Tim Barcz

What Is This World Coming To?

Alabama Teen Rapes Mother

I'm Teaching Tomorrow

I'm sitting here putting the final touches on some notes and examples for a seminar I'll be giving tomorrow.  It relates back to the blog posts I did a few weeks ago about writing my own language.  I'm traveling to a college about two hours away to give a lecture on context-free grammars and regular-expressions.  Should be interesting. While I'm there I'm also going to be scouting for talent, either for an internship position, or a full-time position for the seniors.

I'm a little nervous talking to college students.  I don't doubt I know more than they do, I mean I've been out in the real-world a bit longer.  But they're probably hip to new technologies and may trip me up there.  So here's to hoping I can keep 15-25 comp sci majors engaged for an hour.

Wish me luck.

Selling Your Life For A Quarter at a Time

Look at the things you have on right now.  Your shirt, your shoes, you pants, and maybe your watch.  Do you remember the day you got them?  Do you remember some meaningless details about that day and/or the time when you got them.  For me, the watch I wear, was a huge purchase.  It's a GPS capable watch that I use when running.  I remember buying it and having it delivered to my brother's house in Arizona because I was going to be running a marathon the next day and I wanted to have the watch for it.

I'm asking you these questions and telling you about one specific example for me, because just the other day, I saw one of the saddest things I think I've seen in awhile.

I live on a quiet cul de sac.  We have varied ages of people in our neighborhood.  Newlyweds to retirees, young bachelors to single elderly women.  Occassionally my wife will bake something and we'll take it across the street to two separate elderly people who live alone, who we've taken it upon ourselves to greet, spoil with food, and help when needed.  One in particular, Carl, is friendly as can be. Carl is 94, living on his own, and his mind is sharp.  I used to see him walking every day.  He would walk from his house to a bridge nearby and back, the equivalent of maybe 100-150 yards. 

About a week ago, my wife and I noticed a lot of commotion at Carl's house.  We wondered to ourselves what was going on.  A day later, a "For Sale by owner" sign was up.  When we questioned one of the people at Carl's house, we found out "Carl had a relapse."  Having no idea "relapse" meant for Carl, we inferred that he was now in a nursing home or some sort of assisted living.

Last Saturday we again noticed a lot of people over at Carl's house.  This time though there was a new sign out front in addition to the "For Sale by owner",  this one read "Tag Sale".  Sarah and I walked over and looked through the garage and then followed some other patrons into the house.  I was somewhat suprised at what I saw.  Everything was in it's place, where Carl had presumably left it.  Only now, on each item there was a piece of masking tape indicating a price.  We looked around, feeling odd the whole time.  The difficult part for me was entering Carl's room.  There in his closet, a nice suit, for a few bucks.  Shoes, nice, black, obviously cared for by their shining exterior were on sale for 50 cents.  There on the shelf in the closet, a hat.  The kind of hat you don't see anymore and only seems appropriate on men over 70 years old.  The same hat I see my grandfather wearing to church on Sunday mornings in pictures.  The hat, a mere 25 cents.

I didn't purchase anything, it didn't feel right.  And after visiting the bedroom, I wanted to leave.  There were plenty of other people there, eating up the good deals, not slowing enough realize their good deals were someone's life being liquidated.  It was just all too sad, that somewhere, Carl was "relapsing", away from the home he's lived in for years, away from his things, which were being sold for a quarter at a time.



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A How to Guide to Suck at Customer Service

My cable company (Mediacomm) sucks.  Their customer service is even worse.  I've kept it between me and them, until now.

The last straw?  About five minutes ago I got an email from them with a link to view my statement online, I click the link and their website is down.  I know websites go down, but this was just the last straw that caused me to write.  It's the last in a long line of missteps on their part.

About two months ago, I wanted to order DVR.  I tried calling the 800 number on the website and got a busy signal.  Odd, I thought to get a busy signal calling a company, a phone company at that.  After trying a few times over the course of a few days I gave up.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, I want DVR again, so I try calling.  Of course the line is busy.  I try going to the online form to "contact" them but I got a 404 error when I clicked on the link.  Not a 500 error, but a 404, meaning the contact form page didn't even exist.

I sent an email then to their customerservice email address:

Though not the nicest of letters I could've sent, I did get an email back asking for my account number.  I gave it to them and have since not heard back (that was about a month ago).  Since then, I have given up on DVR from them, and got a Tivo from a friend.

Their customer service is an array of dead ends.  Because of this I don't trust their products.  I assume that their phone service is bad, since they can't figure out a way to allow a customer to not recieve a busy signal.  I assume their internet connectivity is bad, since their website is down and when it's up is incomplete.

 

Overcoming "It is an error to use a section registered as allowDefinition='MachineToApplication' beyond application level. This error can be caused by a virtual directory not being configured as an application in IIS."

So it didn't take me too long to fix this but I wanted to document this somewhere to possibly help others and/or myself in the future.  More likely the latter.

I was about to make some rather drastic changes in a website I'm working on.  In order to do so I copied the contents of the entire application to an "archive" folder located under the root.  I didn't just use CVS and/or Subversion because I'm currently in the process of switching between the two (CVS to Subversion).  I then made a bunch of changes and went to build and got this error:
The problem lies in that the copied web config defines sections that can only be run within an IIS application.  My "archive" folder wasn't set up as such so I was getting a parser error.  In order to fix I simply copied the "archive" folder outside of the root, simple as that.

Hope this benefits someone, even if it's me...again.

Torn, Buy an Apple?

I'm at the point where I need a new machine.  I'm so very torn.  Should I get an Apple?  I suppose I've always been a "mac guy" seeing as how my first computer was an iMac and I grew up on Macintosh.

My current machine is becoming slow enough to warrant a change.  I think I'd like a Mac for some of the iLife applications that my wife could use. For me personally, I am really attracted to the dual boot features or Parallels allowing me to run Windows apps on the Apple.  I'm also thinking that an Apple would allow me to be much more well rounded as a developer.  See more, experience a broader range of applications and user experiences.

So the first question is, is it worth getting an Apple?  Would you?  Why or why not?

Assuming I should get an Apple, what computer should I get.  I'm noticing how poorly VS.NET 2005 performs on seemingly "beefy" computers.  I like the all encompassing iMac and the lower price.  But would a dual core 2.16 GHz with 2 GB ram suffice to run VS.NET 2005 when using bootcamp or Parallels?  Or should I be looking at the Mac Pro, which comes with 2 dual core 2.66 Xeon processors, but with a much heftier price tag?

What are you thoughts?  Any one have a similar situation/dilemma?

P.S. Try, please, to use hard facts and not bash mac or windows too much.  I HAVE to use Windows, and I want to use an Apple.  It seems though that these discussions quickly degrade into OS bashing, and that's not what I'm after.

VS 2005 Continues to Disappoint

It's 6:00 PM on a Friday my time and I'm still at work.  That's not what's bothering me though.  It's how incredibly slow Visual Studio .NET 2005 is.  switching pages, it regularly hangs for a few seconds.  I have 2GB of Ram in a 3.4GHz macine.

I'm just amazed at how slow this product is.  I don't rant on Microsoft very much but for them being all about developer productivity, they seem to have missed the mark on this one.  Anyone out there have performance tips?

This is ridonkulous (which is a bit worse than ridiculous).

When to Declare Variables?

Any performance Guru's out there that can answer the following (cause frankly I don't know).

I was looking at some code and wondered what the impact was.  Here are the two options

Option 1:
     protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string id = Request.QueryString["ID"];
       
        if (id == null || id.Length == 0)
            return;
       
        Response.Write(id);

       /* Declare after any conditional logic, saves clock cycles and memory???? */
       MyBusinessObject mbo1 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo2 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo3 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo4 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo5 = new MyBusinessObject();

       
        mbo1.Write();
        mbo2.Write();
        mbo3.Write();
        mbo4.Write();
        mbo5.Write();
    }

Option 2:
     protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       /* Variables declared at the top of the method before an conditional logic */
       MyBusinessObject mbo1 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo2 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo3 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo4 = new MyBusinessObject();
       MyBusinessObject mbo5 = new MyBusinessObject();
      
        string id = Request.QueryString["ID"];
       
        if (id == null || id.Length == 0)
            return;
       
        Response.Write(id);

        mbo1.Write();
        mbo2.Write();
        mbo3.Write();
        mbo4.Write();
        mbo5.Write();

       
    }


The differences here are subtle.  I'm wondering if the differences though are valid and justifiable.  In the first example, all of the business objects are declared AFTER some conditional checking.  In the second example, the business objects are declared at the top of the file. 

My take (I don't know how correct I am):

Performance wise, #2 could be slightly worse seeing as how memory would be allocated for the business objects and any static constructors as well as constructor logic would run however little, only to throw them away shortly.  Is that negligle?  Always?  If not, where's the crossover point?

Readability wise I like #2.  It reminds me of Pascal, where all variables are up at the top.  No hunting to find variable declarations.

Your thoughts?  Any MSIL, memory, or performance gurus care to take a stab?

Disgusted With the State of American Politics

Scandals, accusations, improprieties.  An episode of Jerry Springer?  Nope, American politics.

Government is supposed to be "Of the people, by the people for the people."

Do you feel like that's how it is?  I don't.  Politicians seem to be this other breed we vote in only because we have to.  Would I stand a chance in an election (assume for a second I'd actually be qualified)?  Probably not.  I didn't go to an Ivy League school.  I was never in the military.  I am not from a wealthy family.  Three strikes, I'm out.

Putting that aside for now what bothers me is that when look around at how much anger there is between the Republicans and Democats.  The good of the country takes a back seat to making the other party look bad.  Both parties are disgusting.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I'll tell you I'm a registered Republican)

Recently all the Republicans want to do is point out what Clinton didn't do.  All the Democrats want to do is point out Bush's faults.  Really there's no more to it than that.  If the Dems do something spectacular like say, solving social security, I doubt you'd hear, "Good Job" from the Rebublicans, just a lot of moaning about how it won't work or this or that.  It's too far and few between that our country's political parties actually work together.  The opposite is true as well, if Republicans were to "fix" something, the Democrats would be all to quick to point out how that alienates American Indians from Oregon who have *** parents, one of which is black and handicapped, no matter how small that group may be.

Instead of working together, they're focused on image.  Can I smear the other guy?  How do I respond to their smears on us, ect?  "How can I hurt them the most" seems to be the prevailing theme, rather than "how can we work together to further the country".  I'd even settle for "how can I show them up" (in a positive manner) at this point.

Right now, here in Iowa, there is an add campaign going on for seat in Congess between Mike Whalen (R) and Bruce Brayley (D).  The commercials are fanatical.  Did you know that Mike Whalen wants lower the federal minimum wage?  hah! That's nothing, Bruce Brayley is a terrorist, in fact, he knows where Osama Bin Laden is hiding.  Oh yeah...  Mike Whalen wants to take your social security and light cigars with it.  Bruce Brayley wants to line up all our soldiers, strip them naked, and shoot them, to save the Iraqi insurgents the trouble.

Or so I'm led to believe.

Do you ever notice how these ads prey on the ignorance of the masses?  Say something spectacular and you'll probably get more people to believe it than if you were to say something mild less aggressive.

And what about the Foley "incident"?  Ah...the Foley "incident".  Shame on Republicans for not doing anything.  There's been enough information floating around that I doubt that no one knew *something*.  Rather than do something, they chose to keep quiet to manage their image (#1).  It seems timely that these accounts come out about a month from election time.  If we look at the timing and who it benefits, we have to look no further than the Democrats.  It fits with the, "how can we hurt them the most" mantra that both parties have adopted.  If this is the case, shame on the Democrats.  Taking something they're saying is extremely serious but sitting on it for the sake of an election (#2).  Foley claims he's an alcoholic, apparently in today's society alcoholism is a free pass (look no further than Larry Eustachy) (#3).  Dennis Hastert, claims he didn't know anything, which seems to be unlikely at this point given the information that's coming out.  He says he didn't know anything, trying to keep his image in tact (#4).

How about doing the right thing for once?

Politics are making me sick. I'm not intrigued, nor amused by what's going on.  I could turn my back and ignore it, but that would be irresponsible of me.  I suppose I could run for something to make a positive difference, but I'm not going to get very far since we've already established that I don't quite fit the mold.  What else can one person do?

Royal Bank of Scotland Commercials

I saw some commercials recently that I wanted to blog about.  I've been meaning to write for some time, but I've been looking for the commercials anywhere on the internet so I could provide a link.  I've been unable to find them so I'm just going to have to tell you about them.  Both commercials are by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Commercial #1: In this commercial there is a wedding ceremony.  When the minister as her, "do you take this man?" she responds, "I do."  When the same question is asked of the man he responds with anything but, "I do."  He goes on about how both sides may not have been equally represented, yada yada yada.  As he's going on, and on, and on, with good management speak, his best man speaks up and says, "I do."

Commerical #2: In this commercial there is a group out on a hike.  On of the hikers steps into some quicksand.  The tour guide notices and says something like, "What the first rule in hiking?"  To which everyone responds, "don't panic."  "Is anyone panicking?" he asks.  After that he (mind you the hiker caught in the quicksand is still sinking) goes on about how he thinks they should form a steering committee and do a risk analysis.  While he's going on and on, a third hiker, throws a rope to the sinking hiker and pulls him out.

The message in both is, less talk, more action.  I think about that in regards to software.  Sometimes, to cover our own lack of undrestanding, we hide behind process.  In our current project we've been working on for a few months, there are times we all feel like we're just talking and we have to put ourselves back on track to build software.  In other words, to get things done.  Joel Spolsky repeated says that the best programmers are the ones who are "Smart, and Get Things Done" and 37signals wrote a whole book dedicated to the idea of "Getting Real" and less talk and more action.

I'm having a bit of the "talking syndrome" lately.  I don't want to be that way, but am gravitating that way as I'm dealing with some really tough problems at work.  Rather than just bust out some code and try things, I allow myself to get caught up in talking about.  While sometimes talking and thinking about things first can be productive, there is a point, just like the two commercials above, where words are just dressing. 

Do you struggle sometimes with "talking to much" in effort to delay work?  Comment on it, tell me about it.

After the post, I'm going to shut down the email and chat windows.  I'm going to close the door to my office.  Throw on the Braveheart Soundtrack and try to bust through this one.