I recently talked to a former client for whom I'd architected a system 4-5 years ago. When I left, they had a technical staff of about 10 and 2 clients using the back-end system we developed. Today, they have the same size technical staff and 900 clients using the system …

I screwed up an online order entry and wrote to customer service, saying that I wanted to affirm that I ordered two instead of one. This was how "Josh" began addressing the issue: "I recognize your concern that you want to affirm that you ordered...." Seems rather Eliza-esque to me …

Fluffernutters banned from schools. Mmmm.... Fluffernutter. Between Fluff, Necco Wafers, Hoodsies, and Drake's Cakes, my Boston childhood was apparently in line with the "eat locally" value. I wonder where Spaghettios were invented...

Richard Gabriel's famous essay "The Rise of Worse is Better" (which, incidentally, I still think was originally published by me when I was editing AI Expert) details the "survival characteristics" of two approaches to software design: the "MIT approach" and the "New Jersey approach" (Bell Labs). He proposes these characteristics …

The sharp and capable Clemens Vaster says that "XML is the assembly language of Web 2.0," drawing a complexity/productivity analogy to higher-level programming languages, which everyone but Steve Gibson thinks are worthwhile tools. The upshot: "[we] have arrived at the point where matters have gotten so complicated that …

ActiveSync is the worst piece of software I use on a regular basis. I hate it: the way it irregularly wakes up the device, the way it loses profiles, the way it deals with resolving conflicts, its bugs... Vista apparently has device synchronization built in to it, hopefully rewritten from …

My "knowing" exercises made the Digg homepage. Now I have to resist the temptation to check the comments every 15 minutes...

Failed...Okay, this time for sure...

::: {style="direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-left:0in;width:6.5562in"} ::: {style="direction:ltr;margin-top:0in;margin-left:0in;width:4.7902in"} Minesweeper: It Was the Other One :::

::: {style="direction:ltr;margin-top:.0493in;margin-left:0in;width:1.5854in"} Saturday, June 17, 2006

9:33 AM :::

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Weird. On one of my Tablets, the "Start" button has stopped working. It changes color when you mouse / pen over, but when you click on it ... nothing. Kind of a problem.

This is the final post in a series of 3 covering 15 exercises that provide a sense of a programming  language's idioms and "feel." For newcomers, if you can't "jump in" and tackle these exercises in a  particular programming language, don't embarrass yourself by claiming to know that language. For …