So I was talking to our COO today - and I mentioned some difficulties we' ve had in finding new notebooks that fit our requirements. Like a lot of companies, we don't want to move to Vista. We bought a couple Vista machines (Vaio's) and they pretty much suck out loud.
So we decided to stick with XP Pro. And a couple of us who actually set up the new machines are making an effort to stick with one particular model (namely HP's business class notebooks - no pre-loaded craplets, no pre-loaded trial anything - just plain, solid machines for a good price) and XP Pro.
The problem we've basically created for ourselves is that we are limited to a particular brand, model and operating system when the new dominant OS is Vista. And recently I almost got screwed because I ordered a bunch from PC Connectiion that turned out to be severely back-ordered.
My COO mentioned that now you could buy any Vista machine and downgrade it to XP Pro. But those are all the details I have. The only backup he had was that he read someplace (NY Times yada yada) that because of peoples' reluctance to move to Vista, that one could take a Vista Machine and run it as Windows XP Pro.
My question - is this really true? I mean, I keep up with most of this stuff - did I miss something?
I'd really love for some confirmation of this claim.
So, again, the question is: Can you buy any machine with Vista and run the thing as XP Pro?
COROLLARY
So here's the deal.
The whole magic button aspect of what my COO was talking about is a myth. But I finally found the articles he had in mind.
Linkage:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=543 (ZDnet blogger Mary Foley outlines the particulars)
(and the official word from Microsoft)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cbd-699b0c164182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf
So basically it looks like a person is perfectly within their rights to request an OEM to downgrade Vista to XP OR, to wipe Vista, load a copy of XP (that I assume the owner already has) and then call Microsoft for help activating.
I'd still love to hear from someone who has gone through the particular mechanics of this process.
In the end - yes, you can downgrade Vista to XP. And it sounds like you wouldn't have to spend anything extra to do it.
When a web host goes bad.
I've totally lost faith in WebHost4Life. I've been with the service for a few years now and I was comfortable with their performance level - namely that they would have occasional downtime, the tech support wouldn't be spectacular and they would probably cram more sites on each server than passengers on the Calcutta Express. By and large they did okay for the price.
But now, now they seem to be im-fudging-ploding in the last three days.
Before I didn't care much - but now I'm hosting sites for my wife's business and sites for a few friends and trying to get some work done on my own stuff - and I'm getting blocked at every turn.
These guys just can't stop from shooting themselves in the foot these days. They've screwed up my FTP settings twice in two days.
I think there's something seriously bad going on over at WebHost4Life - I don't know if it's name server issues, router issues, or what. And I'll never hear the truth from them.
I can have sympathy for technical problems. But these tards are slow to respond, they give lame answers designed to cover their asses and then they do it all again the next day.
I don't know about their other offerings like dedicated hosting, but right now their shared hosting sucks out loud.
I won't renew my contract with WebHost4Life and I may take a hit and leave early.
(Corollary)
A day after WebHost4Life started cratering on an hourly basis, they seem to have stabilized whatever was causing their (and my) problems. Still super ticked but at least my sites appear on screen when I ask for them.
By the way - I sent an email at one point to the CEO - there's a nice little link on their trouble ticket page that says, 'Not happy with your service - email the CEO' - so I did - and haven't received a response. No auto-reply, no chaff from a lacky - nuthin.
Live and learn I guess
Smokers will get the title. Not that I'm a smoker - I'm just particularly well read.
I have a theory - well, it's not really a theory - it's more of an idea. Theories have premises and at least some anecdotal evidence. Theories are like the hearings of science. You state your case and see if there's enough evidence to go ahead with a trial. Except in the world of science OJ wouldn't go free.
Whatever.
I have this THING - I like to be able to build or fix my own stuff. I change the oil in my car, I do my own home renovations, that sort of thing. I think it's the way I grew up. You know, my dad is the kind of guy who can fix anything.
"Dad - dead President Lincoln traveled through time and is hogging the t.v."
"Damn space-time continuum piece of crap - hand me a philips head screwdriver, boy..."
Yeah - you get the idea. So I figured I need to build my own blog. And I finally got around to whomping up the bare minimum of logic needed to harass hapless readers with my own peripatetic style of writing.
If you should feel inclined (or you're looking for examples of painfully plain web pages) - you can find it here: www.pelotontech.com (I'm working on post that explains just why in the hell I registered pelotontech.com).
It's fairly plain. Like, really plain. But I don't have a fortune of time for my own projects. Still, I can post my own stuff, choose whether it's live or not, and it's a great way to play around with Sql Server 2005. I'm figuring out some captcha code so I can let people post comments for posts and I'll add other standard blogging tools as I go. In the end it's fun and a good object lesson on just getting things done. Check it out and if you feel so inclined leave a comment and let me know what you think.
You might hit a user group. And this Thursday the newest one hits - Chip Lemmon's New Jersey User Experience (NJUX).
The groups I attend on a semi-regular basis include the .Net group out of the Microsoft Iselin office, the .Net group out of the SetFocus office and the SQL group out of the SetFocus office.
The general theme among most groups is everything .Net
Well what's exciting about Chip's group is its focus on the user experience, including usability, good design and functional practices and maybe even some architecting. These are not .Net exclusive concepts and they're no less important to the practice of developing software - in fact, they are some of the most important elements of a good application. Who gives a rat's ass for yer refactored, multi-threaded, n-tiered, enterprise level accounting, reporting and glavin system if it's not usable by the average corporate user?
Thursday at 6:30 at the Gaslight Brewery in South Orange
Chips blog post: http://geekswithblogs.net/clemmon/archive/2007/03/12/108572.aspx
NJUX - check it, mah shiz nitches.
Untitled Page
This is what my wife told me this morning. She told me this after I was instructed not to use my laptop on my lap. Which is okay for her to do, I guess, because she's a woman. And there's less to, damage, down there.
She can be kind of a nag sometimes.
'Rob - don't drive 90 mile per hour.'
'Rob - wear your seatbelt.'
'Rob - be careful dragging the 17 foot, 300 pound Christmas tree up the side of our condo building and over our balcony.'
I mean, it never ends. And now I've been informed that the heat generated from my laptop is going to damage my boys. Based on sheer conjecture.
I guess it's possible - since the tackle's outside of the box because it has to stay a couple degrees cooler than body temperature.
So according to C. Everett Wife, I'm supposed to keep the laptop off my person, and trend towards baggy slacks. Which is difficult because I'm a cyclist,
which means my sporting wardrobe largely features spandex. Spandex trousers, wasn't that a Bloom County joke made by the basselope?
No topping of the lap, no close fitting pantaloons.
That's fine I guess. As long as I can still sky dive with my home-made parachute.
Although I have a (self imposed) long list of to-do's for a client's site, I've had a gnarly Firefox issue in the back of my mind for a while now.
I wrote a picture gallery application - thumbnails on the side, larger space in the center - click on a thumbnail and get the larger version in the center. Unless yer using Firefox. I used an asp:ImageButton for the thumbnails. I also used a zombie anchor tag to accomodate a call to javascript that keeps the scroll position of a data repeater.
It's taken a big effort to get this site rolling - I mean server issue after server issue (no .Net 2.0 framework - access permission-palooza - the works). After finally ironing out a bunch of (most) of my server issues (actually getting root from the host to get the thing set up) I decided to take a whack at what I assumed (foreshadowing) would be an entirely opaque Firefox problem.
Not that I cared much - I mean, most people use IE - and I could always put a label out there for Firefox users giving them a link to download a real browser (like Opera). I mean - WTF - why can't the Firefox developers make their browser work like the other browser children? Open source snobs.
So fine - I'll give a token effort - probably have to write code just for Firefox - like we're back in the days of a million browsers none too keen on complying with W3C standards (effing hippies).
Turns out, Firefox (Waterweasel?) - she don't like the empty link tag with a blocked href attribute. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book - take an anchor
to make an area clickable - put a # as the value for the href attribute - and set up the onclick event (because dollars to donuts that's what you're using a zombie link for).
Here's what the thing looks like in action: <a href="#" onclick="SomeJavascriptFunction();" />
The Waterweasel - she don't like that. No sir. So I thinks to myself - maybes I puts the onclicks events ins the tables cells definitions (combination Sigmund Freud and Finnish accent). Sho' enuff - Waterweasel starts cooperating. Damn thing still works in IE and Opera, too.
Long story short - took about 10 minutes to debug and test. Better than the usual average amount of lifetimes wacky stuff like this takes.
But now I'm late for work.
Oi veh.
I'm in the job market, and unlike in years past, I'm actually busy weeding thru e-mails, telephone calls and scheduling interview after interview.
What the hell is going on here?
And these interviews are going on for over 3 hours! Seriously, this is cutting into valuable nap time.
I was at an interview this morning for over 4, count'em, 4 hours. Unfortunately I won't get the position because they need someone with way more experience - but that's one marathon Q&A.
One of the interesting observations I've been able to make is what I don't know. You know the phrase - you don't know what you don't know? Well, you might think you're hot stuff until someone asks you about your skill level doing something you ain't never done, like localizing a website for 6 countries and replicating a database across continents.
Here's another observation - stage fright can kill you. They asked me (I think around hour 3.5) to write a simple function. By that time I was so tweaked I could barely spell, 'function'. My handwriting was so terrible I had to read my code aloud.
A final and incomplete observation - be very, very careful with recruiters. More on this later, but if anyone who actually reads this actually knows me you can guess where this is headed.
I just realized I probably have enough material to make my job search it's own blog category - hence the category title - On The Bench. Here's to staying up late and coding your own projects.
Epilogue - Even though I didn't quite have what this particular company wanted, I have to give credit to the interviewers for treating me so well as a person and as a developer. They definitely score high on the
Joel Test.
Hello. Welcome. Hey. Nice to see you.
An informal beginning to a suitably informal activity. And not a very interesting first post.
I am a computer programmer who practices web development. And I've never had a proper presence on the web. So I'm taking some steps to fill that hole.
No, I don't always write in such short sentences.
No, I'm not trying to be funny.
An explanation, mostly for my own benefit, this blog, large parts of which I hope to reproduce on my own site, is dual purposed for my own enjoyment and reflection and at times for the edification of others, either thru technical observation and articles (for recent instance I've learned all manner of Gridview tricks) or general observation alone (for recent instance I've learned open-mouthed breathers who chew gum loudly are not really people).
You see, I don't always write short sentences. (Yes, yes, nor grammatically correct ones. )
I can see this will be fun.
I have a sister in law. She's a pretty nice person. She's a doctor who works in a hospital. Apparently there's this software system in the hospital that doctor's use to prescibe medication. She can't use it. Because her name has an Irish spelling. In other words, her last name has an apostrophe. You know, like Paddy O'Drinksalot. Or Seamus O'Beatwife.
She types in that little tick -- ' -- and this wonderfully convenient program barfs all over like a patient on too much
ipecac.
She tells this happy little story of medical wonderment --- and me? I get a little twitchy. Because that's the sort of thing that makes me question the future of mankind. In response to this story I ranted for several minutes about lazy programmers, lack of quality control and why Kuala Lumpur will be smarter than America in two years.
It's enough to make a kitten cry.
I think my first posting with this title was so good I'm going to continue the thread as a whole category. I'll hide names to protect the guilty, but I've heard or seen a few more examples of bizarre programming that make me twitch.
I'd love to get some more feed back - so feel free to commiserate or share.
There's one last point, which is, as absurd and perverted some stories may be, I don't want to come off like a big, fat whiner. Nor should anyone think I feel like I'm so much better than any evil-doers I might describe. Like I said to someone at a recent NJ Code Camp, I know enough to know what's bad. I may not always know the right direction to move in, but I know enough to move in the opposite direction of fire.
Search Engine Optimization
A cursory search using the term Search Engine Optimization turned up the topic of sitemaps – and one link I followed went to a tutorial on www.seochat.com entitled, Put Your Site on the Map with Google Sitemaps (written by Dan Wellman).
I learned that sitemaps are simple xml files that basically lay out a map of your site – every distinct url/page of your site is listed in an xml document with some optional attributes that describe how frequently a page is updated, the last time you changed it and how important a page is to the site.
Google’s layout for a sitemap is as follows:
<? Xml version=”1.0” encoding=”utf-8” ?>
<urlset xmlns=http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84>
<url>
<loc>http://www.TheBestSiteInTheWorld.com/index.html</loc>
<lastmod>1990-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>never
<priority>0.0</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
So the snippet of xml above basically says my site has a url/page called http://www.TheBestSiteInTheWorld.com/index.html and it was last changed on January 1, 1990, it’s never updated and its priority on that web site is nil.
Pretty simple to do – just rinse, lather and repeat for each page on your site. Wellman mentions that sitemaps are no guarantee of improving your page ranking beyond lottery odds, but it’s apparently a good method for helping search engines (especially google) index your site completely and get a better picture. And anything that accurately describes your presence to a search engine has to be good, right?
So once you whomp up a tidy batch of site describing xml, the next step is toddle off to all the search engines and submit the thing for their consumption.
Google
Google is my first stop – because it’s Google, after all. The first step was logging in to my Google account and going to the section for web masters. I already submitted a site url so now the next step was submitting the sitemap. To do this Google makes you verify your authority by either uploading a uniquely named html page to the root of the site – if you have access to change files on the server then you the man.
The next step is making sure the sitemap is as close to root as possible in your site’s directory. Then use a form on Google’s web master pages to tell them the exact address of the file. I got a message saying it could take several hours for reports to be updated – whatever that meant. In any case I was off and running.
Yahoo
Next up, Yahoo. I had to do a Yahoo search on how to submit a url and sitemap so their process is not quite as intuitive or friendly as Google’s. Yahoo makes you create an account which is a standard practice. Submitting a url and sitemap was easy, but the confirmation page didn’t display in Opera so I had to switch to Internet Explorer to make sure the transaction was completed.
Yahoo also uses an authentication method for making sure you have the authority to speak for the site in question. Their authentication takes significantly longer to process than Google’s. Yahoo says to keep an authentication html page on the site’s root until Yahoo gets around to checking it out. In fact, over 24 hours after submitting the site for authentication Yahoo still hadn’t gotten around to it. Whatever – I’ll leave their verification file on the site and hope their bot grabs my sitemap at some point.
MSN Search
As it turns out MSN Search (or Live Search or whatever they call themselves this year) does not accept sitemaps. Which is fine – but they don’t explicitly STATE that they don’t accept sitemaps – so if you don’t know any better you’re left to slog thru all their webmaster links looking for something that doesn’t exist.
What’s left? Surely Yahoo, Google and MSN Live Search aren’t the only stars in the search engine universe. Wikipedia has an article listing all manner of search engines encompassing general search engines, open source search engines, regional, email, etc. I went to a few of the general search engines (Exalead, Gigablast, Wisenut and Snap). It was a good thing I didn’t have any expectations – basically I could submit a url to their index and that was it.
Google seems to be the only engine that offers a mechanism for measuring the effectiveness of your sitemap by letting you know how their bot views your site.
I think the next topic to tackle is key words and search terms. My wife hates that standard key word searches for her business turn up nothing.
Don XML must be right when he says there's a strong developer community in NJ because these days you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a user group.
And if you happen to be swinging a dead cat in the Berkeley Heights area you might hit
Chip Lemmon's new group.
Chip has been itching for months to start a user group and it looks like he's ready to pull the trigger. Check out his latest
posting on the new group and send him a message if you're interested in participating. Sounds like the focus will be on UI which fills definitely fills a gap in the user group universe and I wouldn't be surprised if Chip sneaks in some architecture stuff.
I should have posted this news earlier, like when I accepted a job offer three weeks ago, but I've been busy - so technically this is old news.
With two weeks spent at a new job it's official - I'm off the bench and back to work.
It was an interesting job search. The market for .Net developers seems to be very good (I can't speak for other programming disciplines).
The new company's core business is Olympic Games hospitality. I get to work in a mansion 11 miles from home. I make two turns - right turn out of my driveway and a left turn into work. And in the summer of 2008 I'll spend at least 8 weeks in China for the Beijing games.
Cool stuff. Very cool.
Peace out.
Just saw registration opened up for New Jersey Code Camp - Part Trois. Check out www.njcodecamp.org for details. If you haven't heard of this little phenomenon - it's an all day event put on for developers, by developers. Code Camps are great opportunities for developers to get together and learn from each other. It's not your standard INETA or Microsoft evangelist speaker in a movie theater - although I guess some code camps could take place in movie theaters and some speakers might belong to INETA or the MS evangelists group - quit nit-picking. Seriously - Code Camp's cool - go - meet - greet - ask a question - learn about something you never even heard of before (e.g. - URL rewriting with asp.net 2.0) - ask Don XML about TechEd Barcelona and tell'em not to be such a public transportation ninny. Yeah - don't know what I'm talking about, do you. Go to a Code Camp - get connected.
Here's a tip that will likely serve no good purpose to anyone.
In Visual Studio if you highlight a file in the Solution Explorer panel and drag it to an active display code file it creates an html hyperlink.
This is the kind of thing that probably falls into the category of basic VS knowledge, but like most people I never read the manual so it feels all novel and hacky to me.