KMorrill's WebLog : Catch all

Apprentice, episode 4

KMorrill — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 06:22:00 GMT

I just finished watching this week's show. It looks like this year is shapping up to be a reverse of last year, where now several women get peeled off the team early on. I am pretty sure they'll be back in the boardroom next week too, because it doesn't look like they have any real energy on their team.

One thing that was really disappointing this week is that so many of the people on the team kept bashing the leader. I mean it's great if you can spot weaknesses, but I didn't see many of them doing something to step up themselves and fix the situation--they were content to just complain about it. I don't think they showed one clip of the Mosaic team having this kind of infighting. They just focused on the task and got it done.

I will say I was pretty impressed both of the teams set up an entire restaurant in a single day. It wasn't really clear from the footage how they chose their dishes and figured out the preparation. I am almost wondering if they had a preselected chef who figured that part out.

-Kevin

Apprentice, episode 4

KMorrill — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 05:37:00 GMT

-Kevin

And I thought my job was cool...

KMorrill — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 04:39:00 GMT

In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, there is a pretty mind blowing article on a guy named John “Winter” Smith who is attempting to visit each and ever Starbucks location. I find myself joking frequently with friends that there must be a building code in Seattle decreeing you should not have to walk more than 50 feet to find a Starbucks--sometimes less.

This guy is pretty cool. He's set up his own site at http://starbuckseverywhere.net/ My favorite quote is a note about a store he visited in Bellevue, “By the time I visited this store, in late 2001, there were plenty of intersections throughout the continent boasting multiple Starbucks locations. But as near as I can remember, this is one of the few, excluding shopping malls, in which the two Starbucks locations are in the same outdoor strip mall.”

-Kevin

Made it to TechEd

KMorrill — Mon, 24 May 2004 00:01:00 GMT

I made it into TechEd this afternoon without any hitches. The weather was just starting to look up as we pulled out of Seattle, but no doubt pales in comparison to the sun and palm trees down here. I always love seeing Mt. Rainer from up in the air, and this morning was no exception. Definitely a different perspective on the Seattle skyline.

Walking the streets of San Diego, TechEd buzz is in the air. There are banners on the street signposts, and about every fifth person walking on the street has a TechEd backpack. Cool to see lots of devs out and about!

I picked up my pack and shirts at the registration desk, which didn't seem to be quite as long a line as others were talking about earlier. When I got home and unpacked everything, I realized I was going to get a chance to develop my ironing skills, since the shirt was looking pretty wrinkled from sitting in the back for eons. I suck at it :-)

Anyway, as I write I am sitting in the Dev cabana (it's labeled #5, right across from the communications network). It's pretty dead here right now, no doubt folks are saving their questions for later in the week. Drop by with your Deployment/Setup question. If you have gripes about the Visual Studio or .NET Framework setups, I can also take those back to our team :)

Working on the setup team I get to interface with folks all over the Developer Division. So if you have other questions on Visual Studio or the .NET Framework, drop by and I'll help get you connect with the right person.

-Kevin

Installing the .NET Framework

KMorrill — Wed, 12 May 2004 17:46:00 GMT

I wanted to make sure and blog this before I lost the link.

I frequently get asked how to detect whether the .NET Framework is installed and chain it into a setup as a prequisite. The Setup.exe Bootstrapper Sample includes sample codes that shows exactly how to do this.

Creating Products People Love

KMorrill — Wed, 12 May 2004 07:05:00 GMT

I have been meaning to write a blog on Creating Product People Love for a few weeks now, and am finally getting around to it. I remember seeing a talk on this very topic several years back, and unfortunately my notes from it got trashed when I accidentally reformatted my laptop (ouch!). The speaker had a great list of the essential elements that lead to products people love using.

I was sitting on my couch a while back thinking how much I've started to enjoy driving my car--just driving along--and it got me thinking about this topic. There's something completely relaxing about having a CD playing in the background and cruising down the freeway, not even at excessive speeds necessarily (though that sounds pretty fun to ;-> ). Somehow associatively, it got me thinking about video games, which also seem to have an equal thrill to them. In both experiences, you have this immediate sense of control about what's in front of you--whether it be a steering wheel or a joystick. Video games are even more interesting, because they present challenges to deal with.

Both of these experience I think are telling about a fundamental that underlies all great product design: efficacy. As humans, we enjoy ourselves the most when we're put in a situation where we can exercise control over what's in front of us.

When I think about the gripes people have with software and computers in general, efficacy seems to be at the bottom of all of them:

“Software is too confusing and complex; it makes me feel stupid.”
“Why does it crash?”
What's with all this fluffy UI? I want to have access to the source code and get down to the metal on the command line.”

So I think through induction I stumbled upon one of the tennets of creating products people love.

Feel free to chime in if you have any other essentials you think play into the mix.

Columbia River Gorge photography

KMorrill — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:27:00 GMT

I just posted pictures from my recent expedition to the Columbia River Gorge up at Kevin Morrill's Photos. Really cool shots of Pony Tail and Wahkeena Falls. If you live in the Seattle/Portland area and haven't ever driven through the Columbia River Gorge--you are missing out! You can take highway 84 on the Oregon side to see some breathtaking waterfalls. Highway 14 on the Washington side has a nice lookout called Cape Horn. I don't have a really good hosted site for my pics, so you'll have to deal with the low res pics that I can store on MSN.

This is one of my first times out with my new Nikon 8700. I absolutely love it. My only gripe is the shooting speed is far from SLR quality. It is perfect for nature photography though.

-Kevin

Cool deployment/setup blog

KMorrill — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 21:45:00 GMT

Michael Dunn from the Windows Deployment team wrote a good post on building a solid setup. For those that didn't catch it, it can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/mdunn/archive/2004/04/09/110702.aspx

-Kevin

Deployment and dependencies

KMorrill — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 21:55:00 GMT

One of the things I work with on my team is how customers deploy their applications when they depend on a redistributable such as the .NET Framework or J#. I am just starting to get my arms around this space, and have more questions than answers right now. Having worked on the Visual Studio setup quite a bit, I know it can be tricky to build your setup when you need to “chain” in a completely separate setup. For example, how do you detect when the dependency is already installed, how do you show progress in a meaningful way to the user with a process that's black box to you, what happens if the outside setup fails, and the list goes on.

For folks out there who have done deployment of the .NET Framework or J# with their application before, how did it go for you? Did you end up using a tool like Visual Studio's deployment project or InstallShield? What problems did you run into?

-Kevin

Good news in a newspaper!?!

KMorrill — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 18:57:00 GMT

I sat down for breakfast this morning after plunking down $1.50 for a copy of the Seattle Times. I usually find myself more distressed than encouraged after reading the paper. So I was pleasantly surprised when I flipped to the local news section today to read a column titled Woman works to find work by Nicole Brodeur.

The column introduced a local woman, Jennifer Ryan, who's searching for work. Apparently she had put an ad in the paper under the section “Work Wanted.” Interestingly, she was the only person to put an ad in that particular section, which floors me given how much I hear about unemployment. Her ad read:

West Seattle mom will clean, shampoo carpets, do yardwork, clean gutters, drive errands, detail autos/campers, haul & dump, paint, sm. repairs, baby/pet sit, etc. bldg. maint. background, hard worker, strong, able to lift, honest worker w/eye for detail — rsnbl. rates. Need to Make Ends Meet.

At the end of the column Ryan speaks to her dismay, “They are more willing to help people who don't want to help themselves. The more you try, the less help you get, and the less you try, the more help you get.” She sums up her attitude by saying, “I want my mother to be proud of me, whereever she is.”

I have never met this woman, but I am proud just reading this little bit about her.

Progress bars, does anyone trust them?

KMorrill — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 07:07:00 GMT

Our team just finished doing usability research on Visual Studio's setup. These studies are always fascinating to me, because even the most seemingly simple interface can completely crash and burn when presented to someone who is not biased by the effort that went into designing it. One of the things I see repeatedly is how little we actually read UI that's presented to us. When it comes right down to it, the human mind is amazing at skimming text.

Anyways, just about every time I watch users install software and get them talking, they gripe about the progress bar. For Visual Studio in particular, we are notorious for taking a long time to install (hey we're working on it; there's just a ton of stuff to install!). In some versions, the progress bar is accompanied by a text message estimating how long it will take to complete the install. This estimate is kind of like a asymptotic, sinusoidal graph. It goes up and down wildly, and--cross your fingers--gets closer to its target as time goes on. I think we have all been taught overtime to be skeptical by the application that gets to 98% done and then stops dead in its tracks. Do people even trust progress bars anymore? It seems like more than anything I use them as purely an indication that xyz program just hasn't crashed yet. Maybe I just have really low expectations.

-Kevin

My first blog...

KMorrill — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 05:56:00 GMT

Okay, this is my first ever attempt at writing a blog. I am pitifully behind the times, but I figured better late then never.

First, a quick introduction... I work as a Program Manager at Microsoft. I started working at MS as an intern when I was in high school. Back then I was a Software Design Engineer--err developer. I have no idea what they were thinking when they brought in a 17 year old kid who's biggest programming project consisted of writing QuickBasic code that converted numbers ($17.50) into long handed strings (Seventeen and 50/100 dollars). After doing the internship gig for three summers, I wrote one of my friends at the company telling him I thought it would be cool to try Program Management sometime. I did not give it much thought, until I got a message back saying I should do interviews fora Program Management (PM in Microsoft speak). I ended up trying that the next summer, fell in love, left college early and the past four years since then have been a whirlwind.

That's not much of an introduction, but it's good enough for now :-)

Anyway, I am not really sure what I'll be putting in this blog. I work deeply with the setup technologies at my job, so I'll try to write about that from time to time. I am also a photography hobbyist in my spare time, so I'll be sure to upload pics from my exploits.

-Kevin