David Wang : Personal

I'm Back...

David.Wang — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:15:00 GMT

After a long and very much needed hiatus, I have regained control of this blog and returned to blogging. For the curious reader, you can read about some of the happenings here. But, I am not one for dwelling on the past (except to learn and improve upon); I look forward to the future.

And speaking of the future... technology-wise, my day-to-day interests have moved up the application stack to Exchange, specifically the Calendaring, OOF, and Free/Busy components. Basically, whenever you use Outlook or OWA to schedule a meeting, look up an attendee's Free/Busy information, or toggle your own OOF on Exchange 2007 onward, you are looking at functionality that I am responsible for within Exchange... and that is just the beginning. So, I will certainly be offering tidbits and answering questions about that aspect of Exchange as well as others as I encounter them.

Of course, I will continue to write and answer questions about IIS and ISAPI since they remain woefully under-documented. Not much changes with ISAPI after IIS6 since it exists for compatibility. As for IIS7 and beyond... I was involved in a lot of the design discussions/reviews and co-inventor of the extensibility API introduced in IIS7, so I think I have a good idea how things SHOULD work at the core. ;-) Besides, most of the work on IIS7 and beyond should come in the form of additional modules/handler on top of the core extensibility API, so questions about them are really specific to those modules and not IIS...

Cheers!

//David

P.S. Yes, I am still working on answering the backlog of existing comments, and I have just re-enabled anonymous comments...

Water Day 2006

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:15:00 GMT

Annually, the IIS team gathers at Emily's house on the shores of lake Sammamish to enjoy a day of fun under under the sun. We call it "water day", and it has been a team tradition for at least as long as I have been on the IIS team.

Its organization, activities, and participants constantly alter, but one thing remains constant - a large number of the IIS team take off on a work day to go have fun on the lake, and a sub group hangs around at the end to really chat/gripe about things on their mind, management excluded. It allows parts of the team who otherwise would not gather/socialize with each other a chance to do so, and it gives people a creative outlet to vent/relax. We try to not talk about work, but inevitably, issues/differences do get informally ironed out, and that is a cool side-effect.

I remember water day starting out as a bunch of core developers who decided to coordinate a common ditch-work-day to go drink and play on the lake (water ski, wake board, swim, etc), and few key test process and automation folks with close working relationship with those developers who tagged along. It quickly got management sanction, organization, and catering, and it grew into the current, annual event.

Yeah, it is symbolic of how many things come about on the IIS team - do it, and they will come. A small number of people decides to do something, the result gathers concensus from others, and management later comes along to rationalize/formalize what was intuitively done.

In contrast to prior years, the team catered everything. Brian, Rich, and Keith manned the grill and churned out BBQ ribs, chicken, burgers, hot dogs, and ears of corn. Chips/salsa, fresh veggie platter, fresh fruit platter, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and ice cream were also present... along with two kegs of beer. Emily took interested people out for a ride on her boat. I took photos/movies of the event throughout the entire water day. Yeah, we had everything covered. :-)

For the first half of the afternoon, the weather was overcast, and people staggered in from work between 12-2pm to eat. Some people went out for a ride on the jet skis and hopped off the water trampoline; others just ate and watched from shore. Fortunately, the sun broke through later in the afternoon, and that was when the fun began. Chris challenged Andrew to a team drinking game - team of people each sequentially drink an equal amount of beer and then attempt to flip their plastic cup to stand on its opposite end, and first team to have all its members complete the drink-and-flip task wins the round... and we played to the best of 7 rounds to win a game, and best two out of three games.

Let's just say that this kept a large part of the IIS team entertained, and we were glad that the managers were no longer around. ;-) Jan made a strong showing for the women on the IIS team by consistently performing the drink-and-flip in a short amount of time, and there were several photo-finish moments, including one where Edmund beat Wade by a matter of milliseconds. In the end, Andrew's team soundly beat Chris's team... but Andrew got really, really wasted. But it was all in good fun. We all had a great time.

Most people left by 8pm, but Jan, Edmund, Andrew, Emily, and I hung around to watch the sunset and chat/gripe about the drama in our lives both work and personal. I swear... while it is nice to impersonally plan and negotiate a task completion schedule, it is very satisfying to just reach a mutual state of understanding and simply operate as friends instead of coworkers. Things just get done better when we do things as "favors" for friends and our team morale stays higher as well. Yes, I know it does not scale past a certain point, but the IIS team is not yet past that point... despite what team management tries to organize. We just try to pull together and get things done, fast.

Ahh... it was such a nice, enjoyable day..

//David

Hunting for Real Estate

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 15:32:00 GMT

Lately, I have not been making frequent blog posts. There are good reasons, of course... and I will get to disclosing them in the near future.

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time house-hunting. Yeah, I have decided that it is about time for me to move from my condo into a stand-alone house. I have a lot of furniture and electronics purchases all queued up behind buying a house, and it is about time I release that bottleneck.

And I have been amazed at the tools available at my fingertips to make this search. I remember just three years ago how painful it was for me to locate appropriately priced condos in the areas that I wanted. I needed an agent to help locate and sort things out.

Well, with websites like http://www.johnlscott.com and http://www.windermere.com, I can finally do most of the hunting on my own and engage a buyer's agent to help with the details and close the deal. I can easily enter in my criteria, like price range, location, features, rooms, etc... and scrolling/zooming around a map to narrow down the location... and the web app shows me the properties that match my criteria. How nifty is that!

I am especially impressed with the John L Scott site because it is so intuitively functional. I start out by punching in a price range and simply start scrolling, panning, and zooming into the area I want to focus on, and eventually I end up with a list of property matches with hyperlinks to lots of relevant information. And it works smoothly and quickly... so I have to say "score one for Microsoft technologies like ASP.Net, AJAX, and Virtual Earth"! Meanwhile, the Windermere site, which is based on ColdFusion and a MapQuest-like map called PropertyPoint... simply pales in comparison. Search criteria behavior is quirky at best, search/navigation is archaic in comparison to new standards like Virtual Earth and Google Maps, and usefulness of pricing information is not that high.

In contrast, from the John L Scott site, I have quick access to information like:

Recent sale prices in the area, so I can guage price/sq.ft ratio and relative desire
Historical public information on any property from metrokc.gov so that I have an idea of the price/profit range to help me determine position and approach for price negotiation
I can also passively keep tabs on listings in the area, price changes... all of which help me easily assess property worth before I even invest the time into physically touring the place to determine if I like it or not

Yeah... it is very different from my first home purchase experience where I spent days of time visiting dozens of homes before finding one I loved, had no clue on the basis of price negotiation, and then later rationalized the economics and details. That was a weird feeling for me because I never felt in control and my selection criteria was so emotional.

Well... this time, I finally have the tools to apply an analytical approach of quantifying and qualifying what I am looking for and how important each criteria is... and then narrowing down amongst those choices. It leaves the emotions out until the end, which I think is the way it should be. After all, real-estate purchase is financial in nature for most people, not emotional (don't know about you, but I don't buy houses because I am "bored" or for "fun")... :-)

Next step - how to make the financing work from an investment perspective...

//David

What is wrong with Free?

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:30:00 GMT

Ok, maybe this is something you business/marketing types understand intrinsically... but it is something that I do not understand, so please bear with me. Why do people complain about getting something for free that used to require money? I thought people like getting something for nothing.

For example, Microsoft recently announced that Virtual PC 2004 will be available free of charge. I expected users to be happy to get yet more quality software for free... but I did not expect the firestorm of complaint from users on newsgroups that fall along this line of logic:

Gosh, I feel like a used dummy for paying Microsoft $X for Virtual PC 2004 Y months ago. Either

Microsoft is stealing money from me
I am simply lining Microsoft's profits without even an acknowledgement

These users either want:

Microsoft to give compensation, either in the form of money-back or money voucher, for people who purchased Virtual PC 2004 in the last Y months
To pirate other Microsoft software to "get back" at Microsoft because it extorted money on eventually free software and who knows, it may be released for free in the future.

I simply do not understand the rationale for this line of logic. Software is not your possession; you purchase a license to give yourself the right to use that software.

If I purchase a possession and the seller later decides to give the item away for free, then sure I will be bummed because it means I cannot later resell that possession. I am cheated from being able to resell that possession because the sellar has deflated the market price for that item. However, regardless of price, I still get my utility and value from using the item - it functions the same whether it is priced at something or nothing.

If I merely purchase the RIGHT to use an item and the seller later decides to give the item away for free, then how can I be cheated? Since I never owned the item, I am not cheated from being able to resell the item because I could not sell the rights to it in the first place. However, I still get my utility and value from using the item regardless of price.

So, I do not think there is any stealing going on. Instead, I think there is a natural sense of Buyer's Remorse. Why one thinks that s/he is magically entitled to compensation for feeling remorseful... I do not know.

I mean... no one pointed a gun at you or otherwise extorted you to purchase an item Y months ago for $X. You willingly purchased the item because you believed its utility is worth at least $X at that time. Just because its price is now free does not diminish its utility - you are not investing in something you don't own; the binary files didn't change; the software doesn't phone home and alter behavior, did it? And since you did not own it in the first place... what's changed?

Are you upset that Joe Schmoe now gets the software for free while you had to pay for it? But what about those Y months when you had utility of the tool but Joe did not; was the price not worth it? But if it was not worth it, then why did you purchase it in the first place? Oh, you thought that Y was going to be a long period of time to amortize the initial cost... but who gives assurance of that assumption?

I sense the same analogy in computer hardware. It seems like every year the hard drives double in capacity at the same price point. Do I complain to the hard drive manufacturers that I am simply lining their profits this year and that they are stealing money from me because next year they will charge me half the price for the same item? Or that they should just give me the discounted price now or give me cash back/voucher towards the future purchase of a hard drive? Or that I should steal an identically sized hard drive every year because it halves in price?

Nope... I take comfort in the fact that when I purchase a hard drive, I do so at a reasonable price point at that time, and the utility of having that drive for a year is worth any depreciation in price. Looking back and feeling remorseful is only going to be upsetting because most things tend to get cheaper/faster/better as time goes on. I just accept it and move on.

So... can anyone explain to me why Buyer's Remorse deserves compensation, or that Microsoft is somehow stealing by giving away software for free? Because as far as I see, Microsoft is far from stealing - it is simply not making money it can otherwise make. Maybe there are subtle points that I do not understand; feel free to kindly enlighten me. :-)

//David

TS Gateway on Vista Server Rocks!

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:53:00 GMT

Back in this blog entry, I mused about the nice Audio over RDP feature. It is pretty sweet to have secure, remote access to one's audio collection.

Well, I recently started playing with RDP over the new TS Gateway on Vista Server, and I have to say that it just keeps getting better.

In the past, I would VPN from home into Microsoft, open RDP from my laptop at home into my work machine at Microsoft, then stream audio from the work machine through my laptop at home. Life was good.

With TS Gateway, I no longer need to VPN. I now directly open RDP from my laptop at home into my work machine at Microsoft and stream audio. Life is great.

While you may think "big deal... you are still tunneling and get no substantially new features", it is important to me for one reason:

I no longer need to run as local Administrator on any of my systems.

As I mentioned in this blog entry - I run as normal, unprivileged User to do everything; I turn on the Windows Firewall to block all but a few select ports; I do not bother with personal Security Products because they simply intrude on my computing freedom... because, umm... the idea of a computer software "chaperone" scares me. Remember HAL 9000?

Dave... what's wrong? What are you doing? Please don't do that...

Argh! :-P

Anyways, the one and only reason that I still use my local Administrator account is to VPN from home into Microsoft, and once I have VPN, I immediately RDP from my laptop to my machine at work using my non-priviledged account. I imagine that most everyone else in the world running Windows do something similar and run with Administrative priviliges with far greater amount of time.

Well, the TS Gateway works perfectly for me:

I still RDP from my laptop at home to my machine at work
I no longer need to VPN
I no longer need to use my local Administrator accounts anywhere

To boot, RDP already allows me to copy files between the Host and Remote computers. So I do not need to VPN anymore to do these common operations.

Yes, I know you *nix-heads are shaking your heads and saying "welcome to modern computing; *nix has had SSH tunneling and X11 port-forwarding for decades now" - but humor me for the moment. :-) How easy is it to work with and forward smart card so that you can double hop?

To me, the TS Gateway feature, like IIS7, make Vista Server compelling.

//David

Laptop Business 2006

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 12:39:00 GMT

Ok, I know that I just purchased an IBM X41 Tablet last fall, but I am in the market for a new laptop again.

No, nothing wrong with my computers... I am just going to be giving the X41 to my younger sister so that she can use it during Law School the next few years. I wager she needs it more than I do, and I still have my older Dell laptop, PC, and Mac Mini, so I have no shortage of computers. Yes, I am a nice older brother.

Why am I giving her the X41 instead of the other machines? Because the X41 is new and still has its 3-year warranty. There is no way that I am giving my sister a machine out of warranty because if anything goes wrong, I will get the phone call... and we all know what long-distance computer troubleshooting can be like... ;-)

All it means is that I must re-evaluate the ultraportable landscape again.

Unfortunately, it seems that Dell's design philosophy for its Latitude Ultraportables no longer match what I am looking for. I do not want a widescreen LCD on the business-class Latitude; if I wanted widescreen LCDs for movies, I would choose the consumer-class Inspirons. PC Card slot and SD memory slot are necessary now, for my smart card reader and digital camera memory. And packing it all into a real ultraportable package (2.5-4lb, 1" thick) is important. Sigh... I do like Dell machines, especially their a la carte software setup, but their hardware design seems to go in a direction that no longer match what I want.

Toshiba appears to still go with the R200, which while sleek and more business-minded, it is also demanding a price premium for last year's hardware (Pentium M instead of Solo/Duo, 4200rpm HDD). I may enjoy the fashion, but not at the cost of basic functionality. I am willing to trade-off some hardware functionality for a fashionable ultraportable form factor (like the fastest CPUs, discrete graphics, or 1600x1200 LCD panels), but not for last year's functionality. Gotta have standards, you know. ;-)

Apple, HP/Compaq, and Gateway are pretty much out of the picture because I have never seen a system from them that simultaneously satisify the price, functionality, reliability, and customizability ratio. I am always amazed at how Apple manages to pawn last year's hardware at premium prices and still get away with it - gotta love their marketing and spin-machine...

So, I guess that leaves me with IBM (oops, Lenovo) for the this purchase. I am debating between the X60S and the T60P... because on the one hand, you have the classic ultraportable X60S with all the usual features and this year's hardware refresh (Duo, 7200rpm HDD) while still retaining the standard XGA resolution, PC Card/SD Memory, and now 3 USB 2.0 ports... and on the other, you have the classic power-machine T60P with all the top-end Vista-ready hardware (Duo, 7200 HDD, discrete graphics) while sporting a 1600x1200 LCD. I don't know... 1600x1200 is a really attractive resolution, especially for me to PPTP into my work machines. I have been really spoiled by my dual 1600x1200 and 1200x1600 monitor layout - having screen real-estate really helps my work efficiency.

Hmm... I guess I will just have to toss a coin... :-)

//David

Six Years...

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:30:00 GMT

Gosh, how quickly time flies by. It seems like yesterday when I was just getting started on this blog and typing out the entry for my 5-year anniversary at Microsoft. At that time, I had just finished doubling my number of blog entries, was in the midst of converting from purely newsgroup posts to blogging, and was having all sorts of wondering thoughts like whether a daily technical blog is possible...

Well, a year is a long time, and after 200+ blog entries... it is definitely possible. :-) And I still have a growing queue of 70+ ideas for blog entries in various states of completion, lots more source code sample ideas for ISAPI and IIS7 Modules to introduce, script tools using the IIS administration APIs, and just general background details on IIS core and problem solving. I just wish I had the time and energy to push them to completion faster.

As users, you never cease to amaze me with the sorts of things that you wonder about or plan to do with IIS. Yes, I observe the patterns, but I also observe the outliers. And believe me, I take your needs and make sure the developers writing features know about it and the testers validating scenarios add it to their list.

Anyways... Andrew Lin, the developer lead for the IIS7 UI, had an awesome idea for his 5-year last Friday - instead of the 5 pounds of M&Ms that people usually bring, he brought in a 15.5 gallon keg of Hazelnut Brown Nectar - and we managed to drink it all in about 3 hours. Let's not talk about the revelries and controversies that it caused - jumping into bushes, wrestling matches, team drinking competitions... You know the cliche - what happens at Vegas, stays at Vegas... so there are no photographic evidence, right? ;-)

Ok, so I am not one to go top that, but in the same spirit and tradition, I decided to bring 6 bottles of Belgium Lambic beer, various flavors (framboise, kriek, peche), to celebrate my 6-year. So, I sent out the email, and after 5pm, the IIS team (sans managers, somewhat unintentional since they left by 5pm) had a little impromptu gathering on a sunny Wednesday afternoon to relax for a while. We really needed it, too, because this week is the final push to get IIS7 done for Windows Vista...

But, a little beer and team morale/gathering can't hurt in the grand scheme of things, right? :-)

//David

Much Ado About...

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:43:00 GMT

Nothing!

Maybe it is just the summer-time lull, but I have not been terribly motivated to write anything lately. Alas, the IIS newsgroup has not been spawning anything interesting nor new in terms of issues either, and my private blog comments are starting to degenerate into "can you help me figure out how application X works with IIS and how to fix it".

You know, it is really hard for me to get excited about those type of questions because I am NOT in product support, nor do I have any idea how application X works through a cursory description of it. Sorry, I do not know how every application works...

Sigh. What I want to do is explain how IIS works and interacts so that you can help yourself figure out what is going on, but clearly many people do not want to learn and just want to use my time to get some answers. Grr...

For example, one very apologetic guy tells me that he followed my blog entry to allow EXEs to be downloadable on IIS6, but other file extensions like .CC2, .VDX, etc were still getting denied by 404s on IIS6. Umm... hello?!? There is a blog entry dedicated to troubleshooting IIS6 linked right off my blog entry, which should have led one to look in the IIS log file for more clues. One should then notice the 404.3 for the request, and a quick search on the Internet or even my blog should locate the solution.

Hmm... maybe it is because I am so close to the issue that I find the steps intuitively obvious, but I suspect otherwise. I think it is just basic common sense and troubleshooting skills one needs to have to survive in a digital world, but I think that progress has made computing so comparatively "easy" that not everyone using a computer or running a server has the proper skills to survive. And, I am not certain that is a good thing to encourage...

I mean, it is like how in the US, people treat driving as a "right" and not a "privilege" and let all sorts of miscreants onto the road with minimal training and supervision. And then we wonder about the insurance and accident rates. Put that in contrast with Germany, where driving is more of a "privilege" than a "right", and we get comparatively better drivers, faster speeds, and less accidents. Ok, the occassional Ghost Drivers, but generally better.

For example, you also see this with Virtual PC/Server users. People ask about how to install Windows 3.1, DOS, or Windows NT4 on Virtual PC when the answers have already been said a decade ago - just need to search for it - and then they get annoyed that Microsoft did not put it on a silver platter for them.

Umm... hello?!? Virtual PC/Server is all about providing a Virtual Machine so that you can install/run whatever software you want. You are still ultimately responsible for figuring out how to do what you want to do.

Anyhow, it is always amusing to see the same user later balk at having to install OS by booting from a floppy. It appears that they s/he never lived through the "earlier" days of PC computing, before there were bootable CDs. It is at this point that one should marvel at the progress in computing and how much more coddled we all are nowadays.

Booting from a CD or USB key? Outrageous! Having drivers automatically detected and installed instead of going into Control Panel? Amazing! We take so much for granted, especially without knowing the basics... and that concerns me.

In my view, one should always start from the basics and build up knowledge from there. Otherwise, one lacks the building blocks to do critical thinking, which condemns one to mindless pattern matching and not mindful problem solving. And we all want problem solvers, right? :-)

Anyways... I think a little elitist is ok; as with everything, just don't go overboard with it.

//David

Thoughts on Debugging IIS7

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:45:00 GMT

Hmm... it seems that ever since I made the blog entry about how to install PHP on IIS7, I seem to have become the default tech-support for PHP/IIS7 issues. That'll teach me to ever post beta guidance again - I just get more "help, I've fallen and I can't get up" questions, especially the sort when the user ignores the directions or thinks that their "modifications" to my instructions are just as good. Sigh... ;-)

I mean, is it too much to expect that if you want to modify the configuration files by hand or commandline that you should have write access to the configuration files? The IIS7 UI automatically asks you for privilege elevation, but when you go on the commandline you are obviously on your own. Or that if I give instructions for configuring the PHP ISAPI handler to run using the ISAPI Module that you merely change the handler to run the PHP CGI EXE handler with the ISAPI Module (and not the CGI Module)?

However, this also makes me realize that if you think IIS6 is confusing and difficult to troubleshoot, IIS7 is even more open-ended and hence harder to troubleshoot. You really have to know how IIS7 operates and what you are configuring (and why) when you make IIS7 configuration changes... because one wrong step and the server will stop working, by-design due to its open extensibility.

For example, when it comes to requests not resulting in the proper response, my first question is "what handler generated the response - static file handler or arbitrary dynamic file handler" - because that determines the expected response behavior. However, it is clearly not how users think - users think of it as a file to download, HTML page with a CSS stylesheet, or ASP.Net web application not working. Unfortunately, given how configurable (and misconfigurable) IIS7 can be, using the user's view of the issue will not be sufficient to troubleshoot, and we cannot make it any better/easier - there are so many things to misconfigure!

All it means is that if you customize beyond the default set of supported IIS7 configurations, you will pretty much be on your own. We try our best to make many module combinations work, but it will always be possible to configure IIS7 modules into a non-functional state.

For example:

If you [accidentally] mangle the ordering of the StaticFileModule, DirectoryListingModule, and DefaultDocumentModule modules, IIS7 will either refuse to serve default documents (regardless of how you enabled/configured it), refuse to do 301 courtesy-redirect, or refuse to show a directory listing. If you just stare at the IIS7 configuration, you will tear your hair out trying to figure it out... and FREB or ETW tracing won't really help, either. You literally have to know how to order the modules to end up with expected IIS behavior, and requiring that knowledge is by-design. Similar dependencies exist for authentication and caching...
If you want to configure a "wildcard application mapping", you have to chant the magic incantation of a perfect handler configuration. I'll leave the exercise to the reader to come up with the spell. :-)
If you configure a handler AFTER the catch-all StaticFileHandler, it will NOT apply to any requests. If you just stare at the IIS7 configuration wondering why it is not running - it is there in the configuration section - you will go crazy unless you know how the handler section works.
If you configure an ISAPI DLL as a globalModule, reference a non-existing managed type as a module, or remove a referenced module from loading... good luck on the spotting the error! ;-)

In short, if you run IIS7 in non-default fashion, it will require either perfect instructions or the user has to really understand IIS7 processing and behavior. Maybe there is a way to lower the requirements of running/using IIS7, but I have not come up with any. What are your thoughts?

//David

Blog Spam, Part 2

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 10:05:00 GMT

Three months ago, I ranted in this blog entry about blog comment spam. Well, it appears that the arms race of allowing anonymous blog comments (which I deem highly important) has been steadily escalating, and the latest crop of blog comment spam are pretty clever to the point that I think that anonymous blog comments cannot be allowed to be made unfettered and freely.

For example, the latest algorithms:

One takes snippets of existing blog comments from the same blog entry, injects its URL into the username field, and repost that as blog comment
One takes snippets of text from novels, emails, etc from other sources, injects its URL into the comment text and/or username field, and reposts that as blog comment
One uses short congratulatory phrases like "good to know", "I like your site a lot", "keep up the good work", etc, injects its URL into the username field, and reposts that as blog comment

The only common thing amongst all of them is that the spam URL is in the username field, but unfortunately, that is also used for Trackback and by legitimate users linking to your blog... so disallowing those links diminish the linkage of the blogosphere.

Now, some have proposed requiring HIP-CAPTCHA and other Turing Tests for Humans before allowing comments to be made... and while I resisted such user restraint earlier because I value my user liberties, a little validation every once in a while can't hurt... or can it?

Anonymous Spam is the very abuse of personal privacy, but chipping away at one's civil liberties in the name of security is just as dangerous and slippery slop towards tyranny. Is there a better choice? Perhaps we can attack/remove the economic incentive to spam, or make it prohibitively expensive to spam than not.

//David

Reflection 2006

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:06:00 GMT

About twelve months ago, I started to hit a comfort zone with blogging. I had written a lot of initial content the prior two months, started to get a small number of private blog comments as well as a handful of comments to various posts, and I paid attention to answering just about every single one of those comments. I probably spent hours every day just going through the IIS newsgroups and my blog.

Well, a lot happens in twelve months, in addition to a year passing by. :-) I have basically written twelve-times the blog entries, seen half a dozen entries gather 10K+ hits, and now getting about a dozen valid private/public comments every day. I definitely try to reply to all public comments of blog entries (I am still working through the backlog of comments made during my recent vacation in Europe), and private comments have to be REALLY detailed, concise, and illustrative of some common issue/problem which I can identify without asking for more details for me to answer it with a blog entry... or it has to push my buttons somehow. ;-) After all, I do not send private email responses because everyone benefits from public responses, and it is really hard to blog about an incomplete or insufficient question..

Anyways, I have hit a major lull recently, since returning from vacation. I am not really refocusing on work, and I am not terribly focused on writing blog entries, either. Or rather, I am not terribly motivated to think about anything at the moment.

Yes, like last July, we are in crunch-mode, this time trying to finish up on our final IIS7 milestone in Vista. Last year, we were just trying to get IIS7 into Vista, and Edmund and I had to perform some last minute heroics and miracles (and I do mean miracles, as the following days proved) for it to happen.

Yes, we are wrapping up on the fiscal year and yearly performance reviews are getting into swing. You know, as time goes by, I grow to dislike these reviews more and more because I see that they have little real value other than to illustrate your manager's opinion of your work, and you get to rank his/her ignorance of your achievements. I mean, it is all pointless because before you even write or have the review discussion, all the numbers are already set by committee behind closed doors, so the discussion is practically moot-point and only serves to make the employee feel somehow engaged and involved. Ugh, such a mental drag and waste of time...

What's worse, I feel like we are on a forced death-march for IIS7, with people's lives and careers as tombstones scattered along the path. .But maybe it is just me getting more and more jaded and cynical...

Crunch-mode, reviews, and death-march. Mmm... what fun I have returned to from vacation. No wonder I am having problems refocusing on work. ;-)

//David

Back from Europe... amidst a flood of comments

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 09:55:00 GMT

Ok... I have just returned from my three week vacation in Europe. Jet-lag is kicking in about now, so I am going to sleep.

I had a blast visiting London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, Luxembourg, and Amsterdam... I will get to observations about them future entries. For certain, I learned to appreciate several cultural and technological differences which I never understood until observing them in the public mass-transit systems across several countries...

I took 4GB of SD memory with me on the trip, and I used up every last bit of it with over 1,000 pictures and mini-movies. Yeah, I did take more pictures on this trip than I have the past several years combined. Now, I have no idea where to host any number of them as a photo gallery since I've never bothered with such services (remember, I tend to be on the trailing edge of using this "technology" stuff)...

Since I really went dark the past three weeks as far as electronics communication and much of technology is concerned, I now have that deluge of blog comments (sheesh, spammers have been doing a good job lately), email from work and friends, and the usual monthly finance stuff.

I get this feeling that I will need *another* vacation just to recover from the "life" correspondence-pile-up of this of vacation.

Sigh. Isn't technology just wonderful? ;-)

//David

Eurotrip. Back in Early June

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2006 04:00:00 GMT

Well, it is time for me to take a vacation. For the next three weeks, I will be intentionally disconnected from technology and touring through a north/central Europe. Oh, yes, I need the break to disconnect and re-center myself. I have not done that in a few years now.

So adios, ciao, cya later...

//David

Perspectives on Design and Support

Anonymous — Sat, 13 May 2006 23:42:00 GMT

I started typing this as a response to this blog entry and then decided that I was investing a little too much of myself into the response... so here goes.

The original question was about "how to install Virtual Server, install its VSWebApp.exe component, without IIS ever being installed" because the user wants to run Virtual Server, re-use its VSWebApp.exe, but does not want to run it on IIS. Thus, the user viewed any additional non-technical requirements as "bundling".

Well, I do not think it is bundling. Is the glass half empty or half full? Why can't we all be tolerent and simply get along?

From my perspective, Microsoft only tested that same product against IIS and only supports running on IIS by-design. If the requirement of IIS is not fixed, then I consider that a bug. Now, if the product was designed to support other web servers as well as Commandline usage, you can bet that the requirements will change for VSWebApp.exe such that independent installation is possible. That is the meaning of design and support.

As an analogy, suppose you really like to drive a Porche sports car, and you really want to save on gasoline since it is getting expensive these days. Just because you want to save on gasoline does not mean that you can question why the Porche does not come with an ethanol conversion kit or that the car is badly designed to require gasoline. If you want to save on gasoline, then either figure out a way to tinker with the car to purr and rev without gasoline or buy a car that naturally saves on gasoline. The car is not "bundled" with gasoline any more than it is "bundled" with its steel bolts. You can't complain that you cannot swap out the steel bolts with aluminum ones to lower the weight and improve gas mileage. Oy, it's a conspiracy between the auto manufacturer and gasoline providers! ;-)

Actually, I think that we are simply disagreeing over opinions in a very self-centered way - there is no right/wrong here - it is all about what makes sense for you:

Since Microsoft owns Virtual Server, it has the right to decide what combinations are allowed, but it also has the responsibility to support those combinations
Since everyone owns Apache, anyone can decide the combinations, and no one has the responsibility to support those combinations

Both are viable options, and there is nothing wrong with either choice. Some people like tinkering, assembling things together, and supporting it themselves because they can. Many people like having a packaged ride because it is simpler and does what they want. I simply accept that people are all different, have different needs, and make different choices... because the same freedom to choose a la carte is also the same nightmare from a support perspective. No sustainable organization will provide guaranteed support without restrictions; you decide whether the restrictions are worth the support.

Personally, in this case, I think one should put aside one's prejudice and install IIS6 on Windows Server 2003 (available for free evaluation) and use it to extract VSWebApp.exe. Installing IIS6 is not exactly a bad thing - I would argue that it is certainly equal if not better than Apache (you can find my other blog entries on this), so by all means, have fun tinkering. :-)

Good luck,

//David

Taxonomy of a Product Team's Roles at Microsoft

Anonymous — Sat, 13 May 2006 09:40:00 GMT

I started posting this as a blog response elsewhere, and then I decided that I was having way too much fun composing it to leave it stranded as a mere comment... so here is my take on Product Team Roles at Microsoft.

Yes, read it with a grain of salt, good humor, and enjoy the self-deprecating satire... ;-)

For those of you who aren't aware of the typical Product Team Roles at Microsoft, they are (in no particular order of preference):

Development
Test
Program Management
Management
Documentation

Now, the first role, Development, is pretty obvious - you don't have a software product without code. Developers deal with writing code; lots of code. They prefer to not deal with Testers who keep filing bugs against their code, Program Managers who keep changing the code's supposedly intended behavior, and Management who keep changing the schedule... because they all prevent him from writing lots and lots of code. Hmm, I guess that's what makes Open Source appealing - no Testing, no Customer design, and no Schedules... and lots of code of dubious value. ;-)

But what the heck about the remaining roles?

Test

Well, you want to make sure that software does not crash and format your hard drive all the time, right?

Testers deal with validating Developer's code against Program Manager's ideas that have never been written down and in the insanely short amount of time that Management schedules.

They prefer to not deal with Program Managers that keep changing their ideas (and hence require tests to be updated), Developers that do not want to fix anything and pile up bugs, or Management who want the testing completed yesterday... because they all prevent him from having a work/life balance.

Program Management

Well, you want that software to actually do what you want and not what the developer THINKS you want, right?

Program Managers deal with ideas and never writes it down because it immediately changes and is out-of-date.

They prefer to come up with ideas and want to just get their way, so they prefer to not deal with Developers and Testers who do not cooperate and want a life. Some of them are actually smart and interact with customers to get ideas via mediums like blogs... instead of just dreaming up features in a vacuum and arguing about customers in the abstract...

Management

Ok, they perform a necessary but thankless job. They like:

Getting in the way of Test/Dev/PM of doing their jobs by asking them what they are doing with weekly TPS status reports
Deciding what bugs to fix when they often have no context on the bug's issue
Making up and breaking schedules
Making/Enforcing "mandates" and "rules"
Holding all the team funds
Oh, and they have to heard cats to move in one direction and on-time. :-D

Documentation

Ok, they also perform another necessary but thankless job. They like:

Getting in the way of Test/Dev/PM of doing their jobs by asking them what they are doing (so that they can presumably "document" it)
Deciding on what information to keep/remove in documentation when they often have no context on the raw information involved
Alter schedules all the time because the product schedule changes
Making/Enforcing mandates and rules for what should be documented
Oh, and they have to perform "technical edits" of raw information into the sanitized forms you see on MSDN and KB

I find amazing similarities between Management and Documentation, where one is a project of code and the other is a project of words that accompany the code. But if you think about it, both are really just "overhead". ;-)

If I had my way, I would simply pay the Developer/Tester/Program Manager to write Documentation as a Wiki or Blog entries. Do you want more things like my blog entries or more things like "sanitized" KB articles or MSDN/Technet articles? Can you imagine the changes when we can actually write Documentation which does not get filtered by someone else?

In Conclusion...

Hehe... sometimes, I am amazed that in the middle of all this, we actually find time and energy to ship useful software. But, we all definitely try our best to navigate through the madness and red-tape.

Now that I've done my bit of satirical insight into the organization that is Microsoft... I would love to hear about your favorite job euphemisms. :-)

//David