Visual ActiveKent Sharkey .NET SE 3.11 : Bitterness

A modest proposal: Date/Time considered evil

ksharkey — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:38:00 GMT

After documenting some of the problems I had with Date/Time when creating my RSS Aggregator, and reading a Google presentation at ETech, I came up with a noble idea. We all use the same date and time. Whereever we are in the world, whatever time of day. So, timezones, Daylight Savings Time, Julian/Gregorian/etc. calendars, RFC 822, RFC 1123 and everything else goes away. Think of how easy life would be -- "I'll you at 5". 5:00 PST? 5:00 EST? 5:00 Arizona whacky Time? GMT? 5:30 in Newfoundland? (Canadians only will likely get that one). As was asked in the Google PPT, "What day is 2005-03-09T00:00:00Z"? (Depends on where you are in the world)

OK, now that we've decided that dates and times are evil, how can we pick one? Who gets elevated to the new GMT? Well, I propose we take a page from Zoology, where extinct languages such as Latin and Old Greek are used. More than a little Western Centric, but there you go. I suggest we use an ancient, extinct calendar, such as from the Mayans and define a day using Toronto (known center of the universe) as hour 0. Feel free to burn your calendars and start the migration of your apps now. Note that this decision could lead to a Y2K problem of Biblical proportions on 23 Dec, 2012. However, I think that the savings in confusion on my part and the luxury of demand for programmers leading up to this more than outweigh these minor problems.

TTFN - Kent
PS: For those who can't parse my "sense of humour", yes, this was a joke.
PPS: But dates still bum me out, I can't figure out timezones to save my life, and I wish that RSS defined RSS 1123, not 822 for its date format.

Still time for one more headache in 2004

ksharkey — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 23:21:00 GMT

I know I've promised to be good, and I've sucked the life out of any possible controversial topic off of this blog. So, to finish up the year, it's time to get myself in trouble again.

The MSDN stats report came out for November, and I noticed a few tasty tidbits in there:

Approximately 48% of people search when they come to the home page
Top 25 MSDN Viewed Pages are approx 33% of the total traffic to MSDN
From 2003 – 2004, Downloads, Subscription Downloads and the Visual Studio Developer Center continue to be major drivers.
Customer VSAT (very satisfied) and DSAT (disatisfied) numbers are flat (same as last year)

What does this tell me? Rather, what should I learn from this? Here's what I think:

Almost half of you search as soon as you get to MSDN. This implies that our "Information Architecture" — aka the ToC, and the Dev Centers aren't really doing it for you. Or is it just that people have become programmed by Google to "Just search it"? The Dev Center project has been a fairly large (in effort, if not also budget) undertaking by MSDN. I know I'm here only because of this project. Still, do they make sense? Does creating organized sections of content mean anything to you, or help you find information you need? Do you even know what a Dev Center is? Should we move to a new UI?

25 pages are a third of our traffic. Wow. Looking at them, they're almost all download pages. Should we try to improve the ability to find and get your downloads? Does the newly redesigned Downloads page help? Do the articles help, or should we just be providing downloads and documentation?
Help me out here — I need ideas to help MSDN help you. And so I stop feeling like I'm collecting a salary for unjust reasons.

TTFN - Kent (aka Eeyore)
Currently: Scanning for polymorphic spyware files, listening to "Who's Laughing Now?" by Skinny Puppy

Debugging MUIDs

ksharkey — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:12:00 GMT

Wednesday started out fairly normal -- look through all my "ContactUS", "VS2005 You wanted to know" and other support-related emails.

One was from one of my Product Managers, though. In one sense, that means higher priority (he knows how to find my office), and another it means lower priority (customer stuff comes first). However, as it was just a forward from a customer, it jumped to the top of my todo list. It seemed that I had a page on the Dev Center with this added text:

THIS IS THE ITEM

That was obviously not meant to be there. No problem, I say, it must have been added when I built that page by accident. I look in out page building tool. Nope, it's not there. Weird. Rebuild the page, the text is still there. Look at the files on disc (we build out an aspx and xml file for each page, but I neither told you that, nor understand fully why -- "It was like that when I got here."), none of them have the text in it, in fact a quick "ffind" ffinds nothing. Repeat for far too long. Finally, open the source for one of the controls on the page. Search.

if(Items[i].Attributes.GetNamedItem("itemid").Value == "41ABB38E-3DBB-4C98-BCF7-9B22E3985D8F"){
Response.Write("<br>THIS IS THE ITEM<BR><BR>");
}

Which (as I'm sure you've already figured out) is the exact GUID used by my page. Somehow, the GUID selected at random by the dev two or more years ago was the same GUID selected at random by our page building tool when I built that page. So much for 16^^32 possible GUID values (thus MUID -- Mostly Unique IDentifier), guess I should buy a lottery ticket.

Mostly non-technical

ksharkey — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:42:00 GMT

... I just needed a rant space. I've just spent 10-20 minutes trying to track down a bug in some code in a Windows Service I was writing, "Cannot close stream until all bytes are written."

Get stream length. Yup, right size
Get ContentLength property. Same
Write both values side by side to EventLog. Values are identical.
repeat 'n' times
Remove ContentEncoding header, assuming it's UTF8. No effect.
Remove ContentLength header. Works. Autocalculated value is what I was looking for... plus two.
AAAAAAAAUGH! Change responseWriter.WriteLine to responseWriter.Write. .... grrrr

Sometimes, even .NET easy isn't easy enough for some people.

Attack of the mini-meme

ksharkey — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:13:00 GMT

meme: /meem/ [coined on analogy with `gene' by Richard Dawkins] n. An idea considered as a {replicator}, esp. with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do.

More colloquilally: a way to store/share a moment in time by a number of people.

Today's meme: “What did you listen to on the way in to work?”

me:
Gangster Tripping - Fatboy Slim
Have you met her thunder - Age of Mythology soundtrack
Sucks - KMFDM
360 Degrees - PropellerHeads and De La Soul

TTFN - Kent
PS: Yesterday I realized that the second half of my resolution ended last Friday, meaning it lasted a bit more than three months. Not quite a record, but surely longer than many.

Highways and MSDN

ksharkey — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 00:38:00 GMT

After spending six of the last 13 days as a passenger in a hot car traversing the country (and the neighbouring country to the North), I'm home. I spent a lot of those 2400 km thinking about highways, strangely enough. Do the people that build and maintain the highways, rest areas and ancillary structures feel like they help people? I hope so, they helped us “go home” to visit family & friends.

I have also decided that there is (for me) a new analogy for MSDN. Others have compared it to a magazine, or a reference library, or perhaps just a mouthpiece. I want to add “highway” to that mix. MSDN is intended to get you to a destination (knowledge, working code, whatever). The journey may not be pleasant, may not be direct, nor is anyone's destination the same as any others'. We attempt to get everyone to some place that they want, or need to go. Are we helping you? I have no clue, really (and it's Review time, to boot), but I'd like to think that my little rest areas are clean and well supplied with soap, towels, and the all important paper materials. Feel free to let me know if you need any additional maps, articles or anything else.

TTFN - Kent

Horrid blast from the past

ksharkey — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:30:00 GMT

Did something yesterday I had hoped I would never need to do again — get some JavaScript to work in all available browsers. Why are we still having this issue? OK, in this case it was because the “ease of use” item I had been using from one <cough, cough> browser isn't part of the W3C DOM. After I changed the code to be compliant with the standard it worked in IE, Firefox and Opera. (hmmm, forgot to test Safari... oops). Still, why isn't there a great JavaScript editor that works cross browser yet? Or do I just not know about it?

TTFN - Kent

Firedrills

ksharkey — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 01:13:00 GMT

I'll tell you more, once I get the time...

TTFN - Kent

A day in the life...

ksharkey — Tue, 25 May 2004 00:04:00 GMT

With so many people at TechEd this week, it's scary-quiet around here. With that in mind, and also the fact that it's been a while since I last oozedor gotten into internal joy, I've decided to share with you a probably not so average day in the "life" of a Content Strategist (besides, this will help when I'm working on my status report on Friday)

8:00 - late start this morning (although that's becoming more of a par for start time)
clean out my ContactUs support e-mails. Only three this morning (I did a bunch over the weekend)
Apology e-mails to the oldest ones needing replies in my Inbox
9:00 - work on some pages for a new section on the Visual Studio Developer Center that we should be launching next week (current plan, anyway)
10:00 - Tech Review and Copy Edit (yes, part of the job) for a couple of articles on ASP.NET 2.0 we'll be bringing to you soonish. Created the bugs for them for tracking through the system.
10:45 - Frank called (he's on vacation in Michigan). I'm supposed to be updating his site while he's gone, and he called to remind me you all need headlines. TBD for later today.
11:00 - meeting to discuss the controls for the mumble mumble Developer Center, hopefully to be launched soon. Well, in a month or so.
11:40 - Frank again. His VPN connection isn't all that great, so a few more items to do.
11:45 - first article off to the developmental editors
12:00 - lunch with a friend from a team I used to work on
1:00 - back (yeah, I take long lunches, so there)
1:15 - *&(*&#$*#($*&$(%^*&#$(#$ Media Player setup rebooted my machine! Gah! I *hate* that!
1:30 - Tina, one of the PMs popped in to discuss attributing content for the mumble mumble Developer Center.
1:40 - back to the copy edit. Good, tasty article...
1:48 - Second article off to the editors
1:50 - on to Frank's site
2:15 - distracted during a build -- off to something else shiny. Building a list of the dev center RSS feeds, and the internal attributes that define what goes where.
2:40 - do a 'code sign' for Brian
2:46 - quick e-mail questions
2:52 - back to Frank's site
2:57 - impromptu meeting with my Site Manager, the statsful Christine
3:14 - head off to a meeting I'm 14 minutes late for
3:30 - back to the .NET Framework changes
3:56 - done a band-aid solution, working on the bigger, uglier problem, but first, catch up on e-mail...
4:30 - oh, you've got to love the XML Diff tool. It may just save my mind today.
4:57 - Sent a couple of lists to C & F for confirmation. Posting this, then taking off. Far too sunny to stay in here anymore, plus we're having palacsinta tonight.

Thanks to all the artists who helped me through today, especially Meat Beat Manifesto, and The Dropkick Murphys.

TTFN - Kent

There is nothing new under the sun

ksharkey — Tue, 09 Mar 2004 21:49:00 GMT

<rant>

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

- Ecclesiastes 1:9

Probably the one and only time you may see a Bible quote on my blog. I've been looking at the verbatims (those comments that some of you write on the articles on the ASP.NET Developer Center and vsdc), and I've been seeing a sad trend that I also frequently see on /. That is, people complaining about something, “That's not new, I've been doing this for years with <foo>”. Usually, this comes from 'old timers', but occasionally in a competitive situation as well.

My usual feeling is, “Yes, what's your point?” There is very little (read: nothing) new. There is very little that you can only build using newer technologies such as .NET, J2EE etc. You can build web services in x86 assembly or probably Apple II machine language if you worked really hard. Does that mean that .NET or J2EE is less capable? For example, NUnit, “I've been doing TDD for years with JUnit“. OK, does that make it a bad article? Perhaps you should write an article on your experiences. (OK, bad example in that point). OK, I'm babbling now, but I didn't sleep much last night.

</rant>

TTFN - Kent
PS: Wow, the first item I've actually checked off my 'Bitterness' category in a while. I must be a happy, happy person.

Public Resolution

ksharkey — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 01:31:00 GMT

I know it's not New Years' Eve, but I want to use this public venue to make a resolution.

I, Kent Sharkey, promise to try to avoid commenting on the poor quality of other's code, except in a constructive manner. I likely simply don't understand the choices made, and development situation of those programs. I also promise to avoid disparaging certain products in comparison with other, similar programs.

These promises include, but are not limited to:

Lotus Notes
Microsoft Exchange vs. Post.Office
Microsoft Passport
Any instant messaging product vs. Jabber
Microsoft Outlook (OK, 2003 actually removed this from my list, except for synchronization with devices)
Internet Explorer vs. Firebird
Longhorn
The DOS command shell vs. 4NT
Newsgroups (wait, that's not a code-thing, so I still hate them)
Google vs. Microsoft Search

Thank you all for your patience,
TTFN - Kent
[Listening to: Pikachu by Apoptygma Berserk]

I hate/love RSS

ksharkey — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:00:00 GMT

I've been doing a fair bit of internal development lately (one of my excuses for not writing articles for MSDN), and this development seems to be leaning to RSS a *lot* lately.

I love RSS

Developing for RSS is simple. Grab a bunch of RSS files. Run the fabulous Infer tool on them to generate an XML Schema. Touch up the RSS by hand. Use the xsd.exe utility to generate some classes. Touch up the generated classes. Poof! You have a ready set of classes that can read and write RSS. I've written about these in the past -- nothing exciting really. Point the classes at some RSS (0.9x or 2.0, and some 1.0 files), and you have a set of classes nice & easy to work with.

I hate RSS

Developing for RSS can be a pain in the fanny. The main reason is there is no RSS. There are RSS. 0.91, 0.92, 1.0, 2.0, many with assorted extension tags thrown in. A case in point. I'm currently working on an ASP.NET Server Control to display RSS (yes, I could have done it simply with XSLT -- been there, done that, Duncan's writing an article about it). On our team alone (MSDN Content Strategists) there are five formats for RSS -- one each for Brian, Chris, Tim and Shawn, and one used by Matt, Duncan and myself. Tim supports a number of comment tags, and dc:Date. Duncan's supports a number of comment tags, and pubDate. Brian's supports one form of comment, and pubDate. Some people put the blog entries in the description element; others in the xhtml body. Some apply the xhtml body to the body element, others don't (<xhtml:body xmlns:body=”...”> as opposed to <body xmlns=”...”>). And don't get me started on RSS 1.0 (aka RDF RSS) Parsing RSS, therefore, is an endless series of “does it have this?”

Would you like Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate, or Neopolitan?

As I was exercising, I realized (yes, I'm slow) that this is an excellent example of the benefit of standards bodies and specifications. Compare RSS to SOAP. RSS is a mess of “it should do this -- it's not in the spec, so I'll add it”. SOAP, while it took forever to go through the W3, is much cleaner. The efforts that SOAPBuilders did to ensure interop should be an example to all. Do whatever you want, but make certain you can talk with everyone else.

So, what to do?

There should be an effort to create a real spec. It shouldn't be just a few people proposing something, it should be driven though some body, at least once it gels. Step one should be creating a test suite, then allow people to implement and test. Be willing to change your ideas if everyone else hates it (think of poor Section 5 here). Write a real specification and schema.

Just lame thoughts from a lame brain, however I see RSS/Echo/nEcho/Atom as being a great “Push” complement to Web Services' “Pull” capabilities.

TTFN - Kent

I guess it thought I wanted to know

ksharkey — Tue, 01 Jul 2003 16:24:00 GMT

I think I received a cry of boredom from my SQL Server today (from the Event Log):

Event Type: Information
Event Source: MSSQLSERVER
Event Category: (2)
Event ID: 17177
Date:  7/1/2003
Time:  12:00:23 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: GLADIUS
Description:
This instance of SQL Server has been using a process id of 1764 since 6/11/2003 6:35:33 PM (local) 6/12/2003 1:35:33 AM (UTC).

Or maybe it's just excited that I've gone for that long without restarting?

Unicode doesn't work when you don't have the fonts...

ksharkey — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 21:39:00 GMT

Graphical version of my previous punchline:

TTFN - Kent

[Listening to: A Drug Against War - KMFDM]

Your mileage must vary

ksharkey — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 21:30:00 GMT

I'm sure many of you have heard about the meeting, and perhaps two of you care. Indeed, I've even seen some people worry that we may fall off the web. Well, let me assure you... Oh, wait, I have to add the Legal Disclaimer to this blog entry first (per Microsoft Legal Department, and Community Communications):

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm

Ce message est fourni en l’état, sans garantie d’aucune sorte, et ne vous confère aucun droit. Vous assumez tous les risques liés à son utilisation.

Microsoft kann für die Richtigkeit und Vollständigkeit der Inhalte in dieser Newsgroup keine Haftung übernehmen.

????? ?? ?????? "??? ????" ??? ?? ?????? ?? ??????, ????? ????? ?? ?????? ?????.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????

? ????? ??? ??? ?? “?? ???” ???? ?? ???? ??? ??? ???? ????.

Il presente posting viene fornito “così come é”, senza garanzie, e non conferisce alcun diritto.

Este mensaje se proporciona "como está" sin garantías de ninguna clase, y no otorga ningún derecho.

????“??”?????????,???????????

?????"??"??,?????????,????????

So, where was I? Hmmm. Haven't a clue. Oh, well, stay tuned for the next time I enter my disclaimer, and perhaps have something to add.

TTFN - Kent

[Listening to: Walla Walla - The Offspring]