How do you know that?

Tech

I finally got around to putting a working example of my type-ahead list box example on my other site. This has been pretty consistant action from google, so I thought I'd make sure that it was working correctly. I tweaked the documentation a bit. But it's doing what it's supposed to do.

posted by Christopher @ 4:58 PM

Security

Just read the omitted first chapter of Kevin Mitnick's book posted on LabMistress.com. Very interesting read. I'm sure most of what he says is absolute truth. It would be interesting to read the other publications mentioned in order to triangulate.

I'm struck with the idea that we fail to question why the media reports on a subject. This has come into sharp focus for me in the last year and a half. The CNN Terror machine is ridiculously obvious. 'Be afraid', but if you watch us, you'll be OK. Mitnick reveals a very plausible motive for Markoff's NY Times article.

posted by Christopher @ 1:17 PM

For those of us who can't explain what we do for a living, try rattling this off...

posted by Christopher @ 8:02 AM

KM

note to self - refer here for a good Taxonomy Primer. Thanks L. Michelle.

posted by Christopher @ 7:10 AM

Google

Very interesting article on cultural/regional analysis of Google in the NYTimes today. Why don't they call it data mining? I guess it really does matter what Carol Brady's maiden name was.

posted by Christopher @ 6:45 AM

testing... testing.. Is this thing on?

Misery loves company. Brad and Matt appear to be investigating same parts of the same elephant. I spent some time today scripting Microsoft Application Center Test to work with our extranet. Simply put, it's a pain in the ass. It works well enough for an application with standard authentication. But add RSA secureid and ssl on top of ntlm authentication and you've got some work in front of you. Documentation is somewhat sparse as well.

posted by Christopher @ 8:45 PM

Ah... another week

Spent yesterday working on some code for time reporting. Interesting problem. When I move it over to my brinkster account, the asp.net calendar controls fails. At least it does from machine here. Very wierd.

We've had some major problems with the scripting that controls sql data replication to our remote site. It looks like that's the topic of the morning. More news as it happens.

posted by Christopher @ 6:21 AM

Security

Ouch! MS has a spill. Can you imagine what it feels like to be the sys admin in charge of that server at the moment? Can you imagine Bill's face!

I'm curious to know how MS will deal with something as embarrassing as this. I can picture a windowless, low slung office compound with flashing red lights, loud vaguely European sounding horns and black clad armed guards racing down grey corridors. A sweating twenty something realizing there's no place to hide in his cubicle. The passive eye of the security camera looking on.

Seriously... Do they fire people? Do they physically beat them up? Are they cooler about it, understanding that there was a reasonable, yet regrettable path to the event happening... then happening again? Are we going to hear about what they are going to do to prevent this from happening again?

posted by Christopher @ 12:28 PM

Testing

I spent some time putting Microsoft Application Center Test through its paces today. Unfortunately it was a struggle. First off the application doesn't like intranets. If you're using NT authentication within the firewall it will not let you record scripts to create a test. You must script your tests by hand. Annoying at best.

Also, tests would not run until I used the dcomcnfg utility to re-set permissions on a few essential components. If you don't know dcom, you're going to have more than a few problems here.

Once I crossed these bridges, I was able to use the tool to pound a few applications with good results. At first blush this is a C student.

posted by Christopher @ 6:34 PM

Security

JB sent across an interesting paper on MS security claims and another. Yes, software in general and the network tying it together is ripe for a 'spectacular' event. I'm reminded of Lily Tomlin's statement 'I'm worried that drugs have made us more creative than we really are'. Is it that we've developed applications faster than we had any right to do? Have the tools and networks made it too easy to create software? Do we all have some vast cosmic/technical karmic debt to pay?

posted by Christopher @ 10:08 AM

.net

Yes, I'm still plodding my way through this book. The chapter on creating custom controls is woefully light. It's as though the author's started to loose interest as they were getting on with the book. Even so, It's a fair overview of the tool.

posted by Christopher @ 7:33 AM

Paranoia

Biglaw had a scheduled power down of its data center this morning. Many people had to be in to test, guide the applications back into the on state. Everything's been pretty successful so far. Much planning and much anxiety have paid off.

posted by Christopher @ 7:19 AM

KM

In an ideal world... (I don't say that too often these days)... one would be able to look at all of the information resources, collection and delivery mechanisms in an organization and plot an efficient and cost effective way of meeting the needs of the various constituents. In the real world you continually unearth systems and processes that have been quietly working their way into oblivion for years.

In the last few weeks we identified a set of reports created by an ancient server that hadn't been looked at in years. These reports were dutifully printed and distributed to a dozen or so people daily and weekly. A little research revealed that nobody was looking at them, and nobody even knew why they were receiving them. Click, one less server to maintain.

One of the recipients responded with anger that 'why doesn't somebody take a look at all the reports and decide on the best way to provide the information'? Yes, correct question.

But it would also seem that that task must rest upon a firmer foundation. Simply put, systems must only be allowed to grow when they satisfy a few basic standards:

What's the real business purpose for doing this (benefits)?

Who requested it?

Who is going to build it?

How much money/time is it going to take to build it?

Who is going to maintain it?

Who is responsible for approving access?

When the requester/access granter leaves who will take over?

Why don't we ever talk about how to re-evaluate systems and weed out the bad ones? Is it because technicians tend to get possessive about the programs they've written. I would bet that that's the case quite frequently. I'd hope we'd be above that.

My take on the issue:

I've inherited a whole nursery full of babies, some of these babies are healthy and have families that love them.

Some of them are sick, but they still have families that love them. If these families love there sick little babies enough it makes sense to take them to the doctor and get them health - but the doctor's expensive - so these babies better be worth it.

Then there are the sick babies that nobody, or very few people love. Some times the best thing you can do for the families and the other babies is get rid of them. It's a cruel world.

posted by Christopher @ 5:20 PM

KM

Jon illustrates how Delta is sharing knowledge. This sounds great. It's as if someone actually asked a traveller what they wanted... and listened.

posted by Christopher @ 6:05 AM

The Bahamas love the Internet

Access everywhere in downtown Nassau. The citizens are comfortable discussing the relative merrits of DSL vs. Cable access. This is great.

Oh and the weather is absolutely beautiful. Wish you were here. blah, blah, blah.

posted by Christopher @ 7:43 PM

That which does not kill an idea makes it strong.

We all know them. They will sit comfortably in a meeting and listen patiently a you introduce a new idea and then proceed to tell you how it won't work or management will never agree to it. There power comes from their confidence that they've had all the brilliant ideas already. That they know upper management well enough to anticipate there every move. I love fighting with these guys. The trick is understanding where they are coming from, sorting out legitimate arguments from personality and learning as much as challenging. Often the guy fighting you the hardest is going to be your strongest supporter if you give a little to their point of view.

posted by Christopher @ 12:27 AM

Please hold during the silent period.

I'm off to the Bahamas for a couple days. Back on Tuesday.

posted by Christopher @ 12:05 AM

Do it yourself DOS

Here's a fun one. Turn on smtp services on your win2k server. Change the permissions on the \mailroot directory and all of it's children to permit everyone read and execute. Remove all other permissions on this directory. Now create a simple program to send an email using cdonts. What do you get?

Well smtp knows to send the email, but it' can't delete it from the queue after it's been sent. So you quickly fill up your hard drive sending the same message over and over again. WAY COOL!

Oh - to fix this you'll want to make sure that the account that smtp is running as (usually 'system') has permission to delete files in the mailroot directories.

posted by Christopher @ 11:58 AM

Fun

magnet poetry comes to the web. Thanks Lou.

posted by Christopher @ 10:58 AM

Way cool

OK, I'm not a palm user (I have an ignored Ipaq), but one of the best developers I know has created this application for the Palm that looks awesome. Geoff and I worked together a few companies back. We had the misfortune of having to manage the client for hell on a six month death march of a development. Call us war buddies.

Fatfinger lets you use your handheld easily without the stylus. Check it out!

The application looks great, but he still sucks at darts.

posted by Christopher @ 1:14 PM

BlogSpot

... OK, that's better.

posted by Christopher @ 11:29 AM

BlogSpot

... is being cranky this morning. Can't seem to post.

posted by Christopher @ 10:55 AM

.net

It sounds like Brad is doing so way cool stuff with .net. I may be wrong, but it sounds like he has a job where he can actually do work (as opposed to meetings). I spend about half my time in meetings and the other time is divided between the phone and some hands on work. I'm not complaining - I have a great job. But a new set of technical skills is like a new car. You want to drive!

posted by Christopher @ 9:36 AM

Google search results

google sent me a visitor who searched for 'what do you call a person who looks after pigs'. Hmmmm

posted by Christopher @ 6:28 AM

.net

Found a great outline for exam preparation. Tim does a nice job of laying out the topics and linking to concise background material, without revealing exam questions. It's all very fair.

posted by Christopher @ 6:15 AM