Random Stuff

Process, time, money…
In my line of work it’s not uncommon to start computer processes that take several hours to finish. I’ve owned a few projects that took days to complete. When I mean complete, I mean they were automated. I told it to go and it emailed me several days or hours later when it completed. Part of my job is to figure out how to make these processes take less time to complete. After all, time is money. One engineer getting paid $100k per year is roughly $50 per hour, waiting for this process to complete. Now multiply that times 100 (people waiting) and you have the approximate cost to run this process. $5000 per hour.

I had been fighting a process for some time. It took 18 hours to complete. It desperatly needed to be sped up because the data set was about to increase by 6 times. This would give it a linear increase in time. Totalling about 108 hours. That’s over 4 days.

I was up until 11:30pm last night trying to make it work better but I just couldn’t get it to go. My idea was correct in theory, but I actually made things worse. But this morning around 10am, the idea light went on. It was a simple timing problem. I fixed it and ran it. It worked WAY better than expected! It worked so good in fact, I had three people examine the final product to make sure it really did complete correctly. When asked why I was so happy about it, I told them how long it took. “NO WAY!!!” was the response. I took it down to under 1 hour. Now it cost’s $30,000 to run for the new larger dataset. That’s down from $540,000.

 Money and Stock…
I make a decent salary. Not 6 figures, but I make enough that I never have to worry about being able to eat, pay bills, feed or clothe my kids. I get to buy a few expensive toys here and there, and I get to travel. I recently thought about this and the fact that I am now working for a company that is making an excellent product, has some excellent investors, and seems to be a great investment opportunity. I sent an email to the CTO asking if it would be possible to get stock or stock options instead of a raise and bonus at review time should my performance merit such. Rather than get a %5 raise, give me the equivalent value in stock options. Instead of a bonus, do the same. Good for the company short term, good for both the company and me long term. The numbers work. The CTO was impressed. He stopped me in the hallway and said it was an excellent idea and was going to run it by the executive board. It was received better than I expected.

Performance Review
I asked my manager for a checkup on my performance. I like to know if there are any problems to correct well in advance rather than continuing on my merry way thinking everything is fine only to get hit at review time with a bunch of negative input. I like to know that I am doing a good job. Working at Microsoft has taught me that you had better be prepared for a bad review even though you did stellar work.  He had no complaints. His words were “Better than expected.” which is high praise considering that they had very high expectations of me when they hired me.

(btw: I still get email from people at MS asking how something works, as well as email from people who are pissed I left because they are still picking up the pieces).

All in all it’s been a better than expected day.

A number of people have asked me about my signature in my email. It is a copy of this comic. I forget sometimes that a good portion of my friends don’t know computer code. I’ve gotten a couple of “What does that mean?” or “I don’t understand.” and actually quite a few “I think your email is messed up, it’s showing some weird computer stuff at the bottom…”

You really do have to be a computer geek to find humor in it.

If you are a math wiz and don’t understand a bit of computer code it is the same as saying “f(x)=4 for all values of x.” That’s not so funny by itself, but the name of the function implies the value of f(x) should be unpredictable regardless of the value of x. But 4 is random because it was chosen by dice before the function was written. Even though, I suppose, it is only random until it is put into the function, because it is no longer unpredictable.

OK, that’s still not funny. In fact I think it is almost impossible to explain why it is funny unless you understand how important random numbers are in todays world of computers and just how hard it is to get something that is truly random. Even then, when I try to explain it, it just gets more scary than it does funny. It is also the reason why I refused to do any online transactions until about 2002 when my credit card company started offering protection against online credit card theft.

Imagine that you are buying a book from amazon.com. At the end when it asks you for your credit card info as well as that little cv2 number on the back, your computer and Amazon’s computer are talking though each other through a secure connection. It is deemed secure because all of the data being sent back and forth is encrypted. Anyone who may be “listening in” to the communication would only see garbled data and not be able to make any sense of it.

This encryption has it’s base in random numbers and counts on random numbers being unpredictable. If the random number becomes predictable, then anyone can listen in. Getting your credit card and cv2 number so they could use your credit card too.

Preventing this from happening depends on just a single number being unpredictable. Kinda scary,huh? The really bad thing is, there is no real way to generate something that is completely unpredictable on a computer. You can get pretty close, making it highly unlikely that someone will figure out what the next “random” number will be. But not totally.

Clear as mud, huh?

You’ll just have to trust me when I say it’s funny.

It seems to be a common mistake when it comes to understanding. I’ve seen it with people trying to communicate with a computer using voice recognition software, it the computer didn’t understand, the person would just say the same thing again, only louder. And in the picture here, she was trying to explain something to me in Japanese (Nihongo?), but when I didn’t understand, she just repeated herself at a higher volume.

I’ve mentioned several times in the past and even had a discussion with a friend a few days ago about the effect of a company growing from a startup to an enterprise market leader. At some point people stop being treated as talent and start being treated as a commodity.

I read this article today: Start-Ups Make Inroads With Google’s Work Force (Wall Street Journal)

I went all of what is mentioned in the article, but did so in my ten years a Microsoft.

Probably the most telltale comment is at the end where a representative from Google mentions that they are on track to receive over 2 million resumes for 2007. That says to me they are not really concerned with losing people because they can be replaced. The value of an employee to them seems to be losing ground with them.

That’s too bad. But I suppose it had to happen.
So far in my comparison/predictions bucket:

Employees as a  Commodity
Antitrust Investigations

Next I think I’ll comment on Growth vs flattening stock and even perhaps internal arrogance making everyone blind to the outside world.

Over the years it has continually amazed me how computers change in regards to their processing power, memory capacity, and storage capacity. Earlier this week a coworker and I were reminiscing about this when hard drive space came up.

I worked on a project that had a massive hard drive space requirement. All of the supported hard drives filled 18 racks that were 8 feet tall each. At the time, this was the highest concentration of hard drive space in North America.

A few months ago I was looking at two units which together took up 12 inches of a single 8 foot rack.  In these two units was the same hard drive space that took up 18 full racks just ten years ago.

People often say “What’s that?” when I say I am a Build Engineer. Unless they have ever worked in a large software development environment, trying to explain it to them is almost futile.

But I think I may have figured it out.

Think of software development in terms of an assembly line. You have people who design the cars, you have people who put the pieces of the cars together, you have people who inspect the cars, and of course you have managers. All of these people working together to create a car.

I’m the guy who builds, operates, and maintains the assembly line itself. The conveyor belts, pulleys, tools, and rollers. I design it, I modify it to support new cars, and I keep it running. Always changing to meet the needs in terms of higher production, better quality, and to keep things running smoothly for everyone.

Henry Ford actually came up with the system for the Model T. First a frame was set with axles and wheels. A worker then would push the rolling assembly along while others attached parts to it. This evolved into a complex system of machines that moved the cars along, but then this conveyor system actually became so complex it needed specialists.

This job I do evolved very much the same way. What started out as a simple job that wasn’t really recognized evolved into it’s own field with a high level of complexity that now requires a specialist.

That’s what I do, but with software and computers instead of cars and assembly lines.

Today was one of those days that reminds me why I like to do what I do. A particular project that that I have been tasked with I fought with all day long today seemingly getting nowhere. Consistently getting frustrated, on a number of occasions I just got up from my desk and wondered around the hallway thinking. I literally think better on my feet.  Just a couple of hours to go  before it was time to head home and the light  in my brain  went on.  In the remaining two hours I got it to work.

There is still some fit and finish to do on it, but it works. Another complex problem solved. That is the part that I really enjoy. I may get frustrated, but once the problem figured it out and it works how I expected it to, I am quite exhilarated.

A reminder of why I like what I do.

My new laptop just arrived today. I’m typing this entry on it as I install some software. I bought it direct from Dell simply because I knew it would be pre configured with Linux. Anyone who has used Linux for a long time knows that it can be a chore to both find a laptop that all the devices (like network, sound, video, etc) are supported and then configure everything to actually work.

This one came installed and configured. There were a couple issues, but a quick look at the Dell Linux Wiki and the problems were solved. I am impressed. The software already installed is comprehensive for the average desktop user and is set up in an intuitive manner. Very nice.

First the Issues.
Telling the wireless networking to connect automatically is immediately apparent and the Instructions are unclear. But poking around a bit, it turns out to be very easy to set up. Wireless was near impossible to set up on Linux before.

First time using Firefox, I noticed the screen was blurry. The screen was running at 1024×768 instead of the native 1280×800. The hardware itself then stretched the screen to fit. This stretching was enough to distort everything and make it blurry. I had to download and install a special patch to fix this. Now the display is crystal clear. But this is something the average user would not have known to do. It would have been assumed the screen was blurry because of manufacturing.

Both of the above are relatively small problems, but the next problem I think would get a lot of people irate. I ran the update manager to get all the latest security fixes. Once I did that, I rebooted the computer to find that it would not boot. Not a problem for me, I’ve been dealing with operating systems  not booting for the last ten years. Easy fix for me, probably a panic situation for anyone else.

But otherwise…

This computer is blazingly fast! My oldest son has a laptop with more memory and a faster CPU running Windows Vista. My laptop running Linux puts it to shame. It also cost about $1200 less(note: I’m not the one who bought it for him).

It’s lightweight and has a decent sized screen.

Given the problems I listed, I definitely think this was worth the $600 I paid for it.

I just upgraded the version of wordpress that I am running. Let me know if you see any weirdness.

I don’t know why, but I still find it a bit strange to see my own posts to a forum show up in my rss reader.

Sometimes one of the things I forget about when writing about tech stuff and what I do is that not everyone knows what I am talking about.

So here is a small lesson that I hope is clear about a comment I made the other day. What did I mean by “How granular are the permissions?”

When dealing with the code that is used to run the world that we know, one of the things that I need to deal with is how much access do I give people.
Just like in the real world you give access to your life on different levels.

• Strangers only get to see what’s on the outside if even that. No information is given willingly other what can be gathered by looking at you.
• Acquaintances get a different level of access to your life. Generally they know your name, some of your habits, and perhaps bits and pieces of your personal life, but not a lot.
• Friends have yet another level of access. They perhaps know what you do with your free time, what makes you happy or sad. Can make a joke with you that would perhaps make you upset if it were someone else.
• Family has a different type of access. Maybe equal to friends but not the same.
• Lovers have yet another level. I won’t go into detail other than it is about as close to being unrestricted, but not usually completely.
• Then there is you, who ultimately has complete access to your life.

These different levels of access to your life change over time. Friends fall from grace as do lovers. Then when the stranger asks you how it’s going and you dump all of your problems on this person raising their access temporarily to your life. Acquaintances become friends, friends become lovers and so on.

This what I mean by how granular the permissions are. It determines how much access I give someone to the secret source code and why.

It’s can be rather complicated and often changes. There is a lot of crossover between them. Knowing how detailed I can get is a must and it determines how policy is set

Whenever I’ve run ads on a website I specifically did not use doubleclick ads. The reason for this was that I never saw a need or that I never liked the big flashing, largely irrelevant ads at the top of my web pages.

Everyday I scan http://carpicarhive.com to make sure that no porn showed up in the database and to quickly remove it if it did. When I did this yesterday there was a big bright red ad for the new Mazda sports car that is now out. A Giant banner, mismatched to both the color and layout of my web page. With a note about doubleclick in small text at the bottom. Kudos to Google for at least making it related to cars, but a little warning would have been nice. Or even the choice to not run a banner ad.

The advertisements have since changed back to text, but I don’t look forward to when they appear again.

I spent some time watching old Steve Jobs presentations. I particularly like the 1997 Mac World presentation which was his first after being asked to return to Apple.

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

I don’t really care for the part about Microsoft being a partner, but, in general this talk gives good advice for any company trying to be successful or trying to recover.

I found this while stumbling aroudn the internet. Turns on the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is on Google Video (youtube)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7941901498664355924

I really like this movie. Everyone growing up has people in movies or sports they look up to and follow. I followed Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Even though this movie is largely fictionalizes the story and gets some things out of order, it’s still interesting and does give some insight.

I’ve mentioned quite a few times that I believe Google is following in the same footsteps as Microsoft. Perhaps more than Google or even Microsoft want to believe. They are just doing it much faster than Microsoft did. There are a number of similarities I could spend time enumerating but for now I’ll stick to just one. How Google’s market share could land them in a battle with the US Government in an Antitrust lawsuit.

Microsoft had (and still has) the majority of the market share when it comes to desktop operating systems. During the 90s they used this as a way to pressure computer manufacturers to not install other operating systems and software on their computers. Not only could Dell not sell you a linux computer, but on the windows computer, Dell was required to ship MSN software installed instead of AOL, and they were not allowed to offer pre-installed Corel software such as WordPerfect, but could offer Microsoft Office. In essence shutting all of competing software out of the mass production market. Dell isn’t the only company Microsoft did this to. Putting all of the manufacturers into the same position of only being able to ship MS software and still be able to compete. Did you know that companies like Dell and HP only pay around $20 for Windows? Now imagine that they had to pay full retail for Windows for every computer they shipped with Windows. About a $200 difference per computer. This is anti-competitive behavior. It is illegal to use your power to prevent a competitor from being sold along side your own product.

Now lets look at Google. Google currently has about %50 market share of the search market. When people want to find something, they “Google it”. It has been proven that where your page shows up in the search results directly impacts views of your page and in a lot of cases, income generated from it. I’ve seen this myself on one of my webpages*. If your pagerank drops, then your views drop, and your income drops. It’s that simple. Google is also an advertising company. They make money off the text ads and now banner ads with the purchase of DoubleClick. In order to make money they count on their ads being placed far and wide*. This means that any form of paid advertising on other webpages directly competes with their adsense program.

Now comes the possible anti competitive behavior. Google is considering dropping the page rank of web pages that contain paid links. Other than google text ads. Companies don’t pay for ads on low ranking web pages. If you want to maintain your page rank, you would be forced to give up the paid links and go exclusivly with google’s ads which pay at a much lower rate. What do you do. If Google did not have such a high market share and such influence, this really would not be a problem. But because they basicly control how popular a web page is, they can make or break a business that relies on ad or link revenue. They were initally noted for not allowing their search results be influenced by their own advertising revenue, but this idea of lowering a pagerank of a site that is using someone else’s advertising flies right in the face of that. The search results will be influence by their revenue model forming a “Us or no one” advertising system. This is anti-competitive.

I suspect that Google will be looked at hard by our Government as their market share increases and it becomes evedent how much power they have.

* notes after the jump. (more…)

No not that kind… sheesh.

Subversion is the name of a revision control system. Like most things GNU, it’s name has a double meaning. I could try to explain the double meaning of this one, but I would also have to describe the history of revision control systems. I would also have to describe what a revision control system is. There are already plenty of books out there that already do this.

Subversion is a product that I need to become an expert at using. I don’t suspect it would be too hard, but while reading up on it and trying some things out, I began to think about how I learned things in school.

In school, we were all given text books. The teacher would often give us reading to do. We would then usually be assigned a few questions to answer. These question were usually at the back of the book. I actually kind of miss these question/answer sections of the book. When I pick up a book now, it sometimes gives a summary, but that’s about it.

What I need is a lesson plan. A step by step series of exercises and questions that will help me get to know my way around this product. Not just for the stuff that I know I need to learn, but the other things that differentiate if from what I am used to.

Here is what I know I need to learn, and a few notes.

• How to install (where should it be installed and how to configure with base settings)
• What are the different methods of access (what protocol and/or support programs)
• How to I set permissions (restrict users access, some users, all users, etc)
• How granular are the permissions?
• How to I create a new repository (called a depot in my previous two jobs)
• How does the new terminology and commands equate to my previous experience?
• How do I create a branch? At a specific change? At a specific point in time?
• How do I set labels
• How do I integrate a branch?
• How do I get the revision history of a file, a directory, a repository
• How do I determine what revisions I have?
• How do I pull in different elements from different repositories or branches?
• How do I revert a change?
• How do I backup a repository?
• What are the common problems I will run into?

A chart comparing the different systems would be nice. Having a set of exercises would be nice too. Perhaps I should create one.

As thankful as I am for all of the experience I’ve gained over the years at Microsoft, I have to admit that their tactics have been both aggressive and without restraint when it came to squashing the competition. Something you can do when you have all the money. Today they lost a round in their own game. And hard. By a company they did not take seriously a few years ago.

Microsoft for the longest time had the financial power to beat out anyone. Either through power of persuasion (If you support them, then we wont give you the same deal as your competitor) or just plain throwing money at something (Internet Explorer vs Netscape) or outright buying anything that could be competition.

I had read through various tech blogs I watch that Microsoft was bidding on DoubleClick. DoubleClick is behind about 90% of the ads you see on commercial websites, including sites belonging to Microsoft. After failing at their own ad scheme, and losing more search market share to Google, they needed something they new would work. DoubleClick is just that solution. It is already well established, profitable, and growing. Last year DoubleClick took in about $100 million.

Then I hear that Google jumped in and started a bidding war against Microsoft for ownership of DoubleClick. I had a lot of thoughts about this one. Google already has one of the most successful ad revenue generating streams in the world. Are they just after their only compitition? Are they only doing this to force Microsoft to pay more for it and have no intention of acutally buying it? Do they really intend to buy it just to keep Microsoft from having it?

In the end, Google wound up buying it. The winning bidder. They paid $3.5 Billion for it. Or in more revealing terms, 35 times the revenue of DoubleClick last year. Unless they crank up the revenue DoubleClick generates, it is a money loser for a long time to come, on the order of decades.

This was a purely offensive move on Googles part. Microsoft was put in a position they could not win by the only company in the last 20 years to be able to match their financial strength and agressiveness.

It’s one of those very solid landing blows that lets you know the current title holder may be in for a real fight, and may lose.

Lets try this again. Today I signed and returned an offer/acceptance letter for Voicebox. Tomorrow morning I give my two weeks notice at my current employer.

This time I did my research. The company is privately funded meaning no venture capital. It has venture capitalists constantly knocking on it’s door though. The founders of the company have a proven track record with companies in the past. Employee attrition is the lowest I’ve heard about any company. To them, hiring the best candidate doesn’t mean the most technically capable, rather, someone who will fit well on the team. I won’t be working in a single OS environment, but a multiple OS environment.

Not only that, while interviewing with different people, I had some great conversations about things other than work.

There are a number of reasons why I decided to leave intrinsyc. I can’t remember which is NDA and which is not, so I’ll keep quiet about it all. But most of all, everyone seems to suffer from “Not my job” syndrome. No one is taking any risks, no one is questioning what we are doing and why. They are just doing what they are told. I’ve shaken the boat a few times and people just looked at me funny. Throw me a bone here… Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m right. Tell me something. Anything. Don’t just look at me like I’ve just turned glow in the dark green.

http://voicebox.com

These guys make some very cool stuff! Think about how the computer is access on Star Trek. Using natural language for input. No using a voice to navigate menus or anything like that, just tell the computer what you want and it figures it out.

This blog may contain strong language, insults, opinions, and references to sex which you may find offending and/or may be inappropriate for people under the age of 18. It may contain pictures that depict violence. It may contain pictures that are sexual in nature. The pictures, comments, and posts may insult you, your religion, your family and/or your country.

(more…)

You can now reach this blog at http://jhires.com

You “should” be able to get to it at the old address of http://rdsd.com/wordpress but I haven’t really tested things out a whole lot at this point.

I have a feeling I am going to have to choose between one or the other. It can’t be both. No I’m not talking about girls. I am being courted by two different companies.

Both are very solid. Both seem to be great places to work. People I’ve talked to and met have had nothing but good words to say and have very low attrition rates.

One is on the bleeding edge of technology for technology itself. It will be technology that will be used throughout the industry. Fun and exciting stuff. Working across a multitude of operating systems and devices. When I saw what they had to offer I said “Wow! That’s Cool!” which hasn’t happened in a long time. Of a company of 100, 65 are engineers. Not managers.

The other is not in the technology industry, but would be giving me a lead position where I build their build process from the ground up and establishing policy. They are the leading competitor in their industry and their business model is outstanding. They are pre IPO and in the black(as the recruiter’s ad stated). The people I met there are great people.

But… 

The hi-tech company will probably get bought. Some major player will want it and buy it. This may not happen and is pure speculation, but I have seen this happen on a regular basis throughout the years. I could just imagine being sold back to Microsoft (is it weird that I had a dream about this once?). Either that or once their flagship product is out there, what do they do for an encore? Will I be looking for another job when the patents expire? Or when they are bought? It is a bit on the risky side.

The other company is not in the tech industry. They sell a service and the software I would be building is only for internal use. It’s no small product, but it’s no operating system either. Would I get bored because I’m not out there on the edge anymore? Not shipping a product to the world? Not working on a piece of software that I could point to on just about any given day and say “I had an impact on that!”

I think I already know the answer. But I need to wait and see.

Why am I entertaining these options? In addition to not being challenged where I am at, there are a number of other things that I see that I can’t talk about because of the NDA I signed with Microsoft as well as the NDA I signed with my current employer. My conscience is telling me to say something, but I can’t without legal repercussions. It’s a bad situation that I am in. As well as being bored.

Hopefully I have a big change coming up. Can’t say anything right now because I don’t know for sure, but within the next couple of weeks I should be able to say something.

I wanted a break from the level of work that I was getting at Microsoft. Everyday it was ten projects due. Minimum eight hours of work to get done per day but broken up with 5 hours of meetings. The deadlines and juggling of resources, unsupportive management, and a constant high stress environment.

Now I have nothing to do.

I am making work for myself as best I can, but it only goes so far. I’ve been given one assigned task in the last four months. I’ve done several projects that I created and brought to completion, but I’ve run out of things to do.

I’ve taken to learning new things, but they are largely unrelated to work. I’ve poked around with building web pages. I spend my time reading news and blogs. Trying to figure out just what this company I work for needs. I’m tired of inventing stuff to do and wondering if it is going to be used or seen as a waste of time.

It would help if those contracts that are supposed to be signed “any day now” since November would actually be signed. Then the projects I was hired to work on would keep me a bit more busy. But even then, the entire list of items that require the build department’s attention I used to do double by myself.

It would help if anyone communicated. All of the email that I have sent over the last couple of months has gone without response. I don’t know how I am doing. As far as I know I think I am doing ok. But no one says anything and when I ask I seem to get a canned answer.

Two glaring things come to mind.
1. I hate being bored.
2. They just don’t need me.

Either one of those things by itself is enough to make me want to move on.

Perhaps it is time for a little self evaluation of where I want to go and what I want to do. Being bored at work gives me time to plan, think, and consider just where I am at.

Call it a midlife crisis, being unsatisfied, or stagnate. It doesn’t matter. It’s time for me to start looking forward. But first I need to figure out which direction forward really is.

It’s not in my nature to be satisfied with being bored. I love to accomplish goals. I have a need to always be doing something or going somewhere. A prime example was how I spent Sunday. I get headaches. Sometimes due to stress, sometimes due to diet. Regardless, Sunday was one of those days where the headache would not go away. I spent most of it on the couch with the remote. But I still managed to wash my car because I just could not bring myself to let the day go by without some sort of accomplishment. I gotta do something.

Lately the accomplishment at work has fallen to zero. That is the hazard of working for a small company that only has a minimal amount of products after having done nearly a decade working on 5 projects at the same time. But it has allowed me time to think about if this is really what I want to do.

I don’t know. I need to write more to help me figure it out.

I’ve been fighting setting up Windows XP on two different computers. I finally got it installed on one, but I’m having a heck of a time getting it installed on the other.

There was a time when Linux was the more difficult OS to install. Now I just plop in the Fedora Core DVD, reboot it, select a few options, select the software I want, and an hour later it’s up and running. I then run the update program and 2 hours later it’s all up to date, on the Internet, and running fine (at the best graphics resolution even).

Here is what I went through on the first computer to install Windows:

1. Drop in XP DVD and reboot
2. screen comes up about checking hardware, then goes blank.
3. repeat several different times with different bios options and various pieces of hardware swapped out.
4. drop in Linux DVD with original hardware, it works fine.
5. Mull about on the Internet for a few hours to find an obscure article about a corrupted MBR causing similar problems.
6. Mull about on Internet some more to find out how to get into the windows recovery console because XP can only go into it if the computer already boots (which is useless if you have a corrupted MBR, because it wont boot)
7. Try Windows Server 2003 install.
8. Server 2003 setup works fine. It recognized the format of the MBR that was written by old install of Linux so use recovery console in Server setup to restore the MBR.
9. Reboot with XP DVD
10. It installs, but network card and video card not recognized.
11. Mull around on Internet on different computer looking for video drivers and network drivers to burn to CD to put on computer I am trying to set up.
12. go to hardware control panel and remove devices that are marked as non-functional because drivers won’t install because it thinks something is already there, just not working right.
13. install drivers, rebooting at least two more times.
14. Run windows update to get critical updates, which takes several hours.
15. Spend an hour figuring out and fixing the one windows update that now causes computer to crash.

I am running into similar problems on the next computer, but with the added step of trying to install SATA drivers that are not in Windows and required for setup. So add in the steps of digging around my office for my USB floppy drive, searching the Internet for the SATA drivers to download from a website that isn’t loaded with ads and pop-ups that actually lets you download the drivers, writing the drivers to the floppy and then taking those back to the other computer.

I might also add that Linux “Just works” on this other computer as well.

I tried Windows Vista. I get about 20 seconds into install before setup stops with the error “Setup encountered a serious error.” And then nothing further. So I suppose this is a good thing since I’m not wasting hours setting up Vista only to find it doesn’t work. It just dies right away.

What sucks is that I actually need to run windows.

When the web-crawler started indexing pages a number of years ago, they were really on to something. It was the web-crawler that allowed companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, and of course Google make the billions of dollars they do today off searches.

In my opinion, the demise of the web-crawler from being a search engine into just an aggregate web-page for searching other search engines, was caused by people taking advantage of the technology to cause their pages to reach the top when any search term was used. Pretty soon anytime you entered a word into the search, you would get nothing but random web pages and porn. Rendering the search useless until you got to page 10 or more of the results.

Alta-Vista came next with faster servers, and an all around better algorithm for searching. Also the use of “Natural Language” in the search terms made it easier to narrow down the list of results. But again, people began to figure out how to take advantage of Alta Vista’s indexing, and again only random web pages and porn began to make the top of the list. Useless results for the first few pages.

When Google began I thought it was great. Once again searches were actually relevant to what I was looking for. After a little while it would begin to get a bit randomized, but at least I wasn’t getting porn every time I searched for something like “Washington weather”. And for the most part, at least porn is not what is showing up.

Now however, the results are starting to degrade a bit more. Over the last couple of months I’ve been learning about a technology that I’ve been wanting to learn more about for a few years, but have never taken the time. What I am finding when I search for a keyword or an example of source code usage, are not really the pages I want.

What comes up when I follow the link, that even appears to have a reasonable description, are nothing but pages full of links to other pages and are filled with Google ads. The sole purpose of the page is to do nothing more than gather revenue for click throughs to other pages that have nothing to do with what I was looking for. Either that or I get a page that sends pop up ads and have the page I want embedded or copied from the site that I was hoping to reach. Junk.

I’m not finding the relevant information on the first page or two of the search and it seems to be getting worse.

When is the next new latest and greatest search algorithm due out? I’d really like to find the information I search for again. Without having to search the search results.

“Shipping software is a lot like being constipated. It takes a lot of effort to get it out, and feels good when you are done, but it’s still shit.” –Me referring to shipping…well, every one of the products I’ve worked on for the last ten years.

Windows NT Terminal Server 4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Detto Intellimover
Exchange Server
Windows CE 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0

I’m sure I’ll say it again. Hearing the choices and compromises that are made, seeing what developers do to make something work, and knowing just how unstable the software that runs our everyday life really is can be a bit disturbing.

To be perfectly honest, I’m amazed that any commercial development project actually ever works.

I think I need to start making a portal just for the stuff I want to play with.

I’ll add this one to my list of resolutions. How about if I work on my fun projects at least one day a week? I have so many ideas that I want to work on that I lose track of them. I’ve started a list of things that I want to do, but I manage to do very little with them, when I know I could do much more.

I’ve written some tools that download all of the pictures of cars posted to three different usenet news groups, put them all in a database, and do full text indexing on the filenames and the subject of the posting. So you can search for things like “mustang” and get a bunch of pictures of mustangs. It’s not perfect, far from complete, doesn’t handle duplicates well, but can be fun. It’s got around 40k pictures in it and climbing.

Go ahead and take a peek.

http://rdsd.com/cars