the road less traveled

StormScape

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 02:17:00 +0000

“This isn’t a fantasy world. It’s a world like Earth. Power here is based on ignorance. On superstition. On deception. Not on magic. Not on anything mystical or paranormal. This ‘power’ wielded by the Hood is rooted, deeply rooted, in pure, blind fear.”

StormScape is a new Science Fiction/Fantasy book published by Joe Wells, who happens to be a friend of mine. The book was just published on Lulu late last month. If you like sci-fi books, this one is well worth it. I'm looking forward to the release of Book 2, although I have no idea when that will be.

Changing of the Guard

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:41:00 +0000

After 2½ years at Sunbelt Software I am changing companies and roles by moving to BST Global. It sounds like an excellent opportunity for me and I am looking forward to starting the new year with a new company.

I won't go in to the details that led me to the decision to leave Sunbelt, but there are several rather significant events that have happened in the last several months (and especially over the last week) that led me to make the decision.

Moving to BST will allow me the opportunity to work with a smaller, although very well established, company that focuses on a single product suite rather than trying to cover a complete and disparate line of security products. I will be primarily responsible for working on the next generation release of their ERP software.

From the sound of the project, it is a very ambitious undertaking that has a huge potential to make the product even more successful than it already is.

I have certainly enjoyed the majority of my time at Sunbelt and the people I worked with there. On the same note, I am looking forward to working with a new development team. I wish Sunbelt and everyone there the very best of luck.

Zune Desktop Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:07:00 +0000

Even if you aren't a Zune fanatic, Microsoft has released a new desktop theme based on the Zune interface. The new interface is very similar to the one offered by Windows Media Player 11.

The theme is very clean and easy on the eyes. It installs as a desktop theme in the Display Properties control panel, so there is no extra software required in order to use it.

Secretary Rumsfeld stepping down

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:22:00 +0000

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped down. This comes one day after elections which clearly showed opposition to another Republican controlled House (and possibly Senate) and opposition to the current policy in Iraq.

Robert Gates, a former CIA directory and close friend of the Bush family, will take his place if he is confirmed by the Senate. Gates joined the CIA in 1966 and has served in the intelligence community under six presidents.

Read the full article on MSNBC.com.

Hanging out a shingle...

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 00:23:00 +0000

I've finally had time and incentive to put out a real shingle on the web. Most of this is due to Microsoft's new Office Live beta, which provides free domain name registration and hosting (on Microsoft's servers) for as long as I have my account. Office Live Basics is a little limited right now (and probably will continue to stay that way), but it will always be free.

Check out the site at: www.campari-software.com

Some strange job offers

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:26:00 +0000

In the past week, I've received three very unusual unsolicited job offers from Monster.

Now, I realize that a lot of companies advertise on Monster and even more of them troll the resumes that are there looking for candidates. Mostly, these are head-hunter types that send job offers in bulk.

These offers, however, caught my attention because they have absolutely nothing to do my skills or work experience. I've snipped the incriminating portions to protect the guilty.

The first one came from one of the local Nissan dealers. That's right, a car dealership. (By the way, this one was received on the 28th.)

Congratulations! Based on your qualifications, we have selected you to interview with [removed] Nissan. My name is [removed] and I am the [removed] for [removed]. We currently have 5 sales associate positions available with [removed] located in [removed]. I would like for you to come in tomorrow Tuesday August 29th between 10:00am-5:00pm. Tomorrow is the last day for interviews. Please view information below if interested please email back with a good time to interview.

The second one appears to be a financial services firm. If they were offering to do my finances for free, that would have been great...but no, they were trying to recruit me. Sounds like a great company to work for if I were a financial planner or stock broker.

[removed] is a premier financial planning company with its clients' interests at heart. Our philosophy: Investing. With a plan. focuses on the concept of providing our clients with comprehensive, individualized financial planning and long-standing, competitive, reliable investment products. We strive to provide the same supportive, personalized career opportunity for our financial advisors.

As the need for our special brand of financial planning services continues to grow, we are committed to continuing our expansion into new locations. With your background, I feel like you could be an excellent addition. Because we are committed to building our sales force with high-quality professionals, the core of [removed]'s long-standing success centers on its financial advisors.

At [removed], we enable you to develop your career into one that works with who you are and what you have to offer. We provide the means: the tools, processes, support systems and products to assist you in achieving the goals you have set for yourself and your growing business.

Finally, yesterday I received the third (and hopefully last!) such email. This one was from a national lawn care company.

SUMMARY:
Provides service to residential or commercial customers by making timely lawn/landscape applications, diagnosing and correcting lawn/landscaping problems through service calls and other customer communications.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
The essential duties and responsibilities are listed below. Other duties may be assigned.

Applies fertilizers and pesticides to lawns according to schedule, safety procedures, and label instructions.
Drives company vehicle to commercial customer location.
Responds on a timely basis to customer requests for telephone and in-person service calls.
Completes required production forms and customer instructions.
Assists in sales to current customers through contact on route and telemarketing.
Measures the lawn of potential customers to provide them with an accurate cost of [removed]'s lawncare service.
Performs a daily three-minute, 360 degree inspection of truck and equipment before taking the vehicle out on the road and upon return.
Completes production reports, new sales forms, customer invoice forms, daily vehicle inspection report, and cancel/skip notices as required daily.
Maintains vehicle and equipment through cleanliness, safety, and general maintenance.
Assists in maintaining cleanliness of facility.

It makes me wonder...just who do these companies have reviewing resumes?

Keeping the people stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 04:16:00 +0000

My wife was watching Real Time with Bill Maher tonight on HBO, when she heard the following statement:

I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but I swear to God, I think it's in the interest of corporations to keep the people stupid, and the best way to keep the people stupid is by having the people who inform them be even stupider.

That is perhaps one of the best quotes I've heard in a long time. For me, it ties with something I heard Dennis Miller say when I saw him live for one of my college homecoming concerts:

Life is like a big, ugly, grizzly bear. If you lock eyes with it, it will kick your ass.

Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 20:28:00 +0000

IE7 RC1 is here! I've been running IE7 since the first public beta and have really liked it. If you haven't already installed it, I highly recommend it.

The RC1 build includes improvements in performance, stability, security and comparability. There have also been changes to the fit and finish of the user interface and an auto-uninstall feature in Setup, which will automatically uninstall earlier betas of IE7.

The automatic uninstall feature is very nice since it helps to streamline the install process. To get through the install I required two reboots, one to finish uninstalling the beta 3 and the other to finish installing RC1. The reboot after RC1 was automatic as the install started as soon as the system booted from the previous uninstall.

IE7 will be distributed as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates soon after the final version is released for Windows XP later this year, so you will be running it whether you want to or not. Given the number of security fixes that have been rolled in to this release of Internet Explorer, you are probably going to want to install it anyway.

Windows Live Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:37:00 +0000

Courtesy of the latest issue of WXPNews, I came across a very cool new blogging tool, named Windows Live Writer.

This is a desktop application that makes it very easy to write new blog posts by providing a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") editor that reminds me of a slimmed down version of Microsoft Word.

Windows Live Writer has some pretty cool features, like the ability to automatically spell check your blog posts before posting them and automatically saving a draft every x minutes.

While it is primarily focused on helping you write blog posts for Windows Live Spaces, it also supports many other popular blogging sites, including Blogger.com, Community Server, dasBlog, and many others.

I used it to compose this blog post, and it rocks. I highly recommend checking it out.

Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:41:00 +0000

I have been an IM user since around 1999, when Yahoo! Messenger first came out. Since then, I've added AIM and Windows Live Messenger. As instant messegng became an integrated part of my personal and professional life, the one thing that has always bothered me was that I needed 3 IM clients, one for each service.

There are several third-party IM clients, such as Jabber and Trillian, that federate the main IM services. The problem I have with these clients is that I need to sign up with them, which gives me yet another user ID floating around (I already have way too many of them, I don't really want more), they don't offer the same level of functionality as the major 3, or they aren't free. The last one is a big deal for me as I think IM services, just like the Internet, should be free.

All of that has finally changed. Thanks to a partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft, I can finally slim down to just two IM clients. (It's a start, right.) Wndows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger can now communicate with each other. Finally, I can use the IM client that I like the most and still keep my contacts on the other service.

This works out great for me. Over the years I have become a Microsoft convert and actually like the Windows Live Messenger interface a little better than Yahoo! Messenger. (This wasn't always the case, I preferred Yahoo! Messenger up until about 2 years ago.) I think a large part of the conversion was that I have 3 times the number of Live Messenger contacts as Yahoo! contacts.

There are a few things that I don't like about the new integration. If I have a contact that has both IM services, I have to create separate contacts for each service. There should be a way to tie both IM services together to one contact and see which service is "on" at the time. You also can't tell who's on which service unless you view the contact card. Other than that, so far, I like it a lot.

In order to share contacts like this you will need either the latest Windows Live Messenger client or the Yahoo! Messenger with Voice 8 beta.

Now we just have to wait for AOL to get the picture and strike a similar deal.

On This Day

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 17:17:00 +0000

I've always thought it was cool to be able to find out what happened in history on a particular day. This used to be limited to encyclopedias and birtday cards, but in the "information age" this type of information is available from a lot of places fairly easily.

I started searching the web and ran across some information on how to do this on a blogger.com site, but the link was dead. Needless to say, I managed to track down a site the had it implemented (which I believe is the original) and was able to view the javascript code.

I have implemented a version of this on my blog and am posting instructions on how to do it. You should be comfortable with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and not be afraid of customizing your blogger.com template.

I apologize in advance for the word-wrapping in the following code sections. If you want a better formatted version of the code, you can grab it from the source of this page or email me.

The first step is to add the following JavaScript to your template. This should be added to the <head> section:


<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
function OnThisDay(thisDay)
{
   var returnString   = "<span class=\"on-this-day\">On this day: #Wikipedia# ‡ #HistoryChannel# ‡ #NYTimes# <br> #BBC# ‡ #Britannica#</span>";

   var Wikipedia      = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/#month#_#day#\">Wikipedia</a>";
   var HistoryChannel = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=#month#&day=#day#&cat=10272946\">The History Channel</a>";
   var NYTimes        = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/#year##month##day#.html\">The New York Times</a>";
   var BBC            = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/#month#/#day#/default.stm\">BBC News</a>";
   var IMDB           = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.imdb.com/OnThisDay?day=#day#&month=#month#\">IMDb</a>";
   var Reference      = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://reference.com/thisday/index.html?m=#month#&d=#day#\">Reference.com</a>";
   var Britannica     = "<a TARGET=\"_blank\" href=\"http://www.britannica.com/eb/dailycontent?month=#month#&day=#day#\"><font style=\"font-variant:small-caps;\">ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA</font></a>";

   var monthNames = new Array(
      "January",
      "February",
      "March",
      "April",
      "May",
      "June",
      "July",
      "August",
      "September",
      "October",
      "November",
      "December"
   );

   var date = new Date(thisDay);
   var day = date.getDate();
   var month = date.getMonth() + 1; // fixup the month number since getMonth() returns a zero based number;
   var year = date.getFullYear();
   var monthName = monthNames[month - 1];

   var wikipedia = Wikipedia.replace(/#month#/, monthName).replace(/#day#/, day);
   var historyChannel = HistoryChannel.replace(/#month#/, 10272953 + (month - 1)).replace(/#day#/, 10272965 + day);
   var nyTimes = NYTimes.replace(/#year#/, year).replace(/#month#/, (month < 10 ? "0" + month : month)).replace(/#day#/, (day < 10 ? "0" + day : day));
   var bbc = BBC.replace(/#month#/, monthName.toLowerCase()).replace(/#day#/, day);
   var britannica = Britannica.replace(/#month#/, month).replace(/#day#/, day);

   return returnString.replace(/#Wikipedia#/, wikipedia).
           replace(/#HistoryChannel#/, historyChannel).
           replace(/#NYTimes#/, nyTimes).
           replace(/#BBC#/, bbc).
           replace(/#Britannica#/, britannica)
           ;
}
</script>

Next, add the following CSS declarations to the <style> block:


.on-this-day-header {
  border-bottom:2px dotted #999;
}

.on-this-day {
  margin:1.5em 0 .5em;
  font:78%/1.4em "Trebuchet MS",Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif;
  text-transform:uppercase;
  letter-spacing:.2em;
  color:#999;
}

Finally, you are ready to change the actual date header. You are looking for the section enclosed by the <BlogDateHeader> element. It usually looks like this:


   <BlogDateHeader>
      <h2 class="date-header"><$BlogDateHeaderDate$></h2>
   </BlogDateHeader>

You need to change the <BlogDateHeader> content so it looks like this:


   <BlogDateHeader>
      <div class="on-this-day-header">
         <h2 class="date-header"><$BlogDateHeaderDate$></h2>
         <script type="text/javascript">document.write(OnThisDay("<$BlogDateHeaderDate$>"));</script>
      </div>
   </BlogDateHeader>

If you want to customize the script, there are only a few things you need to do. The script is broken up into sections. The first section defines some constant strings that represent the output returned from the function (returnString) and the URLs for each of the sites you want listed. To add a new site, you need to add a new URL variable with the appropriate URL and add a new string replacement pattern to resultString.

The middle section computes the date information based on the date that is passed in. This part should be very simple and should not need to be changed.

The third section fills in the URL strings replacing the patterns with the appropriate values. To add a new site, once you have added the URL constant, you need to create a new variable in this section that holds the fixed-up string pattern.

Finally, we return the resultString value. To add a new site, you need to add the appropriate .replace() call to the return statement.

A week in the life of Sunbelt

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:30:00 +0000

Friday, 7 July 2006

The air is finally working again (for the moment) and it's a balmy 74° F in my office.

Of course, we have a mini thunderstorm (lasted about 10 minutes) that generated a waterspout that could be seen from outside our executive conference room.

Great view, unfortunately, I'm on the other side of the building so I get to see part of downtown Clearwater.

Thursday, 6 July 2006

Building maintenance decided that the compressors in the A/C units needed replacing...so they replaced them. In the middle of the day by shutting the A/C off for about 2 hours. It wasn't bad...it only reached 82° F in the office with almost no airflow.

Wednesday, 5 July 2006

The real excitement, an electrical fire on the the high-tension power lines feeding many of the buildings in downtown.

We had lots of power fluctuations bringing many computers down and playing havoc with the elevators.

The air is still not working correctly.

Tuesday, 4 July 2006

HOLIDAY! (and I actually didn't do any work for a change)

Monday, 3 July 2006

The air is still dying a slow death, but with a small portable fan it's bearable...only about 78° F.

Goodbye Shayna

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:18:00 +0000

Goodbye Shayna, we miss you.

Shayan Punum Dorman
? - June 29, 2006 (approx. 20 years old)

What Does It Take to Feed Tech·Ed?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 18:16:00 +0000

More than 1,250,000 pieces of Mikes and Ikes were consumed over the course of the week.
18,750 pounds of salad were prepared and offered at meals.
83,700 ice cream novelty bars and fruit and yogurt bars were served.
60,000 (or 5,000 dozen) eggs were eaten by attendees at breakfast.
It took four tractor trailer trucks to transport the 150,000 bottles of water that were consumed this week.
The total amount of fruit ordered for this week would fill three-quarters of a full-size tractor trailer.
At least 1.6 million ounces of coffee were poured.
More than 50,000 pounds of carbohydrates were consumed at Tech·Ed (Atkins who?).
7,500 table cloths were used and reset on a daily basis.

(Taken from Commnet, Microsoft's TechEd site for attendees.)

TechEd hotel problems

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 14:45:00 +0000

well...i had planned on blogging during my time at TechEd but thanks to the hotel's internet connection not working i wasn't able to. now that i'm back at home, it's time to go through all of my notes and start blogging.

i've created a new blog as well that i will start using for my technical/work related posts. check it at out:

http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/

thanks hurricane Alberto

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:55:00 +0000

I just talked with my wife and found out that we have a hurricane heading our way (in Florida, not Boston). It looks like it is going to make landfall sometime tomorrow night around Tallahassee (north of us) according to the latest models. Of course, that can change at any moment.

I logged in to try and finish my post from last night about the keynote and ended up looking up information for her about the hurricane and watching the last 10 minutes of the Japan v. Australia match. The Aussies won 3 to 1.

Anyway, I'm off to lunch and to officially check out the exhibit hall now that it's finally open.

To everyone back home, be safe through the storm.

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:45:00 +0000

This is a little late, but better late than never. I tried posting this last night on my Jasjar, but wasn't able to keep a connection going.

The keynote this year featured Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, and Chris Capossela. Micrsoft introduced the "four promises":

1. Manage Complexity, Achieve Agility
2. Protect Information, Control Access
3. Advance the Business with IT Solutions
4. Amplify the Impact of Your People

This is the year of what Microsoft is calling "people ready" software. People ready software sounds like the service oriented programming model rebranded to a catchier title. People ready software is the logical conclusion of the consumer market moving towards a more service oriented architecture with the introduction of the Microsoft Live brand of products. Microsoft feels that this is only the beginning and that the industry is moving towards a "services disruption", a phrase coined by Ray Ozzie. This services disruption is fueled by the Grove technology that Microsoft is incorporating in to the Microsoft Office family of products and is positioned as a middle ground for business to adopt the software as a service model without completely decentralizing their network.

There are lots of new products looming on the horizon, least of which is Vista. Bob Muglia hailed Vista as the most secure operating system Microsoft has created and perhaps the most secure in the industry. Very bold words for a company that has traditionally been riddled with security flaws in their operating systems and other operating system core components (namely Internet Explorer).

Microsoft is investing heavily in the server virtualization market as well. There are updates to Virtual Server 2003 that are coming in the next few weeks to help ease the transition to the next generation of virtual servers. Microsoft is rumoring that by the end of next year they will have not only full support for hardware virtualization, but also support in Longhorn for operating system virtualization (this is where the core operating system services are virtualized) and support for application virtualization (which would allow incompatible versions of the software (either the same or different) to run at the same time). In order to further their goals of application virtualization, Microsoft has bought Softricity.

In the arena of security, Microsoft announced a new security product called Forefront that promises to ease the adoption of better security models when using Vista and XP. Forefront also has Antigen components not only for Exchange but also now for SharePoint and Live Communication Server.

All in all, it promises to be an interesting year for Microsoft and the industry as a whole. We'll have to wait and see if Microsoft follows through on their promises.

in Boston, finally

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 15:15:00 +0000

Stepping off the plane at baggage claim. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do about a hotel since my coworker missed the flight and the hotel is in his name.

Update: I was able to find out when he was coming in and get checked in to the hotel anyway. I've just checked out our booth and it looks really good. The entertainment center is incredible. I'm off to the keynote...see you there.

getting ready for TechEd 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:46:00 +0000

I'm getting ready for TechEd 2006 with mixed feelings this year. In the five years I've been married I've never left my wife for longer than a night or two. Now, before anybody pipes up and says "Oh...how sappy/cute/etc.", let me explain why I feel this way.

She has epilepsy and has had it for the last 11 years. The convulsive seizures are under control, but the partial ones aren't. So, it's because of the seizures that I don't like leaving her alone for any extended periods of time. Fortunately, she has a lot of people here that are keeping an eye on her while I'm gone and a friend staying with her...so that all helps.

This is the third TechEd I've been able to attend and looks like it will be just as impressive as the last two. I've just finished packing, and barely filled one corner of the massive suitcase I'm bringing. Why bring such a large suitecase? Easy...SWAG! Last year I ended up with almost an entire small suitecase worth (thanks mostly to my wife, who was able to attend since it was in our backyard). Learning my lesson from last year, I'm bringing the largest suitecase I have and making sure it arrives almost empty. That way I can be sure to fill it up with lots of goodies.

This is definately the year for Vista and .NET 2.0. It should be interesting. There are a ton of changes in Vista and .NET 2.0. I'm already pretty familiar with .NET 2.0 since the product I've been developing since October of last year is written using C# 2.0. Vista is another story. I'm just now starting to take the plunge, although I'm very happy to say that the remote console portion of the product runs as a native Vista application under limited user mode.

It looks like the sessoins on malware are starting to die down from last year. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. There are still a few, so I'm going to try to hit those as well. Malware (especially spyware) is of particular interest since I was the lead architect and developer for our CounterSpy Enterprise product (at least all of the releases through 1.5) before I moved over to become a development manager. Now I handle our Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall, LanHound and Sunbelt Network Security Inspector products.

It looks like a good list of sessions this year, although again there are lots of sessions that I want to attend that are all at the same time. If only I could be in two places at once. Oh well...I'll just have to wait for the DVDs.

I wonder what they will be "giving away" at the keynote this year. It's Sunday night this time so there's more time for the actual conference. Last year I was one of the lucky ones to get a Jasjar and absolutely love it. I've got my entire schedule planned out on it, plus the slide decks for the sessions I'm going to on the SD card. If they give out some equally as cool this year, I'll have to try and get it. Last year it was hard...they only had a small amount and by the time the keynote was over they were all gone.

If you're going to TechEd this year, be sure to check out the Sunbelt Software booth (both #909) and see the demos for CounterSpy Enterprise and Sunbelt Messaging Ninja. Be sure to sign up for a chance to win the entertainment system (XBox 360, Alienware media center PC, stereo system and big screen TV). I wish I had this setup. It's very slick.

Stay tuned.....I'll try to keep blogging while I'm at the conference.

Line Item Veto...and other thoughts.

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 03:17:00 +0000

We can't be seriously considering this. This is the Holy Grail of almost every president since I've been old enough to vote. Sure, lets vote to give the president the power to veto specific clauses of legislation. Brilliant! That way we ensure that the only items to go to law are those that the president and the controlling party agree with. Talk about creating a partisan government.

While we're talking about partisan politics, the president just mentioned that we need to put aside party politics and work together to help create a more stable America (I'm paraphrasing here, but the meaning is about the same). Yes, by all means, let's put aside party politics since going all the way back to George Washington, we have had party politics and Washington himself said that we shouldn't move to a multi-party political system.

Great...I'm finally hearing about how we need to improve the healthcare system, pass medical liability reform, strengthen social security, and lower the energy costs. But HOW are you, the government, going to do that? We're going to invest in nuclear energy, ok...not bad, but more coal burning plants? Ok...we'll reduce our natural resources even more. Alternate fuel sources? We've tried that before and the problem has always been that the Big 3 automakers and the big energy companies don't have enough profits in changing so they buy the technology and bury it. Just ask Mr. Tucker.

I've heard about lots of initiatives but nothing about what they really are and how they are going to be paid for? The 140 "unnecessary" programs that you are planning on cutting from the government (great! trim the government "fat", it certainly needs it) to save $14 billion to help cut the deficit in half by 2009. Um...pardon me, but I thought we had a surplus prior to the first Bush administration which turned in to one of the largest deficits this country has seen by the middle of the second administration.

Whatever happened to the separation of Church and State? I realize that everyone has their own religion, but our Founding Fathers took great care to ensure that religion wouldn't influence government decisions. It seems that is something our current president and our two new justices don't seem to remember.

State of the Union?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 02:46:00 +0000

I'm sitting here watching the State of the Union address being given by President Bush. I can't help thinking "isn't this supposed to be the state of the Union"? It seems to me that most of the speech has been spent telling the "terrorist" nations of the middle east what they should do to ensure democracy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for democracy and peaceful relations in the middle east, but shouldn't we be hearing about what our president is going to do about the state of the United States? Where is the plan to help bring fuel prices down to a reasonable amount, especially in the wake of my electricity bill almost doubling this month so the energy company can help offset their costs? Where is the plan to help reduce the costs of medical insurance?

So far, all I've heard about is how the president wants to re-authorize the Patriot Act and continue to suspend civil liberties by appointing the most conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

The most amazing thing was how partisan the speech and the applause has been. The only topics that have brought applause from both parties were those that extolled the virtues of our soldiers, and rightly so. Whether they are there for the wrong or right reasons doesn't matter. They are still American citizens and soldiers following their hearts in defending the country they love and deserve our respect and appreciation for doing a job that not everyone is willing to do.

Priceless

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:18:00 +0000

In the process of cleaning up some of the source code for one of the projects I manage, I came across the following comments:

MAB 08-05-2004: Who wrote this routine? When did they do it? Who should I call if I have questions about it? It's worth it to have a good header here. It should helps to set context, it should identify the author (hero or culprit!), including contact information, so that anyone who has questions can call or email. It's useful to have the date noted, and a brief statement of intention. On the other hand, this isn't meant to be busy work; it's meant to make maintenance easier--so don't go overboard.

One other good reason to put your name on it: take credit! This is your craft

and then a little further down:

#include "xxxMsg.h" // xxx messages

MAB 08-05-2004: With respect to the comment above, I gathered that from the filename. I think I need either more or less here. For one thing, xxxMsg.h is automatically generated from the .mc file. That might be interesting information. Another thing is that xxxMsg.h should NOT be added to source control, because it's auto-generated. Alternatively, don't bother with a comment at all.

and then yet again:

MAB 08-05-2004: Defining a keyword?? This seems problemmatic [sic], in principle if not in practice. Is this a common idiom?

So, what does this tell us? Well, for starters it sounds like MAB wasn't very happy about having to work on this particular file and was doing some serious ranting. I can rant about things as well, such as the benefit of good, pertinent code comments. I've maintained enough code (both someone else's code and my own) that I understand the value of good comments.

However, to paraphrase "Marry Poppins"...

I've always said that there is nothing like a good comment. And that was nothing like a good comment.
- Bert and Uncle Albert "Mary Poppins"

Honestly, those comments weren't any better than not having them there in the first place. While the points made by MAB are, for the most part, valid there are much better ways to make them.

One good reason to not put your name on it: Your bad comments living on for posterity.

No comments at all: 0 minutes
Ranting about the lack of comments: 10 minutes
Laughing at the rants years later: priceless

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost.

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 18:34:00 +0000

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

my new blogmap

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 16:40:00 +0000

well...i finally added a blogmap to my blog. had some problems getting the right geocoding in place - my first attempt put me in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. :)

Sunbeltblog

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:04:00 +0000

Sunbeltblog