Writing ... or Just Practicing?

A great many years ago, when I was fresh out of school and learning to be a salesman, we had a sales manager who proudly advertised that his office door was "always open". What he meant, obviously, was that we could drop in any time with questions, problems, and for advice on any sales-related issue that might arise. Forgotten what step five of "the seven steps to making a sale" is? Having problems framing your "double-positive questions"? Struggling to find "a response to overcome an objection"? Just sail in through that ever-open door and fire away. Except that the only response you ever got from him was "...you can always rely on one end of a swimming pool". Read More...

Every now and then I get to write actual code rather than just documentation. Usually there's either a crowd watching in amazement that I can actually find Visual Studio, never mind knowing some of the magic keywords that make it all work when you press the green arrow button. Or else everyone is cowering behind their desk in case my computer can't cope with the culture shock and explodes. Isn't it wonderful when everyone has so much faith in your capabilities - after all, I've read the .NET Architecture Guide (endlessly, as I've been working on it for the last year) so I ought to know a bit about this stuff. Read More...

Last week I was creating short introduction videos for our Architecture Guide project. You'd assume that this would be easy enough - write some slides and record the commentary, and then generate a WMV file from the recording. I used Camtasia, which integrates with PowerPoint and makes it really easy to create the recording and edit it. Only then, when I generated the WMV file, did I start to appreciate just how large these kinds of files can be. Read More...

Here in England, architects (the kind who design houses and office blocks) seem to have a pretty poor reputation. Other than the "stars" who win prizes for designing skyscrapers, or weird shopping centers that look like an armadillo that wandered into a chrome-plating factory, they seem to be universally reviled. Perhaps it’s the same in the US. I remember once hearing the quip "Don't tell my mother I'm an architect, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse". That sounds like a US-ism if you ask me. Read More...