Archive October 2007

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Software Bugs Can Really Hurt

 Ok, so I was stranded last Sunday at Newark International Airport in New Jersey for about 6.5 hours. Thats not soooo bad but what makes it worse is that I had just gotten off a plane that I had been on for about 9 hours prior...I was, maybe, a little irritable to begin with...I had been traveling for like 16 hours and now I had to spend another half a day killing time in a frantic, crowded airport!! Anyway, guess why I was stuck there? Someone's software bug. Yup - someone adding two lines somewhere and I would have been home at 6pm as opposed to a ragged 1:30am. 

Apparently, somewhat recently, someone in the U.S. decided that if we pushed Daylight Savings Time ahead a few weeks, we would save a bunch of energy. (I am all for green, both environmentally and the kind that goes in my pocket, by the way.) Anyway, Germany (Europe in general?) hasn't gotten the memo yet - or they don't agree. So, when we booked our flights on Orbitz, the software dutifully found us a flight from Frankfurt to Detroit, connecting in Newark, NJ. When you come into the U.S. from abroad you have to go through customs - you and your bags. That means you have to wait for the baggage fellas to get your stuff off the plane and send it though the system while you check your watch waiting in front of those baggage carousel dealies. Anyway, the whole process is supposed to take less than 1.5 hours. Orbitz didn't get the memo that something has changed with DST - apparently neither did Continental Airlines (or me until it was too late). We had half an hour - our place was probably gone before our bags were off the last one. Apparently, we weren't the only ones with this issue because Newark was a zoo (I HOPE its not always like that), everything was delayed (except apparently our outbound flight). It was chaos. Two lines of code somewhere...

Trek through Europe

I just got back from a two week trek through Europe - traveling with my wife and another couple. We started in Frankfurt, stopped for a night in the beautiful 'olde town' part of Heidlberg.

From there we headed off to the Czech Republic, to one of my previous favorite spots, Prague. Unfortunately, Prague has become a little more touristy than I remembered it..and with that, more expensive. It is no longer insanely inexpensive - bummer. It still has the Eastern European feel that you don't get in many major cities any longer - but it has lost something in my mind. From CZ we headed source to Austria stopping for an evening in Linz before getting on an overnight train to Venice. Spending a full day (not night) in Venice is great. I felt like we saw everything we needed to before heading down to a smaller city on the easter Italian coast called Rimini. From what I can tell, Rimini is a hopping place in the summer - its on the sea - and there are a bunch of oceanfront-resort-looking stuff three. It was too cold for the water however.

We treked next to Rome, a great place for sightseeing - so much history. From there we headed into Tuscany, stopping at a neat town, somewhat off the beaten path, called Lucca. Oh, did I mention the great vino in Italy... After Lucca, we stopped in Florence for dinner and briefly checked out the sights. There is more to Florence than I gave it credit for last time. Next on to Switzerland - overnight from Florence - to Lucerne. Beautiful place, and I was really struck by how orderly and clean everything was. Lucerne has a bunch of history too, we visited a ver cool (high tech too) museum there. Then on to Paris for a couple days. Paris is great, and I think it has gotten better since I was there some years ago. This time, the line for the Lourve was non-existant which was great. More on Europe later maybe.

Microsoft Downloads Notifications

A while back through my MSDN account or some similiar type of thing I signed up for Microsoft Download Notifications. This 'service' claimed to shoot me an email every once in a while when something new and exciting was available for download. I got an email today about something real exciting. Apparently I should get busy downloading something called 'Windows XP Service Pack 2' - have your heard of this yet? Apparently it is supposed to 'Help protect your computer against viruses, hackers, and worms.' That sounds important, I should probably get that. Does that work with Vista Ultimate (which I am currently running on my main dev machine)? Seriously ... it's October of 2007.

The Source to .NET

Some big news out of Microsoft today - they are going to release the source code to much of the .NET framework & integrate it into VS2008 for debugging support. Check this out from ScottGu. I can't wait to dive in there and see how everything is done. I don't konw what has gotten into Microsoft lately...but this is cool.