"I Have Lusted in my Heart"

The quote's from the Playboy interview with President Jimmy Carter while he was in offer. I can't remember whom he was talking about, but here's what I've got lust in my heart about. Now all I need to do is get a huge gig or win the lottery. (BTW, Carter didn't use that exact phrase in his interview, but the title phrase has pretty much become the psuedo-standard. [Link is worksafe for that page only.])

Memorial Day Thoughts

James Avery and Alex Lowe both have thoughtful notes on what Memorial Day's really about. Grilling and relaxing in the back yard is a great thing to do on Memorial Day, but take a moment, please, to keep in mind those whose sacrifices have kept tyrants, fascists, and despots at bay. My family's been kept safe by everyday Joes and Janes struggling in far off lands to improve the lives of strangers they've never met in a land they most likely hadn't read much about. War's not glorious, except to those naieve and far behind the lines. War is blood, tears, shit, missing limbs, missing friends and fathers, innocent children dead in the street as collateral damage. War is men and women standing in front of a stone wall on the Mall searching for the names of their fallen comrades. Still these amazing troops get their jobs done, sacrificing more than most of us will ever understand in order that our nation continues its wonderful, creaky, flawed role as a shining beacon to those wanting a better life. By far the best words I've ever heard to describe the importance of what these men and women do comes from the Arborath declaration where in 1320 a group of Scottish barons gathered to draft a letter to Pope John XXII asking for his support of the Scottish independence war. The declaration concluded "for it is not for glory, riches or honours that we fight, but for freedom alone, that no man of worth yields up, save with his life”. AFTERTHOUGHT: I should also add that most in the front lines fight for something few others away from the lines understand: they fight for their comrade next to them in the foxhole or trench. Read Ambrose's Citizen Soldier or watch Band of Brothers and you might get an idea what that bond's like. Those who never served, or those of us who served only in peacetime, can't truely understand the depth and intensity of that bond.

YASR (Yet Another Sith Review) (But This One's Good)

Check out John Scalzi's thoughts on Revenge of the Sith. Scalzi's got some terrific thoughts on Lucas' impact on filmmaking, merchandizing, CGI, sound, and a host of other matters. Scalzi hits hard the many problems with episodes I-III, but not in a snarky way. There's also some interesting thoughts on the future of the Star Wars juggernaut, including this terrific set of sentances finishing off Scalzi's post: "Lucas, who I think is well pleased to finally wash his hands of the Star Wars universe, is likely to have minimal involvement. That means there's an excellent chance some good writers and decent directors will creep back into the Star Wars universe and make it finally live up to its potential. A new hope, indeed."

Changes in Writing, or Media in General

John Scalzi's got a terrific post on how the publishing/writing business is changing, at least by his line of reasoning. According to Scalzi, revenue streams won't be primarily from selling printed matter, they'll be from ancillary lines such as blog ads, material sold from an author's site, etc. Regarding publishers and editors, as General Shinseki said, "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware B1

Anybody else have odd issues with MS's Anti-Spyware? I've felt it's been dragging down system performance, so I've been trying to run with it disabled in order to get some subjective comparisons. Right-click on the taskbar icon, select "Shutdown". A dialog appears with dire warnings that my system will be suceptible to spyware attacks and may even do something more horrific. [What, like register itself as a Howard Dean supporter? -- ed.] Fine. Click "Yes" to confirm that I know what I'm doing (supposedly). The little icon goes away and everything looks fine and runs just ducky. Until... Some hours later, I notice Anti-Spyware's icon is back in the taskbar. Hmmm... I had no notification it was starting back up, nor can I find any preferences or options which would explain to me why this is happening. This has happened several times on both of my systems. Software that starts up on its own and sucks up resources even when you've told it to stay gone. Wouldn't that be considered, well, SPYWARE??? I need to caveat this with the note that I've not done much checking into MSAS's configuration, nor have I even looked to see if there's an online forum or blog where I can go for more info on it. What, you want me to actually do some research before ranting? Hah!

Great Guide for Great Presentations

Tom Peters has a terrific post on giving great presentations. There's a link to a PowerPoint slideshow in his post with 59 points on how to consistently make great pitches. You absolutely need to know how to effectively communicate your ideas and goals, even if you never give a pitch to a group larger than your five member development team. The two most important points to me are #15: "No more than THREE key points! Come at them in several different ways." and #17: "Slides: NO CLUTTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (no wee print/ charts/graphs)" If you can only remember two things on how to form your next presentation/pitch/briefing, remember these two. I've sat through too many briefings and presentations where the speaker hadn't thought out a clear story -- we were overloaded with far too many important points. Worse yet are the folks who think that more graphics == more clarity. Bullpuckey. The only thing you're doing is showing that you didn't take enough time to distill your point or issue down to the essence. Even worse, your audience may think you're trying to pull a smoke and mirrors act by splattering crap all over the screen. As Glenn Reynolds would say, read the whole thing.

Peanut Butter Sandwiches in Systems & Software Development

Rico Mariani has a good post on statements "so obvious as to be uninteresting." How often have you run across marketing blabber BS which fits this bill? How about poorly-worded requirements? (OK, so you XP fanatics will just refactor the requirement.) Oh yeah, the rest of his post on performance analysis is pretty damned useful too. But I still dig the peanut butter sandwich part.

Torture Is...

having three boxes in the front hallway with parts for my new computer. And not being able to put the toy together until I pass the first test for my MCSD. I'm forcing myself to wait until the afternoon of 6 June to start putting pieces together. Maybe I'd best not even open boxes to RTFM yet. The horror. For those interested, I've got an ASUS P4P800-E motherboard, P4 3.4E GHz (Prescott socket 478), 2GB RAM (1GB modules from Crucial), a 300GB Seagate Barracuda S-ATA 7200RPM drive, and an ATI Radeon 9800Pro video card. All that's going in an Antec Solution 1650 minitower case with TAC (Thermally Advanced Chassis) with a side vent right over the heat-producing monstrous processor. I still need to pick up a Plextor PX-716 DVD+-RW drive and a KVM switch to flip between my existing system. The Radeon 9800 supports dual monitors, but I'm forcing myself to wait for a second monitor until I get a gig and a paycheck!

Clarifying Visual Studio 2005 Products

Are you confused about the numerous variants of Visual Studio 2005 and how it fits in with MSDN subscriptions? Check out these two posts from Rob Caron: A Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Part I A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Part II There are a lot of changes coming about, and Rob's posts do a great job of explaining them. Lots of purty pictures make it more clearer for dumb folks like me. Bottom line? Get an MSDN subscription now if you don't already have one. (Like me.) (Via dasBlonde)

Build Process: Visual Clues

A friend passed this on to me some time ago. It's a great way for linking CruiseControl's automated build cycle to a terrific visual feedback system. Some folks have a bit too much spare time on their hands. (But I'd love to put this together!)

Terrific PDF Generating Tools

I stumbled across a great tool for generating PDF files from Office documents: GhostWord. This handy front end for GhostScript installs itself as a button in Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. Click the button and you'll get a simple dialog. A couple sanity checks, one button and Poof! you've got a PDF file. You'll need GhostScript 6.0 or higher, plus a PostScript printer driver. Note that I say driver, not a PostScript printer. Install the recommended driver (HP Color LaserJet 4500) and select "File" as its connection port. I tried one simple resume Word document with moderate formatting, one basic PowerPoint, and one moderately complex Word document with an odd-sized paper setting and a few graphics. GhostWord worked terrific in all cases. Best of all, it's FREE.

Disclaimer Template

Need a good disclaimer for your work, blog, or other important communication? Check out this one.

Playing With CSS and Paintshop

I spent part of yesterday and much of today fooling around with getting my LLC's website up and running. The graphics and colors are still quite rough, but hey, it's an iterative process. Boy, there's nothing like trying to do something fancy with CSS to make you learn CSS. There are still some rough band-aids on the styling, but I am fairly pleased with the general layout. I still need to re-read sections of Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition, particularly the details of how text flows. I'm not happy with the h1 and h2 blocks not resizing, but I couldn't figure out what I changed from when they were working. Rat farts. I'll dope it out soon. I'm also not happy with some of the duplicated properties I've got scattered throughout the sheet, particularly those dealing with block and border sizes. I wish there was some way to declare constants and reference those values in the properties themselves. This is a bit too much like the awful "magic number" issue which crops up in far too much software code. The rose graphic is an initial cut from a friend who's a real artist. I'm looking forward to seeing what her final work is. I'm paying her in home roasted coffee; she and her husband both seem very pleased with the barter deal -- and I'm sure I'm getting the best out of the deal by far.

Good Reading List

Jean Tessier's got a good list of books he's read with short, sweet reviews. It looks like there are some listed which are worth reading. He's also created an open source project which sounds pretty dang interesting: Dependency Finder. It's in Java, but I wonder if there's a .NET port or something similar around. Note to self: Worth looking at later. (From a post at Yahoo's Test Driven Development group.)

It Is Alive!

Woo hoo! The Ohio Secretary of State's office just confirmed my paperwork has been approved. I'm now officially the owner of Iterative Rose Solutions, LLC. I've even got a logo, an idea I had a long time ago brought to life by a friend who actually does art stuff for a living. The piece is still evolving, but it's supposed to show a rose emerging in an iterative fashion. Clever, no. Y'know, "owner" just doesn't have the right ring to it. Maybe my title should be "Supreme Ruler", or "President for Life". Got a name, got a logo, got a biz plan. Now I just gots to get a gig, and I'm working on that!

All's Really Not Quiet Here

I haven't posted anything in the last couple days simply because it's been a madhouse. I've been dashing about doing the usual FrazzledDad chores of running my daughter around, chasing my son around, chasing the cats around, etc., but I've also been spinning up something big in my life: a single-member limited liability corporation. Yes, it's true: I'm now a small businessman. I'm going down this path simply because I think it offers me the best chance to get part-time work from home over the next 15 or so months. I think it also offers me a terrific vehicle to complete certifications and perhaps more education. Paperwork for registering the LLC went off in the mail Wednesday afternoon. I'm hoping to hear something back in the next few days -- I had to expedite things because of another possible Big Event which I can't talk about quite yet. (Dave Donaldson's not the only one who can be mysterious. Heh.) I've also been hitting my study material fairly hard. The Transcender tests have been spanking me nastily on everything relating to databases (DataSets, DataViews, Commands, etc.), but I haven't even gotten that far in my books. Attempts at linking ADO.NET and .NET's SQL stuff to my past experience with JDBC and Oracle/Sybase/MySQL will only go so far... Overall, I'm fairly pleased with my progress, especially since the eight yards of mulch in my driveway are almost gone. Amazing how long it takes to get a couple wheelbarrows of mulch moved when you've got a ten-month-old in a baby backpack and a 4.83 year old running around your feet and wanting a ride in the wheelbarrow every time you move it.

Naming Convention Rant

If you're going to write APIs, then you ought to take care as to how you're doing your naming. Go back and read McConnell, Scott Meyers, or any other good author and see how they talk about having constistent naming styles across your public accessors. Consider then, a couple disconnects in the .NET Framework:

• Form. Activated vs. Form.Deactivate (Tense disconnect)
• Form.Load vs. Form.Closing (Tense disconnect)
• Array.Length vs. ArrayList.Count (Noun disconnect)

These two jumped to mind, but I'm unhappily certain there are a passle more examples in the framework. Sure, Intellisense will help you with these kinds of problems, but the issue's more fundamental. Inconsistent naming does nothing but cause disruption to one's work. Folks who are more smarter than me won't have as much disruption, but again, consistency should be a fundamental issue during design phase. Sure, the framework's an immense set of libraries worked on by a huge number of folks. All the more reason to have consistent conventions! Make some serious effort up front to cut away crap like this and keep names consistent and clear. Rant off

Firefox & The Middle Mouse Button

Having problems getting Firefox's middlemouse functionality to work like you want? Check your mouse software's configuration. I had my Logitech's mouse button set to "Double-Click", rather than "Middle Button". I'd been living with that annoyance for longer than I care to admit...

Good Specifics on C#'s "using"

Cyrus's Blather has a great post on why C#'s "using" construct is such a terrific thing. Good in-depth discussion with some pitfalls and recommendations, especially for remaining in compliance with .NET and FxCop guidelines.

Terrific Visual Studio Tips

Sara Ford has a great wealth of tips and tricks for Visual Studio. Killer stuff! (Via James Avery)