SaaS: Save the Soup!

This is part of the SaaS series. Any connection to reality will be strictly denied.



"Are you insane?" I half shouted at Biff, my college roommate. We had just finished our Operating  Systems midterm and were lounging at “The Bomber,” our college pub. Biff suggested we both do our last internship at Microsoft.



I had no desire to work at Microsoft, the largest software company in the world back then.  At that point in my career the largest company I’d worked for had 200 employees, and my idea of process was running down the hall asking everyone if they agreed.    But, Biff sold me with his pitch “Look, MS will give us an apartment, a rental car, hell – they will even pay for our gym membership. We can cook awesome meals and get drunk whenever we want. Plus, Seattle has oceans, mountains, world class fencing and bikes everywhere – you’ll love it”. Biff knew how to convince me, so he paid for my IPA and we stumbled out of the pub with our next adventure glittering in our eyes. Seven short weeks later, we’d arrived in Seattle.  Even the trip from the airport to our intern apartment was awesome. You could see the mountains as you drove across lakes, and bike riders were everywhere.



The first night in our apartment, Biff decided to make good on his promise of cooking and getting drunk. Biff began a complex preparation of soup and sent me off to the liquor store for a bottle of cheap Scotch. Let me explain – internships are where you turn theory into practice, not just for technology, but also for life. For example, up to this point, I'd had few experiences with hard liquor nor with drunken foolishness.



Back from the liquor store, Biff was working on the soup. “Good, good you’re back,"  he said. “Pour me a shot.” And so it continued, Biff carefully adding  ingredients and adjusting  the soup, and intermittently saying, “Good, good” and pouring us both a shot. The fun continued for several more rounds of soup adjustments, when Biff started to turn a shade of green and disappeared. Conveniently, I’d been drinking along so I didn’t care about Biff while I finished making the Soup.



A few minutes later I heard a long moan, and went to the bathroom to investigate. Relieved to find Biff on the floor in front of the porcelain throne instead of on it, I was still trying to wrap my head around the situation when Biff groaned “I’m going to die” and curled up in agony.



“I’m going to die, call 911”. Biff moaned again.



Not wanting to report a dead intern to my new employer, I quickly dialed 911.



ME: “My roommate thinks he’s going to die, and he’s had a lot of scotch”

911: “How much did he drink?”

ME: “Half a bottle of scotch.”

911: “How about you sir – have you been drinking?”

ME: “I drank the other half.”

911: “Sir, is your roommate responsive?”

ME: (always the engineer) “When I kick him, he groans.”

911: “Sir, he’s what we call ‘drunk.’ Cover him with a blanket and let him sleep.”



Following the 911 dispatcher’s advice, I threw a blanket over Biff, staggered to my bed and crashed.



The next day at 11 a.m., Biff woke up me up in a frantic state. While I was trying to shake the hangover out of my mind Biff was utterly distraught and begged - ‘oh my god, I fell asleep, the soup – did you save the soup?”

SaaS: Sleeping Bag Sacrifices

This is part of the SaaS series. Any connection to reality will be strictly denied.



I started in Windows Azure in 2007. Back then, the name “Azure” wasn't invented, and Azure was still called “Reddog.” I started on the OS team, drawn in by my dream of changing the world, and getting to be Dave Cutler's lackey. I didn't get to work with Cutler, but I still may change the world - now that I’ve learned it’s OK to wake sleeping giants. My giant was named Jay.



See, when you join a team at Microsoft, you're assigned a mentor and I was assigned Jay. Jay is a technical wiz. He knows nine flavors of assembly, and has every machine type back to the PDP-11. Jay's also a little odd.



For example, my first day on the team, I wanted to make a good impression, so I sent a mail to the team calling out something clever with the intention of impressing. Four hours later, Jay replied with a 22-page analysis. I started reading, but by page two, I was sweating bullets and scared. Luckily, as I was starting the third page, a new mail arrived. It was another member of the OS team replying with a translation: "Jay means – Yes, good thinking."



Another interesting thing about Jay was he kept a sleeping bag at work and often slept under his desk. I was intimidated by Jay's technical brilliance, so I decided to ask Colin, a fast-tracked junior executive, what to make of Jay sleeping under his desk. Specifically, could I wake Jay up and ask him questions? After all, Jay was MY mentor.



"Dude, imagine if you were sleeping at home, would you want to be woken up? Of course not, let Jay sleep!" – Colin scolded. Armed with Colin's advice, I let Jay sleep in peace.



Several weeks later, I was 12 consecutive hours into fixing a tough bug and needing a break. I grabbed an IPA and decided to shoot the shit with Jay, who was wide awake with me at 2 a.m.  We talked for a while about cloud computing and esoteric coding convention when Jay paused a few moments longer than usual. He tried to start his sentence a couple times, but was unable to find the right words or the right tone. Eventually, he looked down at the label he had been peeling off of his beer and in a more withdrawn tone than usual, began to answer the question I should have asked HIM directly weeks ago.



"Hey, I take my mentorship responsibilities very seriously, and I noticed you've never woken me up. You know if I wasn't your mentor, I'd be at home sleeping in my comfortable bed."



I guess the only thing worse than waking your mentor up night after night is letting them sleep under their desk in untapped anticipation.

I love my 27" IPS monitors with 2560x1440 resolution

Jeff Atwood covered his religious experience with these monitors here.

I have another post talking about the monitor sizes and physical dimensions here.



Most days I spend hours staring at my monitor.  As a result, I make sure I have the most awesome monitors I can afford.  Right now, that's 27" 2560x1440 IPS monitors.  If you've never seen these, find wise friend who already has them, and ask for a demo . Once you've seen them, you'll want to know how to go about buying them.



In Feb 2013, you have 3 choices for this awesome panel:



Choice 1) Off brand from Korea, via EBAY ~ 330: 



I got my first 27" monitor from Korea on Ebay for 330$ with shipping.  Shipping took 2 days, it had some missing screws in the mount (I don't care since I use monitor arms), and it had a Korean plug (I don't care since I have that plug ~ 4$).  The monitor only supports DVI input (this matters, we'll talk about it shortly). I'm pretty sure if the monitor was busted, the hassle of trying to get it fixed would make it a write off, but I've had no troubles.



NOTE: There are lots of different monitors on EBay from this seller, I've no idea how to tell them apart.



Choice 2) Off brand from America, via MicroCenter ~ 420: 



I got my second 27" monitor from Micro Center, for 420$ with chipping.  Shipping took 2-3 weeks, this had all it's screws and american power adapters.  The key difference in this monitor is that it has display port, VGA, HDMI as well as DVI input.  In my opinion this is worth an extra 70$.   I have no idea how warranty would work this monitor, but I bet it must suck less then dealing with a company in Korea.



Choice 3) Brand name from America,  via Dell ~700:



I haven't bought this monitor from Dell, but I'm sure it'll be wonderful quality and have all the connector choices.  All my other monitors are top of the line Dell's which I bought for ~1000$ each, not one of them has failed, or even disappointed me ever.



A note about video cards, connectors, and resolution:



Single DVI (normal) can only drive upto 1920x1200. If you want to drive this monitor, you need to makes

sure your video card supports Dual DVI.



If you have a 10$ display port to DVI cable, that'd be a display port to single DVI cable. If you want   display port to Dual DVI, you'll need an 80$ cable. Thus I recommend getting a monitor with Display Port input, if the price difference is less than 100$.



A note about 30" monitors:



The same ebay vendor who sells 27" monitors has 30" 2560x1600  IPS monitors for 350$.   Be careful, as these have a matte finish.  I bought one, and I'm not thrilled.  This is my first monitor with a matte finish so I can't tell if it's a poorly done matte finish, or I just don't like matte finish. In either case, I do not recommend 30" matte finish monitors.



A note about monitor arms: 

Worthy of another post, but in a nutshell totally worth it - I use this cheap one at home.

Remap CapLocks to Control on Windows RT (aka Surface)

Skip this post if you don't  know the gospel of mapping your caps lock key to the control key. 

This post was stolen from Ed Anderson.



On the Microsoft Surface  (aka Windows RT) you can't run unsigned code, so we can't run the awesome ctrl2cap. Luckily, windows supports key remapping higher in the stack via the scan code mapper.  I leave figuring out what exactly this powershell snippet is doing as an exercise to the reader. Simply run the following script  from an admin power shell console and then reboot.

Set-ItemProperty -path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" -name "Scancode Map" -Value ([byte[]](0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x02,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x1d,0x00,0x3a,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00))

SaaS: Canadian Spotting

This is part of the SaaS series. Any connection to reality will be strictly denied.



“I bet you the bill that dude by the window is Canadian,” I challenged.



Sam, my favorite architect, glanced over the top of his menu and nodded his acceptance. Sam was over-confident given I’d lost our last two design debates.



But, as a Canadian engineer, I happen to know a bit about Mohawk Indians, Canadian bridges and epic failures, and I have no qualms about using said knowledge to pay for my IPA.



You see, in the early 1900s, the Mohawk Indians found a profitable outlet for their intense, fearless nature – steel working. Their boundless courage enabled them to rivet steel girders 80 stories above the ground with the same vigor they ferociously displayed on the battlefield in days gone by.



Mohawk men were the preferred steel workers of the time and with their help, construction began on the Quebec Bridge – the largest bridge in the world in its day. Soon after work began, the lead engineer discovered a problem. The bridge wouldn't hold and collapse was imminent. He warned management, but was ignored. This negligence resulted in death.



Because an engineer didn't do the right thing, the bridge fell and took the lives of 33 Mohawk steel workers with it.



This tragedy still serves as a guiding principle to engineering students today. The students’ wise predecessors had portions of that fallen bridge forged into iron rings, which are passed on during a secret ceremony, reminding graduating engineers to place ethics and moral obligations on the same tier as physics and mathematics. Just like the rings’ previous owners, today’s engineers hear the “clink, clink” on their desks as they work and are reminded of this paramount obligation.



The food was fantastic, and I clinked the table with my ring as Sam paid for my dinner!

Hg-git installer for windows

This post  assumes you're a developer who has python and visual studio installed and are just trying to get hg-git to work on your windows box. 



I'll admit it, I
know and love mercurial, and I haven't got a clue how to use git. Sure I can learn,

but why bother since
there is a mercurial adapter called hg-git? The only fly in the ointment is installing hg-git on windows. The installer is annoying, so I wrote a powershell script to handle it for me. 

The installation script, which is self contained  in powershell, does the hard work of installation and complains if you're missing dependencies.  You can download it here, or see the original version inline below: 

# Install hg-git, on a windows machine.
#   This script makes lots of assumptions - you're welcome to fix it to be less
#   restricitive. 
###############################################################################

#Helper Functions START
###############################################################################
function DownloadFile ($file)
{
    $uri = new-Object System.Uri $file ; 
    $localPath =  "$($pwd.Path)\$($uri.Segments[-1])"; 
    (new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($uri,$localPath); 
    $localPath
}
#Helper Functions END
###############################################################################

# Assert Python is installed.
###############################################################################
$pythonPath = "c:\python27"
if (!(Test-Path $pythonPath))
{
    $msg = "Python Is not installed checked at [$pythonPath]";
    throw $msg;
}

# Install easy_install if needed.
###############################################################################
$easyInstallPath = "$pythonPath\scripts\easy_install.exe"
if ((Test-Path $easyInstallPath))
{
    Write-Host("++ ez_setup already installed");
}
else
{
    $localFile = DownloadFile("http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py")
    . $localFile 
}


#Installer is going to need VS9.0
# Use it, or VS11, if that's installed. 
###############################################################################
if (!(gci env: | ? {$_.Name -eq "VS90COMNTOOLS"})) 
{
    # If VS 11 is installed, we can use that instead, python just needs to be told.
    if ((gci env: | ? {$_.Name -eq "VS110COMNTOOLS"})) 
    {
        Write-Host "++ Setting environment to contain VS Common Tools Installed"
        $env:VS90COMNTOOLS = $env:VS110COMNTOOLS;
    }
}


if (!(gci env: | ? {$_.Name -eq "VS90COMNTOOLS"})) 
{
    $msg = "VS Common Tools are not installed - install VS express";
    throw $msg;
}
else
{
    Write-Host "++ VS Common Tools Installed"
}

# Run easy-install hg_git, with path will involve compilation.
###############################################################################
Invoke-Expression "$easyInstallPath hg-git"


# Make sure mercurialIni exists.
###############################################################################
$mercurialIniPath = "~\Mercurial.ini"
if (!(Test-Path $mercurialIniPath ))
{
    $msg = "Mercurial.ini not found at [$mercurialIniPath]";
    throw $msg;
}

# if Mercurial.ini exists, test if it contains the plugin.
# if not tell user to install the plugin.
###############################################################################
$hggitInstallLine =  "hggit = c:/python27/lib/site-packages/hg_git-0.3.4-py2.7.egg/hggit";

if (select-string $hggitInstallLine -Path $mercurialIniPath)
{
    Write-Host "++ WooHoo - hg git installed, you can now use hg clone git+https://"
}
else
{
    Invoke-Expression $mercurialIniPath
    Write-Host "Please add $hggitInstallLine to $mercurialIniPath";
}