Friday, October 3, 2003

Tonight is Friday night, which means the Sells family generally has pizza and a movie at home. However, since we’ve been through most of Blockbuster’s catalog and the boys aren’t quite old enough for most of my DVD collection (9 is a tad young for things like Fight Club…), we thought we’d take in the new Jack Black movie School of Rock. Kids-in-Mind.com gives it a 3.3.3, heavy on the poop jokes (which my sons like) and heavy on the irreverence (which I like), so it seemed like a winner. However, as most movies start between 7-7:30pm and I just noticed it was 6:30p but Melissa wasn’t home with the boys, I started the calling. First was her cell, but I remember her telling me it was out of batteries. Then it was her sister’s house, where she had been, but she had left for a friend’s. Then the friend, but no answer. And then I remembered my son and his cell phone.

My son is 9 years old. He’s been into computers and gadgets of all kinds since before he was 3. A few months ago, he was digging around and found my old Nokia cell phone. It had some cool games, so he charged it up and started carrying it around with him. Then, he wanted minutes so he could make his own calls. So we finally found our way to the local AT&T wireless place (which wasn’t really very local at all) and he spent his allowance money on pre-paid minutes ($10 for 20 minutes). After less than a week, he was down to 8 minutes left. He’s most just calling his friends from our car (where I have my cell in my pocket w/o unlimited monthly minutes) or from our house (where we don’t have long distance, but we do still have a land line), but it’s his phone and his money and it gives him pleasure.

It did, however, freak my wife out. “A 9-year old doesn’t need a cell phone!” she’d say. I’d explain that it was his own money. “A 9-year old doesn’t need a cell phone! Drug dealers have cell phones!” She and I both have our own cell phones and besides the occasional glass of wine, we don’t even *use* drugs, let alone *sell* them. And while no amount of reasoning with her stopped her from being upset, she didn’t say he couldn’t have a cell phone, so now he does. That he keeps charged. And that he carries. And that he spends his own money on minutes for. And that I just called because he was with his mother:

“Hello?” said my 9-year-old son on his very own cell phone, surprised but pleased to get a call.

“Can I talk to your mother?”

“Sure.”

“Hello. Sorry. My cell phone ran out of batteries,” she said.

“Aren’t you glad that John has a cell phone?” I asked, not bothering to keep the smug out of my voice.

“Hmphf,” she said, not bothering to keep the annoyed out of hers.

I think I may pay for his next batch of minutes just so I can keep calling her on his phone. : )

This 3-part series really belonged as a chapter in my WinForms book, but after doubling the estimated size of the book (not to mention the amount of time it was supposed to take to write it), my publisher was anxious for me to stop writing. For those folks accustomed to the document management support in MFC or for anyone that needs to build document-centric WinForms application, I think you'll like this series. Part 1 discusses the basics of document management in SDI WinForms apps. Part 2 discusses MDI apps and deeper shell integration. Part 3 wraps most everything up into a reusable component, turning the construction of document management features in .NET largely into some drag-n-drop and some property browser settings. The resultant FileDocument component is available in the latest Genghis sources (although not yet in the release zip) @ http://www.genghisgroup.com Enjoy.

As well as women would do without us, it's clear to me that the two sexes have evolved as a pair, although whether that'll be enough to make saving us worth the trouble, I don't know. For example, my wife may well decide to replace me with a footstool to reach things on the high shelves and call it good. : ) [boingboing.net]

Saturday, September 13, 2003

When I was a kid, the source of universal knowledge at home was the set of dusty encyclopedias that my Mom inherited from somewhere. Today, it’s the Internet, via Google. That in itself makes Google the fulfillment of most sci-fi novels’ description of the the-store-of-all-human knowledge (I wish the text of all books were up, but that’ll happen in time…).

Anyway, it didn’t hit me just how comprehensive Google was ‘til I typed in ‘“Joe Grammer” wife’ yesterday (I was calling and wanted to be prepared to address his very nice wife by name in case she answered the phone). In 0.39 seconds, Google gave 45 results, the 3rd of which contained Joe’s wife’s name! It was Joe himself who’d mentioned his wife’s name in a mailing list post but still, that’s pretty damn scary…

I'm sure it won't last, but the WinForms book has broken 1000 (908) and has an average 5-star rating with three reviews, saying very nice things like: "This book rocks! ... All chapters are brilliant." "The localisation and resource usage in the managed world are clearly described and you won't lose hours trying to access resources in your code anymore!" "I stayed up all last night reading Chris' new book... I enjoyed every single page." And, of course, the quote that makes my life complete: "Move over Petzold, Sells is here."

Even in my short time at Microsoft so far, I’ve have already learned a *ton* from marketing. Of course, I’m working with lots of marketing folks as we get closer to the PDC. Because of my role, I have to worry about what’s good for the developer. Marketing guys, on the other hand, have to balance that with what’s good for the administrator, what’s good for the user, what’s good for the company, what’s good for the shareholders and what’s good for a bunch of other folks I don’t even know about. And, they have to do it for all of the streams of information coming out of the company, which now includes lots of informal streams like newsgroups, message boards, user group talks and blogs. Anyone that can balance all of these folks and still get developers what they need has my unabashed respect.

My 8-year old was proud to remind me that today was the two-year anniversary of 9/11. I was surprised that he knew and grateful to his school for taking the time to discuss it. He then went on to tell me how cool he thought the explosions were, which left me less pleased with his school. When I told him about my own experiences that day and how many people died, it immediately took all of the “coolness” right out of the day for him.

George Bullock, a colleague at MS who’s birthday happens to fall on 9/11, has also had the “coolness” taken out of the day for him and sent around a mail that starts this way:

“Let us pause on 9/11 to remember and honor the thousands killed, maimed, put out of work, and traumatized two years ago; also to honor the heroic, living and dead, who rose to the occasion on that terrible day. May God rest their souls and keep and protect their loved ones. May God also keep and protect our men and women serving here and abroad. Yes, there is much difference of opinion about what’s happening in the world today; nevertheless, I think we all support the men and women of our armed forces and wish them a safe return home. They sacrifice a lot to serve their country.”

Personally, I try very hard not to let the terrorists get to me. Unfortunately, they have. Even time I get the anal probe treatment at the airport or a personal freedom is taken away by the Patriot Act or my sister-in-law is afraid to fly (and flat out refuses to fly on that day), they win. More subtly, ever time a US politician uses “terrorism” to push their own agenda, they also win. Please don’t let them win. Have courage. Try to understand what it was that drove them to terrorism to attract our attention. Compare their lives to ours. But don’t let them win. Don’t let them take the right to the pursuit of happiness out of our lives.

Friday, September 5, 2003

I would classify my style of communication as “get to conflict sooner rather than later.” A radio DJ once classified engineering abilities as a series of personality flaws that are accidentally useful in today’s IT industry and, arguably, he’s right. For most folks that have to work with me, it’s generally hard at first, but eventually you either love me or hate me (and I continuously work to tip that percentage towards the former : ).

However, it’s the rare individual that can see past someone’s personal communications style and still pull out the value. Alan Cooper is one such person. I was reading one of his books and was so lost that I called and blamed him and his parents. He straightened me out by letting politely me know that he book wasn’t even trying to solve my problems and therefore it’s not surprising that it didn’t. Further, he ended his email like this:

“PS. Your enquiries frustrate the hell out of me. That’s why they are good and I want you to keep making them. If I growl at you, well, that’s my problem. Not yours.”

I don’t know if other people would appreciate Alan encouraging my behavior, but it’s still cool to know that such tolerance exists in the world. : )