Warning: strong language ahead...

So I'm attending this webcast on Microsoft Project Server 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh and I can't believe the stupid motherfuckers on the call who:

• Can't mute their god-damned phones.
• Can't leave the screen alone so the presenter can continue.
• Insist on asking questions on the document instead of in chat.
• Start drawing on the document...

Motherfuckers...you'd think we'd be a little better behaved than high school kids...Man, we're all professionals and most importantly, we're all adults man!  WTF?

And then, with regards to the install procedure for the Technical Refresh:

"Yes, I know this is painful, but due to time and resource constraints, this is the best we could come up with."

Garrrrrrrrrgh!

And then the kicker: you can't have SharePoint Beta 2 TR and Project Server Beta 2 TR on the same machine...You MUST install SharePoint Beta 2 TR on a seperate server first and then install Project Server Beta 2 and TR on a second server.

While the reasoning behind using the patching procedure is understandable, what is not so clear is why they do not make both types of upgrades (patch and clean/standalone) available so that some people can test the patching if they are interested in that aspect and that others (the majority) can just test the functionality of Project Server (and not have to worry about the complexity of applying the patch).  The complexity of the TR patch itself will make it likely that many will skip over the TR beta testing and simply continue to use the Beta 2 version.

Even more annoying, no further patches will be provided (no Release Candidates) until RTM so that the bugs in TR will persist until RTM.  I suspect this approach will backfire on the Project team as most people will end up simply using Beta 2 without applying the TR patch.

"B-Team" indeed...

So it looks like the EU is trying to pick Microsoft's pocket again.  The EU is up in fits about Microsoft's inclusion of security features such as Windows Firewall and warns Microsoft that inclusion of such features would bring further fines against it in the future.

Regarding the new security features in Vista, Jonathon Todd, an EU spokesman said:

"Less diversity and innovation would ultimately harm consumers through reduced choice and higher security risks."

What?  Wait, so having an OS that's, by default, not secured at all, somehow helps consumers?  It's entirely contradictory and the EU has lost all credibility with this move.  The inclusion of default security measures is a gesture to help improve the user experience and make sure that users aren't exposed.  If such features were not included, users would likely not even be aware of the need for security related software until it's too late.

It's not as if Microsoft is blocking others from installing security related software on Vista, it's simply providing some simple functionality out of the box so that there is always protection available to the consumer, whether he or she is aware of the need for such software.

And I'm sure if Microsoft didn't include default security software, the EU would have a different stance and claim Microsoft wasn't protecting consumers by providing a stop-gap solution until third party security solutions were installed.

What a debacle...

I don't want to get all mushy here and get too deep into this historic event.  I remember being awoken by my girlfriend then (now wife) with a frantic call to turn on the TV after the first plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center.  I watched in disbelief, as if it were some sort of fiction, as the second plane crashed into the second tower on live television.

My mother was a mere five blocks away from the World Trade Center...it was quite frantic trying to check on her condition as all of the cellular channels were overloaded.  Luckily, she was unharmed and was able to make it out of the city that evening.

There's not much else to comment on this I guess, so I'll leave this with a photograph that I took in March of 2002:

Pretty freaking awesome, actually:

A half-mile below the surface of the New Mexico desert, the federal government is interring thousands of tons of monstrously dangerous leftovers from its nuclear weapons program --plutonium-infested clothing, tools and chemical sludge that will remain potentially lethal for thousands of years to come.

The berm will be implanted with magnets and radar reflectors to make it obvious that it’s not a natural formation. A structure in the center of the space and two subterranean rooms will hold detailed information on the facility, and hundreds of super-hard disks printed with pictographic danger signs will be scattered throughout its 120 acres.

"We looked at what messages had come from deep in time to the present, like the pyramids," explains David B. Givens, an anthropologist specializing in non-verbal communication who helped conceive the warning system. "It boils down to stones," he says -- the only medium so far to have established a track record of retaining messages for as long as 5,000 years.

It's kind of cool to imagine what sorts of creatures will come upon this monument in several millenia and what our world will look like then. It gets me thinking about our perspective of time; we tend to think of things as being non-transient since our life span is limited, but certainly, history shows that entire cities have been buried in natural catastrophes in the past. What will the world look like 5000 years from now when the unnatural signals emminated by this monument draws intelligent life towards it?

Pretty cool, huh?

There's always a "cool-factor" invovled with working with beta software and trying the latest products out before anyone else.  It's definitely quite exciting to see some of the new features of Office 2007 in action and actually dig into Project Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0.

At the same time, it's also incredibly frustrating, especially if you're the one that has to set up the beta environment .

I've been hunched over my PC and laptop over the last 4-5 days trying to get Project Server 2007 to install on a VM image and it has been downright painful.  From the dreaded "Thread was being aborted" error to the  "Object reference not set to an instance of an object.." error.  It has been slow and painful as each failed install took tons of time and there have been few answers on how to deal with these errors.

With regards to the first type of error, you may be able to solve it by following the warning in the documentation (starting the SharePoint Services Web Application service).  In my case, I believe the process was actually timing out on me.  Initially, I was trying to do the install over remote desktop from my laptop to my desktop.  The documented fix did nothing for me after several tries.  After switching to the desktop, I was able to work around this.

With regards to the second error, well, I'm still working on that, but it seems that to provision the PWA website, an Active Directory domain account is necessary.  Don't ask my why as I have no clue why this should/would be the case.  Apparently, it's fixed in Beta 2 Technical Refresh.

It was also fun coming across the superficial SQL Server collation error reported by SharePoint Services 3.0.  I was on the brink of uninstalling and reinstalling SQL Server before I stumbled on the Microsoft Communities thread.

All in all, this has been brutal weekend.  I'm simply drained from having to deal with this.

Steve Irwin, Mr. Crocodile Hunter himself, has passed away.

It's the kind of news that sets you back and leaves you kind of lost.  At least to me, Irwin was an icon in many ways.  Here was a man who had made a career--a very successful one at that--doing what he genuinely loved; one could not imagine him doing anything but what he did.  In addition, Irwin's love and respect of Nature, his sense of presentation, and his appeal helped to bring more audiences, young and old, a better understanding of our natural world.

Aside from that, Irwin had an aura of invincibility...as if he could always escape Death himself as he had done time and again on his show.  And with his openness, you felt like you knew the guy...as if the Irwin that you saw on TV was basically the Irwin that you would expect to see in real life: friendly, inquisitive, open, honest, and fun loving.  I think these qualities make this loss even more saddening as we all felt like we knew him personally.

So it was quite shocking (really quite shocking) to read that he had passed.  At least he died in pursuit of what he loved: helping people all over the world explore the natural world from their armchairs.

Welcome to another entry of Random DevTools!  It's been quite a while since the last post, but the wait is worth it!

Well, what we have today is a general tool that's sure to help anyone out.

As a developer, I spend so much time launching a variety of applications.  Visual Studio, web browers, digging through my project directories, Query Analyzer, and so on.  It can be quite tedious to have to trod through the Windows Start menu.

Fortunately, there are a variety of application taskbars out there like ObjectDock, for example.  But I've found ObjectDock to be a little too fancy for my simple needs and a little too resource intensive on my laptop.  In addition, I recently had a weird error with it on my wife's laptop where it would cause the task bar to disappear (even though I did not set the option in ObjectDock)...took quite a while to figure out that it was ObjectDock causing it.

Enter Kana Launcher.  This is exactly what I've been looking for in terms of application task bars.  It's small, simple, lightweight, easy to use, and performant.  What I like best about it is that the little floating task bar shows up where your mouse is, so getting to the application you want to launch only requires the minimal amount of mouse movement.

Kana Launcher also has a full size listing (like a context menu) with folders where you can organize all of your applications and what not (the floating task bar is a subset of the full list).

Best of all, it's free (and we always like free on the Random DevTools list)!

Note that you can add all sorts of launchers to it.  You can open up to a specific folder.  You can open up FireFox or Internet Explorer to a specific URL.  You can
launch command line applications with arguments in it.  All you have to do is create an application shortcut on your desktop and then drag it over to the Kana Launcher.

Perhaps I was being a bit delusional.  I really thought that Team USA could win it all this year.

Alas, it was not to be so. 

Team USA lost to Greece 95-101.  While Team USA only lost by 6, the game itself was never really within reach of Team USA after the half.  Greece held onto their halftime lead for almost the entire second half and even extended it to 14 points on solid defense, great movement by their gaurds, and solid offensive execution.  The Greeks ran the pic-and-roll to perfection and simply relied on the American's stagnant offense to deny posessions.

Growing up, one of my best friends was half Greek.  I can pretty much predict that there's going to be a lot of celebration by the Greek community tomorrow.

The poor shooting really did the team in.  Aside from Carmelo Anthony and Kirk Hinrich, the rest of Team USA was just stone cold from the floor, and most importantly, from the line.  Clank after clank from the charity stripe.  Terrible.

The player I'm most disappointed in is LeBron James.  Anytime the ball touched his hand, the offense seemed to stagnate as teams simply let him dribble it out and played solid defense as he lowered his shoulder to drive.  On the other hand, the player that impressed me the most was definitely Carmelo Anthony who quietly played an excellent tournament, showing amazing versatility, maturity, and range (not to mention his shooting touch).

I also wonder if the offense would have flowed more smoothly if Brad Miller spent some more time in the lineup.  Miller, who, like the Greek big men, is adept at running the pic-and-roll and he has the range to finish inside or out.  Not only that, Miller is a superb passer and a very solid big man.  It's too bad that he didn't get a lot of playing time.  It seemed like Coach K chose to use a smaller lineup for better mobility, but in doing that he sacrificed a great deal of interior defense which allowed the Greek team to get layups almost at will.  While Miller isn't going to give you spectacular blocks like Howard or Bosh, his defensive footwork is excellent and a better outside shooter than either.

The most interesting stat of the game?  Greece had zero offensive boards in the first half.  Jim Durham commented that they made such a high percentage of their shots, there were no offensive boards for Greece to grab.

So what's next for Team USA?  Well, they play the winner of the Spain-Argentina game tomorrow so it's not guaranteed that Team USA will even medal at all.  It can be argued that both Spain and Argentina are better teams than Greece.  Would it be a total disappointment if Team USA didn't medal?  Well, let's put things into perspective; these guys had about three weeks to practice and this team is extremely young.  Let's not forget that they finished 6^th in the 2002 World Championships, so this is a step in the right direction and certainly a learning experience for them.

How can Team USA get better? 

First of all, Team USA needs more no-hesitation outside shooters.  I wonder how this game would have played out had JJ Reddick been available or if Adam Morrison had made team.  "Ammo" is one of those fearless shooters who would have been perfect for this team. 

Second, LeBron needs to watch some tapes of this game.  With him at the helm, the offense stagnated tremendously.  He was Anthony Mason-esque with his over dribbling and use of his shoulder to try to power through people.  LeBron needs to look to make the pass earlier in the posession and make some cuts to get towards the basket.  When he's good, he's good.  But in international play, LeBron was merely so-so.

Third, Coach K needs to spend more time on defense for the next competition.  The US is hindered by the fact that they can only play man-to-man as it would appear they never practiced the zone.  Greece had the luxury of going to either man coverage or zone, depending on how Team USA was doing.  Shooting poorly?  Switch on the zone D and essentially shut them out.  Hot shooting?  Stick to man deny the ball and lock up the shooter.  These are the exact tactics that the Greeks used. 

Fourth, get more defense oriented point veteran gaurds.  Chris Paul had a terrible game and couldn't make any shots; he looked lost on offense for the first time in the tournament.  Not only that, Team USA point gaurds simply didn't command the pace and flow of the game by initiating the ball movement.  But this is an error of youth and inexperience.  With Chauncey Billups at the helm, Team USA would have had a better chance to win this game.

Fifth, Team USA needs some offensive sets in the half court.  I mean, they must have known that they couldn't possibly run every team out of the gym, right?  They must have known that they would eventually have to play some solid half court ball, right?  Well, if they did know, they didn't show it at all.  Nothing fancy; just some easy sets/schemes to break out the zone and get out of a funk.

Well, it'll be interesting to see if they even medal this time around.  Regardless, big props to these guys for playing their hearts out and commiting the time for Team USA.  I'm really looking forward to what these guys can do with a bit more time to gel and play together.

And yes, I stayed up all night to watch this game.

A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.

Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world?

And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?

Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"

Let no one deny we are patriots. We love our country, we hold dear the values upon which our nation was founded, and we are distressed at what our President, his administration, and our Congress are doing to, and in the name of, our great nation.

Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

Read the rest of the transcript here.

I stumbled on a post by Don Demask on the subject of tech/IT recruiter etiquette. Or rather, I should say, the lack thereof.  I've touched on a similar topic in the past (in fact, one of my first posts on this blog!) after I was simply driven mad by rude headhunters (one that kept asking me to doctor my resume) and many that implicitly discriminated by age by asking my graduation date (this is a very dirty tactic that they use to figure out where to bracket you in terms of rate, salary, and position, irregardless of your actual skill and knowledge level).

Since I graduated from Rutgers in 2003, I’ve already worked for six companies (that’s including my current employer, Zorch Software). Of those six, three of them were acquired through recruiters and there were many other times where I’d come across these sometimes very curt “professionals” as I was searching for better opportunities.

Of the many, many recruiters that I’ve come across, I would have to say that only one sticks out in my mind as being truly a professional: a Mr. Seber, who helped me obtain my first position out of college. He offered me great career advice, guidance on proper behavior on the client site, information regarding education, and was always open to listen to me bitch and moan from time to time.

These days, I’ll drop by and listen to his band play once in a while and we are still in contact.

While there have been a few other very courteous and polite recruiters that I’ve come across, the vast majority of them are simply rude, unprofessional, and lazy. One of the laziest and most annoying tactics that this type of recruiters use is to simply spam email lists with random positions; as Don calls it, “trawling” for potential respondents.

“Hot .Net Position in Chicago!”

No thanks!

I’ve seen worse though as I’ve even gotten emails that didn’t completely populate the formatting fields in the subject line and emails with bountiful spelling mistakes (what a terrible professional statement that makes).

Perhaps what annoyed me the most is that many recruiters simply didn’t bother to read my resume. In order to cut down on responses from jobs offering salaries below my desired range, I explicitly stated, in bold, the minimum salary and rate I would consider. And yet, I’d still get calls and emails about positions obviously outside of the range. I added a location restriction so that recruiters wouldn’t call me about positions in PA or Chicago or Alaska (yes, I once had a call about a position in Alaska, I shit you not). And yet, I’d still get calls and emails for positions all over the country. I added explicit descriptions of the types of positions that I was interested in. And yet, as my resume would pop up on the keyword ".Net", I was contacted regarding any position that required .Net.

After a while, it was clear that I couldn’t leave my cell phone number in the resume as I was getting calls on client sites even after explicitly stating that the cell phone was for after hours contact only. Beyond that, I finally wised up to the spamming by recruiters that didn’t read my resume by using a “code word” and adding a simple request on the last line of my email: “Please add the text ‘DICEREF’ anywhere in your email message to bypass my spam filter; thank you for taking the time to read my resume!”

In the end, I can’t help but feel like…a piece of meat to these people. The sad thing is that, invariably, someone will respond to these low-lifes, which simply acts to encourage the continued practice of trawling for candidates.

It’s a lose-lose-lose situation for the recruiter, the employer, and the consultant. The recruiter loses potential responses from top candidates by not putting in the effort to sort through the resumes and use more refined searches. The employer obviously loses out because many top candidates simply will not put up with this type of recruiting (I truly believe only desperate developers respond to these emails). And consultants lose out as--who knows--the employer on the other end may be the perfect match.

So what can be done to fix the system? One idea I had early on was to implement a recruiter rating system much like Amazon z-shops and eBay have seller ratings so that potential candidates can see how other candidates were treated and perhaps even create a personal blacklist of recruiters. If you continually get spammed by a particular headhunter, you can enter a negative review and add them to your blacklist. The number of people who blacklisted the recruiters would be visible on the job posting and sortable in a recruiter listing so that candidates could simply find the cream of the crop recruiters and reward them for their practices. Not only that, you would be able to put a threshold where if a recruiter has a certain number of blacklist entries, they won’t even be able to see your profile in searches.

While such a system would invariably cause an initial revenue drop for Dice due to recruiters boycotting them after being blacklisted too many times (good riddance!), I think it would ultimately lead to more quality job posts, more thoughtful recruiters (even if superficially), and happier candidates.  As it is, to me at least, craigslist has become perhaps an even better way to connect directly with employers (it's how I got my job at MediaWhiz).  Dice would be wise to act on this proactively and try to help candidates connect with the quality recruiters out there.

So what do you think? Any stories to share?