Keith Pleas Blog

Going to Milan in August...

keithpleas — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 22:39:00 GMT

...with Jenny for a couple of weeks. We'll be taking side trips to other cities, and would welcome any suggestions!

UPS Gets the Job Done

keithpleas — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:35:00 GMT

As everyone in the PNW knows, there was a lot of snow here just before Christmas. We live at the top of the "driveway from hell" on Mercer Island, and we haven't had any UPS deliveries for over a week. We even tracked down our delivery driver, and he said "yeah, we have some packages for you but nobody knows where they are". My UPS tracking showed things loaded out for delivery a couple of days before XMAS, but...nothing showed up.

Well, today after lunch at Yuzen (our favorite) on the South end of Mercer Island I snapped this photo of _7_ UPS trucks parked together and a bunch of "brown" guys hustling packages between trucks.

When we got home, we had 8 UPS packages on our doorstep (including an extra hard drive for my WHS!)

Kudos to the drivers for taking the initiative to sort this out..

Encouraging Bad Coding?

keithpleas — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:05:00 GMT

A recent office-cleaning turned up a quote I'd kept from an automotive magazine from 20 years ago:

"Protecting drivers from the consequences of bad driving encourages bad driving"

Well, that seems reasonable to me. If you didn't have bumpers, seatbelts, airbags, and whatever...you'd probably be encouraged to drive more carefully, right? And the Darwinian aspect would help cleanse the pool of bad drivers. So, how well would this translate to software development?

"Protecting developers from the consequences of bad coding encourages bad coding"

Of course, it's not just coding - you could substitute architecture or pretty much any other activity and the statement might still be true - and relevant.

Design for Operations on dnrTV

keithpleas — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:33:00 GMT

I've been working with the patterns & practices group on the "Design for Operations" initiative, and dnrTV episode 100 (up today) covers the Team System Management Model Designer that we're going to be releasing as a CTP within then next week or so.

http://www.dnrtv.com/

Computer History Museum Memories

keithpleas — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:48:00 GMT

An interesting story in the Seattle Times about the Computer History Museum triggered some memories of a reception we did there for a patterns & practices Summit event a couple of years ago.

At the time, Ward Cunningham was with the http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/practices/default.aspx, and - as you might expect with an industry icon - he had more than a passing familiarity with much of the hardware there. He clearly recalled using this machine:

Here's another picture of Billy Hollis and Rocky Lhotka taking in the history:

p&p Summit / VSTS Summit Quick Survey

keithpleas — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:21:00 GMT

We are actively planning the next patterns & practices Summit (scheduled for this November in Redmond), which will be coinciding with the new Visual Studio Team System Summit. To help us better program these events, we would very much appreciate your answering a brief - 6 question - survey about what you’d like to see most in upcoming Summit events.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=33323757584

It's been a while...

keithpleas — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:34:00 GMT

...but today JibJab launched its latest video called "What We Call The News" – it's a parody of the media and the crazy things they now call 'news' (Britney Spears, fingers in food, etc.).

According to my step-son Joey - who works there - it'll be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight…and JibJab founders Gregg and Evan are actually getting to meet President Bush today. That would be interesting...

Assuming you like the video J, you can "Digg It" at:

http://digg.com/videos/comedy/JibJab_s_New_Video_Skewers_CNN_MSNBC_Fox_News_and_More

All slides, no code?

keithpleas — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:50:00 GMT

Ran across this comment (from memory) on an evaluation form for an Advanced Smart Client workshop that Billy Hollis and I have done a couple of times at VSLive:

"Slides are nice - I can choose not to pay attention. It's not like following code - with Billy (the evangelist) you can't miss a beat".

No comment.

Why developers shouldn't test their own software...

keithpleas — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:31:00 GMT

My new wife (6 weeks today!) got her new business cards through her company's web-based application, and they say she now works for the "IT Department". Which was a bit of a surprise, considering that she's a clinical research technician for a large pharamceutical company.

It turns out that if you change one of the fields while filling out the web form (we're not sure which one since it was a couple of weeks ago, but "last name" would be a good guess), it resets your organization as well. To the "IT Department". Which probably seemed like a good idea to whoever developed the application. And, gee, it probably worked as they expected when they "tested" it. <grin>

A belated "thanks!"

keithpleas — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:59:00 GMT

I've been involved in a number of developer conferences over the years and one of the biggest joys of doing these shows can be the people you meet (also one of the biggest...er...challenges as I recall a fellow who followed me off the stage, into the men's room, and then out the door into a cab before I asked "are you going to the airport too?").

Anyway...I want to take this opportunity to highlight a couple of folks from Volvo. At a VSLive conference in Stockholm several years ago, I was talking to them about something (I forget what, but it was probably about .NET localization since I worked on that for the .NET SDK and did a couple of talks there on that subject), noticed that their badges said "Volvo", and asked them if they had any idea who I could contact to get some documentation on the old (circa 1975) Volvo Penta TMD100A diesel engine in my boat.

Well...last year I received an original engine manual for my engine along with this note:

Hi Keith!

We met at the VSLive in Stockholm 2002, and promised you a manual for a Penta engine. Finally we found it.

Regards,
Anders Bogren (not sure of the spelling on that last name!)
Goran Hellstrom

Hey, is that great or what? <smile>

EntLib 2.0 Hands-On-Labs "under development"

keithpleas — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:40:00 GMT

A couple of people have asked about Hands-On-Labs for EntLib (aka "Enterprise Library of Application Blocks"), so I asked Tom Hollander who replied with:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B9BFF619-236C-4BBB-9AA1-2E7BC562C7F5&displaylang=en

These are for EntLib 1.x; new ones are under development for 2.0.

VB6 Migration BOF at TechEd

keithpleas — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 00:26:00 GMT

I'm the host (the TechEd schedule says "speaker" <sigh>) for "Migrating VB6 to VB.NET" at TechEd on Tuesday night from 6:30 to 7:30. Of course, we're going to talk about migrating applications, not the VB product itself...

One of the things I'm planning to have available at the BOF <fingers crossed> is the first few chapters from the upcoming Microsoft patterns & practices guide on this subject, which is currently in production and should be available - with a couple of corresponding planning tools - by the end of July.

Folks from the patterns & practices team, the Visual Basic team, and some of the "usual suspects" in the VB community have all promised to be there so I urge you to come by if this is a subject that interests you (no Karl, we will not be discussing what Microsoft "should have done" <grin>).

"Everything indigo this summer"

keithpleas — Tue, 24 May 2005 01:47:00 GMT

I just got an email with the above subject line. Hmm...really? Gee...I know they've been promising a lot, but "everything"? Wow. Then I looked at the sender...I just got spammed by Pottery Barn. <smile>

"The debugger is not properly installed"

keithpleas — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:11:00 GMT

I too have been a victim of this dreaded problem, likely caused by installing and uninstalling various beta versions of .NET 2.0 frameworks and tools. A great post by Gregg Miskelly (a dev on the VS debugger team) offered tons of promising looking tips, none of which worked. (note: Does anyone know how to interpret the output of DebuggerDiagnostics.exe?).

Of course, Setup - removing, repairing, or reinstalling - all failed. Finally, I just deleted all the files in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VS7Debug (stop the Machine Debug Service first), copied fresh ones from my MSDN DVD, and restarted the service. Bingo.

When Alan talks...

keithpleas — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:25:00 GMT

I mentioned Alan Cooper's keynote at the patterns & practices Summit a couple of weeks back. Alan's talk about "Ending the Death March" was - as expected - outstanding. Here's a picture from the kickback room after his talk with some of our speakers - including Ward Cunningham, Gregor Hohpe, and Rocky Lhotka (headless, on the left) - sitting with Alan and some of attendees: