ThomasCarpe.com

Some Fun Web Part Errors from Today

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:45:00 GMT

So, many issues I had to resolve today were typical over-rushed developer stuff: non checking for nulls, not testing with users that don’t have MySites, yadda yadda.

Two errors stood out as things I'd like to help people avoid doing.

First, the developer of the web parts I am fixing failed to make a distinction between System.Web.UI.WebParts.WebPart and Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. They are almost identical, but each implements Web Part Properties in code slightly differently.

using com = System.ComponentModel;
using aspnetwebparts = System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using wsswebparts = Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages;

...

// for System.Web.UI web parts
[aspnetwebparts.Personalizable(aspnetwebparts.PersonalizationScope.Shared)]
[aspnetwebparts.WebBrowsable(false)]
[com.Category("Configuration")]
[aspnetwebparts.WebDisplayName("Parent Category ID")]
[aspnetwebparts.WebDescription("Determines the Parent Category from the Categories List on the Taxonomy Administration site")]

// for WSS web part
[wsswebparts.WebPartStorage(wsswebparts.Storage.Shared)]
[com.Browsable(false)]
[wsswebparts.SPWebCategoryName("Configuration")]
[com.DisplayName("Parent Category ID")]
[com.Description("Determines the Parent Category from the Categories List on the Taxonomy Administration site")]

This was probably a copy-pasta error, but he used the System implementation instead of the SharePoint one. As a result, none of these web part properties actually showed up where users could change them.

To be honest, I used to make this mistake all the time, especially when copying properties from other web parts I had written. These days, I just suck it up and define all of the attributes so I don't have to deal with this issue.

That was actually good news, because it means that maybe with a little more work, this solution will be about 10x as configurable as it is now.

The second thing almost drove me crazy, because it was very similar to a problem I saw a year ago (or more) and I couldn’t remember what it was. It turned out in the end this was a slightly different issue, but I digress. The problem was that when you have a Tool Pane Editor (basically a fancy custom Web Part Property) and it is used to set a WPP that’s also visible in the browser, the WPP will overwrite the changes that the TPE makes. So for example, you pick "IT Apps" in a dropdown TPE. The TPE goes and looks up the List ID for "IT Apps", and comes back with “15” and saves that to the WPP called Parent ID, but since Parent ID is also visible in the web page and has a value of “” (empty) the empty value then overwrites the “15” and you’re back where you started. The solution here is to hide the WPP by setting Browsable/WeBrowsable = false, thus proving it’s not how much code it takes to fix a bug but finding the correct line to change. J

To the developer's credit, I was the one who set this to true, because I was trying to make it visible so I could troubleshoot the ToolPane picker. Oops!

(By the way Ted, I hope you're settling in nicely at DOE. <grin>)

Corrupted Blog Category Page

Thomas C. Carpe — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:07:00 GMT

Symptoms: After a user has changed the system generated view and/or Posts web part. You may see more than one Posts web part. You may also see that clicking the links in the Categories listed along the left hand side of the page no longer produces filtered results, or returns no results where they are expected.

WARNING: Do not try this unless you are completely unafraid of messing everything up and having to move your blog content to a completely new site/list.

Solution: Determine which of the multiple Posts web parts are behaving correctly. If some web parts have been closed, you may need to do this using SharePoint Designer. Reopen all closed Posts web parts by right clicking and selecting Web Part Properties, then uncheck the Close Web Part box in Appearance section. If any Posts web part behaves correctly, you may safely delete (do not close) the other web parts. To remove web part customizations, save the page, then right click and Revert to Site Definition. In some situations, if the user has deleted the functional version of Posts web part, this solution may not work.

Recommended Future Action: Designers/users should make a copy of Categories.aspx and work with the copy to determine their changes do not have negative effects before implementing those changes on the system generated pages.

Import Hyperlinks with Text into SharePoint Lists Using Excel

Thomas C. Carpe — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:10:00 GMT

Suppose you have a list of URLs that your client has given you. Now suppose they also have stored the text for each URL in a seperate column alongside the URL. At first it might seem difficult to get this into a Hyperlink field on a SharePoint list, especially since the UI for the Datasheet view does not allow for each updates to these two pseudo-sub-fields seperately. You might be tempted to enter them both as simple text fields and use a calculated field and a data view (or some other nonsense) to get what you want. Don't, because it's actually quite easy.

Instead, bring your columnar data into Excel. Then in a blank column, use the HYPERLINK(url, text) formula to generate the links. Reference the calls to each column respectively within the formula. When you copy these into a SharePoint datasheet view, the text of the links will be preserved. Violla!

Dynamic Data Source Controls for Your Data Form Web Parts

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:49:00 GMT

In this very, very, *very* old (but still interesting) ASP.net article on MSDN Magazine, I found the following clever code snippit that uses a temporary file to create a user control dynamically from a string:

TemplateColumn bc = new TemplateColumn();
String tmp = Session.SessionID + ".ascx";
StreamWriter sw;
sw = new StreamWriter(Server.MapPath(tmp));
sw.Write(strLayoutCode);
sw.Close();
bc.ItemTemplate = Page.LoadTemplate(tmp);
grid.Columns.Add(bc);
File.Delete(Server.MapPath(tmp));

This is indeed pretty neat, but it turns out it's not necessary. You can do the same with the following:

Page.TemplateControl.ParseControl(strLayoutCode);

I discovered this interesting fact after realizing that SharePoint's DataFormWebPart is doing some intriguingly useful (but obfuscated) stuff with DataSourceControls and the SQL database. Basically, in the SharePoint Designer, whatever controls you put inside the DataSources tag - using the design pane, I would assume - get serialized into a BLOB in the WebParts table of your WSS Content database. At run time, they get loaded from the database on the first call to get the DataSources collection, which typically happens during CreateChildControls.

I tried forcing a load by explicitly setting DataSourcesString within code, but it blew up because the parser did not understand the tag prefixes in the code that I inserted. It was then that I realized that SharePoint is leveraging ParseControl(string), and after digging in the database, I was able to see that SPD must be programmatically determining what namespaces to register when it saves the data to SQL by way of the DataSourcesString property.

This is useful to me because for a long time I have been thinking that SharePoint, and in a greater sense ASP.net needed a way to allow data source controls to be defined more flexibly and in a centralized location. Sure, you can do it programmatically. But, the control parser gives you a fairly efficient way of doing it using a repeatable and flexible process, and you won't be limited to keeping the controls on the filesystem.

If you want to leverage this functionality without giving up the other benefits of the Data Form, check out SPARK project over at CodePlex. It includes Flex Data Form, a version of the DFWP that inherits all the same features as the original, but allows you to set the DataSources string and some other properties from within the Web UI. (It also has some other nifty features as well.)

Update: Looks like I am not the only one thinking along these lines. Too bad his comments are closed, because his ideas are good ones and he deserves the Whuffie. :-)

More Data Form goodness, especially a decent explaination of the OOTB method for overcoming the list GUID issues that plague migration of the DFWP.

Trials and Tribulations with the Family PVR

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:47:00 GMT

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I was never the kind of person who would run out and get a Tivo if instead I could get something more hardcore that I had more features and I could fiddle with more. Thus, long before Tivo offered network streaming, we had outfitted all of our TVs with ReplayTV units and were happily backing up our shows to our file servers hard drives. But, while they were good, SonicBlue and the ReplayTV have long since run their course, and left us looking for another solution.

So, a year or two ago, I converted our setup to use a storebought PC, a copy of Beyond TV (I think it was v4.7 at that time), and a Hauppauge WinTV-1600 HDTV tuner card. This system worked pretty well overall, with a couple notable shortcomings.

First, the channel changing via IR to our DirecTV D10 and H10-100 boxen were never quite right, and the serial and USB ports for each came with their own headaches. Both had required a Paterson Tech TV Translator to get them working on the ReplayTVs, and this was also true for BeyondTV. This was especially true for the H10 when DTV started mucking around with HD channels that had the same channel number as their SD counterparts, but were not brought up by default. The H10 box also still gives me grief to this very day, because it occassionally stops responding to channel change signals and the USB has to be un/re-plugged. The TV Translator for the D10 has quit working after many years and I think it is dead, but I would be pretty happy if I could only find the spare we put into storage.

Second, there was never really any practical solution to record HDTV quality video from DirecTV, so unless we were watching live anyway, the picture quality generally stank - a fact that became all too apparent as we upgraded our 29" tube to a 42" Samsung flat screen plasma and then again to a 50" Pioneer Elite. I had long yearned for the day when technology would give us a solution to this problem that didn't involve buying a thousand dollar peice of specialized and hacked-to-peices hardware.

Finally, I made the mistake of installing BeyondTV on Windows Vista Home Premium, because it was what came preinstalled from HP on the box we bought to replace the ReplayTV. In hindsight that was a mistake, and a lot could have been better if I had only stayed in XP. Video codecs are quirky and their performance isn't so great on Vista (you get tearing and other weird effects even if the CPU isn't maxed out), plus network transfer speeds require all kind of tweaking to even make thm tolerable.

Well, that was then. This is now.

Last summer Hauppauge released the HD-PVR 1212, an external box capable of recording HD quality at 1080i from component RGB cables. This was an amazing advancement, but unfortunately at first the hardware had some heat issues and driver and software support were sketchy at best. Even though I waited until nearly Christmas to buy one, the one that arrived directly from Hauppauge still needed an RMA due to heat. It would freeze up fairly often, and the BeyondTV would say that it couldn't be found. I guess they were just working through their defective stock, but at least they did replace it right away. I kept it running on the living room set for a few weeks after getting it back from them and at the very least I can say problems were less common.

But, I can never leave well enough alone. With the new ability to record 1080 video, having the resources free for HD playback became more important, so I resolved to reconfigure everything with a client-server model that would offload recording and transcoding onto a seperate box.

We got a hold of a Dell PowerEdge 1850 with 2x 2.8GHz Hyperthreaded Xeon CPUs, nice fast dual SCSI HDD (though a little small at only 150GB), dual gigabit NICs, and 8GB of RAM. Even at 3 years old, this is a *sweet* box.

I installed Windows Server 2003 R2, the latest HD-PVR drivers, and the Beyond TV 4.9 on this box with few issues. Of course, the PowerEdge does not have a sound card, so I had to plug in a USB sound card to fool the codecs into playing. Also, its video card is a bit weak, so we don't really use the console to watch videos unless we're trying to test the video feeds. It makes sense to keep a small TV nearby the server to do tests on the live video feeds from the set top boxen. It took a little work to get everything configured, especially the new PCIe card we got for SD recordings, but all in all this was not too difficult. We do still have a couple minor issues.

The channel changer cable for the H10 still needs a kick now and then.
The channel changer cable for the D10 does not respond at all and we think the TV Translator maybe died, but this old beast isn't supported anymore.
Beyond TV still does not properly implement h264 conversion for HD, so we get "failed to generate graph" if we try to ShowSqueeze our HD recordings (which right now is all of them).

With recording successfully offloaded to the rack in the basement, I was free to start making improvements upstairs. First thing I did was to uninstall all the deadweight drivers and tools. Then, I installed BeyondTV Link on both the living room and side porch PCs.

The living room set is an HP AMD x64 5000+. It has 4GB RAM, 300GB HDD, and came with Vista like I said above. I put a Sound Blaster Extreme Pro and a BFG NVidia GTX 260 in it, as well as a Netgear 311 gigabit NIC, Firefly RF remote, Logitech Dinovo bluetooth keyboard, Rocketfish bluetooth mouse, and a USB XBox wireless game controller adapter. I've also installed teh CoreAVC codec professional version along with BTV Link.

The kids' is a Dell v64 6400+, and its probably a better machine overall. They inherited my old BFG NVidia 8800 OC, but still use the onboard sound. They also got the 311 NIC and an ATI TV Wonder that isn't really connected to any feeds. For thier output, the TV only had VGA input, so I use a DVI to HDMI converrter and the NVidia control panel to compact the desktop so we can see the start menu.

The current issue on the kids' PC is that when you play video across the network UNC share, it plays fine, but when you play through Link, there is no audio. I don't think this is a big deal; I just haven't had time to figure it out yet.

As for the living room PC, I thought that installing Link would have been adequate, but video was still choppy during fast paced action scenes - which are pretty common in Battlestar Galactica. That just won't do. I tried many different configurations of the codecs and BTV settings, to no avail. Further, video playing directly in GraphEdit was much clearer than in BTV.

What I learned from this is that GraphEdit typically uses VMR7 as the video renderer, whereas what BTV calls "3D Accelerated" is actually VMR9. Having learned this, I then found other people in forums saying that Vista is the problem here, and that both XP and the Windows 7 Beta do much better.

So, I decided to give the beta a try. I ran into some problems trying to shrink my hard drive partition, but eventually I found the right settings and defrag tools to at least let me free up 150 GB for a dual install.

The Win 7 install process was tedious, but relatively pain free. The only 64 bit driver it couldn't find or didn't already have natively was of course for the Netgear 311. I was able to get that working by using Have Disk from the Add Hardware wizard. Hint: don't use the more obvious browse or search, as they will not find the driver file, but if you dig intot he CD from Have Disk, it will be pretty obvious you want the file in the Drivers/Vista/x64 folder. Once I had a network connection, all the other devices configured more or less automatically.

There were several possible x64 drivers from Microsoft and NVidia. I decided to try the one they made available from the CUDA page, but there was no joy for me here, since CoreAVC doesn't really support 64bit CUDA yet.

That's okay though, because just using the new OS gave me a 25% reduction in CPU utilization during HD playback. Video was clean and clear even in fast motion on the same sequences that gave me trouble in Vista. Network throughput also appears to be much better, though I imagine Microsoft will figure out how to screw this up by the time they release Windows 7 Home Edition.

So, that's it. I guess I will keep testing Windows 7 to see if it performs well for me after installing anti-virus software and other garbage. Also, I'm really looking forward to seeing if CUDA support in CoreAVC and BeyondTV gets any better in the future.

Setting up TFS Server and using VSSConverter with VSSConverterGUI

Thomas C. Carpe — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:40:00 GMT

I spent the weekend installing and configuring TFS Server 2008. I learned a lot, but mostly it was just a pain. In the end we did get things working properly.

After install, I wanted to port over our existing VSS from a past development project. I found this article, Migrate VSS Projects to TFS Projects, which was indeed a useful walkthrough, although it missed some important steps that were necessary for me.

First, the VSSConverterGUI is compiled only for Visual Studio 2005. Luckily I did have this older version lingering around still. I installed the TFS Explorer for VS2005 using the link I found on the Team System Blog. Note that the image file is in a wierd format, so I had to install Magic ISO in order to extract it; I really didn't feel like wasting a blank CD for this.

You put the GUI exe in the same folder as VSSConverter.exe and it will actually work, which is great. From there, I had to just browse to my VSS and TFS server, which worked very well.

The next issue is that I could not get teh User Mappings part of the form to work at all. So, instead, I saved the setting.xml and closed the application, and ended up rolling my own UserMap.xml in the same folder as Settings.xml using the example from the blog walkthrough above. I was able to use SourceSafe 2005 Admin to view the users so the mappings were pretty much intuitive. The other thing to note is the the tool likes it if you save both these XML files to the VSS folder, not the Common7 IDE.

Finally, I got the message that says "TF60032: The VSS Converter requires Visual SourceSafe 2005 or later to run. Please install Visual SourceSafe 2005 or later and try again. " like this poor fellow and this one. This was very weird because I *did* have SourceSafe 2005 installed on the very same box and was using it. So, I did some digging and thanks to this article, was able to get it working by adding the following keys to my registry using a REG import file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SourceSafe]
@="Microsoft Visual SourceSafe Automation"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SourceSafe\CLSID]
@="{783CD4E4-9D54-11CF-B8EE-00608CC9A71F}"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SourceSafe\CurVer]
@="SourceSafe.8.0"

Finally, the import ran correctly and now all our source code in in TFS!

What I Use for Screen Magnification

Thomas C. Carpe — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:28:00 GMT

Those of you who know me probably know that I have low vision - or to put it another way I'm as blind as a bat. :-) Those of you who don't might have been able to figure it out from my picture. It's true my vision is pretty bad. (It varies from about 20/100 to 20/120 with my glasses on.) However, I know there are folks out there who have it far worse than I do.

Recently, a colleague of mine here at the IMF asked me what software I use for screen magnification. She has family members of varying levels of computer literacy who have a need for such things.

She was thinking about buying JAWS. I don't recommend this unless you are totally blind. JAWS is expensive unless you get a government grant, due to its fairly small base of portential customers - mainly progressive governments and a handful of blind folks who happen to be wealthy beyond reason.

Instead, here are three alternatives I suggest for low vision adaptivity on the cheap.

Use the native features of Windows. Most people do not know this, but there are color, font, and magnification tools built straight into Windows nowadays. To find them, go to Start Menu > [All] Programs > Accessories > Accessibility. Mind you they aren't the best I have ever seen, lacking features and sometimes even becoming unstable, but - hey - you can't beat free.
Use this nifty Magnifying Glass application which I believe comes from IBM's ThinkPad or maybe Microsoft.

Download from ThomasCarpe.com

It also seems that some other folks posted this on one of those file sharing web sites, but obviously I can't vouche for it being free of viruses or spyware.

4Share download
FreeDownloadsPlace download
Dana Hanna, a very talented colleague I worked with while I was at Constellation Energy (he and I have both moved on since then) wrote an amazing little magnifying app, for which he graciously provided source code as well. I've been using this one for quite a while, because it has both features I wanted and the ability for me to add more as I think of them. Of course it's always been just a little buggy, and I guess having source is only an advantage if you happen to be a programmer.

Torian Magnifier (download and source)
Finally, maybe try this. They seem to have an interesting collection of FreeWare and ShareWare magnification tools, althought some of them appear to be effect filters for Photoshop.

http://text.software.informer.com/download-text-magnifier-shareware/

Anyway, I hope people will find this list helpful, and if I find any new resources, I will try to keep it up to date.

SharePoint Code Published on CodePlex

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:59:00 GMT

After thinking this over for a while, and hiring a new employee, I've decided to truly make my SharePoint library both a more accessible and more collaborative effort by publishing it using CodePlex.

http://www.codeplex.com/spark

The SPARK project includes many of the examples published previously in articles from this blog, so those who have commented that you received 401/403 errors here should go there and download the source code. Just search through the files in the Behemoth.SharePoint project it to find the classes mentioned in the blog.

Why Behemoth? Well, because at least right now, the code is a big unstoppable monster. There's tons of code that needs to be ported over, (re)tested, and documented. Like any mythic beast, it is powerful and also a little scary. Plus the name fits with the theme of my company Colossus Consulting.

I'll be doing more additions and documentation in the coming weeks, so I hope if some of you find the code informative or useful that you'll leave me some love in the comments and reviews. (I also accept beer from those in the DC area.)

Coffee Break at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Thomas C. Carpe — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:03:00 GMT

So, after a filling lunch at Mackey's on L Street, where we said goodbye to our team member Dan Smith, Ted and I strolled over to the White House to have a look around, get some coffee and take advantage of the unusual weather.

Above, you can see them dismantling the "fish bowl" where President Obama and the First Lady stood to greet the crowd just a couple weeks ago. It's taking surprisingly long to tear down, which implies that some aspects of its construction must have anticipated something worse than mere bullets.

Another shot of the aquarium. Leaf blowing guy is making life difficult because Ted can't hear me asking him not to block my shot. J

Here's the front of the White House from the fence. Will lasers and death robots emerge if I put my phone between the bars for a better shot? Let's not try that out today.

Lawn numerous deux.

Here leaf blower guy makes his return appearance, and you can see the rest of the reviewing area and fish bowl tear down. It's hard to say, but I would guess they are taking great care in the demolition, since they seem to be stacking the pieces up on palettes. Perhaps they keep all this stuff so they can reuse it in another four years?

A final shot of the construction. Now it's time to get back to work.

A view up Pennsylvania Avenue lies before us, as we return to the office. From this vantage point, you can just barely see my building a few blocks from here. It's the one that's tan and blue glass just below the third American flag from the left. By the time we reach the intersection, the building is looming across Edward R. Murrow Park, but the World Bank is still mostly obscured by other structures. The view of the White House from our office is reciprocally unflattering.

Tmail.exe (and Other Apps) Hang at 100% CPU in Windows Mobile

Thomas C. Carpe — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:24:00 GMT

So this killed my phone during inaugural weekend. I guess it was just bad timing. I want to make sure I post about it so that other folks can find the solution as well.

Basically, you get to a point where you can't send any text messages, because the tmail.exe process is chewing up all your CPU cycles. This can happen to other apps as well. For example, Google Maps has a search feature that also triggered this issue.

The problem appears to be the word suggestion engine. I guess the database of suggested words gets too big or too fragmented at some point.

To resolve the problem, go to Start > Settings > Personal > Input. Tap the Word Completion tab, then uncheck the box for "Suggest words when entering text". Optionally, you may want to try simply clicking the Clear Stored Entries button to see if that resolves the issue by itself.

Personally, I did not get much use from Word Completion - and even found it annoying sometimes - since I have a full qwerty keyboard on my HTC/T-Mo Wing. As a result, I did not mind losing this feature. Your mileage may vary.

Now that I have my phone messaging back, perhaps I should blog my experiences from the Inauguration earlier this week?

Today I Am the Luckiest Dog on the Porch!

Thomas C. Carpe — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:18:00 GMT

Yesterday I posted about my experiences in dealing with the PIC, including my saga to get tickets to the Inaugural Ball.

Well, the story goes on. This morning I showed up in DC for work, and I decided to drop by the convention center around 10:20 or so to see if I could get in line without a printout of my confirmation e-mail. Well, it turns out that you can't, so I schlepped over to get a quick haircut at David's Hair Studio on I Street and to my office to print the e-mail out.

I had to rush, because the e-mail said that the designated pick up time for my last name would stop at noon. By the time I was done, I returned to the convention center at about 11:45. I got on the queue sans coffee, sans breakfast or lunch, and sans cell phone battery. I prepared for what could potentially be a very long wait – after all I've gotten tickets for Otakon, so I know all about long lines.

I met a few nice people in line. That was pretty cool and made the wait more tolerable. Once of the ladies knew a guy ahead of us, and said that he'd gotten in line back around 10:30 and he wasn't too far ahead of us. That was not a good sign. Then there came the rumors that people from the Finance Committee, who were in line with the rest of the alphabet soup, could not be served at all since their packets were not ready. Oh boy!

Oddly, in spite of these foreboding signs, the line moved along pretty quickly. We rounded the corner and were in the main queue before 1:30. I had dodged a bullet by showing up late, because many people had been waiting since 9a.m.

To my further delight, when we got to the front and handed the folks our e-mails, the staff came back to me not with tickets to the Mid-Atlantic Ball as I was expecting (I live in Baltimore), but for the VP Home States Ball for PA & DE. If I understand right, that's actually an upgrade! Well anyway at least I've heard of Maroon 5 – no offense to The Dead, but I have no idea who you are, probably because I am un-hip.

So, I gleefully took my tickets, said goodbye and good luck to my new friends, and left.

Then I got on the Metro and went back to my office, where I received this:

Dear Thomas,

Due to overwhelming ticket demand and a printing problem, today's scheduled ticket pick-up at the Washington Convention Center has been postponed.

Please note that this affects ticket pick-up for today, Friday, January 16th, only.

If you were planning to pick up your ball tickets today, please do NOT come today. We recommend that you come on Monday instead. We apologize to anyone who has already come to the Convention center and experienced service delays. If you need further action to fulfill your ticketing requests, please return on Monday.

Once again, this affects today only; we will follow the original schedule on Saturday and Sunday. For last names beginning with:

A through H -- Saturday*/Sunday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
I through P -- Saturday*/Sunday, 12:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Q through Z -- Saturday*/Sunday, 2:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

*On Saturday the will call box office will remain open for all groups until 8:00 p.m. We will troubleshoot and have a final day of ticket pick-up on Monday, January 19th.

If you would like someone other than yourself to pick up these tickets or if you have further questions about the pick-up process, please email inauguralballs@pic2009.org.

We will attempt to resolve any other questions at the pick-up location.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The Presidential Inaugural Committee

Wow, I feel sorry for all the people who don't get this message because the e-mail server threw it into another dimension.

It looks like today I dodged a hail of bullets! J

A Thought Exercize Regarding Tickets to the Swearing-in Ceremony

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:52:00 GMT

This morning, I got a message from my congressman, John Sarbanes. In his e-mail he apologizes that he can't grant my request for tickets to the swearing in. He goes on to explain that he got 14,000 requests and had to resort to a lottery to choose to whom to give the tickets. That's okay, there are probably a lot of people in that situation right now, and I'm nobody special. He handled it ethically by having a lottery.

But what blew my mind is that he said the PIC only gave his office 200 (that's two *hundred*) tickets! So, I did a little quick math. 435 members of the house times 200 each is 87,000. Wow, that number got big quick. Times two, because I assume the senators will get about the same amount total since they represent an entire state apeice, that's 174,000.

There are supposed to be 224,000 tickets total, so I guess that leaves 50,000 tickets for the PIC to give out on their own. I heard these mostly went to people who worked in the campaign and who accumulated a lot of points on Obama's web site.

Fair enough. I promise not to be mortally offended, as long as I see some other people who maxed out on their campaign contributions camping out with me and my family at 5a.m. for a public spot on the National Mall. <grin> That'll make not having a ticketed seat worthwhile.

More likely I will just have to settle for being the proud owner of a check from the Obama campaign made out for $0.01, which is the amount they had to return to me by FEC regulations. If they think I'm ever cashing that thing, they are out of their minds!

My Experience with the Presidential Inauguration Committee

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Let me preface this post simply by saying that I hate to complain (though some people say you'd never know it). In general, I don't like to call people out, and in this case especially I don't want to undercut my own enthusiasm for the upcoming events or downplay the very positive work being done by the PIC under what must be some very difficult circumstances.

Some people will say "Hey, what are you whining about? You get to go to DC and do stuff most of us don't, so STFU already." Okay, sure. Point taken. But, I'm still going to offer up my account of how things are operating and my opinion about how it could be better. It probably will not do any good and might even hurt somebody's feelings. I don't really need a good reason to speak my mind, do I?

On Sunday night, I got the e-mail that started me down my path to a near annurism - the official PIC invitation to the Inaugural Ball. Just cough up a pile of money and you can go. Of course, the fact that WPIW caught on and blogged about it and it was also anounced on the PIC web site took a little of the feel-special out of it, but hey it's the thought that counts, right?

Honestly I'm flattered they even thought to let me know. Given a shot like this, I had to act on it. I might never care enough about a candidate for POTUS to get invited again. Besides, I am pretty sure I am out of the running for tickets to the parade and swearing-in, so this will be my one shot to do something kind of unique.

So, Monday monring I filled out my donation/request. Unlike what I am used to with e-commerce web sites, there was no [immediate] confirmation e-mail, just a vague message that I would get an e-mail at some point later on. So I waited. How long was I supposed to wait?

On Tuesday the AmEx showed so signs of activity. Tuesday afternoon I called the PIC; delays in processing they said, maybe. Or maybe the system ate my request and I would be shut out. Lots of other people were calling the PIC too. They promised someone would call me back that day. No call. No surprise on my part.

I couldn't wait forever, so I went and bought my tux, and rented one for Eric, just in case everything went well. The ladies sadly were not having any luck finding dresses; they are still shopping today. Now, I was really commited, so I hoped and prayed the log jam over at the PIC would resolve itself eventually.

Wednesday, I called again, and got the same story basically. Later that day, I went and looked at AmEx statement again and now saw that they had actually taken my ticket money the night before. It's sometimes weird how such things don't always show up on their web site right away. Okay, relief. On the train ride home that night, I finally get my official e-mail telling me to pick up my tickets at the Convention Center on Friday morning.

Update 1/16: I learned today in line that most people received an initial confirmation e-mail about ten minutes after they donated, which I didn't get. One lady in line made two seperate donations, and got the two initial notices, but only one e-mail like the one I received Wednesday. It sounds like something is seriously wrong with their outgoing mail server if it is dropping mail into a black hole.

Now, maybe I'm expecting too much, but isn't this the 21st century; don't most people expect a web site that takes your money to do it realtively quickly and give you a yes-or-no style answer about whether your order was palced? So that exposure to the PIC's e-commerce capabilities was not very pleasant, but at least it ended well. Also, although the folks I talked to on the phone weren't really able to provide any maeaningful information, at least they were friendly.

If that had been the whole of it, I think overall my opinion of the PIC would've been overall very favorable. But, there is this one other thing that changed my mind.

For many weeks, the PIC has been hyping up the events including a free concert for the kids. I had hoped to send Sarah to it on Monday night, so we could be free to attend the Yes We Can Party sans kidlets. She's a big Jonas Bros. and Hannah Montana fan, but what 11 year old girl isn't? Well, it looks today like that can't happen. The PIC has some strange definition of the words "free public event" which actually mean "we gave 1,000 tickets to some people we really like and told them to do as they pleased with them. The rest of you are out of luck."

Now, don't get me wrong. I support giving the tickets mainly to kids of military families and members of youth groups in the area. After all, these are underprivileged kids and kids who have sacrificed a lot for this country. But, the way the PIC communicated about this event gave the impression they want to eat their cake and have it too. Either an event is open to the public, or you get to pick who can go to it, not both.

Also, please do you think maybe you could have said that this was a concert intended for only that audience *before* I told my daughter about it, and before I wasted my time trying to figure out how she could get to go??? There are lot's of other things to do in DC, better ways to spend my time than researching a dead end, and I am guessing that proper communication could have reduced some of the PIC's call volume.

Even the Post's Inauguration Watch had to do a little finger wag about their use of the word "public" in this case, when they wrote "Inauguration Watch would argue that that's not exactly making the tickets available to the general public because they're not available to everyone, but rather the selected groups." So obviously I am not alone in feeling this is a little disingenuous.

Now, I'd already told Sarah not to be crushed if there was no way to get tickets, so I don't think she'll be upset. [Update: Good girl. Her response to being told this news was "okey dokey artichokey."] So that aspect of worrying that my daughter would be dissappointed didn't really play into it, but I feel for the other parents of tweenies in the greater Potomac area.

I just find this kind of thing frustrating, because there seems to be a developing character for this year's PIC. They are not particularly forthcoming with facts and details, even about things that should've been easy to plan in advance. This is true despite the fact that they are ostensibly trying to both be and host events that are very open and accessible. That contriadiction is jarring, especially compared to Obama's campaign. They seem to want the appearance of an open celebration that is neither actually particularly open, nor particularly responsive.

What I have seen of the handling of details for the whistle-stop tour though Baltimore just seems to reinforce this idea. I get that security concerns and overwhelming demand are probably causing a lot of this, but I think you'd get fewer confused or angry calls about an event if you just came out and told everyone in advance that you were not giving any tickets out - even if you don't explicitly tell them who you're giving them to.

I imagine that Obama is probably deeply commited to the transition and to getting down to the business of saving our collective bacon. To him, the PIC and the celebration are probably a distraction - even if a necessary one. I totally support that. Hopefully, all his best people from the campaign are likely off to more important things than throwing a party. But this is one thing that I have come to believe about the PIC. They do not really represent President Obama very well. I could not be more glad that in just a few days time, their mission will be over, and as an organization they will simply dissappear.

Inaugural Weekend Plans

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:55:00 GMT

Okay, maybe this is just crazy. So many people have said they are having second thoughts about going to DC this weekend or Tuesday, that the thought of navigating a crowd of 4+ million people is - in a word - scary. Maybe they're right. I don't know how it will turn out. But there's no turning back now.

Here was my clever plan. Wait too long to book a hotel: check. Wait too long to buy Amtrak tickets: check. Have no realistic place to park a car: check. Fume impotently and then resign myself to quiet desperation as MARC tells us all they won't run trains on Jan 20th: check. Fail to get word about special holiday MARC tickets until they're all gone: check. You get the idea.

Okay, so actually all that FUBAR is what helped me come up with my genius way of hacking around the problem. I rented an RV. Then I started freaking out about where to park it. We considered Wal*Mart; there's only one inside the DC beltway. We looked into long term bus parking - all gone.

Finally it occured to me that if you have an RV, maybe you should be looking to put it where RV's usually go. So, I found out that there was actually space at a nearby campground and RV park, Cherry Hill. Okay, so now we can drive in from Baltimore and enjoy the weekend in [relative] style. Hot tub, suana, fireplace, cable TV, fire pit, electricity and heat. Maybe a little bit of posh pseudo-camping will help brace us for the biting cold Tuesday morning.

So, as for the rest of our plans. Saturday, Obama is stopping in Baltimore, and I am still mulling over if I want to see it. By Sunday, we'll be in DC, so maybe we'll check out the stuff going on at the Lincoln Memorial. We've got Netroots Nation Yes We Can Party tickets for Monday night. We'll just have to camp out (like everybody else) for a spot on the Mall for the swearing in. There is the Ball on Tuesday night. Among all this, we're hoping to work in plans to try and find a decent restaurant or two, and to check out some offbeat stuff like the Spy Museum and the Newseum.

Several of our friends will be in DC, so we might try to hook up. Justin will be manning a camera for C-SPAN the entire day Tuesday. Zack and Laura from Baltimore's Drinking Liberally will be in the soup with us, and my friend (and now employee) Ted will be in town since he lives there. Maybe with luck we will manage some meet ups.

Plus, I have my HD camera to play with. And, there is all the research that goes into making sure we have both the supplies and necessary information to surivve this thing.

Wow! Just... wow.

Lego Mindstorms for Christmas

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:00:00 GMT

It's the Monday morning after Christmas weekend, and the office is almost utterly devoid of any signs of life. My stomach is full with the warmth of bad train station coffee, and a fresh cup sits at my desk. My mind is restless and in search of a mission – but not quite in the right frame of mind to take on any heavy lifting. This is the perfect sort of morning for a little light blogging to get the creative juices flowing.

Many people do product reviews on their blogs. I briefly considered doing some of my own, but I'm not sure if anybody really cares what I think of any of these gizmos, and I still feel a bit guilty at all the neat stuff I got for Christmas on a year when so many people have had to do without. Maybe I'll review my toys a little later on, especially since it will give me time to learn how to use them.

Instead, this morning I think I'll talk about one of the toys my son got this Christmas, the Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics set. (Specifically, this is Lego set #8527 for hardcore Lego fans.) The kit comes with all the basics that your little geek in training needs to build one of several possible robot toys. As the product description will tell you, it includes 3 motors, 4 sensors (light, sonar, sound, and touch/collision), a variety of Technic style building pieces, and what they call the Intelligent Brick – a computer with a modest amount of I/O and programmability that controls the other pieces via several cables.

For our family, the NKT set is a re-tread of a Christmas gift Eric got either last year or the year before. The kit suggests that it is for ages 10 and up, and in retrospect I am slightly inclined to disagree. Certainly Eric was capable of playing with the NXT two years ago, but even though he's an avid robot enthusiast, the first time through Eric made a couple of false starts at actually building the robot and had one fun session of playing with its programming features before finally losing interest in it.

By the time he eventually circled back to it again, he had rather predictably misplaced several of the major components, which he blamed on his four year old brother. This was disappointing, though not entirely unexpected. For others, I would suggest that you invest in some kind of organizing and carrying case, preferably with some kind of locking mechanism to keep little fingers out (if you have those around), since at $250 US this is not the kind of toy you want to have to buy twice if you can avoid it. (Sadly, this is exactly what we did.) I am leaning towards a good old fashioned tackle box like the kind your grandpa probably used to organize his fishing lures. That would have lots of little compartments for organizing and possible a loop for locking the box. A good one should have lids on the inside so turning it upside down won't spill its contents all over the place.

It seems I have a soft spot for little boys who dream of someday designing and building giant mecha for the Defense Department. Also, Eric's recent acquisition of my old Windows Mobile PDA phone (aka the T-Mobile MDA/HTC Wizard) is a perfect accessory to the NXT, since both sport a Bluetooth interface and Lego has graciously developed an API and a nifty programmable controller for the Pocket PC.

After some tedious sorting though literal Lego mountains, we were able to locate all but a few of the pieces from his previous set, most of which are large enough that we expect them to turn up in the next round of room cleaning. If this quest provides him any incentive towards that end, I will be both shocked and delighted. What kid wouldn't want to host their very own Battlebots competition? He'll need to find about six cables, a motor, and two sensors that went missing in order to have the entire second robot available.

This year was a much better experience than the previous one with regard to how well Eric was able to enjoy it. He has matured somewhat noticeably in the past year, though some of this may have to do with a change in his medication regimen which was also quite positive. Eric was able to correctly identify the Start Here box on his own and get going on the basic construction of the robot's core. For the most part he was almost completely autonomous. No doubt, failing all else, he has a promising career in Ikea furniture assembly. There were only a couple points where I had to step in to help – one where an axle and its accompanying hole required just enough extra English that even I was afraid I was pushing it too hard, and the other where the order of assembly made one wire practically impossible to insert without taking half the damn thing apart again. Eric also warns me that one of the pages in the instruction guide may have two steps reversed. Beyond that, Eric was able to do practically everything on his own (including installing and using the unit's programming software) with only minimal encouragement and occasional redirection, leaving me idle to search for the lost pieces of his older set.

In a few hours, Eric completed the Tri-bot, a three wheeled robot with a front facing claw for carrying little plastic balls. The design uses the touch sensor to detect if the ball is reachable, and a light sensor facing downward to detect if it has crossed the black border of its testing pad. Voice and ultrasound sensors provide additional flexibility. Following the instructions, Eric programmed the robot to retrieve a ball from a stand and carry it to the outside of the test pad where it would release it. I can already imagine a number of cool variants for this program even before I have done any research on my own to see what's already been done. Hopefully, he'll be equally inspired.

An extra $250 got us a rechargeable Lion battery pack, DC transformer, several alternative sensors (Compass, Heat/IR Seeker, Color, and Accelerometer), and a pile of extra cables. Of these, the battery pack is the most essential and money saving. I have noticed that the unit will quickly chew through six AA batteries, so an extra $60 will pay for itself quickly and prevent this expensive toy from becoming an unused waste of space. I can only imagine how many batteries he would consume using both "bricks". The other sensors are just "goodies", but they can greatly increase what the unit is capable of. Since we have two bricks, it made sense to add some diversity. I didn't waste any time on the IR Link, since we have a lot of Bluetooth devices and I want to see how far we can push that technology before resorting to the line-of-sight only IR.

Frugal Shoppers' Note: the K9833 includes the DC transformer and the battery and will save you a couple bucks, as I learned a few minutes too late. Or, if you haven't bought the base NXT yet, consider the NXT Education Base Set that includes the battery and a few extra sensors and cables for only ten bucks more than the retail NXT set. If I had it to do over, I would definitely go that way.

For the truly robot obsessed, I strongly recommend you take a visit over at Lego Education, where there are more advanced components and plenty of books. For an additional $260, you can get the super cool RFID Sensor and tags, an Infrared Ball, and a Touch Sensor Multiplexer. Of course, by this point you have probably depleted your child's college fund, but I believe it will be well worth it.

I went ahead and got the RFID to fulfill a promise I made to Eric when he first got the set, that if he built and programmed one robot with it I would go ahead and get some of the cool stuff he pointed out to me online. There's no way to know with kids if they'll have the attention span needed to make good use out of these things, but I'm hoping that he will. Considering the A+ he got in Cryptography back in November and all the work he needs to do in order to prepare for the SAT in a few weeks, it just seems fair to reward his hard work. Though now that I think about it, I've now sunk over a thousand dollars into what it ostensibly a child's toy. Either I'm completely insane or a genius. I suppose there's no reason it can't be both.

Maybe in future, Eric and I can do some cooperative blog posts about what we come up with together.

Did You Know: Include XSL In SharePoint Search Results

Thomas C. Carpe — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:13:00 GMT

Maybe some of you already knew this, but I sure didn't until I tried it. Thanks to Ian Morrish for his post about the XSLT Standard Library for helping me put the peices together.

So my little journey into customizing SharePoint Search Results started a few days ago. I won't go into a ton of detail because there are plenty of good blogs out there on how to do this, and anything I have to say on the subject will likely go into Memex. It suffices to say that the method of using XSL to transform the rendering of search results is about a thousand times better than the crazy web part development that I had to do in 2003 in order to accomplish the same results.

But my headaches began when I decided to try and make use of XSLT 2.0 function capability to leverage some nifty string manipulations like those found here. I needed to use something like "substring-before-last" to trim the file extension off the end of document titles (really, URLs) that were coming from a search protocol handler for content outside of SharePoint.

Try as I might, I could not get it to work, and the error information for XSL validation is hidden from you, so my attempts to determine the cause were only causing me more grief. I could switch the stylesheet to version 2.0, add the necessary namespaces, and even declare functions with xsl:function. But whenever I would try to call the function (even with constants) I would get that monolithic web part error "Unable to display this Web Part. To troubleshoot the problem, open this Web page in a Windows SharePoint Services-compatible HTML editor such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. If the problem persists, contact your Web server administrator."

So, in the end here is what I was able to do. I downloaded the entirety of the XSLTSL zip file and uploaded its contents into a document library on my SharePoint site using Explorer View. (I safely ignored the error I got from one file that wouldn't upload.) This makes all the XSL files web accessible, but I suppose there could be other approaches that would work just as well, like uploading these files into a subfolder under "/_layouts/".

Now, I tried making the xsl:import tag work, but there was no love there. However, xsl:include seems to work just fine. I wonder why the SharePoint folks don't make more use of includes in their own XSL. Though I guess it wasn't strictly necessary, it would've made for cleaner code and easier customization of things like Data Form Web Parts and such.

So, once you have you library chock full of stylesheets, modify the top level tag of your Search Results XSL to look like this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:doc="http://xsltsl.org/xsl/documentation/1.0" xmlns:str="http://xsltsl.org/string" extension-element-prefixes="doc str">

Then, add includes just below the last "xsl:param" tag, like so:

<xsl:include href="/XSL%20Library/xsltsl-1.2.1/string.xsl" />

You can add as many includes as you like. Generally I try to only include the ones I will actually be using. The URL for the include statement should point to the path of the desired XSL document on your site. I was able to get both absolute URLs (with protocol and DNS names) and root relative URLs (leading slash) to work, but I didn't try file system based URLs to see if they would work.

Now, you can use the templates defined in the included file just like they were declared directly in the web part itself.

In my example, I put this tag between the document title and the description.

</xsl:choose>

The results look like this:

If I were to dig through all these function, I bet I could think up some fancy stuff to try. Better yet, why not make an XSL template library specific to SharePoint and share it with the community?

Ahh hacking attempts, the true sign you have "arrived" on the Internet

Thomas C. Carpe — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:30:00 GMT

So I was doing some maintenance on my SharePoint servers today and I noticed something interesting in the security event logs.

After seeing the user "alien" repeatedly failing to log in to my FTP server, I checked the logs for IIS. Looks like someone has been trying to knock down my FTP server's front door. I found the following addresses successively trying to access the service using user names like "Administrator", "admin", and "staff".

server77-68-44-143.live-servers.net [77.68.44.143] in the UK and already has a bad reputation as an abuser
82-100-4-189.net.maiva.cz [82.100.4.189]
host-88-217-181-222.aspiria.de [88.217.181.222]
222.33.56.98 (Also somewhere in Germany)
cpe-212-18-40-62.static.amis.net [212.18.40.62] Looks like Austria

Okay, so maybe I don't have all the time in the universe to do security on my network, but I feel a bit better about some of the steps I took. Here's some stuff we did here that maybe helped protect us a little.

We run Snort on the RED port of our Endian firewall. I really would've thought this IDS would shut these guys down, but apparently it didn't. I will have to go over it again and make sure everything is set up correctly - and maybe upgrade to the subscription ruleset.

Long ago we stopped using names like "admin" or even "Administrator". Only hardware firewalls that won't let us change the name of the high level accounts and the occassional development VM use the defaults here. I suggest you consider changing the name of all your Windows NT Administrator accounts to "GrandPoobah", "Dogbert", "ScriptKiddieKiller", or your personal fave. You can do this easily in the registry.

We have security audit logs for login failures enabled. We would not have seen this attack if we hadn't.

We use strong passwords wherever possible. Even so, a password of only eight digits can eventually be brute forced. I am now seriously considering making our account passwords longer, just in case the User IDs are leaked. You should never depend on the User ID to provide added salt and computational weight to your password, since it is almost never a [well kept] secret.

In truth, I should not have this FTP port open to the world anymore. It was for my own access before we implemented OpenVPN client on my phone, and now there is no reason for it. We generally shut down access to any open ports.

So, was this a coordinated attempt by actual people? I figure probably not. Most likely it is a zombie network doing the bidding of its masters and simply thought it might have something it could break. Most of the IPs involved appeared to be clients - only two were servers. If IP addresses came with contact info, I would tell these folks to update their virsu checkers. Oh well.

MARC Penn Line Schedule for Pocket PC

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:38:00 GMT

If you have a Windows Mobile phone or Pocket PC and you ride the MARC from Baltimore to DC (or elsewhere North or in-between), then you might find this pocket sized Excel file handy. It contains an XL Mobile version of the Fall 2008 MARC Penn Line Schedule.

Note that if you live North of Baltimore, I have hidden those columns, as well as those for Amtrak trains that no longer take MARC tickets for passengers in my area. Later, I'll add the Camden Line as well.

Please note you may need to reality check this. I am not responsible for any errors that lead to you missing a train or anything like that.

Extreme Custom Navigation in SharePoint

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:30:00 GMT

I was digging through old tasks in Outlook that were never marked completed, and I came across an e-mail from a coworker. I won't paste it here, but the gist was a question regarding using images in the SharePoint top level navigation. I put this question into the same category as others like how to customize the navigation HTML or control word breaking so long items appear on two lines. This sender had wanted to know how to include custom icons within each navigation node.

The question referred to an early SharePoint article (link) that mentioned interactive buttons. Sadly, this is not the same thing as navigation. Even so, the images are obtained through the use of backgrounds in CSS, and this is not exactly the same as having an icon alongside the text in the form of an IMG tag.

So, what are the best options for creating very customized navigations in SharePoint? I spent a little time in Memex, describing a little bit about what's good and bad about different methods. Later, I want to return to this post and really delve into some kind of out of the ordinary things you could do using custom navigation - hopefully with some demos and code samples.

My Four Day Trip through Wonderland: Fixing Windows Live Authentication in the CKS EBE

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:24:00 GMT

At first, I was thinking about naming this blog post "Can It Really Be That Stupid?" After a few seconds, I realized the answer is "Yes.", got over it, and moved on. For one thing, I would have to decide which thing was *that* stupid, and that's just asking too much.

So, there are a number of people out there using SharePoint with WLA. It seems like a cool concept. Just use the WLA membership and role providers the way you would any provider for forms based authentication, and "Voilla!" your friends or business partners on Live Messenger can log in to your site using their Live ID , whereupon you can give them special access.

Last year, the Community Kit for SharePoint released a WLA membership provider designed to be used with the Enhanced Blog Edition. If you're curious - and very brave - you can get the source code from CodePlex here. The solution comes with a readme, which leaves out a couple of minor steps, but Rolf Eleveld has a nice walkthrough with screenshots on his blog.

Oh, if only it had actually been that easy!

Access Denied Errors on Login for LiveAuth-Handler.aspx

After following all the instructions to set up WLA, I tried to log in on the public facing site by clicking the Sign In link, but I kept receiving the "401 UNAUTHORIZED" error. A quick check of the IIS logs reveleaded this as "HTTP 401.5: Denied by custom ISAPI/CGI Web application", which means that the access issue is occurring within SharePoint itself.

There are so many causes for this kind problem, but I remembered solving such an issue about a year and a half ago. Here are some of the things you can try if you are having 401 problems.

Disable Loopback Checking
This security "feature" is enabled by default with the latest service packs, but it was not really meant to be used in SOA environments like SharePoint. Basically, whenever SharePoint attempts to hit its own web services on the local machine, IIS will block the attempt and cause SharePoint to throw an Access Denied error. The issue described in the Microsoft KB Article is not exactly what I was seeing, but it contains instructions on how to perform the registry hack. In the past I have seen this problem cause unusual symptoms within SharePoint that you normally wouldn't see in a vanilla ASP.net application, so I wouldn't rule it out.
General Tips for 401 Errors in IIS
You can also try some of the things suggested by this Microsoft KB Article. It has useful links to some diagnostic tools including the AACD 1.0 and FileMon. At the very least, following this approach should help to uncover any typical problems that would interfere with any SharePoint install, with or without CKS.
SharePoint File Permissions
Make sure you have all the correct file rights set up for the anonymous (IUSR_MACHINE) and application pool accounts. You can use FileMon to test for this (see above). This will include rights to the ASPX files in the LAYOUTS folder, including special anonymous access permissions that are needed for Login.aspx, Authenticate.aspx, and in our case LiveAuth-Handler.aspx. Generally, if you have IUSR_MACHINE in the WSS_WPG group, and the application pool account in the WSS_ADMIN_WPG group, then that ought to do it.
Is Your Provider Working?
Make sure your authentication provider is set up correctly. In this case, I would double check the setup as per the instructions described with the WLA provider above.

One way to test this is to add the same provider settings to your internal (Windows Authentication) and Central Administration sites. With these added, you should be able to go into your windows authentication based site and add Live Authenticated Users as a group with rights within SharePoint – even if you can't successfully get the Live ID login process to work.

Figure: Testing correct setup of WLA Users and Groups from the intranet (Windows Auth) site

In my case, I added the membership, roleManager, and appSettings nodes to the web.config file located at C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG, because I wanted these providers to be accessible to every web application on my development machine. However, I will probably go "by the book" in production.

Also, note that I have commented out the identity node (namely, impersonation="true") in the public facing (FBA) web.config file, as this is normal practice for FBA sites, but wasn't mentioned in the WLA documentation.

Unfortunately, none of these things I tried actually solved my problem. Every page I would try to visit would redirect me to Authenticate.aspx, and then that would subsequently 302 redirect me to LiveAuth-Handler.aspx?action=login, which would give me the same 401 error.

As a quick aside, let's look at how the login process actually works, because I was thinking about it a lot at the time. We start on the main page of the blog, and if you have Anonymous Access configured in SharePoint and also correctly configured in IIS, then you'll see the default.aspx page with its Sign In link displayed correctly.

As you can see, this link takes you to Authenticate.aspx, which is SharePoint's default page for requiring a login, and the one that is responsible for redirecting you to LiveAuth-Handler.aspx as described in web.config, whereupon, we get the dreaded 401.5 error. Authenticate.aspx seemed to be working as designed, but I was at a loss to explain the error.

My Eureka Moment: Running Out Into the Street without My 401

After a full day of beating my head against the machine I was getting a bit crazy, so I decided to take a break. I put the computer away and went to an Orioles game with a pal of mine. Perhaps my best tip of the day, do not underestimate the value of taking a break. Your brain will keep working on the problem in the background while you recharge your batteries. In fact, I had a great time. Not only was this the first time in over a decade that they won while I was at the stadium (what awful luck!), but they delivered a spectacular grand slam followed by a three run homer, literally crushing the Cleveland Indians.

So, the following morning I was thinking about what is different in the WLA that I have never seen in any FBA based solution before. If I could find the variables, and eliminate them, I might solve the problem or at least discover the cause. One thing that struck me as just-too-stupid-to-think-about was the URL that specified in the loginUrl attribute of the forms tag in the authentication section of web.config.

"What if," I thought, "however unlikely it may be, there is something in the .NET authentication provider that refuses to recognize the login page simply because it can't handle the query string at the end?" Well, it sure seemed like the kind of shortcoming that would typically sneak into code, but I had never heard of such an issue. Still, there are lots of patches both for .NET framework and SharePoint, so maybe I'm on a patched version that has this rare problem.

So, I tried a little experiment. I took out the query string, like so.

Click the Sign In link again, and…

"Wow! There's no way it can be that simple." I put the query string back into the web.config, then tried to log in again, just to be sure.

In fact, if you take the query string out of web.config, but you add it manually on the address line of your browser, it will work as expected. The result redirects you to the Windows Live web site without any 401. Note that I've made some improvements to my source code. If you manually type the login URL on the address bar using the code as downloaded from CodePlex, you are much more likely to see some kind of NullReferenceException instead of a successful 302. But my point is that it will actually run your code.

The Final Verdict: Ye Not Guilty

So, then, this answers how to fix the problem, but doesn't identify the cause. Is this an issue with the .NET framework or maybe SharePoint itself? Well, that might be possible, but I thought it was unlikely given that these products have probably gotten some pretty thorough testing, especially compared to CKS and the WLA provider. But, I was on a mission. I wanted to make this work, and I had a clear path to explore, so there was no time to ponder this in depth.

What should've also crossed my mind at the time - but didn't - is that this issue might have been caused by code running in CKS itself. I ran into some other issues in the following days, but after everything blew over, I did some experiments to try and prove that CKS EBE itself was not at the heart of this particular problem. (Turns out I proved myself wrong.) To test this, I tried changing the settings for Secure System Pages in the CKS EBE Settings (a.k.a. Blog Settings).

There were two takeaways from this that finally explain this issue in black and white.

Lesson #1
The first is that just because you change your Blog Settings on the internal (Windows Authentication) site, does not mean they will automatically change on the public facing (FBA) site. While trying to make changes to the setting above, I learned that you need to make changes to Blog Settings manually to both sites. This is actually pretty cool, because it means you can select different themes for each and change some settings as appropriate. Also, it makes sense, since these blog settings are stored as a section in web.config for each site. But it is also a pain, especially if you have already configured FBA on the public site and you can't actually login to make settings changes.

Lesson #2
Second, I learned that everything I did from here on out is – at least partly – unnecessary. To work around this issue you simply need to turn Secure System Pages off. This will eliminate the problem with the login page having a query string. Of course, I happen to like this setting and want to use it on my public facing site, so I'll be working with this code to make it work properly with WLA.

Ever Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

Now that I've revealed "whodunit" in this little mystery, let me jump back. Instead of finding the exact cause right away, I would spend the next two days trying to make the login page work correctly without the query string. I went through a lot of code changes to liveatuh-handler.cs in the attempt, and I learned a lot. Because this is not the end of the story, I plan to talk about these things just a bit before I'm done, but nobody will blame you if you skip all that and just get the code. [TODO: publish and link to code please]

So my first approach was to try and rewrite liveauth-handler.aspx so that it could just tell that you were going from Authenticate.aspx and redirect you to the Windows Live site automatically without being told via the query string. To some extent, this worked, but it took some messing around the find the right commands, and the HTTP_REFERER was not always what I expected it to be.

Here's a screen shot from my early code:

You can see at this point that I had already done some work to eliminate "Object Reference Not Set" exceptions. That's pretty typical of code written in a rush. You get it working to the extent that you need it to. Since you have other stuff to do, there isn't time to imagine every way in which it might go outside that corral, you move on. Unfortunately, it results in code that breaks easily, which it did for me many times.

You can see in these shots of the debugger as I was digging around for the HTTP_REFERER variable within the page Request object.

Its value would typically be something ending in "default.aspx" or "authenticate.aspx" whenever I was clicking through from the Sign In link. It would be easy enough to tell that the referrer was on the same server using a string comparison or RegEx, but fortunately the .NET framework has provided a couple of handy properties in the HttpRequest class that help to isolate the host name. These are Url and UrlReferer as seen below.

Interestingly, page redirects from the WLA site would have no referrer at all. I would've preferred something like "https://login.live.com/ppsecure/post.srf?appid=000000004400143A&alg=wsignin1.0..." Alas, no, they are just blank. This makes them indistinguishable from URLs entered on the address bar, and that made testing a nuisance.

Despite this, I was able eventually to muddle through. There were a number of setbacks, like this one:

This issue, or some other error, will happen when you have Secure System Pages turned on. (The exception message is my code and not part of CKS EBE or WLA, because I thought it would be helpful for other developers.) I did some experimentation to prove that when Secure System Pages is turned off, the new users will be automatically redirected to liveinfo.aspx as they should be. Also, the issue does not affect users who have already entered an email address in their Blog User Profile, because those users are typically redirected to a generic (unsecured) page such as default.aspx instead.

What's going on here is that Windows Live returns with a valid session ticket as an HTTP form post, but since the user does not yet exist in SharePoint or have any rights other than those granted to Live Authenticated Users, they get redirected from liveinfo.aspx to the liveauth-handler.aspx login page, probably by way of authenticate.aspx. (In the original source code from CodePlex, this would've forced their session to be logged out.) The redirect causes the contents of Request.Form to be lost, which is the means by which WindowsLiveLogin.ProcessLogin() method receives data from the Windows Live website. Even though you'd think that such an internal referral should have some kind of value in Request.UrlReferrer, its value is in fact null. The code, as I had written it at this point, failed because this condition is a contradiction. On the one hand it thinks it is supposed to process some kind of result from Windows Live, but that information has been dropped.

In a nutshell this means that any user who hasn't provided an email address is going to get some kind of error after they log in, and it is very likely that such an error will cause the authentication process to break down before all the cookies have been properly set. Looking at all this strange behavior, I have decided that the entire flow for the page needs to be streamlined and bulletproofed. (Though as of December I still haven't gotten around to it.) It's too convoluted and unreliable when conditions fall outside the norm. In the long run, the issue can be corrected entirely by fixing the code for BlogHttpModule.cs in the CKS.EBE solution.

But, let's talk a minute about the process by which I came to discover that this is what was going on, because it did not come easily.

To have results come back from the Windows Live site, and not have any form attached to them, was very confusing to me. I wanted to try and prove that the form was in fact coming back across the wire, and then being lost someplace else. To this end, I downloaded a very useful tool called EffeTech HTTP Sniffer which I have used on many passed projects to gain insight into what SharePoint is doing behind the scenes. It is my opinion that an HTTP Sniffer of some kind should be included on every SharePoint developer's installation checklist.

I was unable to get any meaningful data from the HTTP Sniffer though, which returned only a generic HTTP request and a GIF for the passport logo. Upon post-back from the Windlows Live server there was not showing up in the trace. So, I tried their EtherDetect product to see if I could figure it out. Here is an example of what came back.

Digging into these, I was able to determine that my server was opening a random port that connected to their server on port 443. Several tests concluded the port was random, and so I was unable to add it to the list of ports in the HTTP sniffer, and everything I saw in the Ethernet sniffer was of course encrypted. Unfortunately, this is a failing of the EffeTech HTTP Sniffer. The MSN Sniffer was totally useless for WLA. But, at least I was able to determine that there was some kind of data coming back.

Eventually, I was able to blunder into the solution of manually adding an email address to my entry in ProfileList, and that got me around the problem with redirection to viewinfo.aspx. This is not a good final solution, but I was able to move on to the next problem.

Okay, so now I could see that I had a form and I was able to step through code to the point where I could see that SetAuthCookie was executing. But, as far as I could tell, there was no cookie and no authentication within SharePoint going on at this point.

By this time, I may have been chasing foo-fighters. I had been a while in the weeds, and the default theme for CKS EBE provides no visual indication that you are signed into SharePoint as any particular user - something I have since changed in my own blog site as you can see at the top of this page. For this reason, I recommend that you create your own theme that makes use of the wssuc:Welcome control to tell you who is logged in. It could very well be that for some time I was actually successful at authenticating and did not know it, because Live Authenticated Users was not assigned any special rights. Note that even if you add this group to the Contributors, it will not automatically be able to create Blog Posts.

Another thing I tried was to remove the domain and path properties from my forms tag in web.config, but I have since put them back so I know they are not to blame in this case. I also tried changing the name of the form from "livelogin" to "LiveID", but I have also changed this back without any effect. For the time being if there were authentication issues around cookies, I have been unable to reproduce the problem.

Ultimate Solution: Fix Secure System Pages

Although I did eventually end up reverting to the use of a query string for the liveauth-handler.aspx page, I wanted to clean up the code somewhat anyway. I also implemented a fix for the BlogHttpHandler.cs that resolves many of the issues described above, and could probably be improved upon even more. Given time I would like to make the list of allowed system pages configurable from an XML file in the Feature (or maybe even web.config itself).

You can download the code here. I only provide the files in question, and I'll submit these issues to CodePlex as soon as I get the chance, but I wanted to make them available here for those experiencing similar problems. Enjoy! [TODO: publish code and provide link]

So What's Eric Doing? (Sarah "Hey, what about me??")

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:09:00 GMT

Since today seems to be turning into my annual Catch Up On Blogging Day, here are a few things about what my kids have been up to this year.

Eric recently finished a class on Cryptography: Math & Codes through Johns Hopkins CTY. He received a grade of A+ (better than 100%). Also, he completed all of the extra credit projects, and got perfect scores on many of the tests. His submissions were excellent, and I will be posting links here later. For me, it is great news that he is finished with this class, since it was very time consuming for him. Even simply helping to keep him focused on the work was a big challenge for me. Congratulations Eric on a well earned success!

During the class he developed a new love for MS Excel Mobile and his HTC Wizard, a phone that he got as a hand-me-down after I upgraded to the Wing. For a kid, he makes amazingly good use out of that device. I steal some of my best mobile ideas from him.

Earlier in the summer, Eric attended a game developers' camp, where he learned to use tools to design 2-D games. He still has a long way to go, so I am hoping he will spend more time with Phrogram and MMF2.

Eric will now go on to study for the SAT, which he needs to pass this winter in order to stay in the CTY program.

Sarah started school this year at the Mt. Royal Elementary and Middle School, as part of their Ingenuity project. She didn't apply in time to be part of the program at Roland Park, but I think that the diversity at Mt. Royal will be a good thing for her. Another plus, she can take the train to school.

Sarah is in the school band and is helping raise money for their trip to Florida later this year. Sadly, there was no chess club for her to join at Mt. Royal.

Over the summer, Sarah went to a CTY class on Minerals and Polymars. They don't give grades for the summer program, but she got good marks all the same.

She also spent a week at NYSP in Washington DC. Sadly, we applied too late (See a pattern here) so she won't be able to go with the NYSP program to the inauguration.

Both Eric and Sarah helped me volunteering for the Obama campaign in Leesburg, VA during the final days leading up to November 4th. They (and the li'l ones) came with me, Alara, and James to see Barack speak at a rally on the 3rd in Mannassas. 90,000 people were there. It was crazy!

By far Talya's favorite word of the fall was "Barack Obama Button". It sounds fun even just saying it - try it! She also recently told Eric's 12 year old friend Elmer, "You're in my seat, little boy!" I can't believe she talks so much now, but I don't know why this suprises me since I've been through so many toddlers before. She likes to re-enact scenes from Steve Carrell's "Lanlord" skit.

Alex is still doing his thing. He enjoys his pre-school. He loves Iron Man, Spider Man, Baby Cthulu, his Loc Nar (it's a green ball), and the Companion Cube. He drew an amazing picture of our family that included the six of us, James "with a samari sword to chase away bad guys", and "Robot Barack Obama hat out of control".

Short of Breath? Maybe You Have Asthma

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:37:00 GMT

Reading one of my previous posts made me think of this.

As of about a month ago, it's official. Though the cause is indeterminate, I have asthma.

I'm writing up a short explaination in case someone stumbles upon it in Google and decides it is similar enough to what they are experiencing to warrant seeing a doctor.

First off the symptoms started almost four years ago, in spring 2005. We had just bought our house and had been there only a few months. As the wet and rainy but still cold part of winter-spring was upon us, I developed the most awful symptoms that felt like bronchitis. I used to get bronchitis nearly every year during the winter when I was in my late teens and early wenties, so I blew it off. I spent several weeks convalescing, and when the warmer sunny weather prevailed my symptoms subsided.

But, they never really went away. The shortness of breath, coughing, fleghm, fatigue, intermittent bronchitis, and even early morning vomiting would return any time the weather became cool or damp.

We did a lot of rennovations in the house over that time, and some of it involved some nastiness - plaster dust, whatever-was-in-the-attic-for-a-hundred-years dust, sanding, insulation. And then there was the mold. When we moved in, there was lots of it. (See Breaking the Mold for the full story.) I seriously was starting to think I had given myself silicosis, COPD, or something.

It took me many months to stich all these symptoms together. I saw an allergist and was told to my suprise that I was only allergic to dust (despite many other known irritants). I began to wonder if this was a long term effect of drinking.

I complained to my doctor, who gave me an Albuterol inhaler for the really bad days. She recommended I see a pulmanologist, and though it took me a long time to get around to it, I wish I had done so sooner.

So what the specialist said was that there are many factors that can cause asthma: mold, construction dust, allergies, poor air quality, acid reflux (which I didn't know) also called GIRD, and others - and I had practically every one.

My thinking now is that the basement mold may have caused it, and it never really went away. The mold never really went away either. We just had a test done and there is still some measurable amount in the basement. So there's that.

In any case, the doc gave me another inhaler - a steroid - to use twice daily. It worked so well I could feel it immediately. I guess it's a testament to how well it works that there are days where I can't tell if it is working or not, but then I will have a bad day and then you bet I can tell it is working when that happens.

It's not a long term solution, but it's something I can do for now to start my recovery while we try to figure out the causes.

When something is wrong, see your doctor. Don't wait. Whatever you may think, you aren't too busy.

My Annual Review: Revisiting the Idea of the "Job I Love"

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:28:00 GMT

Some time back, I wrote this little gem as a musing about what kind of job I would enjoy.

At the time, I had a job that wasn't particularly thrilling. Here were a few of my reasons for daydreaming.

Stagnant pay: In spite of positive reviews and even awards, I'd received no raise for two years. In fact, I observed a general trend towards stinginess, particularly towards those who demanded the best compensation up front. To me this begs the question, if you are competitive about acquiring talent, wouldn't it be prudent to be as-or-more competitve to keep it.
Abusive management: I had seriosly considered giving some of the people I worked for copies of The No Asshole Rule for Christmas. (Work Matters, Bob Sutton's blog is also a good read.) In my line of work you have bosses back at the company and at the client; there were no shortage of jerks embedded in both places.
Few (if any) prospects for promotion: With plenty of competitors, relocation out of the question, and my path blocked by immediate superiors, realism demanded that I did not delude myself into thinking I could move forward by moving up.
Allies leaving the company: when those most willing to defend or make a place for you are finding better opportunities elsewhere, it's time to pack your chute.

If you start to see signs of any of these things, take my advice and do whatever it takes to find yourself another gig quick.

Looking back, it was almost as if my bosses were reading my blog, because only a few days after I made that post, I was shown the door. I have heard stories of such occurrances.

I was lucky. Despite a very strong desire to be loyal to the company, I had never fully come to trust in them to do the same for me. After alternately witnessing and being on the wrong end of a number of instances of office "unpleasantness", I had resolved to stay on my assignment only throught the 1st of March and had prepared myself for the market, so by the time I was dismissed I already ahd everything in place to find a new job.

And so I returned to the world of independent contracting from wence I had come two years prior. I can't be bitter at my former masters. For one thing, losing my job was the best thing financially that could've happened to me. Also, as it turns out I think I am better suited for the life of an independent consultant.

So, as I come up on one year from that time, I want to take a look back at what my goals were, and make some observations about where my work life has met them and where it has fallen short.

A+: Work mainly with SharePoint
A: Don't work (directly) for the "Evil" Empire
B: Variety in work
B-: Limited practical and social impact of assignemnt changes
C: See lasting changes (transformation) from my work
B-: Focused mostly on the new and "yes you can" and less on the existing and "why you can't"
A: Autonomous commute
A+: Show me the money
D: Leadership, example to others
B: Fewer conflicts with others

These letter grades are relative to last year; so "A" means I made a major improvement, "C" means little has changed, and a "D" means that my attempts were fristrated. (It wasn't in the original list, but I threw in #10 "just because".)

I'd say overall, the changes have been good. Perhaps I'm best sutied to working independently after all. I'll be making my resume a standing part of the web site, so no need to repost a link here. Anyway, here's the drill down - more for myself than in case anybody cares.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED I want to work with SharePoint most or all the time, because it's really cool!
Well, the demand for SharePoint has seen to that better than anything. There's been such explosive growth in this product line that it's just insane. I never did spend much more than a week on the bench lat winter, and even during the wall street meltdown in September/October I was only seriously looking for work for a few weeks. (My biggest error was in taking a much needed inter-gig vacation in late August.)

Having my own consulting firm means being able to make a choice to turn down any assignments that don't make good use of the skills I have. That anyone at my old job ever for a moment thought it was a good idea to assign me any work that didn't include SharePoint proved to be completely short-sighted; in doing so, they had sacrificed both long term profitability and my marketability.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED But, I don't want to work for Microsoft.
It's easier than you'd think, but I did get a call about a couple of jobs from one of their people in Reston.
DOING BETTER I like working on lots of little short-term projects. Veriety in work and in solving different problems for different types of users is exciting. For that reason, I could probably spend my whole life building nifty web parts and showing people how to use them.
Well, being an independent contractor does lend itself to changing tasks and roles at least as well as working full time for a consulting firm does. I would prefer to have things mixed up a bit more while on a single project. DHS had so much variety it was almost a problem. Here at IMF it's less so, but I suspect that as I grow into the role that will change somewhat.
MODEST IMPROVEMENT But, I hate having to think about my commute [or the people I have to work with] changing whenever the project ends.
I still hate this aspect of changing jobs, but there have been some improvements. I've had some mixed success. I did form some lasting friendships while I was at Constellation, and I try to keep in touch with people that I enjoyed working with. I've had trouble keeping in touch with some of my old colleagues - John, Erin, I am lookin' at you - lol. Joining a local user's group helped too, but I haven't been to a meeting in quite a few months now. One good thing is that my current gig is only a few blocks from my previous one, so I can get together with pals from the old gig every now and then.

As for the commute changing, it was for the better. These days, I have more control of the locations where I work. Though there were moments when I worried that finances would force me to take an assignment that would make commuting a challenge, fortunately things worked out differently.
STILL ABOUT THE SAME I truly enjoy using technology to help transform a business. Getting only little wins is really frustrating, so buy-in from the top is very important to me. If that means part of my job is to fight for that support, then so be it. Unlike many people, I find debate invigorating.
In many ways, SharePoint lends itself to "little wins", so I see a lot of those. Transformations can be hard to fight for and take a while to happen. I think the trick is to keep the little wins lined up so they keep coming. Give a day or two each week to doing the little things that impress the people who are easily impressed, and use the remainder to take on the big challenges.

I am very fortunate that here at the Fund, the CIO is a big advocate for SharePoint, so maybe I will get to see some of that awesomeness soon.
MODEST IMPROVEMENT I like doing work on proof of concept and design. Finding out what can be done is fun. Finding out that you *could*, except that you *can't* because there either a) aren't the skills, b) aren't the resources, or c) isn't the time is no fun at all. So, a place where there is a real investment in technology (as opposed to band aid solutions) is a real plus. (Update: Add "lack of political will" to that above list of frustrations.)
So what else is new? Many companies large enough to truly leverage SharePoint run into the problems of bureaucracy, process, and political willpower. The ones that are small enough to be agile run into the time-skills-resources roadblock. Part of the challenge of working with SharePoint is finding a way in spite of this conundrum, so I am learning to accept this.

I still prefer development over software maintenance, so I am making the use of TFS and wiki for documentation at part of my mission here. I want other people to take over my stuff so it does not weight me down later.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED I would like to either have a very short commute to downtown Baltimore, or else a reasonable train ride to Washington DC that I can do myself. I am tired of relying on my wife for transportation. I wouldn't mind working in my boxers either, but I need an excuse to get out of the house once in a while, and some things are better done face to face.
I spent about twleve weeks of the year working in my boxers. I also did a short term part-time gig that was mostly telecommuting - though it tried like hell to become full time or worse. Later, I took an eight week unpaid vacation and sat around the house.

As for the commute, all my other work has been either very local to my house or in Washington DC. Only a few visits to Booz Allen in McClean, VA in the early part of the year were outside that spec - and although they were quite a haul, they didn't undermine my autonomy. These days, my wife only gives me a lift to the train station, and I'd love to find a way to save her from that.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED I'd like a job title where the median base salary is in the neighborhood of $150,000/yr. Software Engineering Director looks nice, though frankly I have never seen anybody hiring for that one. They always use terms like Developer, Analyst, or Architect. Sorry, but the pennies don't spend like they used to, and wages don't seem to be going up to meet inflation. I guess I could accept a lower salary for the right perks, but the money is pretty important.
I won't go into specifics, but I am making much better money as an independent contractor. Even with the two month gap in employment this fall, I am well set this year. The net compensation is about double what I used to make as a salaried employee. Although, one thing I really need to be mindful of is the taxes.

This is important though, and I can't stress this part enough. I would not be able to pull this off if my wife were not working. Her job provides the health insurance, taking that worry off my plate. Also, even though her salary covers virtually nothing beyond the mortgage and day care, it provided the much needed butress which allowed me to go through extended unemployment without sinking irrecoverably into debt. Given enough time to amass some savings and shop for benefits, I could possibly take care of both of these issues on my own, but this year it was an indespensible aid.
NOT QUITE WHERE I WANT TO BE Funnily enough, I like managing technical people, and I am good at it too. That's an aspect of work that I miss when being stood up as a lone gunman in consutling gigs. You rarely if ever have the authority to direct a team. Well, at least sometimes you can act as the trusted advisor; that can be nice.
I have to be honest, this is the one thing that hasn't been everything I'd like from a job. Being realistic, that's probably a good thing, since this year has been full of challenges that would've made taking a stronger leadership role difficult. I did get some technical leadership responsibilities at DHS. Due to the practicality of working with govies it wasn't what I was originally promised, but what it morphed into was acceptable. There is a good chance that some leadership duties will emerge here at the Fund, but it's too soon yet and hard to predict at this point. There is some of this in running my own business, but I need to find a way to profitability beyond my own hours if I want it to have any measurable role in my daily life.
DOING BETTER Work in an environment that is less hostile and/or stressful. Have fewer conflicts with others and resolve them more amicably when they occur.
Life as an independet is absolute not conflict free. For starters, I had one client who got to be over $12,000 in arrears early in the year when I needed the money most, and he practically begged for conflict. I mean how many times was I supposed to accept "it's in the mail" as an excuse, anyway? Another client tried to bully me into working more hours than we'd previously agreed on - honestly more than I could handle while trying to run and grow the business. Finally, the security clearance process at DHS will just wreck your sanity - especially if like me you are prone to explaining things in detail and have a lot of petty baggage to disclose.

That said, I will take all this in trade for one abusive boss, or one client who thinks it's funny to tell his developers to go wash his car. There is a different power dynamic at play when a business is your own and you are (at least on paper) supposed to be independent. For one thing, it is much easier emotionally to stand up for yourself.

What Tool Should You Use to Deploy SharePoint Projects?

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:33:00 GMT

At this point, I have tried them all. I hand rolled my solutions; used early versions of WSPBuilder; struggled with the interface for VSeWSS 1.0, 1.1 CTP, and 1.1 final; and even tried a few offbeat solutions.

Until this summer, every method had serious problems that made packaging and deployment problematic. Revisiting my posts, I see that I never mentioned this before, but I owe props to my colleague Ted Calhoon who turned my on to the WSPBuilder Extensions. I switched over, and I never looked back.

http://www.codeplex.com/wspbuilder/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=16820

They are a bit counterintuitive, and the commands to flush out the folder structure are well buried, but once you get the hang of them, they are the best around - at least until someone comes up with something better.

In future, I'll do a walkthrough.

Nightmare Before Christmas Party

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:09:00 GMT

Ever get the feeling that people start celebrating Christmas earlier with each passing year? Well, we noticed too, and frankly we think it's time that Halloween took a stand!

Anouncing our possibly annual "Nightmare Before Christmas Party"

...featuring as many horrible holiday mashups as we can come up with on two weeks' notice. Wear a custume - or don't. Kids are welcome. Bring something to eat or drink, but there will be plenty on hand.

Date: Saturday, December 13th, 2008

When: 4:30 p.m. to "whenever"

Where: Home of Tom and Alara, 1236 Union Ave, Baltimore

What's up with this weird idea? Honestly, we were so busy with the election this year that we didn't really get to do Halloween the way we wanted to. Join us for a little sillyness, as one of our favorite holidays spills over into it's neighbors.

If you haven't gotten your invitation yet, just contact me and let me know. We're not the most organized people after all.

CKS EBE Construction Finished?

Thomas C. Carpe — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:09:00 GMT

After some false starts and delays, I have finally gotten CKS EBE working on this prodiuction server. True, it is not the prettiest or most customized theme in the universe, but it is working.

Next, I have to try and get the Windows Live Authentication configured correctly so y'all can use your MSN/.NET Messenger IDs to sign into the site. I also have further some customizations to the banner and theme planned. Oh! And, a complete reworking of the post catagories.

From Bricked to Tricked Part III: Adding That Personal Touch

Thomas C. Carpe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:47:00 GMT

One thing I am very particular about is that I like to customize my tech so it suits my personality and represents me. With Windows Mobile, this is pretty easy to do, but the pieces are scattered all over the place, and you’ll have to develop some new skills if you don’t want to just go with a theme developed by someone else.

Because it came with my ROM, I started with a theme called HTC Black. This is a nice theme in glossy grayscale that purports to be similar to the look and feel of the iPhone. I like the glossy black bars for their clean design and neutral colors that go with practically everything. My OpenTouch ROM included a background graphic that did not impress me much but was good enough for quite a while – a black cross-hatch backdrop that sort of reminded me of the eye of one of those alien “greys” that hail from a Bud Hopkins or Whitley Strieber paperback.

When it came to making the phone really mine, I wasn’t sure what direction to go in. When the MDA was my phone I had named it GladOS. Eric has since inherited it and renamed it Companion Cube. My earlier XDA I (Wallaby) phone was named for Naomi Armitage (from the anime Armitage the Third) and it had a custom theme to match, but I hadn’t done any hardcore customizations since then. I seem to have a thing for naming my phones after scary women. For the Wing, I named it Revi (after the character from the anime Black Lagoon), continuing this tradition.

Today Screen Theme: Desktop Wallpaper

As it happens, my default ring tone is still GladOS saying “Are you still there?”, but for the visual appearance I wanted something considerably more badass for a character like the gun toting Revi.

There are lots of good desktop wallpapers for Black Lagoon, many developed by fans, but they're all sized for the PC. You have to be careful when porting them into Windows Mobile, not only because of the size, but also you have to consider the smaller, more cluttered, and likely more difficult to read Today screen.

I found an excellent article on creating properly sized images for Windows Mobile 5/6 themes. Because I want to conserve space in main memory, I decided to go with the single image sized 320 x 294 pixel format. You can use two different images instead: one for portrait, and the other for landscape.

The trick is to use images that don’t make the start menu or today screen too hard to see or read. I took a suitable graphic, and after sizing it down appropriately, I reduced the brightness considerably. For a startup Image, I used the same graphic, but reduced the saturation quite a bit and also made it even darker. This has an interesting, and sometimes eerie, effect in that it often looks as if the start menu is causing parts of the today screen and menu bar to become transparent.


Revi with Guns (normal)	Revi with Guns (dark)

Once you have good images, you need to make a theme. I used a program called ThemeGenCE (download here) to develop my theme by downloading HTC Black directly off the phone and then making changes to it. This application was not very intuitive, and not completely in English, but it was very functional and I was able to muddle through doing basic modifications like wallpaper without any problems at all.

Slide 2 Unlock

For the S2U2 screen saver, things were much simpler. I simply had to find appropriate images and scale them down to 320 by 240. (Actually, I accidentally made them 320 by 200 which was a mistake that I intend to correct soon.) S2U2 already does some darkening with software that makes white text easier to read. Once you have these graphics, you just copy over the Wallpaper.jpg and WallpaperL.jpg files in the S2U2 program folder.


Portrait	Landscape

The Full Package

Here are some screen caps to show how this turned out. Sorry there aren't any for S2U2, because the screen capture hotkey won't work when it is active.


Start Menus	Today in Landscape

HTC Clock	HTC Weather

SPB Contacts	SPB Notes

Looking at these now, I think I might want to make some more modifications to improve the readability of the start menus and make the theme just a bit more stylish. Also, though I like Dutch's Desktop, the landscape image doesn't really thrill after you cover it up with S2U2's clock and other screen clutter, so I will probably replace it.

From Bricked to Tricked Part II: Applications You Can't Live Without

Thomas C. Carpe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

[Author's Note: I will add screen shots and links at a later time, so if you'd like anything in the meantime, just contact me.]

Over the past year I have tried many, many apps on my phone. If you do the same, you will likely find many that don’t work at all, and some that are so difficult to use that they aren’t worth having. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of software hanging around from the Pocket PC era, so it can be difficult to tell what is truly useful - especially now with the improved capabilities offered by Windows Mobile 6.

There are some real gems out there in the wastelands, though. I’d rather not bore to death with an endless laundry list of the applications I have tried, what they do, and where to download them. In fact, I already have a list for that if you really want to know. Instead I want to focus on what I call the “must haves”, and how they were truly transformational in that they changed how I use my mobile device.

Google Maps Mobile

I can’t tell you how many times this application has made a real difference to me when I was in a pinch. Having access to a map and your location when you are out and around is something I don’t honestly know how I ever lived without, but having all the features of Google Maps on your phone - plus more – is totally awesome!

Even if you have a car-based GPS (I did, but my wife destroyed it) there are still those times when you will be out on foot. In my case, this is especially useful, since I commute to work by train, Metro, and good old fashioned shoe leather. Also, when you consider that my eyesight is extremely poor – so much so that I can’t read street signs on the opposite side of the road – this application does wonders for helping me know where I am and where I should be going.

Google’s My Location feature works amazingly well even with my GPS-less T-Mobile phone. It gives me a radius of certainty around where it thinks I am, and I have only ever caught it once or twice where I was in fact sitting outside of that circle. I can only imagine it will be that much better on phones with built in or USB/SD based GPS devices.

The traffic feature is useful for all major interstates between New York and DC. I admit that I have not really travelled outside this area, so I can’t speak to other parts of the country. However, I will say that they could do better by providing more granular data for local streets, accidents, etc. I don’t know why, but I think it helps to know why you’re stuck in traffic.

The search features are excellent. Over time, I have found that Google has more or less replaced your phone book, 411, Switchboard.com, and practically any other means of finding a business. Having the same ability to search for the nearest FedEx Kinko’s or Starbucks while you are out and about as you did when you were at home planning your trip really sets you free.

Things I would improve about this application are its absolute need to have a network connection at all times. Mobile apps should not close or crash when they can’t find the Internet, IMHO. At least it should offer a chance to retry, but the ability to cache some data (especially in your home turf) would be of great benefit. Also, I don’t know how one could implement it technically, but a virtual compass would make a great feature – so I can tell not just what corner I am on, but will crossing the street take me in the right direction. Lastly, I would like to see better integration between PIM Contacts and the Google Maps application, so that I can say get directions to a contact’s address, or add a location that I found on Google Maps to my Contacts.

Tome Raider 3

I will simply say this. When you spend two hours plus on the train every day, you will want to bring a book. Over the summer I carried a backpack with a laptop, but the current job provides a desktop PC, so I am not weighed down. This means not only that I am served very well by anything I can do with my mobile that could have been done on my laptop, but also carrying along a paperback book is no longer a trivial matter of stuffing it into my bag. If I want to keep my hands free (more or less), then e-books are the way to do.

Tome Raider is a great product. I have not yet had to pay for it to get enjoyment out of it, but I suspect I will eventually do so in order to get access to their extended library. For now, I am more than amused by the full collection of material by Cory Doctorow and various works by other authors both new and old.

To make this application really complete, you need to download the CIA World Fact Book as well as a copy of the Wikipedia. This makes Tome Raider not just a great tool for your amusement, but an indispensible reference manual that you can rely on even where the Internet itself fears to tread. (Oooooo, DC Metro - scary!)

pRSSReader

RSS feeds have been around for quite some time, but I was always sort of behind the curve in figuring out how to make them a useful part of my life. Some of my thoughts on this would apply to any RSS Reader, but they have specific relevance to RSS readers on mobile devices in particular. In fact, I have long since wanted an RSS reader that was a bit less heavy handed with memory and offers a nicer user interface. But, no such application forthcoming, I will take the best that is available.

One of the best things that RSS is good for is for making good use of my time on the train. I noticed some time ago that I spend about 2 hours virtually every day reading my favorite blogs, news sites, and so forth. On my PC, RSS lets me do this without identifying to my coworkers that I am surfing Digg, DailyKos, Politico, and so on. Moving these feeds to my mobile I can shift my browsing into the morning and afternoon hours, make better use of my time, and resist the urge to fool around at work (excepting those days when I just feel totally useless, of course). The list of feeds I have currently includes a mix of news, politics, work related technology, and fun stuff. I have more material than I can reasonably sift through given only a few hours a day, so I can skim over it or dig it at my leisure.

I have begun to find other useful applications for RSS, especially as information providers have made more and more information available in this way. For example, I now have Google Alerts trained with several searches that will return results as they appear bearing my own name or online alias. This helps me protect my privacy and better manage my net presence. I can do the same sorts of searches for topics of interest: for example, give me all “Barack Obama” appearing on Google in the last 24 hours.

Also, SharePoint provides excellent access to its lists and libraries via RSS, and I am only beginning to envision how I can leverage this, but one example would be to tie our home shopping list to my phone, so I will know if I need to pick anything up (from one of the many stores in DC) before heading home. Because RSS works in the background, I don’t need to remember to connect to a web site to check for updates about this kind of information.

pRSSReader can be configured using OPML files, which I suggest that you do so you can set up your feeds on a real PC where it will go so much faster. Once you have them imported, you can organize them into folders. I recommend you avoid nested folders, at least with the current version (v1.4.2).

You can configure caching and image downloads to suit your memory capacity and network connectivity, but I like to keep offline copies of everything in case I am underground. Note that some feeds will not work well with offline browsing. For example, the Washington Post is virtual useless because of its user registration requirements and non-mobile friendly web site (the Baltimore Sun is a much more mobile friendly newspaper). Also, I have not tried the application for use with “pod-casts” or RSS feeds that deliver streaming media. It would be nice if these were supported, but I am not holding out much hope.

Eventually, I would like to see a much more powerful RSS reader with a better UI based on the .NET Compact Framework. Failing that, I will continue to stand by this open source application, in the hopes they will maybe take in the direction I’d like it to go. (You can download pRSSReader and its source code at Google Code.)

Office Mobile 2007

Simply having the ability to work with MS Office format files while on your phone can be priceless. Though I would never want to rely on my phone as a platform for creating documents from whole cloth, being able to read these documents is indispensible, and being able to work with early drafts can be very useful at times.

Of particular interest, my son found that Pocket Excel was a very useful tool in his cryptography class, as he was able to develop spreadsheet based tools for performing Caesar, Vigenere, and Affine ciphers - as well as useful tools for finding modular inverses and prime numbers. This got me to thinking that there might be many other applications for mobile friendly spreadsheets that I haven’t yet considered. For example, I used to enter my work logs into Excel, so that I could track hours worked independently from the hours on my time sheet or invoice. Just having access to your household budget on the phone could be a useful thing.

One Note and/or Pocket Notes

I used to carry a notebook and pen with me to meetings, and I know many people who still do – even if only so they look like they’re paying attention. The information I would collect generally took extra time to drag into the computer for later use. Now, I enter my notes directly into my phone, or even record the entire meeting. When people ask me if I brought a pad, I smile and flash them my phone.

Doing things this makes everything easier in so many ways, but I do worry just a bit that people may think I am distracted. How do they know I am not surfing the net or writing emails? I just have to try very hard to stay focused on what is going on in the conversation, so I am not caught off guard should someone try to test me. Of course, if I am falling asleep, it is probably better to be surfing the net. Over time, I think people will come to accept this way of taking notes, especially when they see the benefits.

One other thing: for the record, I don’t really see OneNote as being better in any way than the Pocket Notes that comes with Windows Mobile. They both work with ActiveSync, and Pocket Notes supports pen drawings, but it does not appear that OneNote does (I could be wrong). The only real difference is where the information is stored on the PC and when/how they sync. Use what works for you.

SPB Diary

The author brags that Diary may cause you never to leave your Today screen again, and I think they may be right. In my opinion, this is one of the best apps ever made for Pocket PC. The only bad thing about it is that it is only available as a Today plug in, which makes it slow and can make it a little more difficult to read depending on how your Today wallpapers are set. I’d like to see the same functionality from a stand-alone application. But, it is still damn useful.

What SPB Diary does is to portray your common productivity information in a much more useful way than you can get from the standard Pocket Outlook suite (Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Messaging). Contacts support categories, custom colors, and icons. You can also display contact photos. The task list supports categories and other filtering options, so it is well suited to show your goals both long term and immediate. The calendar will include tasks that are due on specific dates.

The Notes panel will display all readable text files on your device (Word, Text, Pocket Notes) organized by the date created or modified, so you won’t lose information regardless of where you saved it. There’s a tab for mail that helps consolidate mail from multiple accounts, and a special events tab that can turn even the most thoughtless schmuck like me into someone who remembers birthdays and anniversaries. Now, how shall I find my anniversary without asking the wife? Hmmm

There is even the ability to include extra tabs with other Today controls, so you can really reclaim space on your Today screen. I like this a lot, and recommend you use it in horizontal mode so that it does not automatically trigger the need for horizontal scroll bars. This worked very well for me, as I added HTC Home (which is itself a kind of tabbed plug in) as the default tab, and Diary will switch back to it if I am idle for five minutes.

Slide to Unlock (S2U2)

Slide to unlock is the mobile equivalent to a screen saver. It locks your screen when you are inactive, so that random pocket calls do not occur. S2U2 has a great interface that is very slick and will make Pocket PC users feel like they just bought an iPhone. It is very personalizable, so you can and should customize it with your own wallpapers to give your phone that extra touch. Further, it can display time, weather, upcoming appointments, message status, and other information – so you may not need to unlock the phone for example if you are just checking the time. It includes a nice feature called Slide 2 Answer which displays large photos when people call (note that you’ll need the companion app S2P in order to upload high resolution contact photos). There is also a media player, S2P, which integrates with the lock screen so you can see what is playing while the phone is locked.

Resco Explorer

Every Windows Mobile device needs some kind of upgrade from the weakling File Explorer that ships with it. There are many choices, including Total Commander and products from SPB, and SKTools. However, Resco has become the gold standard. The new version boasts settings that are touch friendly, letting you get a lot more done without having to whip out your stylus. It is a worthy addition which includes a registry editor and FTP client, so you won’t need to install separate applications to do these jobs.

Sprite Backup

There are lots of backup tools out there. This is the one that I like. You can schedule regular backups from ROM to SD, and perform complete backups of everything while it is docked. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of creating a decent backup plan. Knowing how many times I have customized myself into a corner, you think I would learn.

AirScanner Virus Checker

Personally, I don’t really care which anti-virus suite you choose (as long as you have one), everyone needs a good virus checker. AirScanner was one of the first for Pocket PC. It is affordable, and relatively frugal in terms of CPU and memory resources.

Pocket RAR

Just like WinRAR has become the programmers’ compression tool of choice on Windows, Pocket RAR ensures that no matter the type of compression (including ISO and CAB) you will be able to dig into it and get the files you want.

Snood for Pocket PC

If you have only one game on your phone, it might as well be snood. That’s all I really have to say about the matter. This game is unchanged since the days of the Pocket PC, and it really doesn’t need to be, because the original port was excellent.

Other OS Modifications

There are a number of other enhancements to the Windows Mobile operating system that you should have. In my opinion, if your ROM doesn’t come with these preinstalled, you may want to consider a better ROM.

· BatteryStatus: the best thing about this app, other than the battery meter, is the OMAP Scalar functionality, which can programmatically over-clock your CPU. I was able to boost my 201 MHz processor to 234 MHz without any issues, and the scalar function reduces the CPU to conserve power and reduce heat when the processor utilization is low.

· HTC QuickMenu: Not to be confused with QuickMenu by Nanling, this task manager application replaces the X button in the upper right, and it fully compatible with QuickMenu and BattaryStatus. To enable it, go to System > Settings > Task Manager > Buttons.

· Nanling’s QuickMenu: great improvement over the conventional Start menu. Be advised that some features of BattaryStatus are incompatible with it, namely the TaskBar Indicator.

· HTC Home: a stylish clock and jump panel for contacts and commonly used apps. It also has very nice weather panel and some other useful features.

· Task Manager: This is a great little application that extends the basic TM capability to include many more system processes and settings. It is a must have for people who like to tinker.

From Bricked to Tricked Part I: The Un-boxing and Flashing of HTC Windows Mobile PDA Phones

Thomas C. Carpe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:38:00 GMT

Some people will want to dig right into un-boxing their phones and installing a custom ROM. I was not ready for this, but if you are either tech savvy or very reckless, then you might be. If you’re not sure, you can always back up the factory ROM before you flash a new one. By far the definitive site for flashing HTC phones is www.xda-developers.com, but chances are if you have such a phone and access to Google, then you already know that.

It took me quite a lot of digging before I got the hang of un-boxing and flashing phones. There are a lot of guides out there, and each individual phone is slightly different. That said, most of the HTC/T-Mobile phones I have done were similar. Though I would not take it as a bible for every phone model, the XDA-Dev Wiki for the HTC Excalibur (T-Mo Dash) has two excellent walkthroughs (here and here) that help to explain the process. Though what follows is specific to HTC phones (will probably not help you with iPhone, BlackBerry, G3, etc), I will try my best avoid hardware specific stuff that might be different on each phone and just try to convey the concepts.

First things first, make sure you have a computer with ActiveSync installed. For my installs I used ActiveSync 4.5. There are processes for getting all of this to work with Vista, and I have done so in the past, but you will spend less time and have fewer headaches if you work from Windows XP. I have recently seen some phones that say they can be flashed with ROM files from the SD card, which would let you bypass the whole ActiveSync thing, but I have never tried this process. All the instructions I have followed say that you should remove your SD card during the flashing process.

Next, you’ll have to install a policy change to Windows Mobile that will let you run unsigned applications. (If you ever want to benefit from all that free or semi-free software that is out there for Windows Mobile and Pocket PC you will need to do this anyway.) This is done by means of a CAB file that you can copy to the phone memory and run, but some unlocking tools will do this for you automatically. (For all these steps described, the level of automation will vary depending on the unlocking utility used.) When this is done, it will need a reboot.

Among other things, the step above lets you put a RAPI application on the phone so that the unlocking application can access it over the USB/ActiveSync connection. RAPI is how many of the automated boot loader and flashing utilities do their heavy lifting, and it saves you a lot of frustration and the potential for manual error that could result in “bricking” your phone.

This would be about the point where you can unhide the Extended ROM and back up its contents as well as your main memory. There are many tools to help you do this, and they will likely be different for each device, although they do seem to overlap in some cases. I can’t stress this enough: back it up now. You may find someday that you need to restore it to the factory ROM to prevent any issues with the warranty. Besides, there will be some CAB files in the extended ROM that you may want to re-install later, a licensed copy of Office Mobile for example.

Next comes something called “CID Unlocking”. This allows you to put any custom ROM on your device, as opposed to only those certified by T-Mobile for example. Note that this is different from “SIM Unlocking“(also known simply as “Unlocking”), which allows the phone itself to work with any carrier’s SIM card. Some CID unlocking tools can also SIM unlock the phone, while other phone/tool combinations can’t. I believe there is now a law that says that the provider must offer you a code to unlock the SIM if your account is in good standing.

Whether you need to CID unlock your phone and how it is specifically done will depend a lot on not only the hardware model but also the version of the core firmware, or AKU (analogous to a ROM “Service Pack”), that is installed on it. For example, my old phone was easily unlocked because I had an AKU before version 2.0, but if I had gotten my hardware a little later on (or perhaps a warranty replacement) then I would have had to downgrade the phone first, unlock the phone, and then upgrade the a newer factory ROM, all before being able to load my custom ROM on it. My understanding is that once you have CID unlocked the phone you will never need to do it again, no matter how many times you flash it.

Having gotten the phone to where it is fully unlocked and can communicate with your PC via RAPI, the next step is to get the phone into the correct boot loader. Tools for this step come by many names, such as “USPL/Jump SPL”, “Hard SPL” and “Soft SPL”, and the way these tools work varies considerably (so read the docs carefully). There is also typically a manual key combination for doing this which loads the factory installed boot loader. The trick here is to get into a boot loader that does not care what version of the ROM you put on the phone; the BL from the factory will typically neither let you downgrade nor install a ROM with “weird” version information. Boot loader screens have various appearances. Here are some examples:

· Factory installed boot loader with three-color screen

· Boot loader turns screen completely off-white

· Boot loader black screen with penguin and some text

Once the phone is in this state, it is ready to take a new ROM. Enter the ROM Upgrade Utility. This is a modified version of the same tool that is provided by HTC and T-Mobile for upgrading the factory approved ROMs, but in this case it will be installing a customized file. The ROM files have the extension RUU, named after the tool, but they are packages that contain .NB files that will be flashed to the phone’s ROM and Extended ROM.

Since now is a good time to ask, you did remember to back up your ROM and Extended ROM, just in case, right?

Which ROM you use depends on your preferences and whether you have done all the right unlocking steps above to ensure it will be accepted. For my Wing, I used a version of OpenTouch, but you can pick from any of the ROMs that have been published by the community for your phone model. It’s a good idea to get familiar with all the applications they include; hence my earlier failed experiment with installing practically everything available. Also, consider how much of the main memory you want to preserve. If you have a large SD card (who doesn’t these days) you might want a smaller “lite” ROM with fewer features pre-installed. Remember, you can always install more applications later.

So, that’s un-boxing and flashing your phone in a nutshell. Next, you’ll want some applications, so I’ll talk about the some of the applications that I’ve tried, which are killers, and which ones should just be killed.

From Bricked to Tricked: The Story of my Mobile Metamorphosis

Thomas C. Carpe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:32:00 GMT

I have been a fan of the idea of mobile transformation for a long time – or rather, the idea that you can use mobile technology to transform your life. That said, I am something of an old dog, and though I have always been something of a gadgeteer, but old habits die hard. At times, I’ve had a shortage of imagination when it comes to figuring out what that process looks like. At other times, the technology itself has gotten in the way. Also, there is the time investment required, which I never seem to be able to overcome. About a year ago, I promised myself that I would devote time to making this transformation work, and that I would write an article about my experiences. This is the culmination of that effort.

My story begins about a year ago when my T-Mobile MDA (a.k.a. HTC Wizard) went on the fritz and I began to realize exactly where I did (and did not) rely on it. At that time, it was interesting to notice that it was a sometimes useful phone and e-mail appliance, but that I was not really making use of it in any other way. Nonetheless, I deal emotionally handle with the concept of living without a cell phone. While I was willing to wait for a few days to have a new device shipped, I wasn’t prepared to go longer than that for the minor USB port repair the MDA needed.

When my replacement phone arrived, a shiny new Wing (a.k.a. HTC Herald), I resolved to discover for myself exactly how far I could push mobile computing and my own imagination. I spent several iterations installing, refining, and eventually destroying my device.

My first attempt was done on the T-Mobile Factory ROM that shipped with the phone. In retrospect this was a mistake, since these ROMs are generally loaded with all kinds of garbage and have a reputation for being unstable. Also they are typically “boxed”, meaning that you can’t take your phone from one mobile provider to another, or sometimes even install custom applications.

Like many others before me, loading the phone up with software (that itself was often potentially unreliable) eventually led to it being completely instable. I had started installing applications around Christmas of ’07, and before February the phone was nearly useless and had to be hard reset (and eventually completely re-flashed). However, trying out many different apps helped to form the basis for most of what I learned that got me to the platform I use today.

Thus began a journey that would carry me over an entire year of installing, configuring, exploring, breaking, uninstalling, loving, hating, and occasionally even writing software for my Windows Mobile phone. All this was done in an attempt to reach that illusive nirvana where the mobile device is truly life enriching – and an endless series of still more IT housekeeping chores. This series tells the story of that process.

Construction Almost Done :-)

Thomas C. Carpe — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:42:00 GMT

Just wanted to let the world know that my attempts to rennovate this blog are nearly finished. The new version is in the staging server now and sports the new CKS EBE 2.0 with Windows Live Authentication, my own theme/master page, and several home grown bug fixes. I should have it moved to the production server in a day or two.

I also have several articles I had been keeping in Word, including a guide for implementing WLA in SharePoint and a techniocal discussion about overcoming some of the nastier limitations of custom fields and CAML. Look for those to be published in peices over the next two weeks.

Construction Notice

thomas.carpe — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:49:00 GMT

This note is for my readers, whoever they are. :-)

I will be doing some maintenance work on the SharePoint server over the next few days, and possibly deploying some new features as well. So stay tuned, but don't get mad if the site does down.

To Lawrence, Will.i.am, and Barack: Thank You!

thomas.carpe — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:04:00 GMT

Thank you for reminding me, on the day after I heard I'll need to find a new job, that "Yes, we can."

Thank you for giving me hope in America and in myself. Thanks for reminding me of the opportunity that I have to make a difference - this week and next. Thanks for reminding me about the politics that I love - the politics of hope - instead of the politics of fear.

http://lessig.org/blog/

You can do so much. I can do so much. Together we can all do anything we put our minds to, and bring prosperity and greatness to ourselves, America, and the world.

If you live in a state that is voting today, please take the time to cast your ballot. Sometimes it can be crushing to believe in something so strongly, and then watch other people tear your dreams apart. I have lived through that, in work, in politics, in life. But, if we swallow that fear, rise up together, and take a stand for change, there is nothing we cannot do.

Thank you.

Not So Super Tuesday

thomas.carpe — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:17:00 GMT

For as long as I can remember Maryland has been a Super Tuesday state, meaning that we vote in the Democratic primary along with the majority of other states like California and New York.

So you can imagine my surprise on reading this:

Saturday's record breaking Democratic voter turnout in South Carolina sets the stage for an exciting primary here in Maryland on February 12^th.

Whaaaa!? So when did this happen and do our voters even know?

I'm politically active and consider myself to usually be pretty well informed. All the primary maps (CNN etc) have been showing us as among the Super Tuesday states. At least that was true a few weeks ago - I am pretty sure about it, since i was showing the maps to my kids and explaining the whole complicated thing to them.

Frankly, after several elections that were already tied up by momentum long before Super Tuesday, I am very dissappointed in our state's Democratic Party leaders that allowed us to fall out of step with the rest of the nation.

Did they have some reason that justifies this? I'd like to know.

Now, it's very likely that there will be some kind of clear trend emerging on February 5th, and our vote will matter much less than it would've if we voted with the other states.

I guess we'll miss out on delicious cake yet again. <sigh>

Update: Well, that didn't turn out at all like I thought it would. Instead of a clear leader emerging on Super Tuesday, we got something like a draw, which made the so-called Potomac Primary an actually relevant contest. For once, our Maryland votes counted for something and were noticed. Barack Obama even came to the Baltimore Arena. Sarah and I had a great time going door to door to get the word out about the event. Who knew? But, it is pretty impressive the way my point of view on the date change was turned around 180 degrees.

John Edwards Is Out - What's Next?

thomas.carpe — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:14:00 GMT

So, according to news articles, John Edwards accounced/is anouncing his withdrawl from the Democratic campaign for presidential nomination at 1pm in New Orleans.

Here's the Story on MSNBC.

According to them, "Four in 10 [40%] Edwards supporters said their second choice in the race is Clinton, while a quarter [that's 25%" prefer Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo poll conducted late this month. Both Clinton and Obama would welcome Edwards’ backing and the support of the 56 delegates he had collected."

Personally, I am not sure how I feel about that. I think the first word that came to mind was skeptical.

Why? Because Edwards was my second choice, and because I think his message dovetails most clearly with that of Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton as the poll implies.

From the beginning I have believed that Edwards' supporters would have preferred Barack on issues like the war in Iraq, because where Obama is and has been against the war from the beginniing, Clinton still supports it. Edwards publicly apologized to the nation for his senate vote to go to war. To me, if the war is of concern to you then that is a no-brainer.

If on the other hand your issue is change and helping the poor and working class, then again I think that Obama is the better choice, whereas Clinton has a long history of supporting Wall Street over Main Street in many instances. It is pretty clear from their rhetoric that Hillary represents herself as the inside candidate who knows the system in DC, while the others have both pushed very hard for substantial reforms instead of only incremental improvements and policy "tweaks". Again, for me that is a "well duh".

So why the poll numbers? Well, if I had to guess, the cynic in me says that 4 in 10 Edwards supporters who would roll over to the Clinton camp are probably mostly women, although why they were not in her camp in the first place is interesting to me, I wonder how soft their support will be, and perhaps it may shift some in the coming days as they evaluate their decision. (It is now more real and less abstract then when the poll was taken.)

The bigger question in my mind is what of the 35% of people who obviously must have had no opinion or admit they could not decide? That's a pretty big spread. Even so, I'd have to say those uncommitteds will have to break very heavily for Obama or else he will have to win back some of the 4-in-10s to offset the impact of Edwards' leaving the race.

Telling indeed will be if/when Edwards decides to endorse someone, and exactly how his camp will break out demographically across the nation as a whole.

Obama has already demonstrated that he plans to fight hard in small districts and small states that the Clinton camp is mostly ignoring. Hillary's strategy is more traditional: win in California and New York and everyone else can just-- well you know. I don't know about the rest of you, but Maryland is a small state and I would prefer it if my vote actually mattered to somebody, especially since we Marylanders send more of our money to these campaigns than any other state.

Well, about the only thing that I am absolutely certain of is that the campaigns and media are going to be polling the crap out of Edwards' base over hte next few days. Hope y'all have caller ID. :-)

STSDev 1.1: Another Visual Studio SharePoint Development Tool

thomas.carpe — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:52:00 GMT

Well now in addition to WSPBuilder and the VSeWSS, you now have yet another method you can use to build out your SharePoint projects.

http://www.codeplex.com/stsdev

I have not yet downloaded and tested this tool, but they seem to have some pretty good tutorials for it and have made the source available, which is a HUGE plus over VSeWSS.

I'm going to give using it a try some time this week and maybe do a brief review of it. But for now why not give it a try yourself?

A Kindred Spirit and Voice of Reason

thomas.carpe — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:15:00 GMT

This is just a brief post to give my fellow netizen, PigmyStrong, some props.

http://pigmystrong.com/?p=225

Kudos for taking a stand and explaining so articulately why Anonymous is an important ideal to fight for and why CoS is a force that has to be stopped.

Laaaayyy-m! (State of Duh Union)

thomas.carpe — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:28:00 GMT

Man, I sure do miss the days when we used to gather around the cathode ray tube to see good ol' Dubbya pontificate to us about the state of our great nation!

That was back when we used to raise a pint [or shot] every time he said the word Terror or mis-pronounced Nukular. We'd have the whole thing catered with delicious yellow cake. It was a hoot!

These days, his speeches are just so damn boring and frankly depressing that I can't even muster up a living room full of friends to watch the SoTU, even with free beer and liquor. What's the world coming to?

Well... at least this is the last one he'll ever do.

I Thought I Was Done, But I Had Another Thought

thomas.carpe — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:44:00 GMT

So, I guess I am not finished my brain dump. Given my previous post, what do we know, and what's to be done about it?

Because people don't accurately remember times for compelting small tasks, programmers should measure their own productivity.
This is boring work and should be done using software.
Programmers will resist having their true productivity measured by management, so they should have the tools to do it for themselves.
The measurements of one programmer are utterly useless for anyone other than that programmer, as code production can differ by a factor of 10:1 depending on the individual and circumstances.
If programmers do not share their individual data, then it isn't possible for management to make accurate estimates.
This information is most valuable to the programmer themselves, because it would improve estimaties.
Management is more concerned about creating reliable estimates than in comparing individual output.
In programming, low level tasks of different types are not necessarily interchangeable in terms of time. Individuals have different specialization even within a lagnuage or a framework.

What's this mean? Should we just give up? That probably won't fly, but here are a couple ideas that might help.

It would probably be better if we don't ask programmers themselves to provide estimates. Instead ask a programmer to describe the tasks involved in getting a project done and then use reliable large-scale data to determine how long a project should take given a average level of productivity.

Forrester or the like may have done some of this research or found studies done at universities. I have read some general studies on this topic that were produced by Corporate Executive Board during my time on their SharePoint project in 2003, but I don't know if they have drilled down on specific activities. Another good source would be to follow Fredrick Brook's references and see where they lead and if there have been any modern updates.

Why would programmers not like this done within an individual company? Well, it's basically along the same lines as truck drivers having GPS in their trucks or weight detectors under the passenger's seat. I think that while the programmer who knows or believes that he is 10x more productive than his peers would welcome such a system, there would a majority of others who wouldn't want to give that person more ammunition or ego fuel. In the end, I think even the super-programmer knows that it is better to have solidarity with his brothers if he expects their help later on.

Sidebar: Some of the lady programmers out there may have noticed my assumption that my hypothtical programmer is male. Well you ladies are unfortunately still very rare in our feild, though I do wish that would change. In any case, being so rare, you're probably going to get our help no matter what you say or do, so it would be survivable I think to lord your superior productivity over the group and demand that everyone count their code lines. (Of course, I hope by now you all understand that I am kidding, right?)

We could probably all benefit from a large scale (open source?) project that would allow the entire IT community to provide details about how long tasks take. There could be plugins for popular tools like TFS/vs.net for task management to make participation easier.

If the data is collected in large anonymous sets and each developer has access to their own numbers, then it would remove much of the resistance to the idea of managment grading everyone. This would be much more like the way insurance groups are created. You're boss doesn't have access to the information about your health that the insurance company uses to determine how much they will charge him or her for your medical plans. (Actually, the insurance company doesn't get the whole picture either, but that's not the point right now.)

To make such an idea work it would have to be easy, it would have to be reliable (fake proof), and it would have to be fun.

Food for thought. I'll come back to this again some other time.

Why Are Programmers' Estimates Usually Wrong?

thomas.carpe — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:02:00 GMT

Okay, I don't have a ton of time for this post today, but I wanted to get it out of my headspace so I can focus on other things. I'll just be summarizing my ideas here very briefly, so if you can't keep up I'll understand. I plan to come back and write something more formal later on.

Here's the basic idea. I've been thinking about why programmers tend to come up with estimates that are always too short. This is a problem that is pretty well known in the IT community.

Many programmers apply the Scotty Rule to their estimates (take what you think it will take and multiply by three). I can tell you that I've tried that, and it's still very possible to come up with an estimate that is still too short.

Fredrick Brooks has gone into detail on this topic in several of his essays. If you aren't familliar with him, I suggest you run out and buy a copy of the Mythical Mon-Month (Wiki, Amazon) right away. There are also some discussions of the problem in the book Dreaming in Code (Amazon), which I have only half-read.

Here's a summary of the discussion I've had with colleagues about this, based partly on the sources above, and partly on my own and others' experiences:

Programmers aren't capable of coming up with solid estimates because they are too optimistic. Their nature leads them to believe the impossible is possible and to chronically underestimate the level of effort required for any task.
However, without this (psychotic? disassociative?) optimism, they would not be capable of taking on the burden of creating large and extremely complex systems that must function [nearly] perfectly [mostly] all of the time.
Further, estimates are generated at the start of a project, when very little is actually known about what specific small scale tasks will be required. Even if the design is known, the detail level where the actual work lies is generally not fully understood.
Update Added as a caveat to the above item: obessive listmaking does not help. It is inevitable that a single person drilling down into the required tasks will overlook something, somewhere, and that thing will likely be important. Peer review or collaboration will only help this to the extent that people are actually willing and capable of reading such a detailed laundry list. Imho, the best lists would be generated by logging actual tasks done on several similar jobs, and combining the results into a superset - with notes about when and why certain tasks were only sometimes necessary.
A good programmer would rather try to do something that is hard.
There is a real transition along the lifespan of a project, from a learning and creative process at the start to a controlling and list maintaining process near the end. Programmers who are talented at design and early development are not necessarily well suited to do stabilization, but are frequently required to.
We actually know a lot about estimating software and managing development projects, but for the most part we don't actually act on that knowledge. Brooks is correct in asserting that his book is the software development Bible (everyone reads it, nobody follows it). In 30+ years since its publication our tools have gotten better, but we really haven't learned to actually *do* things much differently.
Yadda, yadda, the list goes on...

I am adding an item to this list today, after having read this New Scientist article about research into how we perceive the passage of time. My premise is that one of the important reasons programmers can't accurately give estimates is that they can't accurately remember how long any particular low level task has taken. To support this idea with facts will require some more research, of which there isn't that much available.

But, I think there might be enough to support the idea that we can chronically underestimate how long a future task will take if we chronically mis-remember it as having not taken very long in the past. In other words, being in "the zone" or acheiving a flow state (which are good things, right?) can make it harder for you to remember accurately how long a task actually took you.

Perhaps some enterprising student of Management Science will stumble on my blog and figure out ow to arrange the experiment and get some funding. For now, I'll have to keep digging until I have exhausted the pool of data that is out there today.

If this theory is true, then it is possible that estimates could be greatly improved by programmers simply keeping detailed logs of their activity. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be consistent with the "flow state" behavior and might undermine it. I am thinking that software might provide an answer for how to gether the data without disrupting concentration.

For example, could we use TFS to measure time taken for work items, and how might one incroporate such a tool into development so that it is a true habit and not disruptive to the creative process? I guess I'll have to answer that some other time though.

To Heck With What I'd Like, How About What I'd Love?

thomas.carpe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:14:00 GMT

Congratulations, Alara!

So, congratulations to Alara for landing a pretty sweet gig today. She starts on Wednesday, doing business analysis type work for a healthcare company in Elk Ridge - in addition to whatever else it was she's been doing with the city to earn money through her business.

The extra money she'll be bringing in from this new contract will really help a lot. Even if it doesn't go past the 2-3 months that it's commited to, it'll teally put a dent in what has become our too-damn-big pile of debts.

A lot of people don't like to talk about money, but for me it is not something I am coy about, and I'm generally very up front about it. The truth is that I make better money now than most people out there - more than I ever expected that I could. I'm not ashamed of that, because I work very, very hard and have cultivated some pretty unique skills. (Acutally, I'm not full of myself, so I know it's a lot of luck plus a little talent.)

So, when I say that this past year has been very difficult for us financially, please understand that if it was rough for me, then my heart truly goes out to the 90%+ of Americans who bring home less than I do. I grew up in near poverty; my mom took help from her parents, food stamps, and college aid as she raised me by herself. I know how it feels.

Lately, raising four kids, it's hard to figure out where the money goes and why we don't keep more of it. Maybe that is just a part of having kids. Or maybe we should both work a little less hard and instead devote that time into managing our money better. Less time spent in setting up the TVPC and a bit more in balancing the household budget might help. I think a lot of it has to do with the simple fact that the dollar just is not worth what it once was. If I had to guess, I would say it has had about the same effect as a 25-33% pay cut.

Oddly enough that's not what I wanted to blog about. I just wanted to thank Alara for her hard work, and for taking the stress (and the daycare bills) off of my shoulders a bit.

So, What Kind of Job Would I Love To Have?

So, her getting this gig made me start thinking about my job, about raises I did not get, about what I enjoy about my job, what I'd rather take a pass on, and how I really want to be spending my time.

So here goes, my wishlist for a dream job:

I want to work with SharePoint most or all the time, because it's really cool!
But, I don't want to work for Microsoft.
I like working on lots of little short-term projects. Veriety in work and in solving different problems for different types of users is exciting. For that reason, I could probably spend my whole life building nifty web parts and showing people how to use them.

But, I hate having to think about my commute [or the people I have to work with] changing whenever the project ends.
I truly enjoy using technology to help transform a business. Getting only little wins is really frustrating, so buy-in from the top is very important to me. If that means part of my job is to fight for that support, then so be it. Unlike many people, I find debate invigorating.
I like doing work on proof of concept and design. Finding out what can be done is fun. Finding out that you *could*, except that you *can't* because there either a) aren't the skills, b) aren't the resources, or c) isn't the time is no fun at all. So, a place where there is a real investment in technology (as opposed to band aid solutions) is a real plus. (Update: Add "lack of political will" to that above list of frustrations.)
I would like to either have a very short commute to downtown Baltimore, or else a reasonable train ride to Washington DC that I can do myself. I am tired of relying on my wife for transportation. I wouldn't mind working in my boxers either, but I need an excuse to get out of the house once in a while, and some things are better done face to face.
I'd like a job title where the median base salary is in the neighborhood of $150,000/yr. Software Engineering Director looks nice, though frankly I have never seen anybody hiring for that one. They always use terms like Developer, Analyst, or Architect. Sorry, but the pennies don't spend like they used to, and wages don't seem to be going up to meet inflation. I guess I could accept a lower salary for the right perks, but the money is pretty important.
Funnily enough, I like managing technical people, and I am good at it too. That's an aspect of work that I miss when being stood up as a lone gunman in consutling gigs. You rarely if ever have the authority to direct a team. Well, at least sometimes you can act as the trusted advisor; that can be nice.

Too bad that nobody will probably ever ask me what kind of job I want. Wouldn't it be great if we interviewed companies instead of companies interviewing us?

For your pleasure, here's my resume. If you feel so inclined, tell me if you think I am qualified for the job I am describing, or for that matter if it even exists.

Resume in XPS Format (It's like PDF only Microsoft-ier)

Resume for Word 2007

Resume in Word 97-2003 Format

Yay! MCP Site Finally Accessible

thomas.carpe — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:47:00 GMT

So after waiting a few weeks to receive my e-mail for the MCP web site, I finally had to break down and call them on the phone to get my MCP ID and activation code.

To their credit, they were very helpful and got my issues resolved quickly. I guess the system just never sent me my automatic invitation, and to some extent it's really my own fault for not visiting the MCP web site since 2000.

So here it is, my pretty logo, plus prominently displayed contact info (so I am compliant with the usage guidelines).

Thomas Carpe

SharePoint Architect

sharepoint@thomascarpe.com

Baltimore, MD

I guess I'll just have to change the link before I get too much spam at that address. :-) Maybe this will get me off my lazy rear end to create that "contact me" page I've been thinking about.

And, my pretty certificate, which I will apparently have to print out myself. (Back in the day, they used to send you a nice one in the *mail*. Ahh, technology!) You can view it in PDF format or as a Microsoft XPS Document.

Democratic Primary: Analysis and Predictions Coloring Book

thomas.carpe — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:38:00 GMT

Well, everyone seems to be getting into this horserace called the presidential primary. Well, okay, maybe not *everybody*.

But, even when I haven't commited to a candidate, I find it exciting. It's like my sports. If they had fantasy politics, I'd probably play. I could read a good novel about a presidential campaign. One of my favorite comic books was about a presidential race. I guess most people think I'm kinda odd.

If you've never volunteered for a campaign then you probably can't understand the attraction. I guess it gets into your blood. I can't explain, and today is not the time to try.

So, without further adieu, I shall [not so] briefly bloviate about the race, my opinions/spin on why it turned out like it did in NH, and my predictions for the non-existant office betting pool.

First, In case you haven't guesed already, I am voting for a Democrat. Actually, I listened to the entire GOP NH debate, and I was pleased to say that each and every candidate there said at least one thing that I could agree with. Given another four years of reform maybe the Republicans will become a respectable party again. (Note to Freepers and RP Revolutionaries: bring it on...LOL) Anyway, that's off topic for now.

I want to talk about the big so-called "upset". I have to admit that it seems like every poll out there had given Obama the big mo' in a big way. I was pretty surprised it actually went to Hillary at all. I guess that's what they call the expectations game, huh. I like Obama. He's my guy, more or less since a few months ago, but official for about a week or so. So, this wasn't a happy thing - but it didn't hurt the way watching Dean get creamed four years ago did.

So, firstly let me say, "Well played Barack. Keep it up. Dreams don't come true overnight." I believe he knows that or he wouldn't be running for President. I think we did pretty well all things considered, and we did learn something valuable about the shape of the race to come.

I was amused to see that Hillary's three point (rounded up?) lead over Barack somehow translated to exactly the same number of commited delegates for both of them, 9. How odd is that!? Anyway, it means we are still ahead in the delgate count. But you won't hear the media reporting on that fact. Delegate counts are boring, even if they do win elections. Momentum is the big story. Comebacks make headlines.

So why did NH turn out the way that it did? Well, I think DailyKos is more or less right about this one. There were too many instances of people - particularly men - treating Hillary badly: in the debate, in the press, and at her events. I think that this is the primary reason that women voted for her in larger numbers. Obama was also not helped by a weaker showing among Indi voters (yes, capital I, in NH at least) turning out for Dems.

I think everyone had a hand in this, and I'll put it out there first because I think my guy should be (and is) accountable for his errors, however explainable they may be. Barack did not help himself when he told Hillary she was "likable enough". That rolled over me during the debate, because I wasn't undecided. I think supporters will give him a pass, because everyone knows the campaign trail can be withering and it's very, very difficult to be sincere and cordial to someone who is making pointed barbs and putting you down behind your back at every turn. Still, it was a poor choice of words and I think it probably cost us a little. I do take issue with the moderator who came up with that question in the first place though; what kind of a question was that supposed to be anyway?

As for Hillary and her 'emotional moment', well, here is how I see it. It struck me as sincere, but probably partly planned. In fact, I'm certain she was coached to let more of her emotions show. Given that debate question about likability, I am sure the pollsters know this is something she had to work on. You could see that in the later part of the debate, after she put her frustration in check. That doesn't mean she doesn't have emotions, or that she was just acting. But, all politicians have a game face - you have to be "on" all the time. Now, I don't really want my President to break down unpredictably, so I'll be keeping an eye on that to see how it develops. But, I will be consistent and give her a pass for it, for the same reason that I'll let Barack slide on being obviously tired and a bit snarky during the debate. Again, 'Kos nails it. The media treatment of her show of emotion was unfavorable, and that helped her because it caused people to emotionally run to her defense.

Finally, that shock-jock from Boston had no business pulling his little stunt [Sunday?] when he said, "Iron my shirt!" I woke up to hearing that on the morning radio on Monday and I was like "whaaaaa!?" I mean, there's just no place for that kind of thing in politics. I admit I am a little cyncial and believe it may have been engineered, because I think the outcome of it was fairly predicatable. I'm guessing that if someone had stood up in from of Obama and made a racially charged comment, that he would've gotten a bump from it. My experience from NH '04 tells me that there isn't time to get the word out about events that happen late. Most people probably didn't know that guy was a plant from a radio talk show - and for many folks it doesn't even matter if he was.

Is that a sympathy vote? Yes and no, I think. It's also an example that highlights our own beliefs and those of the people around us, and I think that 'reminds' women of their need to have solidarity. If women feel threatended - and I think that, since I thought that comment was threatening, at least to feminist ideals, then to a woman it would be - then they will stick together. For a certain number of people, that emotional need is probably strong enough to sway them at the last minute.

(Update: In retrospect, it is easy to see why the McCain/Palin campaign thought they could benefit by creating a similar perception of a threat to feminism. Good for us - and too bad for them - that it didn't work out. Maybe it's just a bit of post game bravado that I feel the need to say this now, but next time Republicans should think about coming up with some independent ideas, instead of just treating the general election as a retread of the primary.)

Barack will need to remember that although the hopes of many minorities (racial and otherwise) are pinned on his success, there is an even bigger and very formidable minority represented by his opponent. It is not hard to find examples, either unfortunate accidents or engineered ones, that highlight that fact. If it isn't difused, it will come up again and again during the race. Campaigns will use whatever works.

I think there are two ways to counter this.

One is to successfully remind everyone that we should not care about whether a candidate is a man or woman the same way we shouldn't care if they are black or white. I believe this is difficult thing to do. The divisions between men and women are still very strong, and even within families there is tension from gender roles that people don't discuss often or easily. I think it is a case that needs to be made, even if you also do other things as well.

The second approach would be to remind your own supporters not just of what unifies them, but of their own need for solidarity as well. To me, this goes beyond just drawing contrasts between the two candidates or making the 'change vs establishment' argument. I think it also involves sharing whatever other reasons there are not to choose the other candidate. We call it going negative, and I think we'll see more of it as the compaign progresses. But, it's a slippery tactic that can backfire.

Perhaps a third approach would be to highlight similar adversities that Obama has faced throughout the campaign. I am sure they will happen from time to time as the campaign moves forward. Right now, I think (however wrongly) people have a euphoric feeling that we have really moved past race as an issue in politics, and also now a sense that we have *not* really moved past sexist thinking in the same way. Thinking about it, I am sure that really we have probably not actually come so far on either. This will probably become more clear as the campaign moves to South Carolina, but it will be interesting to see how the race issue plays out, and if it works in Obama's favor or agaisnt him.

But, whatever the dmeographic makeup of our country, there are women in about the same numbers in every sate. Women will decide the way this primary turns out. Obama has the young people on his side, and at the ripe old age of 33, I count myself among the young - for once. He and Clintion are now almost entirely in a contest for the votes of women.

So, what's that going to look like?

Here's the election schedule. Thanks again Kos. Time magazine's impressive map is also misinforming because the dates and delegate counts are often wrong.

Michigan 1/15*
Nevada 1/19
South Carolina 1/26
Florida 1/29*
Super Tuesday 2/5

I think Obama needs to campaign in Michigan, both because he is more likely to do well there and because he needs to maintain the trust of his supporters who largely see Michigan as a place of depression, declining industry, and poverty. Edwards' argument will also play well here. Hillary will probably do less well, because the [Bill] Clinton era really didn't do so much to improve their state. (Anyone seen Roger and Me?) Barack needs his supporters to be strong, and ignoring Michigan would be a mistake because it would give them pause to consider his character and whether he really supports the little people.

However, MI comes at a heavy price, since they have been stripped of their delegates. If that holds, then Hillary can afford to ignore the state completely and focus on Nevada where her chances are at least somewhat better. This would partly rob Obama of even a moral vicotry and some momentum, by turning Michigan into a non-contest that won't get the media coverage it should. So, I think she will blow it off. If she does and Barack is smart, he can highlight what that says about her, and he'll have a bully pulpit to do so, assuming anyone is listening. Heck, he can use that in Nevada as well, to some degree. So, we'll see if her campaign gives him an 'in' or not.

(Update: Looking back, I still think Obama made a tactical error in sidestepping Michigan. Perhaps he and his team had their reasons, but it created a huge opening for Clinton. She used that "count all the votes" argument to hang on for what seemed like forever, and there was real nailbiting over whether we would be able to devise a comprimise and avoid poisoning the well in MI and FL for the general. In hindsight, I think we were lucky on a couple of points here that things did not go differently.)

I am not making any predictions about NV. I have no idea what they will do and I need to research it more. If MI is a real contest then it may shape NV and if not, then at least there is the Nevada debate.

Whatever happens there in NV, will probably not affect SC too awfully much. I see South Carolina as going largely Barack and Edawards among Democrasts.

I think Edwards may be able to effectively chip away at Hillary on his home turf, assuming he isn't deemed totally irrelavant by then. Funny how he finished second in Iowa, but a distant third in NH suddenly takes him out of the race? He may come back, but he needs to pick up some support in Michigan at least to make SC a strong 'win' for him.

Edawrds will probably drop out at some point after super Tuesday. There's no reason not to stay in until then, unless he really tanks. I don't think his chances of a clear win are very good, but if he is smart he will want to collect the delegates that he can, especially since it seems like this will not be a shut out race like '04. We may have a brokered nomination, giving Edwards a chance to play kingmaker in exchange for... the VP slot?

(Update: Well, I guess he killed any chance of that happening.)

I believe that if he drops out early, his votes will go mostly to Barack: because of their emphasis on change and because they have both admitted that the war was a mistake where Hillary has not. If he stays in for the long haul, and syphens even a few delegates away from Clinton, then he may prevent her from getting anything better than a plurality and suddenly find himself in the position of being able to single handedly decide who the nominee will be. This may be cynical of me, but I am sure the compensation packages will be excellent at his next job, so I am not willing to say for certain that he would 100% pick Barack even if they align ideologically right now.

After South Carolina, FL will be next, and very important for two reasons. First, can anyone really afford to say for certain the the DNC will stick to its guns and not give them back their delegates after the fact? There would be just too many at play there. The other thing is momentum. Hillary will campaign there *hard* if Barach does well in SC (and probably harder if he doesn''t), in an effort to build momentum going into super Tuesday. We'll have to see what happens, but if it's still really close before FL, then it'll still technically be close afterwards. That's a lot of money to spend for just a little bump - but a bump for ST will be a very important bump indeed.

On Super Tuesday we'll all pick whomever we think the winner was prior to that. In the absence of a clear winner, the media will declare whoever has the most mo' the winner. Call me a skeptic, but I have seen in play out that way in past elections. Super Tuesday states include a lot of big states that are strongly Democratic, where independents don't get to vote in the primaries. Clinton has more establishment support in those states, so if Barack hasn't successfully countered her by then she will be very difficult to stop. Then again, there is always California. Who knows what the heck those folks will go for?! LOL

Then there's money. I hear Baraack's campaign is doing well fiancially and is already positioned to operate in many states. I heard that Clinton campaign has burned through much of its stash already. She needs the momentum from NH to raise more cash. That's why I will be making a [another] donation to the Obama campaign this week. Hillary will have no trouble getting more money after her perceived success; Terry M. is good at that kind of work - but it may be that many of their big donors have already given their limit early on. Bad financial management can kill a campaign, but the fact that Clinton represents the establishment means that she can rely on local democratic party organizations as a kind of secondary base; Democratic office holders in those states iwll still have their own resources they may be able to pitch in.

So I guess in the final analysis I am saying that the ball is definitely on Barack's side of the court right now. Everyone knows that all Hillary needs to do is pitch what worked in NH. Barack needs to effectively neutralize that and counter it. We'll see what he does to make that happen.

Whatever happens, we'll be nominiating one tough cookie and this willl be a race to be remembered for some time to come. :-)

(Update: All other things aside, that last bit there was a prediction that I nailed!)

Why I Won't Be Voting for Hillary [In the Primary]

thomas.carpe — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:34:00 GMT

Make no mistake. If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, I will vote for her in the general election. But, why then am I not supporting her now? Is it because I think she won't do a good gob? No, it isn't. Is it because I like the other two top-tier candidates better? Yes, in part it is. But a conversation I had with my friend Rob while watching the primaries helped me realize there are other reasons too.

There is a large part of this country that has hated Hillary for decades. They are already geared up to hate her loudly again. If elected President, they will be every bit as hateful as I feel towards W. - and much more. That is not the future that I want, that is the past that I have had for fifteen years.

Bush (4). Clinton (8). Bush (8). Clinton (4-8?) That's a quarter century of leadership under the same two families. I have one word. "No." At least, not unless there is no other choice.

Hillary Clinton is great on policy and has proven herself to be a real workhorse. The Presidency is not a job where you spend all your time drilling down into policy papers. Executives live in the "land of bullets" where going into too much detail actually works against you.

Leaders can't afford to spend too much time on details. Instead they need to show they have good judgement when it comes to picking the right people as their advisers and heads of executive bodies who will do that work for them. They need to show that they have the intuition to know when to trust or not trust their advisors.

And, they need to show that first and foremost have what is best for us all in their hearts. Hillary voted for that broken bankruptcy reform law that the Bush administration and Wall Street bankers pushed for. That makes me really question for whose betterment she is truly fighting. [Update: okay, fiar enough, I later learned that she voted against it *after* she voted for it, but i still am not fond of her rationale.]

She also voted for the war, and for whatever reason has never even admitted that it *might* have been a mistake to do so. Showing strength and consistency is one thing, but where Edwards admitted he was wrong to vote for the war, I think that at the very least she could admit that it might not have been the best possible thing she/we could've done. Is that strength or stubborness?

[ANd now that I think about it... Yet she criticizes Barack Obama for voting to *fund* the war? I don't get that. I mean, how can you attack your opponent for being not-against-enough something that you've shown yourself to be even more in favor of? Isn't that like the pot calling the kettle a saucepan?]

So, the way I see it, the experience argument doesn't factor into it. Neither Barack nor Hillary have experience being President. Hillary's history shows that she's good at doing something that is very different from being the executive. Barack may be untested in many ways, but he shows great potential.

If Hillary wins, I'll vote for her because technical competence and a partial alignment of ideals are better than picking anyone from a pile of possibly competent but ideologically misaligned (at least from me) Republicans. But, I'm really hoping America doesn't put me in that position. I swallow my pride and take the bitter medicine of choosing the lesser of two evils often enough in elections. Just once, I'd like to actually support the person I am sending to to the White House. Is that too much to ask?

Update: Oh yeah. I almost forgot, but the stories about the Clinton campaign staffers trying to recruit ordinary voters to ask her predetermined questions were a little alarming. She isn't even the nominee and it appears they are already building a bubble around her. I agree with Markos on this point, that whether you like Hillary personally or not (and I [usually] do), she has surrounded herself with the sort of people that I don't want influencing politcs. They may be shrewd and savvy but they practice the politics of exclusion and illusion, and I want no part of a leader who feels that the American people need a good show in order to help them decide what they want. In fact, I was feeling that way before all the tear-shedding business, so that doesn't even factor into it for me.

Soft Skills for Dummies? As If! LOL

thomas.carpe — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:06:00 GMT

So, as I explained in my earlier post, I took the exam this morning to certify for TS for MOSS (SharePoint) configuration. Aside from the test dragging a whole bunch of skeletons out of my closet, it also left me feeling just a bit spunky. So, I guess I can't resist the urge to stick my middle finger up at somebody right now. Here’s something that came pouring out after I got all the self-immolation out of the way.

--fold--

If you have skills - if you are truly brilliant - people will find a way to try and put you in your place. There is some truth to the expression that “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. A lifetime of punishment for doing well has changed my behavior over time; it has made me learn not to shine too brightly. The Dao says that you should never forget the value of worthlessness - the gnarly tree by the side of the road does not get cut down for firewood. There’s some truth to that as well.

When you leave college, or after high school if you don’t go to college, hopefully you will be lucky enough to get a job doing what you like. After all, you're going to do it for half your waking life, so you'd better like it. But, something I remember from school is that there’s no short supply of people in the world for whom what they truly enjoy is putting other people down - or rather, establishing themselves in a group that is superior to others.

These people need to find jobs they like too, and while I don't think that every manager is one of these people, I’ve done some off the cuff counting of the ones I consider to be good managers vs. the ones that are not so good. I think it is fair to say that the career of management is at the very least an attractive option to these sorts of people. Once established on that track, they have learned to emphasize the areas of their personality in which they are strong and call them "soft skills", while they also downplay the role of "hard skills", perhaps sometimes almost without realizing that this is what they are doing.

What are hard skills, anyway? I suppose they’re the skills that actually let you get something measurable accomplished, whereas soft skills are soft because - like the soft sciences - they are as much or more fluff than quantitative or empirical and verifiable fact. If I were feeling more generous I might admit that at least the actual results of employing soft skills are more difficult (or impossible) to measure, but their use can produce real results.

So, what do I want to say by this? Am I saying these skills don't exist? Hardly! In fact, I myself have been in management positions at different levels, so I know that there are skills you can learn and that some people are indeed more socially adroit than others. But is there a certification exam for working with people? Is there a bar exam that you need to pass to prove that you are not someone who will poison the work environment at your company? No, not that I know of - the PMP certification teaches hard management skills, not social skills - just as an MBA teaches you tools and rules for running a business. But, an MBA can’t make you fun at parties all by itself – quite the opposite I would think!

To the best of my knowledge, there’s no finishing school for businesspeople. Maybe there should be. If there were, then many people who are too quick to point to a skilled developer and loudly comment about his "lack of soft skills" would have washed out long ago and become something a little easier to handle like being a hand sanitizer, salad bar spray barrier, or tire patch-n-repair kit.

After thinking about it for some time, I have come to believe that much of the discourse about soft skills that we take for granted as part of our working life is actually a myth. In fact, the truth is that we all have soft skills. We go home and have to practice conflict resolution with our families. We all develop different techniques for time management that work for us – however badly that may be. Many sports nuts would have a hard time fitting in at an anime convention - and being outnumbered might not feel too comfortable about it. I’ve seen very powerful people who were universally disliked by literally everyone at their company, but who didn’t even know it (though I believe they may have suspected it strongly). I’ve also seen executive managers in high levels jobs slink around as if they had been labeled “most likely to wear a pocket protector” because they were ostracized by their peers. Anyone kicked in the teeth long enough will begin to behave in ways that show they expect it, and the opposite it also true. Give a lowly developer a private office and they will start to behave more like they are 'in charge' as a result.

It is true that this is nothing more than my opinion, but I believe the myth of soft skills is a construction generated by the people who were the “cool kids” in high school, created for the purpose of indefinitely perpetuating their position in the social hierarchy. It has theory X written all over it. It has its roots in the same insidious class based elitism that causes us to say things like, "ain't isn't a word." even though you probably can't find a native English speaker alive who can't tell you what it means (and it's even in the dictionary!). There are real coping skills that people learn for dealing with each other, but to put up an imaginary straw man called "soft skills" and attach to it all your preconceived notions that nerds are socially inept is worse than wrong; it's pure and simple bigotry, and people who do it ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To be truly effective, any evaluation of soft skills would have to be based on measurable facts, and even psychologists and sociologists will tell you that generating this kind of verifiable and repeatable data [ethically] in human beings is challenging. Despite this, they do find interesting way to shed light on human behavior, and management science does sometimes find ways to translate this into the business world.

But, business itself could do much more. If we honestly expected the same quality of performance from people who had working with people as one of their primary job responsibilities, as we do from people who perform technically, then I don’t think it would be unreasonable to require from them the same kind of objective certification of their "soft skills" as is required for IT, medicine, law, accounting, or the building trades.

Perhaps such a test would be too costly in terms of time and "actors" to be feasible for new employee screening. Without being emotionally realistic, it would be incredibly easy to just fake it. But, at the very least I think we could all (technical and non-technical alike) benefit from some simulation exercises and training. Just as an example, I would like to see a salesperson or recruiter placed in the position of having to work overtime for several weeks straight, and then measure their social skills as their project is slated to be cancelled prematurely and they’re forced into the position of defending their investment in time. Or maybe they could be periodically graded on the way they deliver constructive criticism to employees who require negative feedback. I had some other ideas too, but they were starting to take on the characteristics of the Stanford and Milgrim experiments, so I’ll just stop. Again, ethics, challenging stuff.

Truly thinking about it now, I guess it's very complex and would require a lot of thought, but one thing I do know is that there aren't nearly enough people devoting resources into this area of testing or training as there should be. To say it is an order of magnitude less than the scrutiny given to IT skills would be a gross understatement, and it is only fair that somebody's feet should be held to the fire to make it happen.

Since that will probably never happen, maybe instead I’ll just write a science fiction novel about what it would be like if we did.

Well, It's About Friggin' Time

thomas.carpe — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:37:00 GMT

Today I finally managed to get my sorry rear end into a Prometric testing center to take the 70-630 exam for MOSS Technology Specialist.

My reasons for waiting so long are complex, and in some ways they are kind of pathetic.

At a basic level, I've just had too much on my plate over the past year. My 2 older kids were getting involved in extracurricular education that required a lot of my time and money. My two youngest are still in diapers, My house is half gutted with renovations. Then I broke my rib and caught some kind of weird bronchitis. On top of just generally being overextended at work, preparing for an exam seems like it would probably have been biting off more than I could chew.

Under the surface, my reasons for procrastinating were more complex, but I think they say volumes about the kind of person that I am. In school, I never needed to study. I was always ahead of everyone else, I always read ahead, and I always tested at the top end of the scale. I was always eager to prove how good I was. So, you might think that in my 30s I would approach test taking in a very similar way.

That's not the case, though. What I realized about myself this week was that I have, over the years, developed a lot of performance anxiety around the concept of taking tests - in spite of the fact that I've never taken any that I did not easily pass. So, I wondered, why might that be?

At some level I think that historically doing well on tests has actually been bad for me. Over my years in high school I was tested early and often for many things. Please don't take what I am about to say as bragging, because I only want to talk about it to highlight the contrast between my actual performance and my feelings.

I took the SATs in seventh grade and scored higher than the average for high school seniors. Years later, my score for the PSAT was the highest in my school - I tied with my friend who died later that year - and qualified for the NMSQT scholarship program. I retook the SAT when I was a senior myself, and with scores alone I could have gotten into many colleges regardless of my GPA. I took the ASVAB test and was literally hounded by military recruiters for months, even though I was considered legally blind. I was given psychological tests, and identified as a high formal thinker. I blew through several AP tests, and got the highest scores possible for both English and history exams.

However, none of these achievements got me much in the way of a tangible reward. Over time, I began to feel that no good deed goes unpunished.

As a seventh grader taking and passing the SAT, I qualified for the Hopkins CTY program, and I even got a nice certificate. But, I never got to participate in CTY, because my family didn't have the money to send me to their summer program. My mom, adding insult to perceived injury, was so ashamed of this fact that she wouldn’t talk to me about it, and later insisted that I'd never actually wanted to go to the program, even though I wanted it more than anything I had ever done or wanted to do up until that point.

As a parent blessed enough to have bright kid, I was overjoyed that my daughter qualified for the same program and that I will have a chance to do for her what my parents' couldn't do for me. But, even making a good living it is expensive. Sarah qualifies for many such expensive opportunities for the gifted, and I was starting to feel strained even before her brother was also recently invited to enter the talent search for CTY. I am starting to understand the dilemma my mother faced, and I think I would've handled it differently and communicated about the problem. I thought she understood me, but looking back I guess she never fully could. I guess I can forgive her for it - finally. But, she passed away about two and a half years ago, so I'll never get a chance to tell her any of this.

Maybe that was what started it all. I had worked hard to pass that exam. I studied all summer for it in my windowless bedroom, learning things about algebra, trig, and English that we had never covered in school. All that work, and what I got amounted to a small pat on the back. Today, CTY has an award cerimony for the kids who take part in the test. I don't know if it existed when I was a kid, but we were less than an hour from Baltimore back then and I think it would've prevented a lot of emotional damage if I'd been able to attend such a thing.

Anyway, that was never really the end of it. As I got older, my grades in school started to slip. My life at home was an emotional mess. I had a difficult relationship with my dad, and he was pretty rough with me. The bigger I got, the more we fought, and the more I did things deliberately to punish my family. Then later I would punish myself for not doing well in school and not doing my homework. To this day, the worst thing that negatively affects my work performance is having to deal with people who have confrontational or combative personalities. A negative encounter with such a person, even for a few short minutes, can turn my entire day into a disaster and leave me falling flat on my face.

I qualified for NMSQT, and I probably could've gotten a scholarship. I can't quite remember it well enough to state it as fact, but I believe that Rob might've actually gotten the Merit scholarship. If so, they sure didn't reallocate it when he was killed in a car accident, and I know that doesn't make any sense, so maybe it went to a person in a different school. I don't know - maybe I just don't want to think anything bad about my friend. He was really one of the few people alive that would understand the importance of what I am writing here today, so it really hurts to be writing this. We were equals in every way, but I wasn't even allowed to say a few kind words about him at his funeral.

My parents were actively discouraged by the school administration, because they said that my grade performance was too much of a factor against me. I guess I wasn't a model student, or the kind of person they thought would be worth investing a little time and energy in helping me prepare for college or get my grades together. Maybe they resented the fact that I could get an A one quarter and then fail the next, and then start working again and get an A, and then fail again - then ace the final and pass the class with a C.

Later I learned that my scores were high enough that there were colleges willing to completely ignore my GPA. Can you believe that? IGNORE my grades. By the time I found this out though it was too late and I would have to pay for my own schooling. The long story short with the SATs was that in the end another five years of school only raised my score about 300 points. I got no help finding a school. Hell, the majority of senior year I didn't even *have* parents and I had to pay for my own food, clothing, and shelter. All I learned is that a smart person can get the same score on the test as they would've if they'd studied by reading a book about quasi-cheating style test taking practices that defeat the way the test is designed, and that you can do this and even go without food and sleep.

All the military tests ever got me was recruiters willing to make false promises to me and tell me that there was some hope that they could use me - at least in the Navy. What a pile of bullshit that turned out to be!

All the psychological tests ever earned me, frankly, was more psychological tests. I started to feel like a pincushion, and I chafed at taking tests. My train was beginning to come off the rails.

AP exams were the only place where I still have an overall good feeling about the tests. They were easy. The essays felt especially easy, where other people seem to hate them. My mom used to say I have "the gift of gab". Just look at my blog; is it any wonder? But even with these, I have the dubious distinction of being the only kid in my school's history to have ever successfully gotten a perfect score on the AP English exam - and an A on the final - and yet still manage to fail senior English. I was in danger of failing history too, and I owe it to my teacher Mr. MacAvoy that I passed. He was the best teacher I ever knew and I owe him a lot that he was willing to spend the time with me to make sure that I could get exposure to the test material even though I read far to slowly from the textbook to ever keep up.

Fast forward past college, where I would routinely CLEP out of classes.

When I started my IT career, tests were also very important in moving ahead. Early Novell and Microsoft certification programs were not what they are today. There was a lot more ink and paper in the process during the nineties. And, they were experimenting with something called adaptive test administration software. In a nutshell the test was designed to sense your weak points and probe at them, almost as if it were trying to make you fail. To the best of my knowledge this testing technique has been either abandoned or very much watered down since then. If so, then I am not surprised, because I found the whole idea to be emotionally traumatic. For me it took my feelings that the world was full of people who would punish me for my talents and secretly wanted me to fail, and it transferred them from people to the test itself. I never forgot that.

After the divorce with Karen, I never updated my contact information with MS or with Novell. Novell certifications became worthless anyway. After she left, I let the rent go on the last two months of our lease, and even let them evict me, steal half my stuff, and throw the rest out on the side of the road. I let this happen even though I took the time to go back and rescue my pet cats. I think that I really did not want any non-living thing to be left that would remind me of that time in my life.

It has been eight years since then.

My attitude about tests is that I expect myself to do very well on them. In fact, I would consider anything less than a 95% to be a personal failure, though I can learn to live with myself for getting above 90%. The extent of my shame is such that I would retake such a test and pay the extra money to do so in order to hide such a score. I will delay taking any test if I do not believe that I can easily achieve a near perfect score. This is who I am - I am such a perfectionist that I consider this to be a great weakness and I am not proud of it.

People who believe that I have a big ego, just because I know my skills and demand fair compensation for them do not have a clue. I push myself harder and demand more from myself than most people alive. It is a blessing and a curse. I am stuck with it, so I might as well make the best of it.

When I started preparing a week ago, I found immediately that there were several gaps in my SharePoint knowledge. In the past week, I invested probably about 8-10 hours making sure I knew what those holes were. Most of my energy was spent in shoring up my biggest weakness - convincing myself that I was ready to take the test.

I guess if you've gotten this far, you are wondering how I did on the test this morning.

I completed the test in under half an hour. I missed two questions out of 51. I'm certain that I know which one at least one of them was, because I had it narrowed down to two possible choices and decided to take a 50/50 guess instead of sitting there for an extra minute or two to think about it. I believe that I probably missed the second one due to not reading the test questions carefully enough; this happens to me on about 1 in 50 questions historically because I have bad eyesight and I tear through the test like a ferret snorting sugar out of a Pixie Stick.

So, now if you are good at math and have taken this test before, you know that my score was 964 out of a thousand. And now the rest of the readers know it too. ;-)

I was disappointed to have not gotten a perfect score. I say this because I thought the test was very easy. I believe that other people - especially young people with no health problems, lots of time to prepare, and no outside responsibilities or commitments to their families - should be able to get a perfect score if they study hard. I also thought that in many, many cases the test would give five choices and three or four of them could be eliminated right off the bat as being patently ridiculous, which was not my experience with practice tests in which the distinctions between choices are much more vague. So, if you have good test taking skills and over prepare for the test, I think you almost can't avoid doing well on it.

And, if me saying this makes you either feel a little frightened to take the test, or more than a little angry at me because you didn't do as well, then I would like to apologize. The truth is that I often feel guilty about that too. I took this test basically because I was forced into it, not because I wanted to compare myself to anyone else. In fact, the last thing I want is to be measured against others, because no matter where I fit into the spectrum I will be miserable both for not being better than I am and for being so much better than so many other people.

And, if you were one of the very fortunate ones who got a perfect score, then I would like to congratulate you for escaping at least one side of that double edged sword.

If you missed one question on the test, I bet your are kicking yourself. I bet you either know exactly which question it was and are really beating yourself up, because you knew it was either C or D and you picked the wrong one. Or, you have no idea which one it was, in which case I am sorry that you'll probably have trouble sleeping tonight. There are few things worse than letting test anxiety creep into your dreams. Either way, let me know who you are, because I owe you a beer.

I know my ten year old daughter has similar feelings of perfectionism, so I think that in the near future I will have to learn how to deal with these. This is a start.

So all said and done and havign gotten all this out of my system, I did about as well as I thought I would. I didn't do as badly as I feared, and I didn't do as well as I hoped I would. I hit it right down the middle, line drive right of center field. Not a home run, but a two-base double. Not half bad!

And Speaking of Shoehorns

thomas.carpe — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:05:00 GMT

Just wanted to take a few minutes to bang out the post I meant to write last night, but was too tired after my caucus watching expidition.

My wife and I have this ongoing discussion that has been taking shape over several months, about this concept we call Little Sister.

The term is an overt reference to the orwellian term Big Borther, meant to symbolize the all watching eye of the government. Actually, the best way to describe it is that it is BBs counterpoint - the all watching eye of, well, everybody.

Little Sister is enabled by the cell phone camera. It waits for us to have our Macaca moment, then tells the whole words about it. Thus, we are assured through repeated examples of the failures of others that our own transgressions will be met with the swift dispassionate justice of the collective.

As an example, the other day I received an e-mail from a friend at work. It contained a video of a man crossing the street, wearing headphones. Then an SUV runs the light, and the resulting crash causes it to tumble inexorably towards the man, who is still blithely unaware of his impending doom. I can be sure of only three things: I will never knowingly run a red light, I will never cross the street wearing headphones, and there are many other people for whom seeing this clip will have a similar effect.

So it this how we acheive societal elevation? Is it a devolution into a world where the world privacy has no real meaning? Or, will we all become so used to the ubiquity of cameras that we simply learn to forgive one another of all but the most aggregious transgressions?

What do you think will come of this?

Update: Kudos to Cory Doctorow, who is quickly becoming my favorite author, for putting a eerily-similar-and-yet-completely-different spin on this timeless idea with his novel Little Brother. Amazing work as always! My wife, 11 year old son, and I all absolutely loved it.

Maybe the World Isn't Such a Bad Place After All

thomas.carpe — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:23:00 GMT

For the past several years, I feel like I had been living in a dream that I keep waiting to wake up from.

I guess it really started around September 2001. Before that, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I knew where I was trying to take it even if I had mixed luck actually driving it there.

That day would have been the first time I found myself saying "can this really be happening?" I guess I never stopped asking that question.

Ever since, I've had this feeling that I am living in a forgettable time - an era that will someday pass. My kids' kids will read about this time on a lazy May afternoon in their history textbooks, assuming they ever get to modern history. My history classes frequently never made it much past WWII, but I read ahead anyway.

Anyway, if and when they do read about us and this time, perhaps they will call this the "post Sept. 11th era", or maybe "the Millenium turn", or just the 00's (spoken: "oh"s). In any case, it'll probably only get about half a page.

Personally, I would like it to be rembered as "the naughts".

naught also nought (nôt)

n.
1. Nonexistence; nothingness.

2. The figure 0; a cipher; a zero.

pron.
Nothing: All their work was for naught.

adj.
1. Nonexistent.

2. Insignificant.

I think it fits. It means both zero and meaningless.

One never really knows how something will turn out when you look back on it later, but I get the feeling that it will turn out to have been pretty pointless. Maybe I just wish that it will turn out to have been pointless.

A pointless decade, opened by a meangingless and cruel attack, followed by a succession of pointless and widespread worldwide violence, culminating in an unecessarily frustrating and futile war, and symbolized by the innefectual leadership of an irrelevant schmuck.

Is it any wonder that for eight years now, I haven't really truly wanted to get out of bed in the morning.

Four years ago, I nursed some hope that we would stop collectively drinking the Kool Aid and see things for what they really are. I threw myself into campaigning as hard as I could for what I believed in. I gave it my all - weeks of my time, my vacation, trips to other states, the maximum amount allowed by FEC rules. I exhausted myself for the sake of hope.

We all know how that battle eventually ended. Any chance I had at hope was crushed out of me.

As it turns out, my friend Nate was right when we proudly declared himself the founding member of Kerry Supporters for Bush. It turns out that demons do come home to roost, and four more years is probably the worst thing that W. could have ever done for himself and his party, both politically and historically. So I can laugh at that and not feel too bitter about putting it all on the line in 2004.

But, I did not get involved in the run up to the priamry this year. I did not pick a favorite. I didn't go out and canvass, or make calls, or travel to other parts of America. I didn't write letters, or letters to the editor. I didn't have the TV crews over my house to show them the power of ordinary people getting involved. I didn't dare have my heart broken a second time.

I watched. I've been watching for a while now, waiting for a sign that this feverish dream is coming to a close.

And then, something truly astounding happened.

Barack Obama is now the front runner for the democratic nomination for President of the United States. Say whatever you will about the candidates you favor, their values, policies, experience, whatever. A black man has had his ticket punched by a decidedly white and rural state. And to boot, they picked him over a woman, and an affable white guy.

I couldn't be happier, but have I fallen into another dimension?

Doesn't matter.

Today, when I feel a little anxious, when I feel like the world just isn't a safe place, like it's not what it's supposed to be, I can take a deep breath, lean back in my chair, and wrap myself in the warm-blanket-and-hot-cocoa feeling that comes from knowing that sometimes the world is not the dark, twisted, distopian place you believe that it is - at least not 100% of the time.

Whatever you think about Barack, or Democrats, or this guy's chances of taking this all the way, I think you have to admit that it'd be pretty cool if he does.

Because - if for no other reason - when he wins, he'll be making history. He made history last night, and he will do it again if he wins the nomination, and again if he wins the general election. His victory will mark the closing book end of an era that began with Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

He'll stand as a living testament to the fact that, imperfect as it is, this country belongs to all of us. He will remind millions that they should not give up hope for a better future, and they should never allow themselves to become disenfranchised - either by others' actions or their own inaction.

Little kids will grow up wanting to "Be Like Barack".

For the first time in a while, I see at least one possible future that ain't half bad.

And, I happen to think that - race issues aside - he'll also be a pretty damn good leader.

Someone could still take this feeling of hope away from me. They have done it before. For today, I want to bask in it. I really hope that they don't. I feel stronger about this than anything I have felt in years. Because, I feel like the future this man envisions - and makes me see too - is so much brighter than dreadful past that I remember.

Update: Why not hear what he has to say?

My blog won't let me embed the video, but here's the link to his victory speech from last night. It's inspiring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoFwZUp5vc

And, just because I think it's funny.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=herolevels

"Hero Levels", hah, indeed! Flamin' troll! If I had a profile on YouTube I'd probably start a flame war with him. :-) At any rate, people shouldn't be rating videos on YouTube based on their political beliefs, in my *huge* opinion. This is a perfect example of the kind of divisive mentality that we stand against. It's a great contrast.

Ratsputin: Tale of the Rat, Part II

thomas.carpe — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:11:00 GMT

Okay, I should've written this about a month ago, but life just wasn't going to let me. It's probably lost some of its punch, but it's still kinda funny.

Some folks may remember the Tale of the Rat, in which I awoke in the middle of the night to the screeching wail of a rat stuck to a glue trap, and hid beneath my covers like a terrified toddler while James dragged it outside and beat it to death with a two-by-four. <shudder> I think I'd rather wake up to the sound of a fire truck parked in my bedroom.

Well, as it turns out, that guy was not the last of the rat colony attempting to infiltrate our home. In fact, it was only the first shot fired in a protracted battle.

The next wave of rats was much more brazen. At first, they would ambush us in the middle of the night, like guerilla warriors.

They would climb up to the countertops and attack the bread, tearing the bags to shreds. They would get into things in the pantry and chew holes through containers. They left their droppings in the bottom of cereal boxes. For a while, they were like the ninja - unseen, but their presence was known and felt.

Eventually, they were even willing to enter the kitchen when the lights were on, and many times late at night I would go in to investigate the noise to find them crawling around on our open pantry shelves, only to have them high-tail it out of there before I could do anything about it.

And so, a seige situation evolved. We were becoming very uncomfortable with going into the kitchen at night. The cats actually stopped going into that end of the house at all. It took on the character of a suspense scene in a slasher flick.

They had an amazing ability to leap high distances in a way that would give you just a little sliver of terror that they just might be able to leap up and bite into your neck or face like the monstrous bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Something had to be done.

Of course we had out glue traps, but the little bastards were undetured. I saw one actually jump over a trap that should've been impossible to avoid. According to James, another one actually got snared in a trap, and then subsequently freed himself.

In hindsight, that might have been the rat we came to call Ratsputin.

This new wave of rats were hardened veterans of battle.

Finally, we had Orkin come back in and the guy left more glue traps, and we all agreed that it would be okay to put some poison bait down in the basement where the kids and [worthless] cats would not eat it. We also had them set a couple of snap traps in places where they couldn't remove any toddler fingers.

And so, some time passed, and we waited to see if our Weapons of Rat Destruction would succeed.

I assume some rats ate the poison, then went off to their nest to die. I can't remember if we found any bodies.

Then finally there was the one rat who, frankly, has my respect.

You could tell that he probably died from loss of blood, by the enormous bloodspray that soaked the wall in our laundry room up to about two feet high. I wish I could've seen it; it must have been something straight out of Fist of the North Star. Who knew that rat blood was kept under so much pressure?

But what's really interesting is that, aside from all the blood everywhere, this little guy didn't have any obvious physical wounds. In fact, he didn't even die in the trap! Sure, the trap had been sprung, and the bait was gone, but he lay down to pass quietly about a foot or two away from it. And we couldn't find a mark on him.

So we began to wonder, what were the circumstances under which this strange rodent lived the last moments of his life?

Was he working with an accomplice, who actually sprung the trap and then slunk away to die someplace else? Did he consume the bait without setting off the trap, only to have it snap on him as he made his escape? Perhaps it only caught his leg, and he decided to gnaw it off like something out of Mad Max.

And then we started to wonder if maybe - just maybe - after seeing how he'd survived all these hazards, he'd actually consumed the poision as well.

Ratsputin survived glue, poision, and a brutal trap designed to break every bone in his body (if not cleave him in half), only to pass away peacefully on the floor, leaving more questions than answers. And so, in death, he has become the stuff of legend.

After that, no other rats came to call. If I were a rat, I don't think after seeing that I would've either.

Sometimes I wonder if there only ever was just Ratsputin, single handedly waging war and striking terror into our hearts from the darkness. Not likely - but certainly funny to think about, in a dark way.

Hey Slackers! Back to Work!

thomas.carpe — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:22:00 GMT

Myself included. :-)

So much for all the blogging I was going to catch up on over the holiday.

I'm not big on new year's resolutions, but I do think this is a great opportunity to clean house, so to speak. So, as part of the changes I am trying to make, I've decided to try blogging a little differently. Instead of sitting on a large post and waiting until it is fully baked before I publish it, I'm going to try breaking up some of my lengthier stuff into bits that I can chew on more easily. I'll be taking a little time each night to work on posts, and with luck I hope to get in the habit of posting something new every day if I can help it.

So, for today, I have two topics I'll discuss. Well, actually they're really more like rants. Take them for what they are worth, which is to say, not much.

The Death of the Household Phone

If anyone at the phone company would like to know why companies like Vonage are just killing them, or why many people are just abandoning the concept of a home phone altogether in favor of their cell, they needn't think very hard.

Have you ever seriously compared the features that you get on a cell phone or VOIP phone to the ones that come with a typical land-line phone and regular phone service? Well, for some stupid reason, I have. And what came out of it is my list of things I wish my household phone could do.

If my land line could do everything I wanted it to:

I could upload ringtones into my land line phone, using MP3s or WAVs that I happen to have on hand on my computer network, just like my cell phone does.
I could assign different rings for different contacts, and not only that, but different groups of contacts, like Friends, or Telemarketer Scumbag.
My phone would have something like a community based RBL for telemarketers, so they could never interrupt my dinner again.
I could tell my phone that I don't want certain types of people calling me at all at certain times, but that other people can call me any time.
My phone would hear the volume in the room and ring appropriately - and in a way that does not give me a heart attack.
It would show a picture of the caller on each handset. Extra points if my phone can make this happen on the taskbar of my PC too, or on my TV set.
My phone would mute my television and pause my DVD player automatically if I answer it a certain way while I'm watching TV. Extra point to pause my XBox 360 or PS3 - as if.
My phone would have an attractive female receiptionist (think GladOS from Portal) that could ask certain callers to identify themselves, and encourage others to leave a message - or not to ever call back.
My phone would send voice messages to email as sound and text. (Vonage actually does this now.)
I would not have to export the phonebook from one handset to all the other handsets every time I enter a new number into it.
I could access settings of my phone via a built in web application that I could expose to the Internet and access from work if I so dare. OMG, this would let me type in my phonebook contacts with a real keyboard.
Better yet, my phone would be compatible with Mocirosoft Outlook, YIM/AIM, and other PIM software.
My phone would tell companies that spoof caller ID to "f*** off and die."
My phone would politely remind political campaigns that they have already called me three times this week, that I have no more money to donate, and could they please call back again after about a month or two.
My phone's robotic receptionist would ask the caller which person in the house they want to speak to, so that I don't find myself getting up to answer the phone, only to hand it over to someone else who could've damn well gotten up to get the call themselves.
If I needed it to, my phone could interoperate with any of my cell phones, but not necessarily require me to purchase it from that particular mobile carrier.

I am sure there are probably some more good ideas out there. I'll try to open this site up for comments soon so anyone interested can share.

A Cautionary Warning

I'd also like to remind each and every person out there that you can never be too paranoid, because there really are people out there that you'd never expect are watching you.

Usually, they're people who are very close to you already, who you'd think can just come over and talk to you directly if they want something from you. It might be a coworker, a friend, a not-such-a-good-friend-anymore, a former or current significant other, or a former or current employer.

We like to think that we can have one life at home and another life professionally. We like to think that people who have our professional respect are above digging through our cyber-trash. We like to think that the Internet isn't really a big deal, and that these are problems that only rich people and celebrities should have to worry about.

We can't really afford to think that way anymore.

I'd like to give some examples. Over the years, I've seen and heard horror stories about violations of privacy that occur over the Internet, and I'm amazed at how easy it is for people to commit breaches of ethical and moral conduct online that they wouldn't even consider in physical space. But, today I can't.

I can't, because at least one such person as I am describing is reading this right now. Mind you, that's not counting the Google bots - who are always watching. But I can say this much, and I want all of you out there on the inter-Tubes to remember this. It's important.

When you visit a web site, it exists somewhere in physical space. That server might be in some rack down in Reston - or it might be in somebody's basement, hall closet, or bedroom. With most commercial sites, you can reasonably assume the former, but with blogs (like this one) and other amateur sites this is not so clear.

Obviously, opening up any system to the Internet comes with risks, just as there are benefits. Owning a house comes with risks too. And some houses are riskier than others, depending on where you live and who your neighbors are. I happen to own a house in a neighborhood of Baltimore that's in transition, so I know a lot about that. One can't argue that just because a person lives in a dicey part of town that they don't have a right to feel safe in their home.

Sometimes, people forget to lock their doors. But, unless you're either a friend of the family or a thief, you probably wouldn't even consider trying the doorknob to find out. This fact of human nature has saved my forgetful and lazy ass many times.

If someone forces your door open, they are a burglar and nobody questions that fact. But, they're still a burglar if they slip in quietly while you're in the other room not paying attention and grab something. So, why then are there so many people who convince themselves this is okay as long as it's done over a pair of wires?

I recently had a gang of ten year olds vandalize my garage and steal a wallet full of games from my side porch. My porch has a broken door that can't be locked, and my ten year old son left the games there because he'd been playing them when the other boys started harrassing him with the doorbell at the other door. Later, they spraypainted the garage out of anger because we called the police in hopes we could make them stop running across our roof.

We're looking at thousands of dollars to replace what they stole and repair what they ruined. The emotional damange of not being able to defend your home from a pack of ten year olds is much more devastasting.

[By the way, I can take out 27 five year olds, according to http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com/, and now you know why.]

Sure, we were kinda dumb to leave the spraypaint in a cabinet outside. Heck, nobody even remembered it had ever been there. Also, it was thoughtless of Eric to panic and leave the CD wallet unguarded. Does that make the act less wrong? Would a law abiding person say we were "asking for it" or that we "handed it to them"? I don't know, maybe some people say that; they'd ought to know better than let me hear it.

So my point in talking about this is to serve as a reminder that if you are using somebody's web site, you are a guest on their property. If you are using it in a reasonable way (or, if posted, in a way that is consistent with the terms of service) then you've been invited to do so. However, this does not mean that, like a vampire, once invited in you are free to cross the threshold and do as you please - draining the life from all those inside. If you behave in a way that is unwanted by the owner of that site, then you are trespassing.

This is true even if the owner never actually discovers your undesired activity, just as you can tresspass in someone's backyard and never get caught for it. As it happens, for this site, you'd be trasspassing both figuratively on the net and literally. I keep my blog server in my house.

Hypothetically, maybe you think you aren't doing anything wrong, because you haven't been intentionally trying to circumvent the security measures of the site. Maybe, like OJ Simpson, you think you are just dispensing justice by undoing something you believe was done to you. I'd prefer to think that such a person is just careless and hasn't thought things through very thoroughly.

But I know something about the character of these things. More often than not, first a person decides to hate you, then they find a way to act on it. If that's paranoia, then frankly it's a perfectly sane reaction to a crazy world.

If you're a blogger or webmaster and you think my comments sound too hysterical, then you're just setting yourself up for something similar to visit you later - because it will happen. I know it can be very hard, because we all slap these sites together with the frigile bits of what's left of our spare time after work and family have torn it to peices. Nevertheless, you are better off being paranoid ahead of time then you are reacting to a situation later - whether it's a virus, a worm, a spam-bot, or a person.

At least that way you are choosing when you will give it the time and attention it will eventually demand of you anyway. Trust me, the worms are bad enough and they can take on all the ugliness of a personal attack. When a person is doing something you don't want, it's on a different level.

So, next time I feel like it, I'll offer some practical advice - after I put some distance between myself and these events, both cyber and real.

For now I'll just say, "Hey you goddarn kids! Get the hell off my cyber lawn!" :->