. To that end, I guess i'm ok with it. If I start spending more time on it or something though, I'll probably revert back to my original curmudgeonly ways.

--- Question though.... I really hate a lot of the songs on there. Poison? Barf. Foghat? Dude, you spilled the bong water. Hit me with your best shot is cool b/c even though it's wussyish, Pat Benetar is cool. The Killers? Uhhh. Barracuda? Bitchin but how many times can you play it? Painted Black - totally rules. So can you pull down other music? I went to the store and EVERYTHING Sucked. Not just sucked but sucked on wheels or at least so it seemed.

Is there a way to get stuff that in the words of Beavis and Butthead, Rules? Metallica (Old), Linkin Park, NIN, Prodigy???????????? or something along those lines? Even if not stuff that awesome, I'd settl,e for way cool, Pink Floyd or anything old school that didn't blow chunks. If so, pretty please, fill me in.

Slight rant - Back in high school, I'll cop to liking a lot of really whack stuff. College was even worse. But never did I go for Poison, or even know anyone that owned Poison cd that I knew of. They just sucked. Stewart might as well have worn a Poison shirt b/c Brett Micheals was no cooler than Kip Winger. Who on Earth made the call to put Poison in GH III? I could sort of see missing the ball and doing it in GH I. But I can only believe that kids of today must think Poison sucks and I know everyone in my day hated them. And that Social Distortion crap, WTF? I honestly never heard that song before GH III and I just feel dirty afterwards, like I've basked in a cesspool of unadulterated suckiness. I can almost hear Butthead saying "Change this or Kill me"

----

So I've found that no matter how bad you suck the first time you play, you can get good quickly. I mean, I went from bombing out in the first section to busting pretty high numbers on Hard in under 2 hours. Sarah was playing with me too last night. She went from never playing to jamming in the 90s on Easy in under an hour and a half. Kim's still not playing but I'm hoping she will soon. However I tried Expert today and just got smoked. After repeated attempts, I wasn't getting better. So I can't say the same for expert but I'm guessing by this time next week, I'll change my tune. I just stubbornly kept going when I was sucking and got better fast so If you're playing now and suck, a little practice will get you there. Not even a lot of practice, just a little.

So if you can help me out with finding some better songs, I'll be indebted in a big way - if I can get any of the above 'cool bands' on there I'd be wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy appreciative.

If Brian Madsen is really a friend, then he'll...............................

William — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:12:00 GMT

Sahil and I have been friends for a long time since then, but to this day, he's yet to give me the Cobra, Turbin and Flute that I've been hitting him up for. Yes, I'm still salty about it.

Well, I just saw this piece on how bad a55 Dingos are. . Well, since Brianis in Australia, if he and Rob Farley are as cool as I think, I'll have a Dingo arriving in the mail by the end of the week.

Fighting the Bull

William — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:15:28 GMT

A few years ago, I read a truly excellent book called Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide . I really liked it b/c I was working at a place with a whole lot of people who were really into talking in business speak and thought they were really cool for doing it. Little by little, they all battled with each other to outdo the other ones. At the same time, they all started to think that talking ambiguously, meaning answering questions by not answering the question was some kind of holy virtue. Meetings were bad enough, but this idiocy makes them unbearable. Because talking in business speak is all about trying to convince people you're smart and hip, it turns into a pissing battle. You only need one of these people in a meeting to really make it so painful it hurts, but G*d help you if you get three or more b/c they will spend the whole time trying to outdo each other. And that's when they aren't battling to be the first to say 'That's a great point" every time a boss says something. They think it makes them sound important and I have yet to find anyone that seriously respects this style of communication. When i read the Bullfighter's Guide, it was really liberating in the same way it's always liberating to find out that not only aren't you alone, that there are many others that agree with you out there.

Purely for therapeutic value, I'd like to describe the phenomenon in a little more detail. The crux of this post is about a tool that's been around for a while and a book that's been around for a while. The book is mentioned above and is an in depth look at the annoying phenomenon known as Business Speak and how to avoid it. There is a Word Add-In that you can use to analyze documents and help you remove Bull as well as let you compute a Bull Index. Better yet, you can create your own lists and add your own words, so this tool can adapt to fight this evil phenomenon.

Here's what it looks like:

You can run the tool (the left hand icon) which works like Word's Spell Checker, or you can compute the Bull Index:

So why is this necessary? Well, because not only do many people think talking in Business Speak is cool, many people now it's stupid and pretentious, yet are uncomfortable saying so out loud b/c it will invariably anger at least a few coworkers. It's a classic case of the Emperor having no clothes. And today, at least in my experience, talking like this is the defacto standard. For example, a few years ago, I was talking with a few of my former coworkers (we all worked for the same Big X Consulting firm where talking like this was mandatory). A competitor of ours actually made Bullfighter. We'd run it on our documents (which were called Deliverables - can you ever imagine talking to your wife or kid and use Deliverable in a sentence? Can you imagine using the term Deliverables ANYWHERE other than work without causing confusion and laughter?) and try to remove all the bull we could find. We'd send it up the chain to the project manager and then to the managing partner, and what we got back was our document, except with Bull words added back in. Just to put it in perspective, this was back in the day when we were still called Resources. Again, imagine telling your wife "Honey, I'm going to be at work pretty late tonight, would you mind running by the school and picking up our resources and making sure our resources get their homework done?) I think the current word is Asset but I hear Resources still lingering around. Is Asset the most up to date one, or is there something newer?

In high school, you have the kids that are teacher's pets. They are the kids who love lecturing you about how 'immature' you are for laughing at potty humor. In a classroom discussion, they always figure out what the teacher's opinion is and spout it out as though it was their long held belief. Then they head off to college. The second week into school when few students know what they really want to do and are busy trying to get drunk and find easy freshman, you often hear these folks at the lunch table or on the sideline of the intramural fields raping people's ears. You hear some poor chap ask them "So what are you majoring in?" and it's all over. They haven't finished a single course or even taken their first test and you hear "Well, I'm going to double major in Poli-Sci and English. You know, 98% of lawyers at the nation's top firms were English majors. So I'm going to go to school on summers and take my LSAT's in my 3rd year. If I score over 190, then I'll be heading off to UVA or Princeton. If I score between 160 and 189, I'll shoot for Penn or Columbia. but i may take the dual MBA/JD program because there are so many MBAs and JDs, that you really need both to distinguish themselves." Then your senior year it turns into "Well, I'm going to work for a few years to get experience and find a company that will pay for my MBA. You know, you can't really get into a MBA program without work experience" They torture their first few sets of coworkers with this nonsense and say really smart sounding things like "You know, the market is going to close up today" every freaking day as though they were the only people in the world that know that the futures markets and market open often indicate the overall mood the traders that day. They start to see that no one likes their ideas and that they offer very little. Then they think "If only I was in management...." At that point, it fully takes over and what you get is a platitude generating Dilbertesque robot that induces vomit on a regular basis.

What happens usually is that someone in your office, usually a younger person on the verge of making management, starts it. These folks spot them and try to copy everything they do. All of a sudden you're in a meeting and they are asked a question and they reply "I'll be glad to take this off-line with you." At that point, you can see the eyes of all the kiss asses and management wannabes light up and you can almost hear them thinking "ooooh, impressive, I need to use that." Two days later, everyone is taking things offline instead of talking to you after the meeting. In another meeting you hear the trendoid say "Well, I have concerns that you may not have the bandwidth..." The same folks mentioned before perk up and take note. Bandwidth, oooh, now that sounds impressive. And then they discover the wonders of ambiguity. Next thing you know everyone is talking about bandwidth and everyone with some pathological agenda is talking about their concerns or telling you that so and so manager has concerns about something {something almost always directly related to their own agenda}. By using concerns, every petty tyrant in empowered to wreak havoc on their coworkers. You see, if you tell people "Well, John said Mr Whoever is pissed off about the network downtime" and John gets called on it, He'll just hide behind the ambiguity "Well, Mr Whoever did have concerns, hugh amounts of downtime is not good for business {all such people also love to slip in completely obvious truisms and state them like it's something profound}, but that's all I was saying. But when they said it in the meetings, they emphasized it in such a way that said "If this isn't fixed, heads are going to roll". The ambiguity is perfect for them because they can get people worked up or hide behind someone else's name and then have complete deniability if they get called out. In short order, they'll start using "We" all the time, so they can take credit if management agrees with their point, but pawn it off on others if management doesn't. This all starts creeping in, just like the business platitudes. These people then start freestyling with each of these techniques:

Bill: "Hey, John, the full database backup didn't run last night nor did the incrementals. I looked into it and the job wasn't enabled. Did someone disable it after you enabled it or did you not enable it before you left?"

John: "Well Bill, we have to do everything possible to take care of customer data. We might be staff here but we are customers at many places and we certainly want our data handled as carefully as possible. It's critical that we leverage each of our core competencies to strategically manage our client's data, even if we're running low on bandwidth or getting pushback about it"

Bill: "Uhh, ok, but I didn't have a chance to look at the error logs, I just want to know if it was left disabled for a reason, or it was an oversight, and if there was a reason, can we re-enable it now, it's been 8 hours since we've had a backup."

John: "Well, we look at our business model as the key to our success and you have to do what's best for the customer and do things that make sense. Right now, I don't have a comfort level with the backup strategy and we may need to have a meeting. I understand you have a concern about it and we totally share your concern. Maybe you could google it and see what comes up and then you can call a meeting and share your findings."

As stupid as this sounds, it's not far from a real conversation I've had and ones I've overheard. I know I'm really long on this rant which is slightly ironic b/c what I'm complaining about is poor communication, but it's because this nonsense is so prevalent that I often wish things were different. the thing is that if you talk to people individually, everyone will tell you they hate this sort of stuff. Depending on the guilt level, you'll typically hear some level of apologetics for their own sins. On the other hand, you just know that there are some people you could never even bring the subject up with, b/c for them, talking like this is absolutely critical to their existence. And if you look deep, you'll find that the more someone talks like this, the less technical skills they have. There are a few exceptions of talented people that speak like this, but the folks with talent are doing it b/c they think it's expected. For the rest, they literally depend on this sort of stuff.

Why do I mention all of this? because I'm going to bet that every single person that reads this works with someone like this. In fact, I bet they work with more than a few people that talk and behave like this, and have worked with many in the past. And these people have driven you nuts. And you've wanted to call Bullsh*t as loudly as possible. At one point, you actually fell for it, thinking that they speak so confidently and sounds so sophisticated that they have to really know what they are talking about. Then you realize that every morning on the ride into work, they hear about the futures markets and that alone is what dictates their daily market predictions. You realize taht without the fancy lingo, they have nothing to offer. And it drives you nuts. If you've felt this and want a good laugh, pull a sample of about 20 of their emails or memos. One day, in a meeting, bring in your notebook and just type in as many phrases as you can without attracting attention. Then run the Bullfighter (yes, it works on everything from Word 97 to 2007) and laugh at the results. Then look at their Bull Index. When you see their pathetic Bull Score, sit back and laugh to yourself knowing they are absolutely full of it as measured by a good objective standard. And run it on your own work just to make sure you never go over to the dark side (the lowest I've scored is a 5.5 and the highest is an 8. I usually score in the 7.0s. The more I use it, the more I 'get it' and hopefully I can improve that.

If you have any really good examples of Business speak (I know I've asked before but figured there are some new good ones based on what I"ve been hearing lately) or memos, Please please please post them or send them to me. I'll keep them confidential unless you tell me it's ok to mention it. For some reason, I find this quite amusing.

I can almost hear Jeff Foxworthy saying...If you write blog posts at 5:00 AM about how much you like running writing analyzers on office memos, you might be a DORK.

Impostors and phonies getting as bad as spammers

William — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 02:44:54 GMT

The community server panel , like all mainstream blog engines, has a feature that allows you to approve comments. You can create word lists to automatically filter comments in an effort to eliminate spam. You can search your comments marked spam and delete them. The major problem though is that the spam feature shows the results in a gridview which provides paging. But there is no 'Delete all Spam comments' or at least, there's not one I know of (if there is, I'd be mighty grateful to hear about it). Each time I've tried to clear out all of my spam comments, they accumulate faster than I can delete them. Since I don't have access to the source tables, I can't just delete all of them at once. Dealing with spam has been one of the most cumbersome aspects of being a blogger.

Until recently that is. In the past few weeks, I've been deluged with comments of a few different sorts but all of which appear to be part of a campaign to cause someone some serious problems. I've had a few comments where people attacked me fairly vigorously, only to find out that they weren't from the people they purported to be from. I've had a ton of comments that were somewhat unrelated to anything being discussed which really laid into people. There were comments, which appear to have been Me, agreeing with the comments being posted. In so doing, some of the people who's names were used contacted me and informed me that they were not the author of the comments, that someone is pretending to be them. Then I was told that the comments were in fact from at least one of the people and that they got cold feet and realized they didn't want to fight the battle they picked.

It got so bad that one person actually wrote me and said essentially that The comments there weren't from me. If I do post comments here, I'll write you an email and confirm that it was really me. If you care about the integrity of your comments, you'll delete them. Then within a few hours I got several emails from the same person, telling me off, calling me all sorts of names and unquestionably trying to provoke a fight. The tone was completely belligerent and 180 degrees away from the earlier email they sent. To put it in perspective, imagine getting some hostile comments from someone you've had some trouble with in the past but who you had pretty much forgotten about and had no problem with currently (and for the record, someone you no longer foster any animus toward and would just prefer to peacefully move on from). Imagine then that they contacted you via email and told you that the comments weren't authentic and were the result of someone pretending to be them. Imagine then that a few hours later, they wrote you back (after you took down the comments in question, essentially complying with their request) telling you off, insulting you, your friends and a few family members. Knowing that the person had suffered a horrific tragedy recently, you just assumed they flipped out and you decided to ignore the latter emails, even though they would otherwise warrant a response. Then you get a few more emails, each getting increasingly provocative. Then a few of the person's friends post comments on your blog getting all over your case (which was the same pattern that has happened before). Then you see a few more comments that are clearly fakes from the same people. I'm not sure what's going on but I suspect it's one of the following:

The person in question never wrote the comments. When they saw them, the tried to clear them up. The person who's attacking them has access to their personal email account and then sends out a few emails trying to provoke a fight.
The person in question wrote some of the comments. When they saw the fakes, they tried to clear it up. Afterward, they regretted extending the pleasantries and decided to make it clear that things are not ok

I have a strong suspicion that it's the former, I just have a feeling. Since my strong guess is that their email account has been breached by someone who clearly doesn't like them, I figured I'd post this. This way they can take the hint , change their password and start keeping an eye on things, without me having to write them an email which would tip the person off. On the other hand, if their email is breached, it's highly likely the person who's breached it is reading this.

Every now and then I start to feel old and long to be back in high school. But then I see crap like this and how lame it is and every bit of nostalgia just dries right up.

Free Silverlight Training

William — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:53:43 GMT

My friend Brian Madsen who owns CSharpZealot has teamed up with InnerWorkings to extend a really slick offer for Free Silverlight Training for CSharpZealot members.

In addition, Shawn Wildermuth has been way ahead of the crowd when it comes to Silverlight and has just created two more Silverlight Videos. His ADO Guy site has an entire Section dedicated to Silverlight and well, Shawn is gifted in many areas but when it comes to teaching, no one does it better.

On a similar note, my company recently sponsored an internal Silverlight contest where our different offices are competing to build the best game written in Silverlight. They put there money where their mouth is so the first place prize is pretty impressive. I've had my nose in the keyboard for the past few weeks trying to help my team win. If you're interested in learning Silverlight, one great place to get started is Here. Microsoft really did the right thing with Orcas (VS 2008) and even provides ready to run (almost anyway) VPC images.

Hopefully when I get some time I can start doing some more in depth Silverlight blogging but let me make a few recommendations.

Use the VPC images for Orcas. The reasons are the same for any other alpha or beta product you'd want to install but outside of isolation and reducing risk, the time factor is huge. Using the VPC images, you can be up and running in under 5 minutes once you have them downloaded. Benefits like this are really hard to quantify but I can tell you personally that at times, getting my environment set up without VPC images was frustrating to say the least.
Although it's often prudent to learn to code things without all the crutches that a powerful IDE provide, creating Silverlight with Intellisense and a designer is probably not a very effective way to start things. Unless you are really familiar with WPF already, the syntax takes a little getting used to and there's a lot of room to mess things up with typos.
In addition to Orcas, make sure you pull down Expression Blend and Design. Blend allows you to create Graphics with XAML. I've already had a few Paint.NET and Photoshop fanatics get all over me for plugging Blend, but I think they are off base. I'm not advocating replacing Photoshop or Paint.NET with Blend. Blend however, allows one to create images with XAML. You in turn can look at the XAML that is generated and use it to help understand and learn XAML. If you did much Office automation, you more than likely 'cheated' in the sense that you just ran a macro and saw the code that was generated and used this as a mechanism to learn VBA and get past sticking points. Blend allows you to do the same thing. Sure, hardcore 'real' developers do everything in Notepad but if you want to get up to speed, using a tool to help you draw the effects you want and then being able to disassemble the XAML that was generated will get you where you want to be a LOT faster.
Pull down each of the items in the Gallery and work through the QuickStarts. These encompass many common kick a55 effects and you can reverse engineer them to see learn how to do quite a bit.
I have some pretty strong opinions on the books out there but even if a book doesn't address Silverlight specifically (most of them however have updated versions which do include Silverlight), you can still learn quite a bit because you are ultimately going to need to really understand WPF and XAML. I really want to gather my thoughts a little better before making any more book recommendations because although all of the WPF books out there are pretty good, some are a lot more helpful than others when it comes to learning Silverlight
Read Shawn Wildermuth's Silverlight posts.

Personally, since I'm not a designer and very challenged when it comes to graphics, I had a pretty rough time at the beginning of my learning curve. Little by little though, I'm getting through it and hopefully I'll have some blogworthy material to post soon. As always, if you have any specific questions, please let me know and I'll be glad to answer what I can.

Passenger's bill of duties

William — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:39:00 GMT

Athough it's been relatively slow in the past few months, I typically have to engage in a good bit of air travel and it seems that many developers/consultants I know are in the same boat.. TSA and similar concerns have made air travel more frustrating over the years, but nothing, nothing compares to some of the obnoxious Pain in the a55e5 that have gotten much worse over the years. So when I read The Passenger's Bill of Duties , I got a real kick out of it. #s 1 & 5 should be passed into law immediately. I think one other one needs added - People who's chairs get kicked repeatedly by bratty kid should be given $10.00 a pop by the brat's parents and People who's kids cry for more than 15 minutes should reimburse everyone disturbed by the kids. None of this will ever happen but it's nice to dream.

Better keep my day job

William — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:44:00 GMT

I got this from Brian's - it's been around a while but always interesting to re-check.

My blog is worth $10,161.72.
How much is your blog worth?

Looks like i better keep my day job...

Any Thoughts?

William — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:22:00 GMT

So I need one of these like I need a hole in the head but I think I want one. Another thing I'm thinking about is going to Wireless N at the house. I just upgraded the stuff at Kim's house to Mimo G - and so far, it seems a lot cooler (if nothing else, the the form factor, as compared to the old Netgear G is a lot cooler).

Just wondering if anyone is using either Wireless N or a the Netgear Skype phone and if so, whether you'd recommend them or not?

Uniden WIN1200 - Windows Live enabled Cordless Phone

William — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 03:39:00 GMT

I got a few new gadgets recently and have been meaning to blog about them b/c all in all, I highly recommend them. The first of these is the Uniden Win 1200 Windows Live Enabled 5800 mhz phone. I'm not a big IM User although recently, Ryan Olshan, Brian Madsen and a few other friends have gotten me into Windows Live Messenger . Although I have been a VOIP fan, using Skype and then getting a more permanent Packet 8 Account , I never really liked sitting at my computer to talk to people. In fact, it's really hard to talk to people when I'm at my computer b/c it's too distracting. So I took a chance and picked up a BlueTooth Cordless phone however I was completely unimpressed. (To be honest, I'm not a big bluetooth fan. I've been through multiple bluetooth headsets and have bluetooth in my car, but I can probably count the number of times I've actually had conversations using the things on one hand). Then I saw the Uniden Win 1200 at in stock at Amazon and decided I had to have one. Well, I highly recommend it. Here's why:

It's very comfortable and user friendly
It holds a charge really well
Pretty nice looking color screen
Can receive notifications of email and chat attempts
I can use VOIP and walk around the house, and I can often get out to the garage before I start experiencing any signal degradation
The integration with Windows and Windows Live Messenger is seamless. Plug in the USB port, answer "Yes" to the "Do you want to use this as a phone?" question and off you go.
As you'd expect, it has your contacts listed as soon as it signs in. So you can IM people (however chatting by typing on the keys is kinda lame), and/or start a phone conversation and a whole lot of other cool IM Features.

Truth is though, that I don't have that many IM buddies so I don't get to use that aspect of it much. I've started using it more and more though. And one really cool thing you can do is bring it with you on the go. There is a http://www.panerabread.com/ for instance, at the bottom of the building across the street from me. They have free wifi and an outside terrace (like most Panera's, it's busy most of the time and they are pretty cool about you hanging out as long as you buy stuff. However if you sit at the terrace, you can pretty much hang out as long as you want. And best of all, they have power outlets out there so if you sit outside, you don't have to jockey for a table with an outlet near it). So you can just bring the phone with you and get calls just like you're at home. Since you're outside, you can talk comfortably without rudely bothering people trying to eat around you (people gabbing on their cell phones at restaurants can be a real annoyance and I certainly don't encourage it).

My other favorite new gadget is the Pleomax . The Pleo comes loaded with the Ceedo (which as I found out recently, can be loaded on most any USB device - if you haven't checked out the Ceedo - give it a look, I can almost assure you you'll like it and you can't beat the price). The Pleo/Ceedo combination has what's known as the Secure Mobile Environment which is just overall cool (the Pleo is powered from a USB port too negating the need to lug around a power chord). You can encrypt your files, run your browser inside of it so that you don't leave bread crumbs on your work machines, run your NNTP or RSS reader off of it, run Office applications in it and install a whole lot more).

Both of these gadgets are priced right around $100.00 and IMHO, well worth every penny. And if you look around on ebay, you can probably find used ones a lot cheaper. So if you use MSN Live Messenger for phone calls, drop me a line some time ;-)

Lunch with Wally

William — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:38:00 GMT

I had the pleasure of eating lunch today with Pat Piccollo, Zach Moore , John Croft and none other than Wally I need more Cowbell McClure. I actually Co-Authored Professional ADO.NET 2.0 with Wally and John but never got to meet John until today. Wally is the creator of the popular ASP.NET , which, like .NET Rocks I've found to be a great reason to use my Zune. He's also co-author of the excellent Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET 2.0 - if you have any interest in learning Ajax, I think you'll find this to be a great resource.

C Ya at the LARP

William — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:28:00 GMT

One of the new things I started doing in the mornings was going to the Gym. I live a few blocks away from a LA Fitness that opens up at 5:00 AM. So if possible, I try to get over there at 5:00, work out, do my morning routine and head to work. As I was telling my co-workers though, I decided that it would be nice of me to call Kim up before i head over and make sure she's doing well. So it goes something like this:

Phone ringing, ringing , ringing:

Kim: (1/2 asleep) Waaaaattt do you want?

Me: Sweety is that you?

Kim: Yes, what do you want.

Me: Well, it's 4:50 in the morning and i just wanted to call and say hi.

Kim: You woke up the dog and he'll be barking all morning. You woke me up. You're going to pay for this

Me: Cool, talk to ya later. Love ya sweety.

-----

So she'll wise up and turn off the ringer for a few days, then she'll slip. So this morning as I was headed to the gym I realized that although it was supposed to be snowing this morning, it was only sleeting. Figured I should call her up and give her the heads up. However try as I could, I think she suspected that I would try something like this so I just got voicemail. I started heading out to the gym and realized it was way too cold to go walking around. As I went back upstairs to get the car, I realized it was too cold for anyone sane to be out and about. Might as well update my blog.

This weekend, I'll be back in good old Greenville. My homie Chris Williams opened up a game shop called Reality Check Games. I've been over there a few times and the Williams family has it hooked up. Being the recluse that I am, I don't get out much and sort of missed the whole D & D and game thing. Chris and family have managed to turn Coffee and games into a pretty rocking business. A few weeks ago while I was there, I was introduced to the concept of a LARP. If you aren't familar with LARPs, let me see if I can explain it. You have Vampires on the one side. You have Werecreatures on the other. (I don't know if they have WereCuckooz yet, but if they do it would be very very cool). They meet up at the LARP, get their instructions, head out and well, as they say in Southpark, "It's on". I'm too much of a Dork to participate in the LARP, but I can head there and take pictures so as to justify the digital dust collector.

I had a lot of trouble understanding the concept until I remembered this post by Shawn Wildermuth . Well, Chris still remains friends with me despite my social ineptness and cluelessness about many things. Then it happend... I was rapping with Chris last night and he invited me to the LARP. 6:00 PM Saturday. I'm cheering for the Vampires at this point. Pictures will follow (however if I remember my Vampire lore correctly, you can't photograph them and they aren't visible in Mirrors, so my pictures of the LARP may be one sided favoring the Werecreatures)

The AngryPharmacist and the Drug Monkey

William — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:07:00 GMT

Every day we go about out lives and we interact with people who we probably don't even think twice about. Many of us interact with pharmacists and never think twice about it, or what they think of us. I know mr 375lb bench press aka 'the lower cased one' interacts with a phramacist all the time although he's been completely remiss in posting pictures of her any more. Anyway, I came across to absolutely hillarious blogs, the DrugMonkey (formerly the Drug Nazi) and The Angry Pharmacist. With site descriptors like "Your Pharmacist may hate you" you know the site is going to be classic. In short, these are two pharmacists who blog about annoying customers and annoying doctors.

When I first came by http://www.theangrypharmacist.com/ site, I started to think, what a pr***. The DEA has many doctors terrified of writing scripts for many substances and a lot of people go under treated for pain and other maladies. So I started reading try to understand where this guy is coming from and it all became clear.

When I was in undergrad, a good majority of my friends were pharmacy majors. I never thought of being a pharmacist as being a real job (after all, you don't hear mothers advising their daughters to marry a doctor, laywer, engineer , accountant OR pharmacist) but saw how unbelievably hard it was to be a pharmacist. And I'm no spring chicken. I graduated right about the time when you could be a pharmacist with only 5 year's education. Now you need a Pharm D (with the exception of Education, getting a Ph. D is a real honor and a lot of work, some a lot harder to earn than others with Pharm D being at the top of the food chain). Anyway, I really learned how hard it is to get through pharmacy (and I also learned that eating more than 5 Percocets at a time will make you itchy).

As I read through these guy's blogs though, I started to laugh out loud quite a bit. I've been waiting for my scripts many times and repeatedly heard someone giving the pharmacist some rap about getting their scripts early. The AP has a pretty funny post about SOMA and yep, I've heard people more than a few times trying to hit the pharmacist up for SOMA. In fact, since I usually wait around for my scripts, I've heard all sorts of stuff. And for some reason, I never thought twice about it. I guess it's b/c the pharmacists just never let on that it's annoying them. But after reading these guys blogs, I thought, they must hear more BS than any profession other than motorcycle cops.

These two blogs have quickly become two of my favorites. Listening to really smart grumpy guys complain about morons is just hysterical. If you like that sort of thing, I highly recommend both of them...

And if Monday doesn't work for you..

William — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:26:00 GMT

I'll also be working at the Ready for a new Day - Launch Tour 2007 February 8, 2007. And yep, I'll be there all day. If you're attending, make sure to stop by.