Grandma says that all US Sells are related from the original Sells that came across on the boat after the May Flower.

My father pointed out that my boys are not, in fact, the original Sells Brothers (and that we must be related, as the originals have his haircut).

TimT said:

od oy dp,ryjomh ;olr yjodz
[d. dpttu. gomhrtd pm yjr etpmh lrud
//yo,

SerdarK said:

Is that Elfish?

ShawnV said:

I think it *is* elvish… let me put my laptop in the fire. Ah yes, I can read it clearly now:

One Desktop to rule them all, One Desktop to find them
One Desktop to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
in the land of Redmond, where the shadows lie

Off Topic mailing list

Sung to “Shaft” by Isaac Hayes <http://www.shaft-themovie.com/soundtrack/track01.mp3>

Who’s the man with tongue-in-cheek
that’s a code machine to all the geeks?

(Box!)

You’re damn right.
Who is the man
that would replace COM for its brother runtime?

(Box!)

Can ya dig it?
Who’s the cat that won’t cop out
when there’s IDispatch all about

(Box!)

Right on
You see this cat Box is a bad mother–

(Shut your mouth)

But I’m talkin’ about Box

(Then we can dig it)

He’s a complicated man
but no one understands him but his pointers

(Don Box)

John Bristowe
Wed 12/19/2001 2:02 PM
dotnet discussion [DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM]

Tue, 12/18/01

During my three years as director of a software project, I learned a lot about people. In fact, I have a little text file entitled “My life as a dog” that may find a home on this site one day. However, because of a thread on the Windows Technical Off Topic list, one of the things I learned came roaring back like a bad acid trip.

The #1 problem with any organization is always communication. You can do postmortems on projects all day long and only #2 and above will be a surprise. The problem is that to build anything of any size, you need a team. As soon as you have to communicate what’s in your head to some number of other people, it’s going to happen imperfectly. The best way that we’ve been able to come up with to deal with this issue is hierarchical structures to practice selective information hiding, i.e. exactly the way we build software.

However, unlike software, humans have feelings and as soon as they perceive that somebody is hiding something from them, they resent it. Again and again, when I see information withheld to hide “bad” news, those being hidden from know something is up and they get upset. And when they’re upset, they send emails and IMs and phone calls around the company looking for every scrap of information they can find, all the while ignoring the work that suddenly seems a waste of time in the face of impending doom. The surprising thing is that when folks are given the truth openly and honestly, no matter how bad it is, they almost always dig in and deal with it. Just knowing that they’re trusted with the secrets of the company seems to boost morale.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to post their daily activities for everyone to see — that’s too much information. But I am saying that everyone from the CEO on down should be open about the issues they face, including being open to scrutiny and suggestions. I find that after doing that long enough, folks working for me tend to trust me to make the right decisions, leaving them to focus on their own work.

The key is that, unlike software systems where components have information hidden from them by their clients, humans can only be effective if they know that the information is available when they want it. Information hiding still needs to happen, but it’s humans that need to choose to hide information from themselves. It whole thing falls apart if the managers do the hiding.

Sat, 12/1/01

Effective C# is available now from Addison-Wesley. Of course, it’s called Effective Java, but *wow* the overlap is amazing. Some of his items I don’t agree with, e.g. return zero-length arrays instead of null (although I see his side) and others have been “fixed” due to advances in C#, e.g. override clone judiciously, but so much of it makes sense in C# (and .NET in general) that it’s scary. I feel like asking AW for the text so that I can port it to C# over the weekend. : )

A friend of mine stumbled over this in the Microsoft source code:

//  Function:   RunCommandEx
//  Synopsis:   runs the given command in the current session, more robust
//				than RunCommand
//  Arguments:  none
//  Returns:    S_OK if success
//  History:    October 3, 2000 - created [name withheld to protect the guilty]
HRESULT RunCommandEx(LPCWSTR szCmdLine) {
	DWORD dwTry = 0;
	HRESULT hResult = S_OK;

	// try run command 3 times at most
	while (dwTry<4) {
		hResult = RunCommand(szCmdLine);
		if (hResult!=E_FAIL) {
			// we succeeded
			break;
		}
		dwTry++;
	}
	if (dwTry==4) {
		ATLTRACE(L"COuld start the command even we tried 4 times\n");
		ASSERT(FALSE);
	}
	return hResult;
}

That’s not quite my definition of robust, but oh well…

Tue 11/27/2001 3:52 PM

“Steal this song right off my page.” You can find it at http://www.ferncrk.com/jittin.html. Use only in well ventilated area. Do not expose to open flame.

Stuart Celarier
Tue 11/27/2001 3:41 PM

Friday, 11/16/01

Last night, in the middle of .NET Band on the Runtime set, Don announced his retirement from DevelopMentor and training. He’s sorry to be leaving us, of course, as we are to lose him, but he’s excited about doing new things. Running a company gets more consuming as a company gets more successful and Don certainly brought DevelopMentor a great deal of success. And not only did he run his part of the company, but he also brought a amount of rigor and insight to an amazing range of technology topics, including C++, COM, DCOM, RPC, XML, Java and .NET, heretofore unprecedented in the training industry. He turned the phrase “them that can’t; teach” on its ear. But these are things that are well-known of Don.

What is perhaps not so well known is the care and dedication that he had for his friends and colleagues. He worked hard to turn his personal success into opportunities for the other technical staff members at DevelopMentor. And he succeeded. He paved the way for people like Ted Pattison, Keith Brown, Tim Ewald, Aaron Skonnard, Martin Gudgin and a host of others who’s made a name for themselves in this industry. Of course, I’m also on this list. If you look at the things that I’ve got listed on this site, i.e. books, articles, courses, conference talks, etc, a staggering amount of it was enabled either directly or indirectly by Don Box. He’s an amazing man and it’s been an honor and a privilege to work with him these last six years. They’re been the richest of my career and of my life. And for that, I’d like to thank him.

Before we get too blubbery, Don has assured the world that he will continue to pursue technology and to communicate it to an eager audience. I, for one, look forward to what he decides to do next. Whatever it is, I’m sure it will be uniquely Don.