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May 2006 - Posts

The Knees Have It

Posted Wednesday, May 31, 2006 11:51 PM by johnmont
My favorite tool today is… Knee pads. Not just any knee pads, though: CLC’s Gel Kneepads with grooved caps (you can get them at Ace Hardware). I spent about six hours this evening on my knees pulling wire in cramped spaces so that we can restore the original Read More...
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De planer! De planer!

Posted Friday, May 26, 2006 6:35 AM by johnmont
Earlier this week I ordered a 13-inch Grizzly planer-molder . Our initial job for it is to plan several thousand lineal feet of painted molding from our house through it to strip it back to its original finish. After that, some custom molding for the Read More...
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After HTML and Javascript, C++

Posted Thursday, May 25, 2006 2:58 PM by johnmont
Surprising factoid: after HTML and Javascript, C++ is the language most used by non-professional developers (including students, hobbyists, etc.). This based on some of our internal research over the past 4 years (statistically significant sample, but Read More...
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Amusing Advertisement

Posted Thursday, May 25, 2006 6:28 AM by johnmont
I’m not encouraging you to switch jobs, but this made me laugh. Read More...
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A Weekend With SPSS

Posted Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:57 AM by johnmont
Let me preface everything in this post with the statement that SPSS is a remarkable tool for data analysis and that I’m not an SPSS expert – I used to have passing familiarity with SAS (different beast) and some college-level statistics from nearly twenty Read More...
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Top 11 Video Games You Don’t Want Your Kids To Play

Posted Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:08 AM by johnmont
Check out Number 10 . Another bbSpot special. Read More...
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Interviews

Posted Tuesday, May 23, 2006 8:39 AM by johnmont
Today I did two in-person interviews and five phone screens plus set up another four informational interviews. Hiring is tiring. It’s really nice when, during the course of the Microsoft interview cycle, one of the interviewers emails you and asks, “Where Read More...
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Dumb Idea Nipped in the Bud: Film at 11

Posted Tuesday, May 23, 2006 6:04 AM by johnmont
Have you ever sat down and thought up some brilliant thing, then realized, “Why bother?” Today during an interview, a candidate related a question he was asked about how he’d implement a particular feature. To me, the feature (it’s not important what Read More...
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Things That Wouldn't Pass Through Airport Security

Posted Monday, May 22, 2006 11:45 PM by johnmont
Well, here's one : a PC case modded to look like a Hollywood nuclear device. Read More...
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“Some Day I Will Rule You All.”

Posted Sunday, May 21, 2006 10:11 AM by johnmont
Transcription of the Morse code in Sunday May 21 st ’s Fox Trot . ... s --- o -- m . e -.. d .- a -.-- y .. i .-- w .. i .-.. l .-.. l .-. r ..- u .-.. l . e -.-- y --- o ..- u .- a .-.. l .-.. l Read More...
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“…At Least There May Be Bacon.”

Posted Wednesday, May 17, 2006 7:19 AM by johnmont
Today I’m going to be at an offsite with a bunch of other managers from the VS team. When I was younger, I always looked forward to offsites as an opportunity to learn something, to play around, and (really) to take a day off from work. As I’ve gotten Read More...
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First Post with Word 2007

Posted Monday, May 15, 2006 1:08 PM by johnmont
I’m checking out Joe Friend’s work to make Word 2007 a good blog post editor. So far what I've noticed is that setting it up was harder than I expected, in part because in order to find the Metaweblog API for blogs.msdn.com I had to RAS into corpnet over Read More...
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"Learn those things and Server is just a tame little kitten that happens to randomly vomit on you when you pet it."

Posted Saturday, May 13, 2006 12:11 PM by johnmont
From the post of a former Apple support person . This actually describes a lot of software from Apple, Microsoft, and many, many others. Read More...
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Attack the Critical Plague of Cat Typing

Posted Thursday, May 11, 2006 1:32 PM by johnmont
Via Fark : PawSense -- catproof your computer . My favorites: "PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing." "If a cat gets on the keyboard, PawSense makes a sound that annoys cats. This teaches your Read More...
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Coding in Someone Else's Kitchen

Posted Thursday, May 11, 2006 7:10 AM by johnmont
During the renovation on our house we've moved to West Seattle and I've noticed that things take me longer here. Not only is the commute 50% longer, but performing my morning ablutions takes longer. Things aren't where I expect them, the doors don't open Read More...
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An Express Web Page Editor?

Posted Wednesday, May 10, 2006 8:03 AM by johnmont
Do we need a complement to Visual Web Developer Express (i.e. a free, simplified Web page editor) that is aimed at the HTML jockey? If so, what features should it have? The big question for me on this one is where a sitebuilder (the Web-based configuration Read More...
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Multitargeting and Express

Posted Tuesday, May 09, 2006 7:57 AM by johnmont
When Visual Studio "Orcas" ships, we have a question we need to answer: which version(s) of the .NET Framework/WinFX should it target? Having a single tool that can target various runtimes has been something I've been a strong advocate of for years, but Read More...
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"Retaking your college women's-studies course and writing a new section for your paper on gender stereotyping and representational imbalance in the mainstream media."

Posted Monday, May 08, 2006 8:57 PM by johnmont
Courtesy bbSpot : 2006 Summer Blockbuster List and why you shouldn't go see them . Read More...
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Express "Orcas" Principles

Posted Monday, May 08, 2006 7:48 AM by johnmont
Building on my Principles for First-Use Tools , I'm thinking about Principles for Express. Express is a tougher job because its customer base spans so many people -- from professionals coding after hours to students to people who aren't developers using Read More...
15 Comments

Funny Watch Reviews

Posted Sunday, May 07, 2006 10:05 AM by johnmont
Courtesy bbSpot (again): Watch reviews . Read More...
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Top Rejected Names for My Team

Posted Friday, May 05, 2006 7:24 AM by johnmont
Getting the right team name is critical to setting the right tone for the kind of team you want to have and for recruiting. A cool name gets you the cool people. A boring name gets you people like me. So, in an effort to come up with a team name I sat Read More...
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...And 24 Hours Later the Cats Come Out of the Basement

Posted Thursday, May 04, 2006 6:54 PM by johnmont
We have two cats: Mac and Jack (yes, named after the beer). Yesterday we moved from our house to a house in West Seattle so that the contractors could descend and remove the existing second story from our house and build a new one. The cats, of course, Read More...
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"V is for Vendetta" Parody Trailer

Posted Thursday, May 04, 2006 8:55 AM by johnmont
C is for Cookie . Thanks to bbspot . Read More...
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How Did You Learn to Program?

Posted Wednesday, May 03, 2006 7:01 AM by johnmont
How did you learn to program? Especially if you’re not a professional developer and never had been (I already have the data that says that something like 70% of professional developers got degrees in computer science or engineering). I’m wondering how Read More...
19 Comments

Concrete Post Caps OK But Not Usable

Posted Tuesday, May 02, 2006 3:26 PM by johnmont
Following up from my previous post about creating a cap for our front porch pillars out of concrete: it worked. I unformed them last night and the concrete seems to have emerged relatively as I wanted it. But we're likely not to use what I created. Why? Read More...
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Who's the Customer?

Posted Tuesday, May 02, 2006 7:50 AM by johnmont
Who is the target user for our non-professional tools? In order to make smarter decisions about what we build, we need to understand that the customer we’re building this product for doesn’t fit a single profile. Off the top of my head, I can think of Read More...
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Forming Concrete

Posted Monday, May 01, 2006 1:22 PM by johnmont
Yesterday, in preparation for the start of a big remodeling project, my wife and I began to create the new tops for the posts on our front porch. During construction, the existing tops, which measure 30 x 30 x 4 and are concrete, will be destroyed so Read More...
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Principles for First-Use Tools

Posted Monday, May 01, 2006 8:02 AM by johnmont
Even as we’re working out the potential features for the next version of Visual Studio Express, we’re looking beyond that. Express has done an amazing job (5M downloads!) of getting development tools into the hands of many people. The feedback we’ve gotten Read More...
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