Author Archive

Refactoring Could’ve Saved the Day

November 2nd, 2007
Posted in Refactoring | No Comments

I have ran into a few snags while trying to update parts of my code that depended on other peoples’ code. Other people updated the interface of their modules, and I needed to update the way my module interacted with theirs. Being slightly optimistic and feeling a bit of schedule pressure, a simple identifier substitution […]

AMZN: Amazing Delay Times!

October 30th, 2007
Posted in - blah - | No Comments

The order was submitted on September 10, 2007. It was previously delayed until sometime between October and November. Now, the delivery date is estimated at January 9 to January 11 of the following year! Amazon is amazing. I’m afraid that if we stick around again, they’ll just move the delivery date another quarter. I simply […]

The NEC ND-3620A and cdrecord

October 24th, 2007

When most hope was lost, a firmware upgrade brought results. After resolving a character set problem with cdrecord through a downgrade, I received a “0x30 Qual 0x05 (cannot write medium – incompatible format) Fru 0x0” error and thought the problem was with the DVDs that I had just purchased. The DVD burner identified itself as […]

Two HDs Down, and Another One on the Way

October 16th, 2007

A Seagate drive and Maxtor drive failed over the week. Now that Maxtor is Seagate, I’ll be sending both drives to the same company for replacement. I can only hope that they return drives that are remanufactured or better, before the Seagate drive that is currently knocking away in my desktop fails.

Conveying Progress through Mockup Subchannels

October 15th, 2007

Kathy Sierra’s Don’t Make the Demo Look Done provides excellent advice for conveying the state of a project while presenting the project’s functionality. It also discusses advantages such as improved user feedback. With a very rough presentation, users will be comfortable providing inputs on significant system features rather than the particular fonts used in the […]