A Day in the Life

Cackl.com…The Yokes on You

2008-08-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine just created a joke site and wants to get the word out to folks and I was one of those tapped to blog about it. It's still a work in progress so post your ideas for improvement here and I'll pass them on to Mike and his team. Otherwise, enjoy and…if you're a jokester…post a few of your own.

Cackl

Out and About – July 15th, North Bay .NET User Group

2008-07-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

I'm heading up to Sebastopol next week. The talk is titled Threading: Back to Basics and I'll be covering how threads work, .NET specific thread stuff, decomposition, and tip and tricks. You can sign up here for the North Bay .NET User Group. Make sure to sign up so they have a good head count.

Comcast? Internet? Huh?

2008-05-28T22:51:00.001-07:00

One would think in this day and age that an Internet Service Provider would understand how the Internet works. But apparently Comcast doesn't have a clue. Not only was I NOT notified that their system would be down…they also don't seem to know how to brand their own 'under construction' page to let their users know what is going on…

After I got a hold of a tech support person, who was rude, there was no estimate as to when I would get email back. Thanks Comcast because not having access to my email is a really big deal for me. I mean it's not like I’m not trying to run a soccer team, a hockey team, play on a hockey team, run a .NET user group, or coordinate a dozen other things that I need to manage in my spare time which…wow…just happens to be at 10:30pm.

Doesn't it actually look like they lost their URL? or that there are a bunch of DNS servers offline?

Click to view image...

Update: Comcast hacked I actually suspected something like that but the Comcast rep told me the site was "down for maintenance". I hate liars. Come on folks a little honesty please.

VS2005 C++ Build Error vc80.pdb

2007-12-17T16:22:00.001-08:00

Are you getting the errors:

Could not delete file ‘c:\myproject\obj\release\vc80.pdb
Make sure that the file is not open by another process and is not write-protected.
Could not delete file ‘c:\myproject\obj\release\vc80.idb
Make sure that the file is not open by another process and is not write-protected.

Then maybe you have the problem described here.

Another solution is to change the number of processes you allow the build process to use.

1. From the VS2005 IDE menu bar select: Tools.Options.Projects and Solutions.Build and Run.
2. On the Build and Run page set the "maximum number of parallel project builds" to 1.

Problem solved.

AVIFileOpen returns 0x8004406d…

2007-12-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

So what does it mean? I was trying to open a .wav file to merge into my AVI stream. After a bit of running around I found that my .wav file only contained a header…no data. And this is why the AVIFileOpen was failing with the return code AVIERR_FILEREAD.

Not a very good error message because the Microsoft documentation says the error indicates, "A disk error occurred while reading the file."

Which is not the case.

Out and About – Oct 28th, Silicon Valley Code Camp

2007-10-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm giving two talks again this year at the Silicon Valley Code Camp. The first talk is at 9:15am and called "Architecture- Building Commercial Apps for Success". I'm going to talk about the things I've learned over the last 20 years delivering commercial apps for startups and small companies. You will learn about my techniques and I will explain to you why those techniques work. This is a high-level talk, no code, but the process has never failed me.

The second talk starts at 10:45am in the same room as the first talk. This will be an "Introduction to Threading" talk for people new to threading. All code samples will use C# but the talk is not language specific. The information is relevant to any developer new to threading on a pre-emptive multitasking operating system.

So…if either of those sound interesting to you follow the Code Camp link and register.

OnUserPreferenceChanged Hang

2007-09-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

You think your code is clean and all is well in the world when all of a sudden your users are starting to report that your application is hanging. You research the issue and discover that from time to time your application hangs when it receives a WM_SETTINGCHANGE message or an OnUserPreferenceChanged event. Ivan Krivyakov did a very thorough write up of what's happening which you can find here. And Microsoft is supposed to have a knowledgebase article out soon about this.

We just ran into this problem and we have learned a few things beyond what Ivan presented. First…did you know that in .NET 2.0 when you create a Control or Form (window) object…it really doesn't exist? For performance reasons Microsoft delays the actual window creation until the window becomes visible or a handle request is made. On the surface this looks innocent enough but if you took the time to read Ivan's report you realize that the final action of window creation may NOT happen on the main UI thread. Where you probably started it.

And don't think you're going to get a CrossThreadException on this one. Even with the CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls flag set no exception was thrown. Nor was an exception thrown when the application encountered this problem outside the debugger. Which the documentation says should happen.

Ivan's Freezer code worked very well (he has a link on The Page for some code, you'll want that) and made it very easy for me to reproduce the problem. So step one whenever debugging something like this is to reproduce it on the developer's machine. Freezer enables just that.

Force Window Creation

One thing that Ivan's write-up didn't make clear to me was how to get around this problem. I have confirmed from the Microsoft support guy (Trevor) that the code below will work if you've identified the correct window.

You basically have to force the window creation and you can do that in one of two ways: 1) make the window visible with a Show() or 2) request the Handle. I used the code below:


List lstHandles = new List();
IntPtr hTemp;
foreach (Control myCtrl in Controls)
{
   hTemp = myCtrl.Handle;
   lstHandles.Add(hTemp);
}

hTemp = Handle;
lstHandles.Add(hTemp);
lstHandles.Clear();

I put the handles in a temporary buffer because I wasn't sure if the optimizing compiler would drop a simple assignment loop like this:


IntPtr hTemp;
foreach (Control myCtrl in Controls)
{
   hTemp = myCtrl.Handle;
}

hTemp = Handle;

Identifying the Hanging Window

We had not correctly identified the problem Window. To do that we needed Trevor's suggestion which sent us down the correct road. Trevor suggested using Spy++ to identify what threads our windows were running on.

This was a new use case for me (with Spy++), I had already thrown Spy++ out as a tool for this problem because with Spy++ running the hang hung my entire desktop and nothing worked but the good old three finger salute, to get a Task Manager up.

The trick was to not start Spy++ until we were ready to run the test. So I got my application to the area I knew would hang (with the help of Freezer), and then started Spy++. Once in Spy++ you'll want to do the steps below to find that "bad" window:

1. Select Spy->Processes
2. In the Process dialog find your process
3. Expand your process
4. Expand the threads with the + sign
5. Look for GUI elements on those threads. If you find an element on a non-UI thread...you have found culprit.

You might think that it would be obvious and clear where all your windows are but that wasn't the case for us. Down in our audio code an engineer had created a window to pass to the SetCooperativeLevel(). This was the problem window. A window with no title…so we basically stepped through the process until we saw that Spy++ now contained a window on a non-UI thread.

What was interesting here is that the Window was actually created much earlier but only finished being created on the call to SetCooperativeLevel(). So once we discovered where the system thought the window was created we had to back up the callstack to find the actual window creation location.

Can you hear me now? ... No

2007-08-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last three days trying to figure out how we lost audio in our server products.

I had the following pieces of information:

1. We are using DirectSound.
2. The following DirectSound call threw the exception: ApplicationException. Of course…it's not documented for this constructor.

_captureBuffer = new CaptureBuffer(desc, device);

3. The following DirectSound call did not threw an exception, however VS2005 Watch window says that the Caps property threw a NullReferenceException. So basically I have an empty Caps property.

_captureDevice = new Capture();

4. I ran the DirectSound managed sample CaptureSound and that application had the same problems as I was having in my server application.

This all makes me start wondering about drivers and hardware…but the weird thing was the problem manifested at the same time on three servers.

While attempting to debug this problem I was using Microsoft's Remote Desktop to access the servers. It actually turns out that Remote Desktop is the problem.

To fix the problem:

1. Open Remote Desktop Connection. Enter the machine address and then select Options.
2. Select the Local Resources page and in the Remote computer sound group box select Leave at remote computer.
3. Select Connect.
4. Log in to your machine
5. Close the Remote Desktop session.

Can you hear me now? …Yes

Didn't Microsoft used to have forums?

2007-08-06T22:43:00.001-07:00

I just got to know what is going on? I haven't been able to access Microsoft forums for awhile now. I'm getting the error below when I try to link to http://forums.microsoft.com:

And if I try any link off the forums.microsoft.com root...such as the one in the right hand panel of the http://msdn2.microsoft.com page...under Communities...my browser just sits there spinning...looking lost and confused. In other words...nothing loads and there is no error message.

So Microsoft...WHAT'S UP!

Grand Theft Auto – The Insurance Way

2007-07-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my neighbor hit my truck. There is no question in any one's mind as to who is responsible. The truck was parked on the street in the same place it has been parked (when I'm home) for nine years. And…did I mention it was parked… as in not moving, stationary.

When it first happened I was angry…more for the inconvenience the accident represented than because I felt a victim. The damage wasn't too bad and I figured that the insurance company (he did stop and he had insurance) would take care of things. Boy was I wrong.

The insurance company (Progressive) has "valued" my truck at $3600 and decided that the repairs exceeded the value of the vehicle and totaled it. On the surface this seems logical but what it actually is, is an extremely unethical decision that moves me from someone who has simply been inconvenienced to a true victim. Progressive has given me the choice of $3600 where they take ownership of my truck and give me the money or I can keep my truck and $2700 (to fix it myself) with the stamp of "Salvage" added to the title. Neither option is acceptable.

I can not replace my truck for the pittance they have offered and the stamp of "Salvage" is a whole other head ache. This entire incident has left me without transportation and has eaten up a considerable amount of time, with more time to be lost in the future as I continue to search for a solution.

In 1993 I drove my truck off the lot, brand new, for fourteen years I have driven that vehicle. I know it and I feel safe in it. And now…what can I possibly buy for $3600 that could come close the value that truck has to me? The emotional side of my personality is screaming out at the injustice. "I DID NOTHING WRONG!" I believe that either Jeff (the guy who hit the truck) or his insurance company should pay to have my truck repaired. The fact that the market value of the vehicle is less that the repair costs SHOULD NOT BE my problem. The value of the truck to me can not be measured in a dollar amount.

I'm open to suggestions. I've already talked to my insurance company and pretty much got the same story. This is wrong. We wonder how the Enron and WorldCom scandals can happen…here is your answer. When our business communities measure the cost of something they RARELY stop to think about the human cost or the long-term costs. These nameless, faceless entities only consider the short-term bottom line...thus making it easy to dump toxic waste, rob from their employees and share holders, produce shoddy products, and steal from the people they are supposed to serve.

This picture should give you an idea of how long he had to slow down...

This is all the damage...really looks like the truck should be totaled right? It's drivable, just not legally drivable...

As you can see from the photos the truck is basically fine and the only one inconvenienced by any of this has been me and my family.

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water

2007-07-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

Microsoft development libraries and tools have been around a long time and it's easy to think that all the kinks have been worked out. If weird stuff happens it's got to be in my code…right? Wrong.

I spent several days trying to figure out why, when I stepped (F10) over an instruction…I lost my thread. I thought of everything that could go wrong: GC, aborted thread, ThreadPool starvation, etc… I tried a lot of stuff.

A word of debugging advice, whenever you find yourself in a messy situation, try to find the simplest setup that produces the problem. I stripped my code down to:


public partial class frmMyForm : Form
{
    private void frmFonBook_Shown(object sender, EventArgs eArgs)
    {
        ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(_DoSomething), this);
    }
}

static void _DoSomething(Object state)
{
    frmMyForm frmObject = state as frmMyForm;
    if (frmObject != null )
    {
        frmObject.MakeACall();
    }
}

Eventually I hit on the right search terms and came up with this link. There are some other links in the post that explain things in more detail here and here. It's a crazy world but the IDE was actually the problem NOT my code.

Basically to get around this probem open VS2005, select Tools->Options->Debugging->General and then disable the 'Enable property evaluation and other implicit function calls' checkbox.

So here are some search terms that I hope will make someone else's life easier:

disappearing thread
collected thread object
lost
failed step
IDE broken

…another door opening…

2007-07-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

This is my third week at FonJax and things are moving right along. I'm out of marketing and back in development and while it was hard to leave Digipede there are many things I'm excited about at FonJax. And while I've spend a great deal of time learning the business and marketing side of the software startup sector, the plan was always to take what I learned back to engineering.

I really enjoyed my interviews with two of the founders: Niall Sweeny and Mark Moore. During my interview with Mark I mentioned that I had been sold as an asset at KaseWorks. That was the first time I have ever mentioned that in an interview and actually had someone understand. First there were the layoffs, then there was the Chapter 11, and then there was the "new" company with different leadership and a different agenda. When it was all done there were only five software engineers left standing. Being sold as an asset is a traumatic experience but it also reflects that the company thought my contributions were important enough to keep me through it all.

Feeling understood, valued, and respected is important to me and I get that feeling from the FonJax team. I'm looking forward to a long and fun ride.

One door closing...

2007-06-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

Update...this post was taken down because...well there were unintended interpretations to what I wrote. This may go back up later after a little more editing.

Well, the toned down version of this post is that I find that for personal reasons I had to leave Digipede. I loved working there. Great team, great product but things don't always work out the way we want them to. So…a door closing.

We all need a little help from our friends...

2007-06-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

All right all you developers out there...you have GOT to start blogging because I am really tired of running into error messages and situations that I KNOW someone has gotten around but no one has bothered to share the solution for. Now I know for a fact that my blog is not in the top 10000 of blogs that are widely read, but I can tell you from my traffic that my blog does help folks. You can help folks too. Be altruistic and give back to the community, there is so much software left to build that there is no reason to hoard information.

As I was searching Google for the answer to the error message below I saw the same error message pop-up in Groups and on the Web but with no solution ever presented. This is not the first time I've encountered this problem, it won't be the last, but maybe we can change this...one post at a time. Okay, that was my call to arms. Now onto the error message and the solution.

--------------------------

I don't know if my solution will work for you, but here is my situation and the accompanying solution.

I'm trying to open a password protected Excel workbook from a VBScript file. The problem I ran into is that there are "empty parameters" between the filename and the password for the Workbooks.Open call; in C# those empty parameters are filled with the word 'missing', but what to do about VBS?

Here is the error message generated with all my attempts to make the call:

"Unable to get the Open property of the Workbooks class."

Here is the correct syntax:

Set oWorkBook = myExcelWorker.Workbooks.Open
(strWorkerWB, , , , "password")

Where strWorkerWB is a variable containing the name of my Excel workbook, "password" is the Password to open for the workbook, and the command is typed into your script on one line (While the line is split in this post, don't split it in your code).

Fun with vbc.exe...snore

2007-06-01T16:11:00.000-07:00

I created a .NET 1.1 and a .NET 2.0 VB.NET sample for the Digipede Network. One of the requirements for our sample code is that the samples can be built from the command-line. The first thing I had to do for this test was to make sure that I had an open Command Prompt window with the PATH correctly containing only .NET 1.1 and VS2003 references.

Then it was time to start building my batch file. Since my sample is based on a C# sample I started by copying the build.bat file from the C# sample, thinking that that would work just fine after I changed a few things. Boy was I wrong.

.NET 1.1/VS2003

My VB.NET project builds fine when built inside VS2003. This is what my batch file started out looking like:

copy ..\..\Digipede.Framework.dll 
copy ..\..\Microsoft.Web.Services2.dll 

cd MonteCarloLibrary
vbc.exe /t:library /out:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
/r:..\Digipede.Framework.dll piworker.vb

cd ..
copy MonteCarloLibrary\MonteCarloLibrary.dll 

vbc.exe /t:winexe /out:MonteCarloPi.exe 
/r:Digipede.Framework.dll /r:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
MainForm.vb

This didn't work and generated a plethora of bugs.

The build command for the MonteCarloLibrary changed to look like this:

vbc.exe /t:library /out:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
/r:..\Digipede.Framework.dll /r:Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll 
/r:System.Data.dll piworker.vb

Apparently the IDE automatically includes the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll and System.Data.dll files for you and when compiling on the command-line you have to reference them yourself. Additionally, I had to make changes to my code so that my Imports list contained everything I would need. That list changed from:

Imports Digipede.Framework
Imports Digipede.Framework.Api

to:

Imports System
Imports System.Data
Imports System.XML
Imports System.Runtime.Serialization
Imports Digipede.Framework
Imports Digipede.Framework.Api

These changes got me around most of the BC30002 errors.

The next thing that was a problem was that in my executable I referenced my DLL as MonteCarloLibrary.MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker. This compiled just fine in the IDE but not from the command-line. When compiling from the command-line I got the following error:

MainForm.vb(468) : error BC30002: Type 
'MonteCarloLibrary.MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker' is not defined.
Dim jobTemplate As JobTemplate = JobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate
(GetType(MonteCarloLibrary.MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker))

This puzzled me for awhile until I changed my code to be:

Dim jobTemplate As JobTemplate = JobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate
(GetType(MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker))

Notice I deleted the Namespace 'MonteCarloLibrary'. This change compiled just fine from the command-line but not from the IDE. What was going on?

It seems that in the IDE my MonteCarloLibrary had a Root namespace defined in the project. Now I don't remember ever setting this so I don't know if I put it in or the IDE put it in, regardless...there it was. And that, so to say, was the root of my problem.

I deleted the Root namespace. Changed my code to remove the namespace reference and was then around that problem.

Onward...though not upward.... As you can see I've switched over to errors reported by my executable WorkerLibraryFormsVB.exe

vbc : error BC30420: 'Sub Main' was not 
found in 'WorkerLibraryFormsVB'.

A quick Google search yielded no valid answer so I decided to bite the bullet and actually look at the VB.NET compiler settings by typing:

vbc /?

This looked good:

/main:

option is defined as

Specifies the Class or Module that contains Sub Main. It can also be a Class that inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Form. (Short form: /m)

New command-line:

vbc /t:winexe /main:MonteCarloForm 
/out:WorkerLibraryFormsVB.exe /r:Digipede.Framework.dll 
/r:MonteCarloLibrary.dll MainForm.vb

Which got past the ‘Sub Main’ error but there were still more....

vbc: error BC30451: Name 'MessageBox' is not declared.

To get around the problem above you'll need to do two things. The first thing to do is to verify that you have

Imports System.Windows.Forms

at the top of your file. (In this case I added the Imports command to the top of MainForm.vb)

The second thing is to add additional references to your build command-line:

vbc /t:winexe /main:MonteCarloForm /out:MonteCarloPi.exe 
/r:Digipede.Framework.dll /r:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
/r:System.Windows.Forms.dll /r:Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll 
/r:System.Data.dll MainForm.vb

I had one error left and that was:

\MainForm.vb(534) : error BC30451: Name 'ControlChars' 
is not declared.

Dim errMsg As String = [String].Format("Job submission 
failed with error:" + ControlChars.Lf + "{0}", 
e.Error.Message)

I changed the line to read:

Dim errMsg As String = [String].Format
("Job submission failed with error:" + 
Microsoft.VisualBasic.ControlChars.Lf + "{0}", 
e.Error.Message)

Notice I told the compiler EXACTLY where to find ControlChars....and then everything was just fine.

Here is the new, working build.bat file:

copy ..\..\Digipede.Framework.dll 
copy ..\..\Microsoft.Web.Services2.dll 

cd MonteCarloLibrary
vbc.exe /t:library /out:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
/r:..\Digipede.Framework.dll /r:Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll 
/r:System.Data.dll piworker.vb

cd ..
copy MonteCarloLibrary\MonteCarloLibrary.dll 

vbc.exe /t:winexe /out:WorkerLibraryFormsVB.exe 
/r:Digipede.Framework.dll /r:MonteCarloLibrary.dll 
/r:Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll /r:System.Data.dll 
/r:Mscorlib.dll /r:System.dll 
/r:System.Windows.Forms.dll /r:System.Drawing.dll 
/main:MonteCarloForm MainForm.vb

.NET 2.0/VS2005

Once testing indicated that I had the .NET 1.1/VS2003 version working I then copied my new build.bat file over to the .NET 2.0/VS2005 project. I made the necessary code changes with my Imports and namespace, and then tried to build. I got the following warning:

warning BC42025: Access of shared member, 
constant member, enum member or nested type through 
an instance; qualifying expression will not be evaluated.

Dim jobTemplate As JobTemplate = jobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate
(GetType(MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker))

Although not an error, only a warning, I don’t like to see either in my output and it needed to go. This is what my code looked like to me in VS2003:

Dim jobTemplate As JobTemplate = 
JobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate(GetType(
MonteCarloLibrary.PiWorker))

Notice that in the error message it is jobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate and in my code it is JobTemplate.NewWorkerJobTemplate. Damned if VB wasn’t making my capital J a lowercase j. It was actually funny (for all of 30 seconds) to change the lower case j to an upper case J and watching the IDE change it back for me. It was like a magic trick; only after the first few laughs it wasn't funny any more. Quite frankly I have better things to do than waste my time on this kind of crap. A quick look through the VS2005 Options pages and nothing jumped out to make this stop. So I changed my variable name to myJobTemplate.

Conclusion
One thing that would have been really handy is if the IDE would have displayed the command-line it was using. This option is available for other languages why not VB.NET?

They’re back.....

2007-03-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

Termite season...and they’re back. This sucks.

CRT .762 side-by-side error

2007-03-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I installed VS2005 SP1 onto my laptop and a few days ago I was asked to retest all the sample code that ships with the Digipede Framework SDK. Everything worked fine until I got to IComWorkerCPP. IComWorkerCPP is a C++ COM sample which ran fine on my machine but when I tried to run it on the grid it failed.

I looked in the Event Viewer but only under Digipede so I didn't find any good clues. Robert looked under System and was able to come up with this error:

"Resolve Partial Assembly failed for Microsoft.VC80.MFC. Reference error message: The referenced assembly is not installed on your system."

After a bit of research it turns out that SP1 installs new C++ libraries with the minor version number .762. If you look in directory C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS you’ll see a bunch of side-by-side directories.

If you get the error above and you only see the directory x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.42_x-ww_0de06acd and not the directory x86_Microsoft.VC80.CRT_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.762_x-ww_6b128700, then you may need to install .762.

I was unable to find a download page on MSDN for the latest redist libraries. But did find that VCRedist_x86.exe was updated on my computer.

You can find the latest version in the directory: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\vcredist_x86

Simply run VCRedist_x86.exe on the target machine and you should be good to go.

VS2005 and ASP.NET: Can't start my debugger

2007-03-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

For the record, I have absolutely NO IDEA what's going on here. But with luck this solution may work for you. I'm playing around with ASP.NET web services and I was getting this error from VS2005 (I was getting this before and after SP1 installation):

"Unable to start debugging on the web server. An authentication error
occurred while communicating with the web server."

Searching on the error produced links to proposed solutions that didn't work for me. This was the only official Microsoft link I found that addressed the error message.

So now I know basically that IIS was having trouble starting my debugger. So I thought, hmmm, let's just try this without debugging. Ctrl-F5 and everything comes up as expected. I closed the new browser window (I'm working on a service) and then hit F5...just to see what would happen. And LO! Up comes my debugger. I set a breakpoint, ran the service, and hit the breakpoint.

I can only assume that a VS2005 setting got munged and Starting Without Debugging fixed it. But I just don't know. Good luck on this one...there seems to be many paths to the same error message.

Out and About: February 27th San Diego, CA

2007-02-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

I'm heading down to San Diego next week. If you're interested in concurrent software development: multithreading and grid computing please come by. I'll be talking to the San Diego .NET User Group, you can find out about the meeting here. Brian and I have plans to grab some food after the event so please plan on joining us.

If I had a nickel...

2007-02-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

...for every product idea I've ever had, I'd retire.

This was a fun read today, Alien-hunting software rats out laptop thief and provided yet another product idea. Lojack for your computers.

Unless a computer-savvy thief uninstalls nearly every piece of software before connecting to the Internet, he said, SETI@home would track the machine -- and the thief would likely never know it.

"I have some advice for thieves: Don't connect to the network," Anderson said.

With the recent news reports of stolen laptops containing lots-o-confidential data, it seems there is a market for a product that can get your stuff back.

After searching the Internet it seems that someone already thought of this, Lojack for Laptops. Here is a review Does LoJack For Laptops Work?

Now I'm wondering why stolen laptops with confidential information ARE SUCH A BIG DEAL! The technology and service is available so that IT departments should be investing money here and protecting their customer's data. This makes it seem criminal that companies are having trouble finding recently stolen computers.

------------------------------------

While I'm on a product idea rant...

Where is the social networking site for retirees? This seems like a huge untapped target market with money. Why build the next MySpace or FaceBook for teenagers and young adults when you can tap an entire un-served market space? Let's think about our retirees...

1. Statistics show that people live longer if they stay busy after retirement.
2. Retirees need to create new connections to replace the work related ones they've lost.
3. The Baby Boomers are a very large, technically savvy group.
4. Many have money.

Most of my immediate family members are 30 to 40 years older than I am. That's just how things worked out. My Grandfather suffered from Macular degeneration. I watched his world get smaller and smaller. Where did he turn for mental stimulation and social contact? His computer. He spent hours on his computer every day. I jacked the fonts up as large I could make them and he would sit in front of the computer with a magnifying glass. To me this is a BIG opportunity indicator. The guy was in his 80s.

So many people think that only the kids are technically savvy, this is a mistake. My Grandfather's generation went through an incredible amount of technology changes. And I am confident that when folks have something to gain by learning about technology – they can not be stopped.

So, build a social network for retirees. Provide a framework for them to make it their own. They are a group that knows how to lead and they will be very vocal in telling you what you need to build.

Talk to me

2007-02-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

As is my wont I was looking through message boards and stumbled across a LinkedIn question about the strangest interview questions you've been asked or have asked. I didn't think my response was strange enough to post there but I thought I'd write it up here.

About 14 years ago I was interviewing candidates for a customer support position. I had already gone through the cover letters and resumes and eliminated folks who were either not technical enough or could not write well enough. At this point I thought that the most important skill for the candidates was how well they handled the phone. So when I called them for the prescreening interview, I asked them to just talk to me. Tell me how their weekend was, what they had for breakfast, I just didn't care. I told them I was just trying to get a feel for their phone skills and how well they communicated.

One candidate got frazzled and asked me what he was supposed to talk about, I reiterated that I didn't care I just wanted to get a feel for how he was on the phone. He got mad and hung up. This was for a job where he would have to spend a lot of time on the phone. His English was good and his technical skills on his resume looked sound, but obviously he was lacking in people skills.

The guy I ended up hiring had very broken English and a thick accent, but our customers loved him. He was very helpful, enthusiastic, and competent. When I had asked him to just talk he very excitedly talked to me, I don't even remember what it was about. But he made a positive impression and that was what I wanted my customers to come away with. (I'm going to call him Bing because my memory is bad and I can't remember his name.)

I suspect that Bing would have been overlooked by many people because of his speech. But I think people are more tuned into emotions and he had a happy, positive, helpful, and engaging personality. Any employee in a customer facing position becomes the voice or face of the company. When people thought of our company I wanted them to not only have their technical needs addressed but I wanted them to leave the encounter feeling good about it, about our products, and about our company. Bing was able to do all of that because he was able to communicate to the customer that he really cared about them and that he was there to help and support them. So his English wasn't so good...but he was a GREAT communicator.

So...what's my point? I don't have one today! I just wanted to share a random story. Have a good one.

My Cool Projects

2007-01-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

I’ve decided to start a meme. We’ll see how far it goes, but I want to know what the coolest projects you’ve ever worked on are and why. I think that the coolness factor says a lot about who we are because it is so subjective. The projects don’t have to be technical. Maybe you built a house with Habitat for Humanity. I think that would be cool. Maybe you taught your dog to bring you a beer. (If you let this information out you may find a lot of dog training gigs coming your way.) Regardless, cool is about who we are at our core and I think it would be much more revealing then the "five things you don’t know about me" meme.

• I started a recreational women’s softball division for the Hotlanta softball league. Zero to thirteen teams in four years. What a ride.

• I wrote a product that was used at the Nagano Olympics and a Super Bowl, I mentioned it here. Besides where it was used, I also got to play around with live broadcast feed, did the entire product myself (that includes documentation), supported multithreading, and generated code. Did I mention it was used at the Olympics?

• There are two things I love to do as an engineer. Work down in the bits and bytes and pull-off the impossible. I’ve had the chance to do this for a casino gaming system (embedded system! proprietary operating system! EPROM! Yea, that’s the ticket!) and for a content aggregation server that was ported from a stand-alone app (I did NOT design that thing but I certainly helped fix it. Can you say more multithreading bugs than stars in the sky?). Now that was cool.

• As an athlete I’ve had moments when my teammates and I have just gelled. It was if we were one unit. Every pass was perfect. Those moments are why I play. And when I think about the coolest moments in my life...I always see those plays and remember the feeling of absolute completion and wholeness. In martial arts they talk about giving up your ego, but I don’t think that is exactly what happens. I think it is a combination of truly accepting what is happening and being open to the moment. Anyway...it’s definitely a safe clean high.

• And to finish off my list...I organized an informational event at one company I worked at. The problem was that there were a lot of folks in the company who didn’t really understand what we were selling or how it worked. I sent out an email asking for questions, lined up the speakers, and we spent a day on the top topics. The event was very well attended and received. This was cool for me because I love to help people, I got a lot of ego strokes from the attendees, and I can’t help but think that it helped our company be more successful...and that is just cool.

Since I want this meme to spread I’m not going to tag anyone specifically. I ask that after you’ve put up your post that you add a comment here with a link to it and tag folks from your blog. That will be my tagging.

Technorati tags: Meme, cool, project, my cool projects

Experienced Multithread Developer...so good I don't need locks

2007-01-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

This has got to be one of the funniest things I've read all year. (Of course it's still early...)

"We have a multi-threaded .NET application, the problem is that the previous programmer didn't care to have locks on the shared variables. Somehow the application doesn't end up in Locked state on a single CPU machine but I have tried running it on several dual core machines and it randomly freezes. I am searching for a quick-fix until I implement locks around all the shared variables in the entire application.

Is there a way to bound the .NET application to single CPU.

Thanks!" link

Anyone who has been reading my postings or attended any of my concurrent development presentations will immediately see the humor in this. However, I will explain for the unenlightened....

I have been saying all along that there are a lot of folks writing multithreaded applications that have no idea what they're doing. The original developer is one of them. Now this guy is probably going to keep writing multithreaded apps because he thinks he has successfully done it before. In fact his new company may have hired him because of that experience. This is funny.

The other funny thing is that I've said time and time again that often a newbie will add multithreading and then only test on a single processor. Some folks have asked me how any one could be so...ignorant. (I want to say stupid but we're trying not to use that word at home.) Well folks, here you have it. Never underestimate a person's ability to do stupid...I mean ignorant things.

I am...a Green Lantern!

2007-01-10T16:13:00.000-08:00

To continue this crazy meme kind of day...the results of my Super Hero test indicate that I am secretly a Green Lantern...I just wish I could find my ring...

You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern		80%
Superman		75%
Spider-Man		75%
The Flash		75%
Batman		65%
Robin		60%
Iron Man		60%
Hulk		55%
Supergirl		50%
Wonder Woman		45%
Catwoman		45%

Hot-headed. You have strong
will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

My five things...

2007-01-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Dan tagged me a few days ago with the "5 things you don't know about me" meme. I've spent a few days thinking about those five things. I read what others had written about themselves for inspiration (and to get some idea what this is about) and came up with these five things:

1. I love turtles. I have no idea why.

2. My favorite color is orange. This is new, my favorite color used to be green.

3. I've been around and touched by a few celebrities. I've eaten dinner on Melissa Etheridge's credit card but I've never met her. I've been inches away from Emily of the Indigo Girls fame on several occasions at the softball field. I was bored out of my mind with Ellen Degeneres at an art show at the Snake Pit in Atlanta. We didn't talk. She is very quite and after several attempts to start a conversation...I decided to just try to get drunk...I didn't succeed at that either. I used to know this guy because we worked together at a children’s theatre where I was more concerned about the roof leaking than any ghosts that might be hanging around. And of course...there's Dan.

[update] I forgot to mention that Fran Tarkenton walked into my office and asked me how things were going (I used to work for him). He didn't really care so I told him everything was fine.

4. And one really cool product that I created (yes I did the whole thing, documentation and everything) was NetCam II for the IBM sports group. NetCam captured images from live broadcast feeds, packaged the images up (even creating the HTML pages for them), and sent them to the IBM hosted websites. The software was used at the Nagano Olympics, a couple big golf events, and even the Super Bowl. I would get crazy last minute requests like the one from the Super Bowl.

"We're going to be in a truck in the parking lot...how fast can you add FTP support because we're going to have to upload the images using FTP through a satellite!"

Sleep? I don't need no stinking sleep! You want FTP...you got FTP, Baby!

5. Inspired by Jonathan Schwartz's response #3 I found myself thinking back to my own brush with death. Unlike Jonathan I am going to elaborate not only on what happened but also on how it began to change me.

I think it was in 1993. I was living in Norcross, GA and commuting to work in Roswell. It had been raining that morning, the first rain in a long time which meant that there were slick spots on the road from oil build up. I was coming down the ramp from 85 to 285 when I hit one of those slicks and did a 180. My pick-up truck was sliding backwards down the ramp at about 50 miles an hour.

When I looked up, I looked right into the eyes of a trucker driving a big rig. In a moment of clarity I felt that he and I had a non-verbal conversation that went like this:

Me: Oh shit...I'm going to die.
Trucker: I'm sorry. I can't do anything without hurting more people.
Me: I know. You're right. It's not your fault. I don't blame you.

In the Trucker's eyes I saw him prepare to ride that rig right over me. He had to be careful not to brake and end up in worse shape than me. But just as I thought it was all over...one of my back tires got a grip on some good pavement and I was able to spin my truck back around and off to the shoulder.

As I sat on the side of the road, not a scratch on me or my truck, I just shook. I had faced what I thought was certain death by a man who I had never met and who meant me no harm. I was surprised that I had faced my death so calmly and peacefully. I had felt bad for the Trucker; I had not wanted my death to be a burden to him and I remembered feeling forgiveness toward him and hoping that he would forgive me.

My life changed in less than a second but the changes weren't immediate. I began asking myself the question, "If I die tomorrow will I regret this decision?" And this one question began to change the direction of my life. I also began to look at people differently. I am more forgiving, more willing to look for the reasons behind a person's actions, to try to understand a person's motivations and assumptions, to step up in my life and lead, to try to leave things a little better than I found them, to never give up...I believe I am a better person.

I hope that when the time comes to face my death again...that I will fight just as calmly to live as I did that day. To accept that my death may be the outcome, but not that my death is necessarily inevitable.

Your turn:

Reg Braithwaite
Adnan Masood
Gustavo Cavalcanti
Peter Kellner
Anand Iyer