You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Thursday, Dec 6, 2007, 10:04 AM
Mark Your Calendars! PDC08 Announced
Save the Date!
Announcing PDC08
October 27–30, 2008
Pre-conference October 26, 2008
Los Angeles, California
Monday, Dec 3, 2007, 6:10 PM in Oslo
12 ways to de-commercialize the holidays
From 12 ways to de-commercialize the holidays:
- Yankee Swap
- Secret Santa
- Un-Secret Santa
- Re-gifting
- Pool your resources
- For children only
- Donate in others' names
- Limit spending
- Families helping others
- Plan family outings
- Let the kids rule for one day
- Take a trip
On the "Let the kids rule for one day" front, that's what we do each year for each kid's birthday. They look forward to that part of it more than any other.
Monday, Dec 3, 2007, 5:58 PM in Fun
StayAtHomeServer.com!
From Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?:
"When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift.
"So he buys a 'stay-at-home' server."
I wish more of the rest of Microsoft had this kind of humor when dealing with the world! I thought I was going to wet myself...
Friday, Nov 30, 2007, 10:35 AM in The Spout
MS Math Add-In for Word 2007
I mention this because this is just the thing I've wanted to be able to check my kid's math homework: the Microsoft Math Add-In for Word 2007.
For example, after installing it, I can open Word, press Alt+= to get myself a new equation and then enter:
x^2 +2x + 2 + 3x - 4x^2
it translates into:
If I right-click and choose Simplify, I get the following:
If I right-click again and choose Plot in 2D, I get:
If I've got an equation that I want to solve, I can enter it:
and then right-click and choose Solve for x and get all the possible solutions:
This even works if you have multiple equations with multiple unknowns, which means this is good through at least 8th grade Algebra. Wahoo!
Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007, 7:09 PM in The Spout
1 Setup == Innumerable Uninstalls?
OK, what's the deal with installing 1 product (Visual Studio 2008 beta 2) and having to do 22 separate uninstalls?!? How is this a good thing?
Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007, 6:18 PM in The Spout
Why aren't Windows settings stored in %HOMEPATH%?
Normally, this is the kind of question I'd pose and then provide an answer, but this time I just don't have one.
If my Word settings were stored in %HOMEPATH%\WordSettings.xml, I could edit the file, back it up, carry it to other machines and generally manage it. Instead, my settings seem to be stored in the Registry, %LOCALAPPDATA% or %APPDATA%, but who knows what's stored where or how to manage it.
Obviously, Unix already does just this and I'm jealous. If I had settings stored somewhere I could understand and apps that actually used XCOPY deployment, I wouldn't have to uninstall at all -- I could just delete.
These are the thoughts you have uninstalling VS05 and VS08b2...
Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 12:04 PM in The Spout
I had to load FireFox on my machine yesterday
In general, IE7 more than meets my needs. It shows me the web pages I want and it works well. However, there is one killer feature that FireFox has that I desperately needed yesterday that caused me to load it onto my machine. It's not my default browser and it doesn't replace IE7, but FireFox is there and fulfilling my one killer feature needs nicely.
What's the feature, you ask? Well I'll tell you: sane content scaling. IE7 has Ctrl+, but it works very poorly, unlike FireFox, where it works fabulously.
Here's the problem. Yesterday, I started reading the most excellent C# 3.0 in a Nutshell online, but the "Text Zoom +" button didn't increase the font size nearly enough for me to read on my giant LCD monitor. So, I started pressing Ctrl+ on IE7 and the text got bigger, but it didn't wrap the text inside the window, instead giving me horizontal scroll bar. This confuses me, because IE wraps text just fine when the window is resized or when the text size changes -- why can't it wrap when the content is scaled?
Anyway, FireFox rescales things very nicely and made my online reading very pleasant.
Monday, Nov 26, 2007, 9:06 AM in The Spout
C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, LINQPad and Pure Genius
I absolutely love what the Albahari brothers (Joe & Ben) have done with C# 3.0 in a Nutshell. Not only is their prose concise in a way that mine is not, but I have learned a bunch of stuff about LINQ I didn't know, they built a tool (LINQPad) that lets you experiment with LINQ interactively in a way that the designers of LINQ themselves don't support and the tool has all kinds of wonderful features that LINQ, SQL and Regular Expression programmers alike will want to use regularly long after they've read the book.
And if that weren't enough, the tool comes with an integrated tree of samples that follow along with the material in the book, teaching the material from another angle and reinforcing it perfectly. It's pure genius and if I ever write another book, it's a model I'm going to follow. Very highly recommended.
Saturday, Nov 24, 2007, 11:11 AM in Fun
Amazon Kindle Real-Life Review
I've posted about ebooks before (e.g. I Hate Books). It sounds like the Amazon Kindle has some real potential. All we need is a product with enough critical mass to create a market and then we can have real competition ala the music player market.
Has anyone used an ebook reader before? I have some friends with the Sony version and they love it. Are we there yet? Does anyone have a Kindle?
Monday, Nov 19, 2007, 10:52 AM in Tools
Visual Studio 2008 Has Been Released!
From the Visual Studio home page:
- Learn more about Visual Studio 2008
- MSDN Subscribers: Get Visual Studio 2008
- Download Trial Editions of Visual Studio 2008
- Download Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions (and see Dan's Top 15 Things to love about Visual Studio 2008 Express)
- Download the .NET Framework 3.5
- Download the Visual Studio 2008 1.0 SDK (includes all kinds of cool stuff for developing against VS itself, including the new Visual Studio Shell).
Enjoy! I know I have been.
Friday, Nov 16, 2007, 10:31 AM
My Team is Hiring and We Need YOU!
As Don Box, Chris Anderson and Doug Purdy have mentioned, my team is hiring. We use agile methods and "everyone shovels," i.e. everyone designs, codes, writes unit tests, gives presentations on their stuff and writes the core docs.
Presently, we need language designers and UI framework designers. Interested? Tell Doug I sent you.
P.S. Did I mention that the team includes Don Box, Chris Anderson and Doug Purdy as well as Martin Gudgin, Jeff Schlimmer and Clemens Szyperski, as well as a bunch more talented folks?
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007, 3:20 PM in Fun
Free copies of "Programming WPF" for YOU!
I just got a box full of free copies of Programming WPF from ORA.
If you want one, post a comment on this post with a) a reason why you deserve one and b) contact info so I can follow up for snail mail addresses.
That's it! I'll pick the top n folks based on how many books I've got when I unpack the boxes. : )
Monday, Nov 5, 2007, 12:33 PM in The Spout
Volunteering as Christmas Present?
When I was a kid, Christmas was my favorite holiday because my entire family (grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles) would get together at our lake cabin, chop wood for the fireplace by day and play games at night, culminating in an hours-long gift opening bonanza on Christmas Eve where each of us would watch the opener open a gift, youngest-to-oldest, one at a time. Did we like opening? Sure, but even better was seeing the look at the person's face when you'd managed to get them just the right thing because you saw them all the time and you knew what they wanted.
Now, I'm building my own family in Oregon, but I still have parents and in-laws and grandparents that need Christmas presents. Do I know what they want and need? No, because I hardly ever see them. Do I get to see their faces when they open the gifts? No, because I'm in Oregon. Does that get me off the hook? No, because when the presents don't show up in time, one or two have been known to call and complain. So, what's a remote relative to do?
In the past, I've floated the idea of sending donations in their names to various charities, but that seems kind of like a cop out, as there's no real thought or effort in it. Plus, it's not every much fun to open.
This year, I thought I'd give an hour of volunteer service and then write a little story about it for them to read around the tree in our absence. I'll pick an organization that fits their personality. For my step-mom, I might walk dogs at the local Humane Society (she likes dogs). For my Grandmother, I might volunteer to drive some elderly shut-in on her holiday errands (as I do for her when I can when I'm in town). Then, step-mom and Grandma can hear about how the hour went and share it with whoever they're opening presents with by reading my description out loud. This way, someone gets something they need, I've put in the effort to show my loved on that they really are loved and there's a little something under the tree.
Thoughts? Has anyone done something like this before? Does anyone have any ideas for Portland-area organizations that can help me get my volunteer hours in this holiday season?
Monday, Oct 29, 2007, 6:12 AM in The Spout
The Future of Telecommuting
I truly believe that the future of employment will be much more individualistic and that requiring people to move will be an anachronism. Right now, phone + LiveMeeting is about 50% as good as being there; you're limited in what jobs you can do based on how much a part of your job "being there" actually is. We already have the pieces of technology to push "being there" to about 80%; we just haven't put them together yet. When we do, a bunch more barriers are going to come down. Until then, some folks are on the bleeding edge and isn't that what this whole industry is about anyway? : )
Sunday, Oct 28, 2007, 8:21 PM in The Spout
Working Remotely for Microsoft: Misc Tips & Tricks
- I used to drive up because it gave me the freedom of traveling whenever I wanted and I always had a car on the far end. Besides the speeding tickets, the other big problem was the amount of human energy it takes to drive back and forth so often.
- I've taken the train, which I love because of the comfy surroundings and the electron dispensers, but if I want to be at a 9:45am meeting on Monday morning, I have to leave on the 2pm train on Sunday, which really cuts into family time.
- Now I fly. The drive to the airport is only 30 minutes and I've never gotten a ticket along the way. When I get there, I use the express line to Seattle flights and get myself a Chai tea on the far side of security, itself made easy by long practice and my slip-off Crocs. The flight is short and I've long ago dropped off luggage that I leave in building 42, so I only have to bring clean undies in my laptop carry-on. When I land, instead of renting a car, I take a cab and get the benefit of the HOV lane when means I can take the 8am flight instead of the 7:30am flight, giving me 30 more minutes in bed. When I arrive, I have a junker freebie car I leave in the parking lot for tooling around town.
- I split my overnights between my long-time friend and mentor Don Box and a local hotel. I stay at the hotel because I don't want to overstay my welcome and I stay at Don's because he and his family have made me feel so at home that I can't not stay there. As much as Don would prefer I be in WA, he has really gone a long way to enable my lifestyle and I love him for it.
- Sometimes when I'm on a roll, I'll keep going long into the night, just like the old days at DM. And sometimes when I'm not feeling it, I'll take the afternoon off and see a movie with my sweetie. It's all about the balance.
- I've always had an office for when I'm in Redmond, but I've always made sure I was the first guy on the double-up list when things get tight. Now only does this give me more face time when I'm in town, but I look like a hero and the guy who rooms with me only has to put up with me 3 days out of 10. I also let the other guy decide how to lay out the office, since my real office is set up just how I like it at my house. I've worked on couches, in the hall, in conference rooms, in the care and at the local Starbucks on 156th. Give me a laptop and wi-fi and I'm good to go.
- Keep a machine setup inside the firewall. Every once in a while, VPN won't let you do anything except terminal serve into a machine, at which point you can do anything just like you were there.
- Make Microsoft pay at least half of your phone and internet bills.
- Just because you're working from home, you should expect adequate equipment to be supplied by your employer. Over a 4.5 year period, Microsoft has supplied me with two laptops, a 20" LCD monitor and a printer-fax-scanner-copier, all in my home office.
Tomorrow, I'll post the final entry in this series with my thoughts about the future of telecommuting.