Archive for the ‘Random Musings’ Category

Blue Screen Haiku

Friday, March 12th, 2010
No Gravatar

Ed note: This was posted on my old site in 2004. Every time you think we are making progress in computing, read this :)

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with Haiku poetry messages:

Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
————————-
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
————————–
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
—————————–
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
——————————
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
——————————–
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
———————————
First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen dies
So beautifully.
———————————
With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.
——————————–
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao-until
You bring fresh toner.
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
———————————
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
———————————
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
———————————
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
———————————
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
——————————–
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
———————————
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Finally: An Answer To What I do

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
No Gravatar

The most dreaded question for an IT professional is “What do you do”?

I’ve finally found the answer. I solve problems.

What kind problems? All kinds. The key piece is, my efficiency in solving a problem is directly proportional to how interesting I find the problem. It’s true for all IT pros.

For an MIS guy, it’s fascinating to find the best way to get file A to point B while keeping away hacker C.

For a Web Services guru, it’s all about getting data from one place to another, and the further apart they are, the more interesting it is.

I have a lot of problems I find interesting, but the one I find most interesting is how to get user A to use system B and for system B to do something useful with system C while user A has no idea that there is a system C. It just happens.

That is what I do.

I Love The Internet Thiiiiiis Much

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
No Gravatar

A recent thread on Linked In lead me to this site showing how many web sites there are: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

Software Project Failure

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
No Gravatar

I’m on a roll with the LinkedIn rants today :)

Do software development efforts fail because: 1) the technical staff is not skilled enough for the work, 2) management has unrealistic expectations, 3) lack of reasonable resources to perform the effort. I would be interested to know your thoughts.

Someone once said that failure can only occur when time and resources are limiting factors. In the case of software, all of the above are true, though the most consistent cause I see is that the process of doing the following in order:
1) Set a completion date
2) Define the requirements
3) Design the software
4) Develop the software
5) Change the requirements
6) Wonder what went wrong

Agile is a good step in preventing failure from the above process except that even shops that use Agile often face that the end date is set before work begins and that unrealistic expectations are set at the same time.

Another ongoing issue is that management’s reaction to bad news about meeting functionality or a date is to throw more people on the project and demand more frequent meetings which pull the people most capable of solving the issue away from solving the issue. This trains developers to not communicate issues until the last minute, which accelerates this vicious cycle.

As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”

Whatever Happened to the Promise of Java Beans?

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
No Gravatar

I ran across a question on LinkedIn today and gave a long-winded rant-like response that I thought I would post here, too.

Javabeans are hailed as reusabel software components. Is anybody aware of a market for these wigits?

My Answer: Yes, and it has been dominated by IBM and Oracle for the past decade. When the books were written that proposed business models around the technology the expectation was that Swing would win massive acceptance and that Applets would continue to be the key technology of rich web applications. None of this came to pass.

There was also the expectation of an open market of beans, which missed the fact that most developers would rather write their own and only reuse when directed, or until it becomes a habit from being directed to do so. The reuse is still mostly of internally developed beans or those that are part of vendor applications.

And the vendor applications mostly make the beans proprietary, i.e., they only run within their servers.

The exceptions to my cynical gut-reaction is the FOSS community, where many Java Beans and other reusable components can be found.

As Dennis Miller used to say “But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong”

Links Be Gone

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
No Gravatar

I often save web pages as Word documents for different reasons, and sometimes need to disable the links. Finding no help in Help, I did the usual search and found the trick elsewhere.

Here’s what I found:
If you just want to remove the hyperlink property of the entry, select the document—[Ctrl]A—and unlink the field—[Ctrl][Shift][F9].

Achieving Artificial Intelligence with the Reverse

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
No Gravatar

I believe that AI is taking the wrong path. They are trying to work top down because that’s how humans who are generally successful at solving problems approach solving problems. Problems that are somewhat familiar are best served with a rigorous approach that leads to a planned conclusion. Still, many of the greatest break-throughs have come about by accident, i.e., not following the general path at first. Penicillin and Post-It Notes come immediately to mind.

But humans only solve most problems the usual way because they have a solid ground work to start from. The accidents create a new ground work for development. Accidents come about by not following the normal path, and I think the solution to AI is in taking a different path that will lead to a ground work that will support the entire field.

AI should take the approach of developing siloed expert systems. Make lots of them and keep refining until commoditized. Then start working on higher systems that can merge related systems together though interfaces like web services (but more efficient). Then build ever higher systems until a small set of controlling systems can leverage the legacy systems. The legacy systems, truly failures to create AI and the wrong accepted path will provide an infrastructure that will support a true AI solution.

Scott Adam’s Illustrates My Life As a Consultant

Sunday, October 4th, 2009
No Gravatar

Scott Adam's Illustrates My Life As a Consultant

Developing Software in a Sauna

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
No Gravatar

There are cynics amongst us (if you are reading this, you should know that by now) who say that the most pleasurable part of a sauna is getting out of it and being relieved from the heat.

Coding software is like that, sometimes. You will always run across a bug in your software, or poor documentation, or an upgrade or language shift where all the things you expect to be there aren’t. So you bang your head against the wall until a solution falls out it (hopefully your head, though the wall has contributed on occasion). And then you stop banging your head and give it a final slap as you solve the problem. Then it feels good. So good, you wind up banging your head again in a few months/days/hours over another problem.

Can I Told You So Be Retroactive?

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
No Gravatar

I was part of the team at my former employer bidding for the re-work of the MBTA web site. Lo and behold (whatever that means), I get around to reading /. for the first time since then and I run across this little item that talks about how the new-and-improved site didn’t support Opera and has been rolled back to it’s earlier version.

So, if they had gone with my former company and if I had stayed, they wouldn’t be having these issues. But, then, I probably wouldn’t have time to read about them :)