CoolBeans: From College to Industry

According to many Slashdot commenters , the answer was clearly “Yes! Just be tactful and careful, and make it über geeky.” Of course, those of us who live in the real world know the correct answer to be “Did you ask your boss first?” Otherwise,...

I’ve noticed one thing in my travels through airports: power is king . I routinely bring a laptop and MP3 player stocked with music and movies to watch during the flight but I always over prepare incase I get stuck waiting. But all of this is for...

I’ve been using Hyper-V for a couple weeks and have been pleasantly surprised at how much benefit it’s brought me. What I love best is how I can start up a VM on my server box, add a network card and then log into it using remote desktop on another box...

I'm writing this post as I'm waiting for friends to come over for a Super Bowl party. That's because during the party I won't be checking email, I won't be trying to fix bugs, I won't be stressing out over something at work. When you start work, there...

As several people commented on yesterday's post , the most common answer is -536870912 (0xE000000 in memory) That's because: most compilers implement arithmetic shift , even though they don't have to and most PCs are x86 32-bit. The point was to...

Since starting work, I’ve been exposed to a bunch of different pillars of software requirements. These can include security, performance, localizability, etc. One big one that is hard to see (no pun intended) is accessibility. How does a blind user...

Here’s something I didn’t know about until I saw someone use it here at Microsoft. Data breakpoints are a nice debugger feature that let you find out when a memory address changes. Say you have some code like this and you’re trying to figure out...

Take this for example: #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> class Storage { public : Storage() : m_val( -1 ) {} int m_val; }; class Holder { public : Holder() : m_double( 50000 ) {} union...

I’m 23. I’m not “old” by any standard that I know of. People of all age ranges will always tell you they’re not old, the guy 10 years older is old. I once opened a networking event by saying all the students need to find an “old” person (professor) to...

In line with this post , writing in a manner that best shows your message in your work environment will help improve your communications with coworkers. Plus you won’t annoy them. However, more importantly is knowing what’s appropriate to send to a...

I don’t know how many times I’ve thought to myself that I knew it all. Many times I’ve coded something that I was absolutely sure was correct only to find out I was drastically wrong. What’s wrong with this code? class Object { public : ...

Ah, a much cooler skin for a very cool blog. Speaking of being cool, have you added CoolBeans to your RSS reader so you don't miss out on any cool happenings? I have found RSS feeds to be key to my productivity. Well, more like key to preventing...

I'm getting pretty good at this game for the 360 called Prey . In some levels of multiplayer, you can get in a ship and the ship has a tractor beam and the tractor beam lets you pick up other players. The level is full of walkways across open space so...

I don’t know why, but I love business trips. Free food, free hotel, free travel. Not having to worry about buying tickets or paying for taxis or booking hotels or coworkers breaking the build. In the end you spend some 8 hours actually working but...

A quick PowerPoint (and Excel) tip of the day: Insert a shape. Hit CTRL+D Move the new shape somewhere. Hit CTRL+D again. (Be amazed)

I bought a place back in September and had just this week gotten things mostly settled. Then today some people knocked on my door. I opened, and there were 3 men, 2 women and baby. It sounded like the makings of some kind of movie sequel, but not the...

...has never been easier to spot . Pretty freakin' sweet.

So I'm here at RIT and talked my guts out about Microsoft, PowerPoint and industry after college. After an hour and a half I think we finally ran out of slides (there were only 25 in all) and questions (well over 25). Thanks to everyone who came, I will...

For those of you at RIT, be sure to stop by the career fair on Wednesday. I’ll be the guy gloating over how awesome his job is compared to the guys in the next booth.

I'm taking a stand. In utter protest of having to work the past two months without a single work day off, I’m going to require a few changes. Microsoft may regain my hard work efforts if the following demands are met: I will be allowed to sit at home...

After coming back from the dentist, I was walking through the parking garage’s 3 rd level and noticed how a significant amount of water was dripping through the ceiling. I’m walking up the stairs past the 2 nd level and guy with a pipe wrench blasts...

Are you a good developer? It’s not just the code you’ve checked in, it’s the code that you’ve allowed to be checked in too. When someone sends you code for review, it is your duty to make sure it’s up to the quality bar set for your team. Compromise...

A tester told me the other day that I have the “dev magic touch” It’s a funny phenomenon. Mainly everything works perfectly on the developer’s machine, but promptly explodes on a test machine. Even better is when you go to a tester’s office and...

Just a note, today was a very busy day. Let's just say a lot got done on the Chris Becker front. I will post the contest results when I can. A bunch of good entries this time again!

A quick note: you can now download Office 2007 SP2 or read more about it here . There are some pretty sweet things in this update that I got to work on; I'll touch on "...more control over the appearance of SmartArt graphics" in a later post.