Author Archives: Rob Eberhardt

Hoopla Roundup for Internet Explorer 8

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2008 March 6 - 6:13pm |
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I won’t say it’s “finally” coming, because it might be one of Internet Explorer’s fastest major upgrades.  But IE8 is coming, and better yet, I think it is “finally” catching up with the competition.

The news is all over the place, and this time I won’t dig into the tech like I did with the IE7 beta.  I have installed the developer beta for a little testing, and it looks pretty similar to IE7.  Since the UI isn’t changing much, I think it’s a comparatively developer-heavy release (yum!). 

Here are some good official links:

And the interesting progress & commentary:

My own/other thoughts:

New Direction: A lot of the most interesting new stuff is neither UI/security improvements nor core web technology improvements, but Web 2.0-type stuff like Activities and WebSlices which seem to be targeting easier mashups and 3rd-party browser extensions.

Bad Chrome: A later IE7 release added back the Classic file menu.  Now they’ve added the crap links bar back in, sacrificing that much more viewport to the biggest waste of browser chrome.  Those plus the infobar warning I got right away doubles the 3 rows it should be, meaning if it goes live this way, my various inattentive relatives are gonna be scrolling way too much:

image

Developer’s Browser Ecosystem: IE7 usage is still roughly even with IE6, and seems to have leveled off.  It’s frustrating that IE6 is still hanging on so much.  Let’s get IE8 in and IE6 gone!

Cool, Vista security improved too

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2008 February 26 - 3:32pm |
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Microsoft just published an interesting Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report

I especially like this graph:
 Graph showing decrease of security vulnerabilities from Windows XP to Windows Vista

I mentioned a few days ago that Vista seems to have picked up at XP’s current level of stability.  From this it looks like it’s done the same with security. 

I think what’s remarkable is that they’ve accomplished this while increasing the amount of Windows code (because of new features).  Normally more code creates more ways for it to fail and to get hacked, but the Vista team has done the opposite.  That’s impressive.

For bonus points, read through the report’s comments (pretty fun on its own) and then read this response on the MS Software Development Lifecycle team blog.

Windows Vista & SP1

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2008 February 22 - 8:10pm | ,
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I’ve been using Vista Business for about a year.  I’ve had it on a secondary work machine since around May, and as my primary work machine since November. Overall, it’s quite nice.

But it’s definitely had its quirks, mostly with waking from standby or hibernation. I put a couple hotfixes on, and they definitely helped, but it still did have an occasional strangeness. That said, in almost a year’s time, I only remember needing to hard-reset it perhaps 3 times, and needing to reboot it maybe 5.

Now, I think that’s great, considering these machines belong to a tweaker like me (read: not a grandma or Mac-type user who doesn’t try new things).  I’d say it’s comparable reliability to a current stable XP system. This is an important comparison — XP has been maturing since 2001, but Vista started out at the same level of reliability.

As an aside, I’ve had several non-technical folks ask me “is Vista as bad as they say?” and I’ve only been able to respond “as who says?”  The only negative reviews I’ve seen were some journalists who must have put Vista on old hardware without current drivers.  But IT professionals I’ve talked to who’ve used Vista for a while seem to like it.

So anyway, I still didn’t want that occasional quirk, so I tracked down hot-off-the-presses Service Pack 1, and applied it last night.  It took about 45 minutes, and went flawlessly.  Hooray for that, and hopefully it sails even smoother now…

Corporate-vs-Consultant

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2008 January 25 - 9:53pm | ,
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Wow, I’ve been out of it for a while…

I’ve failed to mention my new job at TQL as Web Team Supervisor (best described as “all things web”).  Well, 2yrs ago isn’t “new” anymore, though.  The job was both a break for me and also an experiment to try A) being not a consultant, B) working for a non-IT organization, and C) working with bigger stuff.  The break/experiments are over now — my questions are answered and I’m back to working on Slingshot Solutions full-time (never actually stopped, but it was only for a few clients). 

Enough background.  Going into this, I wanted to start a “consultant-vs-corporate drone” comparison .  Coming back out, I do again.  So here it is.  I’ll just sketch it here and fill it in as I think of it.  Consider this in progress:

Hours

Working For The Man: Regular and Separate.
But too many, and for no extra reward but sacrifice to my own quest for perfection.

Working For The Me: Free and Easy.
“Working for the man” can mean “I’m the man!”  But sometimes it’s too free.  I often found/find myself working at odd hours I shouldn’t.  And often my boss was a jerk — time off doesn’t pay the bills, so no vacation and no sick time.  Chalk this up to I’m just a nincompoop.

Sense of Ownership

The Man: Good-ish.
Unfortunately, a strong sense of ownership without enough discretion = lousy follow-through and perpetual frustration.  Not my bag baby.

The Me: Great.
The only limit is my own capacity.  Time tends to be the biggest limit for me (I often suspect this is more a bachelor’s game).

Stress

The Man: High.
An uptight organization’s expections often venture outside of performance.  Uptight sucks.

The Me: High.
Remember that bit about Ownership?  It’s not all healthy.  While it’s great to own your own business, it really sucks when it owns you.  (works of my own hands … otherwise known as idolatry, I’d say).
OTOH, I noticed I smile, sing and play music, and play with my kids a lot more lately (at least when I’m not swamped).

Teamwork

The Man: Great.
It’s wonderful to let HR, Accounting, DBAs and Network Admins just do their thing, so I don’t have to.

The Me: Sucks.
Yes, I use good subcontractors, but everything is still ultimately my problem.

Motivation

The Man: Consistent.
There’s always someone else watching (or at least the sense that there is), which keeps me on my game.

The Me: Variable.
As a lone consultant, motivation is more easily affected by other influences like mood or weather (these snow days are killing me!)

Motive

The Man: Convoluted.
When politics/red tape get in the way,
it’s sometimes hard to tell if I’m fighting for project’s success or just
my own ego.

The Me: Clear.
Simple: My customers’ success is my success.

Driving Oblivion

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2007 April 23 - 2:51am | ,
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“People should be ashamed when they are passed on the right”

I’m not a bumper-sticker person.  I really have never had one, and probably never will.  I guess my soapbox-ish feelings have never overcome my greater aversion to more visual pollution.  …Except when it comes to driving considerately.  If I saw one, I’m sure I would buy and apply a bumper sticker along these lines:

→
keep right (except to pass)

Driving considerately depends on awareness.  If you’re oblivious to what’s going on around you, yes “mental auto-pilot” might keep you personally safe (somewhat), but it interferes with the effective flow of traffic. 

This “driving oblivion” is essentially a form of laziness.  People should be ashamed when they are passed on the right, and should feel the need to apologize somehow, perhaps by flashing their lights in acknowledgement of the inconvenience they may have just caused the passer.  But of course they’d have to notice that too… 

A similar symptom of driving oblivion is failure to indicate: just drift on over to wherever you feel like being, with no consideration for other drivers.

I guess flow and being considerate are big with me these days.

A not particularly-related frustration, but one which also breaks flow, is traffic waves.  I think I mentioned once that I’d meant to write about it as a form of compression wave, but fortunately someone beat me to it.  Traffic waves are actually not a symptom of laziness, but rather one of greediness — never allowing enough space in front of you that someone else might be able to cut in line.  In the process, your foot ends up back-and-forth between pedals, magnifying the compression waves and actually slowing the flow.  (Imagine a sink drain that burps, back with the air, forth with the water).

(Normally I’d apologize for venting, soapboxing, etc.  But lookee there at my name up top!  Speaking freely is a blog’s “why”.)

Hey, Scripting Guy!

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2007 March 3 - 1:18am | ,
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I’ve bugged the Microsoft Scripting Guys to make a feed for their great daily Q&A.  “Coming soon” was the most I ever heard (and over a year ago)…

I don’t know what the holdup is, but it doesn’t matter to me now.  Thanks to etc., I just found Yoktu.com Feedmaker.  A moment later, I had the feed I want.  Sweet!

One note: Feedmaker has a Word Filter option.  Unfortunately it doesn’t do positive filters, so “?” hides all the links I want, instead of the generic ones I don’t.  No big deal (I’ll choke doen the extras), but hey Yoktu, how about a googlish syntax like “+?” for specifying what to include?

Top 10

  By Rob Eberhardt | 2007 February 17 - 9:40pm |
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It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these, but here’s another top 10 randomized entries from my collection:

  • Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season)
  • Kool and the Gang – 16 Spirit Of The Boogie
  • King’s X – Pretend
  • The Commodores – Still
  • Spock’s Beard – 4 O’ Clock
  • Lit – Miserable
  • Journey – Any Way You Want It
  • Van Halen II – D.O.A.
  • They Might Be Giants – Clap Your Hands
  • Mike Helm – Meet My New Friend

(Granted, I cheated when I removed the Mr. Belvedere theme song, but can you blame me?)