I can't really improve on this: "Head teachers have banned children from using video phones to stop them slapping other pupils in the face and recording the attacks on their mobiles.”

Jason Olson recently interviewed for an SDE/T position (Software Development Engineer in Test) at Microsoft and although he didn't get it, he provides some words of advice for folks about to interview for the first time.

If you’ve got .NET 2.0 and the Nov. ’04 Avalon CTP, click here to play my scaling, vector-based, WinFX version of Solitaire. Features include lovely scaling of the cards as the window resizes, real-time drag ‘n’ drop of the cards, sol-like card stacking, ClickOnce deployment and the source. The performance in this version is much improved because I’m re-using DrawingBrushes and a simplified card back. Enjoy!

In honor of Rory Blyth’s birthday, Jim Blizzard has posted a Haiku. I’m not so cultured as Jim, as I could only manage a limerick:

There once was a lad named Rory,
who told many a bawdy story.
He came right out,
like an orgasmic shout,
spreading mirth in drum-beating glory.

Happy birthday, pal. : )

I don't know what Amazon is doing -- except possibly trying to stimulate blog entries -- because I could detect no advertising in there most recent home page movie short, “Tooth Fairy,” but I did enjoy it.

This is what Don Box’s 12-year old son thought a good last minute costume would be when trick-or-treating the Indigo halls of Microsoft suddenly seemed an imperative. I guess this is the consequence of having a life-sized cardboard cutout readily available…

Don Box
Personal Email
Tue 11/2/2004 6:12 PM

It started off innocently enough. I corrected Tom when he tried to put down words like “pils,” “Rome” and “trool,” even giving him a letter or two to help him make his words (he’s only 9, after all, and this was his first game of Scrabble). Then, I ran out of ideas and we needed long words to get into the empty spaces, so I put down with “faxer” (someone who faxes). After that, it was all down hill into “roddy” (someone with a lot of rods), “naped” (the flip of hair across your forehead), “soapic” (very soapy) and, my personal favorite, “oifbath” (good for sores on your skin), all the time fighting to keep a straight face.

However, when I busted Tom for putting down “zin” (“double” in “Tom language”), he started pointing the finger at “trux” (Latin for multiple vehicles), looked it up in our unabridged Webster’s (I’ve got to get rid of that thing…), called his mother to double-check and the whole thing came falling down around my ears. My visions of Tom in his 30s calling me from a party complaining that “glev” wasn’t actually a kind of rock have been dashed.

Still, while I am proud of my son for catching onto to my “creativity,” luckily there are all kinds of other, more subtle lies that I’ve told him that are set to trigger in my retirement years, sure to motivate him to call, even if only to curse my name. : )

(I couldn’t possibly explain. Click the picture…)

Rory Blyth
Saturday, October 09, 2004 12:50 AM
www.Neopolean.com