BS from Lounsberry

Officially Moved

2007-04-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

You can find my new blog at Windows Live Spaces.

Cheers!

Just a Post To Remind You That I'm Alive

2006-03-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

I'm alive. But I'm not quite ready to restart my blogging foray. I think soon perhaps. Until then.

Cheers.

Happy Holidays

2005-12-22T20:19:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm off for the holidays.. Ahhh. I hope you are able to enjoy the holiday season as well.

Merry Freakin' Christmas

Samsung YH-999 Wha?

2005-11-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

During a hectic and depressingly boring Bug Smash of Windows Vista, we were given raffle tickets for various prizes (one of those look at the shiny thing / aren't you having a good time moments). Of course no one actually wins these silly raffles. Especially when they include new Dell PCs, Portable Media Centers, and tickets to Daniel's Broiler.

I know what you're thinking, but no I didn't win. Some dumb schmuck who didn't bother to check the number on their ticket won. So guess what? They drew again! Ok, this time it is what you're thinking. I won the Portable Media Center!!

Talk about a kick ass toy that I would never actually buy! This thing rocks! It's the Samsung YH-999 Portable Media Center (Windows Mobile 5.0 Media Center Edition). It kicks the video iPod squarely in the nuts I think (oh and came out years ahead of it too).

Now I can synch up with my main Windows Media Center PC (or any PC with Media Player 10), and load all my music, videos, recorded TV shows, and pictures! Ok, so I don't have any recorded video or TV shows, but I will! One day. And it will be synched to my Portable Media Center.

I never actually imagined the sort of opportunities this little bastard opens up. Wherever it goes, my entire media life follows. Kinda scary. Now I just need the beliegered Xbox 360 and I'll complete my Media Center trifecta! Wait, fourfecta. I guess I have the Media Center Extender for my old skool Xbox.

At any rate. If you're in the market for a new MP3 player, you're really into pictures, you travel, or you just love kick ass gadgets. Consider picking this little gem up. Check out those specs!!

How to Remove the Comcast Branding from IE

2005-11-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you don't like apps messing with Internet Explorer. I know that Comcast would like to believe that they have a good homepage, and that the clever rotating 'C' in the place of the IE logo is just what I want to look at; however...

Here is how you can remove the Comcast branding from Internet Explorer:

1. Start->Run
2. rundll32 iedkcs32.dll,Clear

Note: This is case-sensitive.

Microsoft security is nothing to sneeze at

2005-11-16T09:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/11/46OPsecadvise_1.html

...

If you look at the statistics against XP Pro, Server 2003, SQL, and IIS, exploits are way down and security is up. How else do you explain that IE (Overview, Articles, Company) had fewer exploits this year than Firefox? How is it that only two of the top five most active exploits on the Internet are Windows-based?

...

Want a good database program without frequent security problems? Maybe Microsoft SQL is the answer. Do you remember the date of the last Microsoft SQL exploit? MySQL and Oracle (Profile, Products, Articles) are fairly worse these days, not better.
Can anyone do security better than Microsoft? I’m not sure. Mac OS X is gaining its fair share of patches on a regular basis. I may complain about Microsoft’s patch Tuesday, but trying to keep my Linux and FreeBSD systems patched is becoming even more painful.

...

Security Adviser, By Roger A. Grimes November 11, 2005

Sony is Spyware

2005-11-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

In case you thought you only had to worry about pop-ups and shady Internet companies, think again. Sony has been sticking spyware on music CDs that has caused major security vulnerabilities!

Microsoft's next addition of its Malicious Software Removal Tool (released monthly through Automatic Update) will target this spyware for removal. I wonder what goodies the PS III will offer us??

Broken

2005-10-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

Scrambling back from mid-field to cover on defense, I managed to break up the play on goal--but not for long. The ball was flicked back into the center, and I made a hard cut to beat it. Unfortunately, my ankle didn't agree. At this point I can't say if it's broken, bruised, or torn, but it's certainly f'd up.

So, now here I sit on my couch with my foot propped up on ice, and all kinds of things I could otherwise be doing. Like going to work. Unfortunately as well is how damn easy they make it to work at Microsoft these days. I just plug in my smartcard reader, and I'm in. Doh.

Halloween is upon us! Where will you be? What will you be up to? I'll be the gimp--apparently. It won't be the first time. Happy Halloween. Here's to "it's just a bruised tendon!"

Doomed

2005-10-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's not much of a surprise, but "Doom" pulled a stellar 1/2 star rating on MSN Movies. While it's not surprising, it is a bit disspointing. I've enjoyed many a night blasting hellish demons and other dudes to bits. Of course, I haven't played it in probably 8 years or so. I'll have to put on the rental queue.

Another not-so-surpising thing: I haven't been keeping up on my blogging. Things have been pretty busy with the new house, Vista Beta 2 work, an attempting to keep some sort of a life. I'll be back at it shortly. I know you're holding your breath!

Halo (the movie)

2005-10-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears we're going to spend some cash on this flick. We've hired Peter Jackson to produce 'Halo'. You may recall him from the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong (coming soon). Look for it in summer 2007. It just might be good--certainly better than "Doom". :)

Palm + Windows Mobile 5.0

2005-09-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Who'd a thunk it? Palm software is running on Windows Mobile 5.0. As announced today, this new collaboration between Microsoft and Palm will create an incredible new offering for the Treo. It will be available in '06 on Verizon Wireless' broadband network. You will love this Smartphone.

Way to go Windows Mobile!

The Down-Payment's on Black

2005-09-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

As I fly off to Vegas for the weekend, my impending real-estate transaction hangs in the balance. Christie and I are buying our first home in Bothell, WA (see how cute it is). We're past the inspection now, but still waiting for the response from the seller on the inspection monies.

"Just do it! Your house isn't in mint condition, as you would like to believe, and those damn steps you built for the front porch are not to code--and they're ugly. We have to rip them out"

This is one of the many, many items that we uncovered. Any homeowner would not be surprised, but this is going to be a lot of work!! Still it's a great house and a great investment. But for now... on to Vegas!

Adam, my buddy from college, is getting hitched to Jenny, another good friend from the collegiate days. Adam the dentist marries Jenny the nurse. Sounds just picture perfect, don't it?

Anywho, they're providing me with this nice little Vegas get-away at the MGM--and when I say providing I do not mean paying. But that's cool, because on Saturday they are providing free food and a full bar! Yes sir. This will in fact be a drunken nightmare.

If you happen to be in Sin City, meet me at the MGM pooldeck. I'll be the skinny geek with white legs.

Oh, and if you have a chance, you MUST check out the PDC '05 key-note. We're showing off some kick-ass technologies. Some of these I haven't seen myself. The Vista demos are incredible, and O12 is gonna make you pee a little--so make sure you've got the Sneaky Leaker handy.

Cheers.

Comcast On-Demand is a POS

2005-09-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

I spent my Labor Day weekend on the east side of the mountains. Hot and dry are not two of the things that Washington is famous for, but Eastern Washington--home of the Washington apple--is just that.

We drove over the pass on Friday evening--a long slow mess of other people on their way to do the same thing. We arrive at Lake Chelan (a bit of a scenic route) just in time for it to get dark. Our friends had not yet arrived at the campground, but the friends-of-friends from Buckley, WA had been there for quite some time. You may remember Buckley from Black Sheep (David Spade and Chris Farley). Eventually we all got set up and made it an early night. It was an interesting group in all.

The next morning. Christie and I met my parents for the Ellensburg Rodeo (a solid two hours drive). Can't say that I'd ever been to a rodeo. I don't know that I will or won't go again, but if it weren't for my grandma, I'd never need to visit Ellensburg again.

At the end of the day we drove across Blewit Pass (again) and rejoined the odd mix of folks at the campground. This time I was prepared with the JD. My friend James and I polished off the better part of the fifth after a few beers and we got a little loud. Christie found herself some Absolut Mandarin and did herself in too--in fact she was hurting so bad, she didn't drink any wine on the wine-tasting tour.

Dragging my ass out of bed early the next morning I managed to scrape myself together to have a round at Bear Mountain Ranch Golf Course. It was a sweet course that reminded me a lot of my trip to Arizona: sweeping views, desert, and poorly played golf. Of course that last feature is one that follows me to every course. I did hit my par however, so I went home happy (I parred one hole, no I'm not a scratch golfer).

We took the boat out on the lake when we got back and got in some swimming and water skiing. We had a hell of a feast for dinner (Christie is a kick-ass cook), and then we played this crappy 20-Questions rip-off game. I think I was the only party-pooper who wasn't into it, but I was tired. In fact I went to bed a bit early and felt like a $100 today.

We packed up and pulled out early. On the way back we hit Rusty's in Cashmere, WA--the home of the Aplet and Cotlet (if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, you're better off for it). Putting down a double cheeseburger with special sauce and onion rings was a questionable decision at 10:30AM, but we weren't all that rational after a long weekend.

We cleaned up and relaxed around the house, made some pizza, and settled in with a movie. All I have to say is "God damn the Comcast On-Demand bullshit". At the very end of the movie the POS dies and gives me error CM-20, followed by error 14. I tried several times to get it back, including restarting and fast-forwarding the movie back to the same place, which again died promptly.

Now I am left with an incredibly sour taste in my mouth after a good three-day-weekend. That pisses me right off. At least it's a short week.

WS-AttackMePlease

2005-08-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

So, you've rolled out your shiny new Web service. You've added all the security wizz-bangs you can think of: a little managed code with CAS, Kerberos, some SSL, a bit of encryption and signing, and a few of your favorite WS-* specs. You've been a good citizen and registered with your friendly UDDI server so all the businesses of the world can discover your services and transact business, and you've carefully crafted your WSDL with strong XML schemas.

Whew! It was a lot of work, but boy is the interoperability, service-orientation, and security worth it! Well, unbeknownst to you, along with all this great stuff, you may have implemented WS-AttackMePlease--a little known standard designed to automate hacking of your service.

This is what happens when you rely on magic pixie dust to secure your enterprise. The sweeter the stack the more layers of attack. If you haven't heard of X-* attacks on Web services, you should do a search for XML-Injection, XPath-Injection, and XQuery-Injection (and any other X-* you can think of: e.g. http://palisade.paladion.net/issues/2005Jul/xpath-injection/).

These new attacks are really just variants of your long-time favorites: SQL-Injection, DOS, and XSS. As more and more developers turn to SQLXML and XQuery these problems will only multiply.

There are many specific attacks that are certainly unique to these kinds of environments, however it all boils down to a failure to head Howard's Rule from WSC2: All Input is Evil! This is just a friendly reminder to santize your input! Whether it looks like SQL: ' or 1=1 -- or XPath: abc' or 1=1 or 'a'='b you still got 0wn3d.

BTW: You may need to crack the stack to get full protection. It depends on what the server's worth to you. Fortunately, IHttpHander is easy to override and forward. You did the right thing by adopting Web services. Now do the right thing and do your threat analysis.

Happy defensing.

Welcome, Mr. Knutson

2005-08-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Today I welcome Jeff to Seattle! He's coming to check out my homeland. I figure we'll get some good Red Hook Brewery action, the Space Needle, Microsoft, and--of course--some Xbox. Too bad there's not enough time for golf. We'll have to fix that next time.!

PDC 2005--Snubbed Again

2005-08-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

Well in keeping with my level of importance at the company, I've been snubbed for the second consecutive PDC. I was out, then I was in, then I was out, then I was in. Now I am out for sure. Swell. I guess their's always PDC '07. I love you too.

Take notes for me...

Be Like Mic

2005-08-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

People are starting to realize that Microsoft is getting security right. And when I say people I mean Gartner. And that is really something else. Just the other day I recall appealing to the added security of a Microsoft product. At the time, I said it like, "of course". But now I see that it's more like, "wha?".

Like or not folks. It's working. Though even Microsoft has a long way to go.

[change: updating links]

Game Teasers

2005-08-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

If you haven't visited the Xbox 360 site recently, you owe yourself a gander. They've posted some game teasers, and they look sweet! I picking up some severe violence in my future.

Your New AzMan--er--Man

2005-08-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

As I wrap up my work on XrML--and before the next-generation of authZ arrives (newSPACE)--I am poised to take on the world of roles-based authorization. I will be working for you--yes YOU--to learn your needs, dreams, and fears about Windows Authorization Manager (AzMan). When it doesn't meet your vertical--I want to know about it. If you've got a wish list, it's mine. My job is ensuring that AzMan has all the features you need to be successful in your enterprise or dev shop, and that the existing features are usable and bug-free.

Look for me in the newsgroups. If you don't see me, it's because I'm listening...

M's Tonight

2005-08-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

Due to my wife's stellar work perfomance, she scored us a couple of box seats for tonight's Mariner's game. Nice! Unfortunately, we're playing those damn Angels. Hopefully we'll give 'em a run for their money.

This game is sadly the first I've gone to this year. I'm not much of a baseball fan, but Safeco's a great stadium--roof or no. I'm excited. This kicks off the start of the real sports season: football. The Seahawks meet the Saints today in preseason action, and just around the corner is Husky Football time!

Yeah baby.

Get Well, Rory

2005-08-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

Rory Blyth hasn't been to been doing to well--a series of ass-kicking and nut-punching blows to his mental, physical, and emotional life. I'd like to take a minute to give him some love.

So, hang in there man! Take a deserved break and get things sorted out. I know the whole community is behind you. You continue to inspire. Get well.

Tech Ready 2005

2005-08-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

So at our annual Tech Ready conference for Microsoft field employees (consultants, sales, marketing, etc), I joined the fray in the "Ask the Experts" forum. Apparently I was an expert for Windows Authorization technology--something sufficiently ambiguous soas to chime in when possible and duck when necessary.

After a few hours of bobbing and weaving with various employees, I struck out to ask some experts myself. I visited the MBS section out of shear morbid curiosity, and ran into Dave Aichele--again. We seem to be at all the same functions. I'm not really sure what that's all about, but it was good to catch up on the recent happenings in the Great Plains world. It sounds like our Web services story is still rumbling ahead. Perhaps a bit slower than we would like, but rumbling. In fact, we're developing common schemas for all our major products (Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, and Solomon).

After swapping a few stories and injecting my own opinion on the direction of their Web services story, I slid over to the Indigo (aka. Windows Communication Foundation--dangerously close to WTF) table hoping to catch a familiar face (Don). I didn't see him but sat down anyway and had a quick conversation about the roadmap, WS-Security, WS-Trust, and WS-SecureConversation with a WSE guy.

I continued bombing around the convention until I found the CLR table. I noticed and empty seat next to Brad Abrams so plopped my ass down for a chat. We discussed the life of managed code in Windows after the Longhorn Reset, internal adoption of the platform, the future of the CLR, and, of course, the .NET Design Guidelines. He mentioned that the guidelines are being made into a book, which I'm sure will be a hot seller. If Brad has his way it will be on every developers desk when it comes out.

So, should you continue to invest in .NET? Yes! Absolutely, the features in Whidbey and WinFX will make you dramatically more effecient (and happy inside). In Orcas we're going to have fantastic Vista API parity and loads of great new features. Long-term you'll see some excellent advances in C# 3.0 (and I'm sure other languages)--trust me you want it!!

When it was all said and done, we went to Gameworks, had a few drinks, and played some pool. Not a bad night of smoozing, learning, and--perhaps--imparting some knoweldge. See you next year!

Cockburn

2005-08-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

I just ran across this interesting blend of software development methodologies called Crystal. I haven't had a chance to thoroughly investigate it, but I trust Alistair Cockburn to do it right. Writing Effective Use Cases got me through the worst of Fargo. Poor Donnell.

I look forward to indulging is his wisdom once again.

Dr. Zhivago

2005-07-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

John Cusack, not unlike Farmer Bros. Coffee, is 'consistently good'. I challenge you to name a single movie of his that wasn't. He has the ability to make even the most flagrant and raging chick flicks tolerable. Must Love Dogs is no different. If you are a Cusack fan, it won't disappoint. His incessant, oddly intellectual rants and over-analyzations kept me from touching that special place in the back of my throat. In fact, I kinda liked it. Of course, you'll have to sit through the rest of the film as well, which might not be worth it to you. Though, even at 40-something, Diane Lane is quite a catch!

For you girls out there, my wife, Christie, claims it was one of the only movies she's seen recently that actually made her laugh, and apparently there's a really hot dude in it. I don't know his name I'm afraid.

BTW: I'm not a big Farmer Bros. fan, though it beats the hell out of a cup of Sysco.

Vista / WinFX Beta Details

2005-07-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

John Montgomery has all the juicy details. Go check it out.

.= B-E-T-A = O-N-E =.

2005-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

I know you weren't a believer. You probably aren't now, but... Today we ship! The Vista beta has arrived. From IE7 to LUA, it's in there! According to MS.com, the beta will not be made available publicly until August 3rd, but that's only a few days away!

What's astounding to me is the number of awesome features and updates that didn't make it into Beta 1. I'm really looking forward to this years Beta 2 release.

Congrats to all the teams that made it in for Beta 1. Remember to enable LUA (aka. UAP)! It's not on by default.

Virtual Earth (unfortunately from Microsoft)

2005-07-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Well, it certainly doesn't crap diamonds or sing, but it does have one hell of a nice map interface with some really cool extras like 'mouse-wheel zoom'. Sure, it's mostly a rip-off, it's a little slow and choppy, and I've had a couple issues with mysterious black holes on the map. But I'd say it's a kick-ass beta.

After using it for a few minutes, I can't stand to go back to Google. It's just too damn smooth!

Blunts, 40's, and Video Cards

2005-07-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you can find the work of MC Frontalot or MC Plus+ on MSN Music just yet. Thanks for the link Rob. Now I can get my freak on to straight geeksta rap! I know MC Rory's down.

Hot Dogs and Hold 'em

2005-07-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

When Christie went up to Whistler (Canada) for Kelle's bachelorette party, I thought she'd be the one partying it up. Well, I'm sure she did--she isn't even back yet. But, I didn't think that I'd be up at 4am Friday and Saturday night--err, morning. I'm supposed to be an old married man now.

I held a little Texas Hold 'em game at my place on Friday. The game went pretty well, but ran to midnight. After losing my $5 buy-in--high rollers, my buddy Morgan stuck around until after 4am playing some Xbox and darts. He drove home like a champion.

The next morning I was hoping to sleep in and have a relaxing day, but my dad called at 9am. He was on his way over the pass to Ellensburg, WA (~2hr), and wanted to know if I would come along to have lunch with my grandma. D'oh! Yes, I'll go see my grandma. I haven't exactly been the all-time greatest grandson.

So we head over in my dad's new 2001 Saab Aero (nice), have some lunch at Bar 14 (ghetto), and we're back by 3:30p (not bad). To be fair, my grandma is fantastic. She is turning 92 this August, but can still get around, remembers EVERYTHING about EVERYONE, and can map anyone she meets to your life through one to six levels of indirection. She also tells the same story about my birth EVERY time I see her. Hey, I guess it was a pretty big deal!

So, after wasting the next several hours playing Sim City 4, dabbling with Direct3D, and eating a couple of Polish sausages, I went to Teddy's off 65th in Seattle. It's a great little dive-bar that we used to hang out at all the time back in the day. I met my buddy Browndogg, who I hadn't seen in probably two years. He had a new trick (lady friend) with him who brought a friend (not bad, but I'm married if you'll recall).

We closed the bar down and headed to QFC to grab some more beer. We got there with ~1 minute to spare before they stopped selling. We lobbed three cases onto the counter as the checker feverishly scanned them and asked if we had a QFC Advantage Card. No. So he runs to another checkstand and gets the 'guest card' and gives a good deal. Nice guy, but that caused the losers in line behind us to miss the cut-off. Suckas!

After a few drinks and most of Old School, I left "Ing Worm's" place and crashed--once again after 4am. However, this time I got some good Z's. I got up around noon, and had some left over pizza. This was the third time for these leftovers (a dinner and two breakfasts). I also had a couple of frozen chimichangas, a pizza pocket, and a bunch of chips, cookies, and other crap over the course of the weekend (Christie, please come home!).

Amazingly, the half-day that I had left has been fairly productive. I'd did some shopping for the upcoming anniversary; washed, vacuumed, and Armor-All'd my car; did the dishes; cleaned up my poker-night mess, and had time to write and incredibly long and unenlightening blog post.
Enjoy!

Microsoft Windows Vista

2005-07-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is my obligatory Windows Vista 'WTF?'. It's not even worth a rant. I take heart in the fact that developers of this earth will create a hack to change the name at boot-time.

60% of Statistics are Made-Up

2005-07-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

Claria

2005-07-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

So at our all-hands meeting today I had the nuts to ask the Claria question to Mike Nash, Corporate VP for Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit (SBTU)--aka. my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss's boss. Clearly, he (and I) could not comment on any rumors of acquisition, however he did talk about the purported conspiracy of Microsoft Anti-Spyware dropping the rating of Claria down ahead of a potential purchase (no I don't know anything about this).

To my intense satisfaction, after a bit of dancing and legal positioning, he drilled on how seriously he (and more importantly) our spyware folks take these ratings. Regardless of how I or anyone else feels about a company, if they don't meet the standards for legitimate software, they will be on the list with an appropriate rating. They are there for a reason, and they will stay there until they can prove that they've changed their ways. And it ain't no picnic--ask my wife (think Zango). It's hard to image, but Claria must have done something right.

With that, in the words of Scoble, "no comment."

Dirty Dozen

2005-07-13T21:15:00.000-07:00

Firefox chalks up another 12 security vulnerabilities, including multiple remote code execution bugs. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Patch Tuesday added one to IE. Keep 'em patched guys!

Ignorance is Bliss

2005-07-13T20:54:00.000-07:00

My friend Aaron is currently in flight training for the US Air Force. Over the course of the last few months he's been looping me in on all the details. It sounds like he's come quite a ways; though it sounds like his flight instructor has mixed feelings. During his latest sortie, he had his first attempt at being the wingman--in the air at least--flying on the wing in formation meters apart from other jets flying at 200 over knots.

You know, it would be real nice if you had a sense of fear or death up here
because you have no idea how close to disaster we are right now.
-Aaron's flight instructor

Tenets of Good Blogging

2005-07-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am guilty of bad blogging form on occasion. I'll take it as a an area of improvement. I'll have to thank Mr. Governor for imparting his knoweldge.

The 19 Deadly Sins of Software Security

2005-07-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well, 19DS3 doesn't quite work as well as WSC, but I'll welcome a new security book from Howard and LeBlanc any day. It seems this time they opted to add an open sourcer. Perhaps they needed some more street cred. :)

W0wz0rs!

2005-07-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't read a blog post that actually made me LMFAO in a long time. This is worth the investment in time. Nice work Rory.

Yahoo!!

2005-07-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hey! I've got a new favorite search engine! Yes, Google does a nice job and MSN search has really turned it around, but I'm excited about Yahoo! Why? Well, I own the top 6 of 10 search results for Brian Lounsberry!

When will the other search engines catch up and be able to get it right? I just don't know. See for yourself: http://search.yahoo.com/search?_adv_prop=web&x=op&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top&va=Brian+Lounsberry&va_vt=any&vp_vt=any&vo_vt=any&ve_vt=any&vd=all&vst=0&vf=all&vm=i&fl=0&n=10

Congratulations to the Wook

2005-07-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Hey Peter, Check Out Channel 9!

2005-07-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's not the breast exam. Sorry to disappoint you. In fact, just get that image completely out of your head. That's just wrong! This is about Ballmer!

Scoble managed to get himself an interview with the big man of the Big House. For those that haven't had the opportunity (or haven't for a long time), he's always a hoot. Check out his commitment to developers, developers, developers, developers...

Design Smatterings

2005-07-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

Jeff reminds us that 'you aren't gonna need it'. And you know, you're absolutely right! How many times have I caught myself on this? Perhaps more importantly, how many times didn't I? But we want to plan for the future, right? We want to have extendable and high-quality code.

Well, instead of building extension points you don't have concrete scenarios for or adding features you might use later, follow the simple guidance of the Gang of Four (GoF): find the concepts in your design that vary and encapsulate them. That's it.

Once you have encapsulated the varying behavior, you start to pick up on a new kind of smell. It's sweet and a little different from the usual sticky garbage you've been writing (of course not your code). You detect a bit of low coupling, high cohesion, high code clarity, and high testability.

If you want to get really crazy, then add your choice of agility or mix in a little bit of your favorite design patterns. Presto! You've got yourself quality!

Of course, if you were practicing Commonality-Variability Analysis (CVA), you would have had no choice but to create this masterpiece. Why? Because it helps you identity the varying behavior. You end up following the GoF by default. Try it out on your next project (any size). You'll be amazed at the results.

After Blog Mint [?] (un-shamefully stolen from Rory):

If you haven't picked up your 5 free songs yet, go do it! The offer expires on July 10th! http://music.msn.com/buy1get5

Grumpy?

2005-07-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've had a lot of negative posts lately. I guess I've been a little grumpy and disaffected. After all, it is review time.

Anyway, it's time for a fresh start. The Longhorn Beta 1 release is rearing to go, and it's generating all the internal excitment I could hope for. Here's to blowing away your expectations! There's a lot to be excited about these days anyway. It's summer! I'm getting to the beach, going boating on the lakes, and attending BBQs with friends and family. What's not to like about getting my ass kicked in croquet by my father-in-law?

I'm also in ultra-productivity mode. I've been equipped with Jeff's C# tips, some quality XML schemas, and the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, that's right. I can see it. It illuminates that which is on the horizon, newSPACE. I can't wait to get my grubby little paws around it and drive post-Longhorn innovation in the authorization space.

Though I've been wrestling with how I can best serve humanity? Am I a trenches individual contributor? A team leader? A Rory Blyth? A Mork? No, I'm just BS Lounsberry. But I'll find my defining moment. First things first. Longhorn must go!

Graham Cluley is a Moron

2005-07-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

Jaschen, the idiotic kid from Germany that wrote the Sasser worm has confessed. According to ZD Net, "Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, hopes that the teenager isn't sent to prison."

Now just what is Graham Cluley thinking? Sure, the kid was 17 when he wrote the virus. Sure, he didn't "steal" anything. But he did cause millions if not billions in damage across the world. If I were to systematically travel the world and physically sabotage systems and equipment, and rack up half that amount of money, I'd be in prison for a LONG time.

We need to get over this mentality of virtual vs. physical. It's all virtual in your mind. Handing someone a fine, community service, and notoriety will only encourage struggling teens to continue this. After all, what's the worst that could happen?

Hold the Boat!

2005-07-04T10:53:00.000-07:00

I just found this old draft sitting around collecting dust... Thought maybe I'd actually post it today!

My friend Tomandl, Christie, and I made it out on his boat finally this weekend. We had a gorgeous day, and all the time in the world. We putted around Lake Washington, admired all the homes we will never be able to afford, and bothered Uncle Bill. Hey Bill!

I Hate Google

2005-06-28T20:39:00.000-07:00

I just found my new favorite site. :)

It's actually all a sham, but it has a quality domain name.

Firefox

2005-06-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, I gave it a try. I've already found a feature of IE that Firefox can't match, and it's a real deal-breaker. When I load up IE, I don't get bombarded with the 'spread Firefox' garbage that is deeply woven into the Mozilla architecture!

I don't want to join your religious cult! I just wanted to try out the browser!

I'll admit that it is a fully functioning browser, but there's nothing here that I can't get from Internet Explorer. Beyond that, I can take comfort in the added security that comes with a Microsoft product. Thanks, but no thanks.

Posted from Firecrotch Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

Tabs at Last!

2005-06-27T21:02:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me, you downloaded the MSN Toolbar when it first released. Little did I know, they had been brewing up some romp-stompin' updates! If you haven't tried the newest MSN Toolbar--complete with new MSN Desktop Search--you need to get this!

The desktop search actually works this time, and it kicks ass. What's more? They've added Outlook and Outlook Express integration from the old Lookout product. Nice! Instant mail just makes you want to say, "Foo McCracky! That's quite a thing."

But wait! There's more! Tabs are here! Of course, I have had the pleasure of tabs for some time now--no, I'm not talking about Firecrotch. I'm talking about IE7 on Longhorn, baby! I guess the fine folks at MSN didn't want you to have to wait, so they stuffed 'em into the MSN Toolbar. Fine work gents!

This actually allows me to almost forgive 'em. I'm still a little miffed over shortcomings in Spaces. Good work anyways fellas.

To be fair, I thought I'd download Firefox and give it a fair shake. Though I'm not that keen on the extra security vulnerabilities...

So Close!

2005-06-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

I came SO close to freeing myself from the tyrrany of Google today. Sadly, MSN Spaces just isn't up to the task yet. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I've had one too many issues. Maybe the next time they roll out an update I'll ride the wave. For now, it's back to business as usual.

How close did I come? I actually had posts for both Blogger and MSN Spaces announcing my entrance to Spaces with fanfare and gleeful departure from Google. Alas, it will have to wait. One day!!

Inagural Match

2005-06-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

Finally! My friend Mandork and I hooked up last night on Halo 2! We only got a few games in, but it was good clean fun.

I'll have to break out Madden again. I can't give you much of a contest, but I'll do my best 'dork! :)

We Care

2005-06-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Now this is something I can say, "hey, my mom and dad would love this!" Microsoft Windows OneCare is a service that will be available soon to help you manage your desktop needs. This includes performance, maintenance, data protection, and security. It's all rolled into convinient service that you don't have to worry about.

I know what I'm getting my parents for their anniversary. :) Hell, I may even sign up myself. Who wants to worry about backups??

Don't Fuck With Nerds

2005-06-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is too great not to post.

Mission: Space

2005-06-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Yikes. A little guy didn't make the trip back from Mars.

I've been on this ride, and, personally, 4-years-old is WAY to young anyway. This thing was intense! It probably scared the poor kid literally to death!

Wing Tunes

2005-06-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

My friend Bill was thoughtful enough to forward this link on to me. I had no choice but to share it with you. I think we are so fortunate to have talent like this in the world.

You may want to give a listen to "Dancing Queen by Wing." It's breath-taking. And don't miss her cover of the Beatles' own "I Want to Holder Your Hand." For a little more hard-core action, check out "Highway to Hell". I didn't have an opportunity to give that a listen, but it's an instant classic I'm sure.

Thanks Bill. You're one hell of a citizen.

Who Says M$ Isn't Cool?

2005-06-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

Pardon my French, but this is f'ing cool! I finally got my Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) 2005 installed on my machine, and it kicks ass! I bought the Media Center Extender for my Xbox as well and plugged in my living room TV wirelessly from my office.

Now I can play my music, view my pictures, and more, right from the comfort of my living room. Cool. Well, almost cool. My poor 802.11b wireless network is a little too puny for this setup. I have a new 802.11g on the way though!

Eventually, I will pick up a new video card so I can hook up the digital video recorder (DVR) functionality--think Tivo. But for now, I still have my Comcast DVR with enhanced Microsoft interface.

All I have to say is "well done". Well done Microsoft Home. This product kicks ass and lives up to the hype. BTW: You could do with some more hype...

Fish On??

2005-06-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, so there was only ONE fish-on the whole weekend at Fawn Lake, BC Canada. For my dad and I anyway. The others seemed to be raking them in...

We were using the same bait, in the same part of the lake, at roughly the same depth. Perhaps we were just screwing around with our line and bait too much trying to get everything 'right'.

Oh well. I did get one hell of a fish on. He hit so hard I thought I'd caught my line in the prop! I got him all the way in to the boat, but he spun and got off at the last second. He was definately the largest fish I've ever had though.

The rest of the weekend (other than fishing) was great! I split a bottle of 18 year Glenlivet with my dad, enjoyed plenty of cold Busch Light (come on; it's camping), played many hands of Texas Hold'em and 5-card-stud, and pulled off a narrow victory in Stratego. Good clean fun.

Talk about a quiet lake! This place is in British Columbia north of Sun Peaks. It is about a 7+ hour drive from Redmond, and far into BFE. We got see some great views, eagles, fish, deer, and what looked like a wolverine!

Other than the long drive, it was a good break from technology and civilization. The only thing I would have changed is the damn mosquitos--you boys in the mid-west know what I'm talking about.

Gone Fishin'

2005-06-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

My dad and I will head out to Fawn Lake in Canada for a few days on Thursday. We'll be staying in 'Rustic Cabin #3'.

This makes for a super short work week, three days! I'll be honest. I could use the break.

Look out trout!

Is This Project Green?

2005-05-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

The Legend of ^KD

2005-05-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

I was reviewing a document in Word the other day, and I had a need to check things off as "complete". I thought it would be nice if I added the little check-mark character after each item in the document.

This was working out nicely until I became lazy. I started to copy-and-paste it instead of using the Insert->Symbol menu and dialog, and this saved me considerable time. However, I was editing the document as I did this, so I needed the clipboard for a variety of tasks.

Finally, I broke down and created a macro:

Sub InsertCheckmark()
    Selection.InsertSymbol Font:="Wingdings", CharacterNumber:=-3844, Unicode _
        :=True
End Sub

The trouble then became: to what key combination do I assign this macro? Well, for some strange reason I elected to use <ctrl>+k,d (^KD). That is, press and hold the <ctrl>key; then press and release 'k'; then press and release 'd'. Why? I have absolutely no idea, but it wasn't already used and it seemed like a great idea at the time.

So, I began happily using my new macro to check items off in my document when a thought struck me. From where do I know this key combination? This bothered me for a few minutes, when all-of-the-sudden it struck me. WordStar!!

At this point I was all excited! I was recalling fond memories of typing away on our old beast of a machine (I don't remember if it was an 8086 or some precursor). Gleefully writing short stories about cement monsters, Transformers, or whatever else came to me--I was only about 6 years old.

As fate would have it, <ctrl>+k,d (or ^KD as it was displayed on the menu) was to save the document and exit. Since I had (OK, have) a short attention span, I would often save and quit to do other things (like play with Transformers).

Consumed by this excitement, I MSN'd :) WordStar to confirm. To my surprise I found some incredible resources including "A Potted History of WordStar" and the very key combination I knew and loved on the WordStar KB: http://www.wordstar.org/wsdos/kb/Q2002.htm.

You may not find the history of MicroPro's WordStar as entertaining or nostalgic as I, but it's a fun bit of PC (and pre-PC) history. It had quite a run from 1976 - 1999, though it struggled mightily after 1985. The introduction of WordPerfect bested it in features, Windows rendered it out-of-date, and Word drove the final nail in the coffin. It's a little sad, and a little ironic that this all came to me while using Microsoft Word.

WordStar, you are missed.

Star Wars?

2005-05-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, I wasn't going to do the Star Wars post, but now that I've seen it twice (I'm a geek), I kinda have to.

Like many others I have waiting a long, long time for this. My collection of action figures when I was five was impressive. I shared the opinion of the masses at the dreadful Episode I and II disaster. Yet, I was a big enough fan to appreciate the attempt and simply be at peace with what George presented us with--aside from Jar Jar.

III certainly lacks the luster it could have had, and it fails at captivating dialog, and there are many redundancies, and on and on. However, it has a certain cool factor that the last two did not. It's like it will be 'OK' to own the series now that this one has been released.

Simply stated, "I liked it". My standards were low, but I liked it. However, if you want a real review, go read Rory's.

Sometimes, when I'm alone...

2005-05-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

I found this off a link from The Onion. I thought it hit a little close to home.

The New World of Work

2005-05-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

While Uncle Bill's latest executive mail sounds a lot like what we were doing in MBS for Project Green, he only mentions Information Worker division (Office). Intersesting. I'm sure he's referring to the SAP and Siebel integration in O12. I wonder if he even considered MBS? :)

Principles and Practices

2005-05-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

[The] newest streamzine is entitled "Principles and Practices." This presentation provides an overview of the critical Principles and Practices that enable Professionalism in Software Development.

In Sickness and in Health

2005-05-15T10:19:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Airborne? It's a "dietary supplement" that is designed to keep you from getting sick. Well, Christie is sick, and I don't want it, so I'm trying it out. The only problem is, they say to take it every three hours as needed. I live with her! That's a lot of Airborne. Wish me luck!

On a more solemn note, I recently found out that one of my friends from when I was a kid has another cancerous tumor. This is his third bout with cancer, and I wish him and his family the very best. Stay strong man!

If there were a Cancerborne that you had to take every three hours, would you take it?

Get Ready

2005-05-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for a peek at the next generation Xbox? MTV is running an exclusive special tomorrow evening. Don't miss it!

Pattern Rant

2005-05-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I don't have much to rant about today. In fact, I'm relatively pleased by the progess my team is making towards pattern-oriented analysis and development--including commonality-variability analysis (CVA). I have had numerous opportunities to raise interesting design discussions that turned into highly efficient and pragmatic implementations following OCP, and the many other first principles.

I realized how much headway I was making when my apprentice commented at how interesting and cool it was to see Alan Shalloway give a talk on the Strategy and Abstract Factory patterns. Just a week before we worked through an XrML parsing test application that utilized both of these, along with a Chain-of-Responsibility.

Is it cool to use a pattern for the sake of it? Well, yes. But what the most interesting advantage to knowning and understanding patterns is not necessarily the patterns themselves. It is the benefit you get from focusing on first principles, including couping, cohesion, and testability. It is the benefit you get from understanding the forces (pros and cons) that a particular pattern will bring.

Ok, it's also cool to say that you have a Decorator to apply dymamic XML transformations to XrML licenses, or a Chain-of-Responsibility to parse differnet document formats--and have it mean something.

If nothing else, I can say that I have personally recruited more than ten Microsofties to the various NetObjectives talks, and they are all seeing the benefits on different levels. Since their talks range from Scrum to refactoring, there's something for everyone.

Yeah Baby!

2005-05-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

I made it out to the Sonics vs. Kings game last night with my team (and wives). What a game! It was fantastic to see them win, but this also means they advance to the next series! Go Sonics! Bring on the Spurs!

There's No Place Like 127.0.0.1

2005-05-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

For a quick bit of entertainment, it's worth checking this out. You go hack0r!

Fish On!

2005-05-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

I survived another trip to Fish Lake. A weekend that involves large quantities of beer, a pontoon boat, fishing, and the Pentagon--a massive 20-billion man tent.

We rolled in Friday night to set up camp, and partook in some classic Busch beer. When the Pentagon arrived we cleared a spot for it, rearranged the cars, and began assembly. We got that baby up and running in record time. With a roaring fire, JD, Busch, and some ridiculous debates about pointless topics, we concluded our first night.

The next morning I woke up fresh as a daisy. We rented the last pontoon boat and loaded it up, and I picked up my yearly combination fish and shellfish pass that allows me to collect dungenous crab, clams, salmon, and all sorts of other critters. I'm set.

We pile on board and Korb-the-Skipper takes us away from the dock. From here we drop our lines, and troll away! We landed quite a few fish, keeping only the big boys. We had hot dogs, beer, and my little Coleman grill on board so we were able stay out there for an impressive 8 or 9 hours.

By the time we headed in, we all had consumed large amounts of beer, caught many fish, cleaned them, and filleted them all before we even docked. We even cleaned, filleted and grilled a trout right on the boat. I'm not sure that's legal, and I wouldn't recommend it without some sort of seasoning.

That night we resumed our ridiculous, but mandatory bickering and debating about meaningless topics, drank a lot of beer and JD, and passed out once again in the Pentagon. At dawn the crows decided to visit. Never had I heard such loud and obnoxious crows. My pounding headache throbbed with each caw! Caw! Caw!

Eventually, I got up and scared them off so I could catch a few more Z's. It turns out that we slept until almost 10am! Unheard of in the woods. When we got up, we had a coyote sitting about 50 yards away watching us. He even came as close as 30 yards or so before retiring to the brush.

All in all, a successful trip. I ate a lot of meat-filled animal casings, and forgot all about work. I'm sure the evidence will surface on the web before long. Thanks to Korb for the great idea and breakfast; to Morgan for providing the one-liners; Bryan for keeping us good and drunk; and Arri for his trout filleting skills.

"What can I say guys? I've got myself into something I can't get out of here."

-Morgan

Adobe

2005-04-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

This evening I will truck over to Adobe and see another NetObjectives seminar. This time the topic is pattern-oriented development. If you're read my past posts you will know that this is a topic of particular passion. One that I derive a strong sense of purpose and warm fuzzies from. I'm just preparing you for the enslaught of pattern-oriented rants.

Raise the Speed Limit

2005-04-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

They're here! The all new 64-bit versions of Windows: Windows XP Pro x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64. If you're lucky enough to own an AMD-64 or and Intel EM64T, upgrade today and turn up th dial on performance!

Jackson Park - Round One

2005-04-24T22:38:00.000-07:00

My round at Jackson Park went as expected. Pretty terrible. I can't expect much with as little as I play. I did walk away with a couple of pars--no complaints, but today was indeed a sad round of golf for me. The score will remain anonymous.

The day on the otherhand was absolutely gorgeous, and it was fantastic to get out again. I have the sunburn to prove it. I'll have to make this a much more regular thing. Not next week though. Next week is Fish Lake!

On Your Left!

2005-04-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

If only those words were uttered, it may have saved a lot of trama. Alas, while walking down the Burke-Gillman Trail in Redmond, my wife spotted a snake! Shreaking in terror and reeling back, she managed to give me just enough of a nudge to catch the handle bars of a passing biker.

The biker went down pretty hard, and I fell on top. As I righted myself, I asked if the biker if she was OK, and she replied "I think so, but I've had my hip replaced." Doh. I pulled the bike off of her, and she managed to get up.

My wife, Christie began blaming this whole thing on the huge snake. The biker was trying to take responsibility for leaving out those three key words, "on your left!" And I was left as the catalyst. So, who was ultimately reponsible for this? I blame that jerk who sold her the bike.

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2

2005-04-22T09:23:00.000-07:00

In case you missed it, download it today--or request a DVD.

Tee Time

2005-04-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Finally! On Sunday, I will finally get my first tee off of the year. It's bad a very sad year for golf. I haven't made the time, and so I haven't made it out. We're going to Jackson Park Golf Course in North Seattle. I haven't been there, but I've driven past it many times on my way back home to Mount Vernon.

Speaking of MV, it's time for the Tulip Festival. Always a strange affair, but I guess I'm biased. If you're coming to my home town this weekend for droves and droves of tulip fields, welcome! Don't stay long! :)

Blame Canada!

2005-04-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

I recently had a bad selling experience on Ebay. If this jack-ass tries to buy from you, just say no! I should have known better, he's Canadian--French Canadian!

Stevens Laroche-Begin
1080 Blv St-Antoine, QC J7Z 3C8
Canada
(450) 512-0903

PS: Anyone need a DVD player?

Branally Game Studios

2005-04-17T20:56:00.000-07:00

In 1993 I started work on a game that would change the course of history--for me. It was my first game, and I called it: Solar Project. This release not only propelled me into game genious in my own mind, but it solidified the fact that I had one major professional passion in life: software development.

Solar Project was a game born in the era of VB3. It featured spaghetti code filled with global variables, and a mess of controls tied together with a big ball of mud. How I ever got it to function without knowedge of variables is a complete mystery. Yet I managed to wire these components together by shear will (I used hidden labels' Enabled property as a Boolean variable, since I didn't understand what a Boolean really was...).

Here I am twelve years later with a BS in computer science and a job at the biggest software development company in the world, and I have little else to show for it. So, I've started the process again. My quest? Recreate the greatest game of all time: Solar Project!

This has been a very interesting endeavor. I lost the source code for the original (that would have been fun), but I managed to hold on the app, which game me all the sounds and graphics I needed for a perfect replica. Armed with an arsenal of patterns and practices, such as test-first, the observer pattern, and object-oriented development, I'm making record time and I've come up with a pretty interesting development model.

In the end what will I have? A fun new game? No. Not really, but I will have put into practice a lot of interesting ideas, and it just may rekindle the flame of good old-fashioned development. There's just nothing wrong with that.

I'll post the source when I'm finished so can ooo and ahh it.

Advanced C#

2005-04-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

I spent Monday and Tuesday in training for Advanced C#. I'll admit I was a little skeptical of the value, but I was quickly proven wrong. No, Anders Hejlsberg was not attending, but Jeffrey Richter from Wintellect was the instructor! Check out his many books at your local or online bookstore, but here's one that talks directly to this material: Applied .NET Framework Programming.

There are few people out there that can succinctly talk their way from a line of C# code, through the CLR, and down into the depths of Win32 and the kernel. Mr. Richter did just that, explaining the intimate details of the garbage collector, proper exception handling techniques, threading best practices, new C# 2.0 features, and a host of other areas.

I thought I'd take a moment and share some of the gems that I took away as either new or newly reiterated:

1. Best Practice: Throwing Exceptions

This is common sense, but I see it a lot. When throwing exceptions, make sure that the object state remains 'good'. That is, don't muck with the object, and then throw without reseting the state. You don't know what the method who catches your exception is going to do next.

2. C# Gotchya: catch vs. catch (Exception)

Like many C# developers, I was unaware of the difference between "catch" and "catch (Exception)". That is, the difference between:

try {
...
}
catch {
...
}

try {
...
}
catch (Exception e) {
...
}

Other than the obvious that you don't have the exception class in the former case, these two statements are actually quite different. It turns out that the CLR supports throwing exceptions of any type, not just System.Exception. However, the C# and VB.NET compilers restrict your code to only throw an instance of these types.

The latter statement is a catch for a System.Exception or descendent. The former is a catch for an exception of any type. Therefore, if someone using Cobol.NET or some other off-shoot, catching System.Exception is not enough to guarantee that you've caught everything.

Now this may very well be a good thing, since you should have an unhandled exception filter for such things, but keep this in mind. You may need both!

Example:

static void Main() {
// Registers an unhandled exception handler
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(UEPolicy);
}

3. CLR Internals: Garbage Collector

The .NET GC is sweet. That's what I learned. Without going into details, the GC fine tunes itself as your app runs. This is why it is an extremely bad idea to call GC.Collect() or otherwise artificially muck with the GC cycle.

The garbage collector does not run on a time schedule, it runs when it needs to. If you create mostly short-lived junk in your app, then you will probably not even notice it. It has been fined to for this scenario, and in many cases it can get away with simply moving a pointer on the heap to kill several objects at once--i.e. fast!

4. Architecture: AppDomains as a Sandbox

Do you need a secure environment to allow for third-party developers to write add-ins to your application? Consider loading add-ins in it's own AppDomain. This has two major benefits: you can lock it down from a security perspective and you can unload it. This means that you can strip their code of other priveleges that your app has. For instance, access to the hard disk or registery or to run unmanaged code. Also, since you can't unload a DLL that is loaded into the default AppDomain, you will have to keep these add-ins in memory for the life of your application.

Tip: If you're interested in this approach you may want to check out MarshalByRefObject.

5. Threading: Thread Pool

Use it. People don't use this enough. It's not always that fastest solution, but for most situations it is. Threads get reused on the thread pool, and the amount of threads is automatically tuned to your application by the CLR. On top of that, you don't need to write the extra code!

Check out ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem and the System.Threading.Timer class.

6. Threading: SyncBlocks

Don't do this:

lock (this) {
...
}

Do this instead:

private Object SyncLock = new Object();

public void Foo()
{
lock (SyncLock)
{
...
}
}

Why? It is possible to dead-lock the CLR's finalizer thread in the GC and hang your entire app. This would be a bad thing. Also, stay away from MethodImplAttribute. This suffers from the same problem.

7. C# 2.0: Generics

Use them! They're type safe and fast! Beyond that the CLR and C# teams were able to do some needed redesign and performance enhancements that would not be possible with the standard collections.

There are some great free additional collections a http://wintellect.com (e.g. Bag, PriorityQueue, Set, etc).

8. C# 2.0: Nullable Types

Be aware that some changes are coming down the pipe with respect to value types in C# 2.0. One of these changes, which has nothing to do with nullable types is that this will compile in Whidbey:

int i = 0;

if (i == null)
{
Console.WriteLine("But an int can't be null ever!!");
}
else {
Console.WriteLine("This will always execute!");
}

The thinking here is that the check of a value type against null should be allowed because checking if a variable is null is like asking if it has a value. Since value types always have a value, this is now allowed.

Beyond this, you can use a nullable type, Nullable, which is a value type that can have no value. This was done for many reasons, but mostly for compliance with database type semantics.

Nullable myNullableInt1;
int? myNullableInt2; // Note: This is equivalent to the above line.

Also, you can initialize a type in C# 2.0 with the default keyword:

T myT = default(T);

This mean 'null' for reference types and all-bits-zero for value types.

9. C# 2.0: Iterators

The new iterators in C# 2.0 are great, but be careful of performance. Remember to measure if you're concerned. You may be able to get an equally elegant design using anonymous methods and the new collection methods, such as ForEach, FindAll, Sort and ConvertAll. I'll let you discover the fun of anonymous methods on your own. Remember to wear your Lisp hat.

In the meantime, check out keyword 'yield return'. It basically tells the compiler to return to the calling function, but if the function is called again, start from here. It will blow your mind in the debugger!

10. C# 2.0: Extern Alias

Today there is no way to load two versions of the same type in C#. That is you create an interface MyNameSpace.Foo, and then later you add some methods to that interface and keep the same name, MyNameSpace.Foo. What happens if a customer has written code for the old interface? There's no way for your app to load it if you compiled against the second version.

Well, no in this one-off scenario you have a way to do exactly that. It's called an extern alias. If you're interested in this, check out the /r compiler switch in Whidbey.

Ok, that's all for now. There are a ton more features and best practices. If you're interested let me know, and I'll see about posting some more, or send your some resources.

For those interested in a good Anders Hejlsberg article, check this one out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/homepageheadlines/hejlsberg/default.aspx.

Some of the above examples are courtesy of Wintellect.

Goal!

2005-04-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

I had my first game back at soccer in three weeks. After being out sick and on vacation, I didn't find much time to go running. I felt it last night!

We got our ass kicked 3 - 1, but I can say that I put in my first goal in over ten years! I should have had two last night, I had a beautiful opportunity, but put it just off to the right. I know you're proud.

By the way, we're looking for more girls. So if you're female and like to play soccer, hit me up.

Speaking of girls, if you get the opportunity, stop by Cucina, Cucina restaraunt in Redmond Town Center. Damn. The waitresses range from 8 - 10. Our's was at least a 10, and that made me enjoy my food all that much more.

MN 2005

2005-04-11T18:11:00.000-07:00

My excursion to Minneapolis, MN kicked off on Thursday with a flight just in time (JIT) for dinner, so we checked out Big Bowl, local Chinese food. It was certainly a Big Bowl of rice! No complaints though, the food was very tasty.

Over the next few days we played a lot of Xbox, where I got my ass handed to me in NCAA and Madden Football '05 by Dan and Jeff (ex-coworkers, current friends), and Star Wars Battlefront by Anders--Dan's six-year-old son.

We hit the bars and some other great local restaurants including The Local, KFAN Restaraunt, and a great little cafe brunch--I can't remember the name. We walked the town a bit in Minneapolis and St. Paul, caught an IMAX film, hung out at Gameworks, and crashed at a hotel downtown after several Bushmills and Jameson's.

I hadn't been to Gameworks since it first opened in Seattle. It wasn't quite the spectacle I remember as a kid, but we had a great time with the air hockey, hoops, EA Golf, and Big Buck Hunter, which I'm convinced was the theme of the weekend.

In summary, this was a perfect weekend trip. I really couldn't have asked for more. Thanks to Jeff and Dan for taking the time to hang out and rip up Minneapolis a bit. A huge thanks to Nikki and Trisha (the wives) and Anders, Nate, and Michael (the kids) for sharing!

Meanwhile, my wife, Christie, hit it up big in Vegas! She pulled down $41 in penny slots. Not bad. It sounds like they had a great time in a semi-sorority reunion. I'm sure the town is a better place. If you were lucky enough to be in the Ghost Room, Paris, or any of the casinos near by, you may have run into them.

Yee Haw!

2005-04-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

Through the end of March 2005:
• Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has released 12 Security Bulletins fixing 17 (16 unique) vulnerabilities, with an average days-of-risk of 19.65 days.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Advanced Server. Red Hat has released 42 security advisories fixing 101 (95 unique) vulnerabilities, with an average days-of-risk of 34.35 days.
• Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9. Novell has released 24 security advisories fixing 137 (130 unique) vulnerabilities, with an average days-of-risk of 32.30 days.
Note that the total count is higher than the unique count of vulnerabilities, since some vulnerabilities affect multiple product and may even be fixed at different times.

Good Old Fashioned M$ Bashing

2005-04-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Sentiment that I could not have put better myself. Neopoleon, the world is a better and more just place with you sitting on it.

Recovery

2005-04-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

I've been down sick for the last few days, but I'm starting to pull out of it. I missed my soccer game and two days of work. Gorging myself on seafood at the Crab Pot this weekend probably didn't help matters much--but damn was it good! Dungeness crab, King crab, Snow crab, clams, oysters, mussels, halibut, andouli sausage, New potatos, corn-on-the-cob and shrimp--the kind that can still look at you. It was worth it.

Meanwhile, I'm getting set for my trip to Minneapolis, while my wife packs for Vegas. Ok, I'm a little jealous, but we're gonna have a sweet time in MN too. I'll need a whole separate recovery for next weekend. I think I'll pass on the seafood, however.

Speaking of MN and recoveries, the M's beat the Twin's on Opening Day yesterday at Safeco Field! Go Mariners. Perhaps they'll be a shade better than last year?

Easter Sunday

2005-03-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

Happy Easter season. If you don't celebrate Easter, happy Spring! This Easter I did the standard holiday song and dance--or should I say eat and eat. Despite my best efforts, I continue to do the double meals.

This time, however it did work out a bit better. My dad made an awesome ham, my mom made a great apple pie, and my in-laws made an excellent rotisserie turkey. Food was eaten in mass quantities and I skipped the gym this morning.

So it's officially spring now. What happened to the damn weather! Dan, you better have it warmed up for me in MN. I'll be out there in a couple of weeks!

EBAY

2005-03-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

I sold my first item on EBay last weekend: a Sony DVD player. I sent my invoice and gave him a courtesy mail, but the bastard lives in Quebec, Canada and hasn't bothered to pay or contact me. Yes, I'm sure it has everything to do with be Canadian.

Pay up pay.

Sweet and Sour Sixteen

2005-03-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a great run and a fantastic season. I would have loved to have seen the Huskies advance to the Elite 8, but alas. I will extend my congrats on an excellent year.

Go Dawgs!

Test-First and Ephemeral Dependencies

2005-03-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

I attended another NetObjectives seminar last night. This time it was Mr. Scott Bain preaching the values of Test-First development and using mock objects to eliminate ephemeral dependencies in your tests.

What the hell does ephemeral mean? Well, literally it means 'lasting a short time', but you can think of an ephemeral dependency in unit testing as something that the class under test (CUT) uses that changes erratically or unpredicably, and is out of your control. So, if you have an ephemeral dependency, you'll find yourself writing very weak tests that just touch the class or method, without really validating anything.

Two examples Scott gives are methods with void return types and classes that use other entities in way that the result depends on it's result. So that's probably not very clear. The high-order bit is that these types of situations are difficult to test. In some cases you can't verify what happened (i.e. it didn't throw, but did it work?). In some cases you can't predict the result (i.e. my result depends on his result and he is erratic).

He proposes one solution to this problem as the use of mock objects. Mock objects are classes that pretend to be the real object, but you control it. In fact, many of the mock objects frameworks have two objects: a control and a mock. The mock is the actual object. The control is the thing that tells it how it should behave. Think of a remote control and a robot.

Of course, just because something is difficult to test or you happen to have an empheral dependency, doesn't mean that you should use nMock or some other framework. You may want to take a step back and look at why your design is the way it is. Why do I have this dependecy? Is it necessary? Did I choose this for the right reasons? Can I refactor this code to better quality and remove or reduce this dependency?

These are all questions and topics that are explained is some depth in the seminar. You can find the slides and information on the link below. I encourage you to take a quick peek.

Other than the content, it was great to see Scott again. I first met Scott in Fargo, ND at a training for Microsoft Business Solutions. He introduced me to design patterns, unit testing, refactoring, and test-driven development. I had read something about each before, but when I left his training I was a fundamentally different and orders-of-magnitude better developer.

Dude, Where's My Car?

2005-03-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

OK, last night I may have had a few too many. I went into Kirkland after to work to hit up Tiki Joe's Wet Bar with my friend Tomandl. Five or six beers later I realized I hadn't had dinner yet and that I needed to drive home. Oops.

So, instead we went to a grill and bar for a burger and another pitcher. After spitting some game at our waitress so Tomandl could get a number, he drove me back to his place so I could crash on the couch. Just as I was falling asleep, my wife, Christie, calls and tells me that she's on her way home and could pick me up.

So, I was transferred to my own bed. Here I rolled around for the remainder of the night, until about 5am. At which time, I headed into the living room to watch TV. I managed to drag my ass of the couch at about 7:30a, took a shower, and pleaded to get a ride back to Kirkland so I could pick up my car.

I'm sure this account sounds completely familiar, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm a zombie today. On top of that, I lost my office. I am now doubled up with my coworker Qibo. Ahh, the joy. That's love from MS.

How Sweet It Is

2005-03-19T14:30:00.000-08:00

Go Dawgs!

The Washington Huskies put down Pacific today to advance to the Sweet 16. And while this kicks and enormous amount of ass, it is a sad day too. The Gonzaga Bulldogs fell to Texas Tech, knocking them out once again. Not only would I have loved to see a Zag - Dawg match-up, but they play some good ball over there in Spo-compton. Tough loss.

I also attended the "St. Patrick's Giving Day" event yesterday. There were four turkeys--yes four--BBQ, baked, deep fried, and smoked. Well, the smoked item was actually chicken. Good stuff. Lot's of food. Lot's of beer. Now that's a holiday.

The only problem was the triptophan. What a party killer.

Test-First Techniques Using xUnit and Mock Objects

2005-03-17T15:13:00.000-08:00

Come and check out the latest NetObjective's talk in my very own building. It's open to the public.

The free seminar "Test-First Techniques Using xUnit and Mock Objects" will be presented by Scott Bain on Thursday, March 24, 2005 in Redmond, WA at the Microsoft Campus, Building 27/Room 1810-Olympic, from 6:30-8:45pm. (NOTE: the starting time of 6:30pm which is later than usual.) Pizza and refreshments will be served.

Unit testing, typically considered a Quality Assurance practice, is now being considered by some to be a tool developers can use to move their process forward (often termed "test-driven development").

This seminar addresses the concept of the unit test as a developer's tool, and in particular how the use of mock objects can help to ameliorate the difficulties that dependencies can create in testing.

For more information on this free seminar, including how to register, please scroll down after my signature or follow this link to our website:

Happy Patty's Day

2005-03-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

This St. Patrick's Day, I will be celebrating as many do, with corned beef and green beer. However, a few of our friends decided to create a hybrid. St. Patrick's Giving. Who am I to complain about beer and turkey?

However you celebrate, drive safe and indulge.

PAC-10 Champs!

2005-03-13T09:39:00.000-08:00

If I can't get excited about the Huskies' football program, at least we've made some ground on the court. Taking home the PAC-10 championship is quite a feat for this team. Let's see what we can do in the tourny!

Worldwide Partner Conference

2005-03-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

For my MN connection. I'm sure you already know...

WPC – July 8-10, 2005 – Minneapolis, MN

Mark your calendar for this year’s Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, taking place July 8–10, 2005, at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA!

Set us up the bomb!!

2005-03-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Kyle and Michelle Raines

2005-03-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

As I was searching through MSN Search results for my name (ahem), I came across this listing:

The wedding is no surprise--I was in it. Nor is the fact that my name was in the listing. Clearly I increase the wedding's prestige (j/k).

What a great wedding though. The maid of honor is a stripper, a groomsman passed-out during the lighting of the unity candle, and I gave a sappy, pourly delivered speech. What else can you ask for? Well, maybe some dinner for the wedding party!

Congrats again to Kyle and Michelle!

Better Than Some; Worse Than Many

2005-03-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

It's nice to know that I'm not the worst Halo 2 player out there. I'm decidedly mediocre. There was a time when I could hold the lead in these 1st-person shooters, but that day has passed. You give me a copy of Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad, or Half-Life, a mouse and keyboard, and I'll make you sorry.

Anyone else experience rude disconnections during gameplay? It seems strange to be dropped with a 3Gb connection and no lag.

Live from Redmond

2005-03-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

I FINALLY got set up with Xbox Live! I know, I know. It's been around for years, I work for MS, I'm a hard-core gamer, so why did it take me so long? To be perfectly honest, I'm lazy.

Anyway, I'm all set for Halo 2, Madden '05, NCAA '05, Starwars Battlefront, and more! I'll see you in the fray. My gamertag is Louis Lowenbrau.

You know who dis is.

Coff-ay

2005-03-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if it's the fact that it's March, or it's just coincidence, but everyone seemed overly busy right now. Our group is no exception, so as a reward for hardware and perserverance, we received... wait for it! A free coffee.

Now, granted, it was an exclusive coffee cart in our hall, but what happened to the days of $$$, trips, stock, and parties? Perhaps after we actually ship something. :)

Console GUI Goo

2005-03-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

Recently, I created a simple console-based stress testing app that run through our tests at random for a given amount of time or forever. As we were reviewing the design, my boss commented that "it would be nice" if the user could press a key to cancel the app without losing the log rollup information that was printed out in the end. That is, you can always close the window or press +c, but you'll lose the pretty reports, and it's not as usable.

Clearly with improved reporting options this is not much of a problem, however, to make him happy, I decided to add the feature. When I examined what this meant, I realized I had the following requirements:

Accept user input to cancel the app (interactive mode)
Allow the app to exit when time expires or a stress failure is detected (headless mode)

But how do you wait for either to finish in a console app? You need a non-blocking input operation for the headless mode, and a way to intervene in interactive mode.

Rather than have multiple exit points or two different modes, I opted for a strategy that included a separate thread for the running of the tests and a wait operation for console input or thread termination. Here's how it works:

The original application was extermely simple. I hesitated to mess with this, but I felt the new architecture was worth it. I have removed the non-essential code for brevity:

int _cdecl
main(
     __in               UINT  cArgs,
     __in_ecount(cArgs) char* asArgs[])
{
    HRESULT             rResult     = S_OK;
    IStressApp*         pIApp       = NULL;

    // Parse input arguments

    // Create the application object

    // Start the application
    rResult = pIApp->Run();

    // Handle failure and cleanup

    return (FAILED(rResult) ? 1 : 0);
}

It was simple and beautiful. Adding the thread made the code more complicated, but allowed me to free up the console GUI for other operations during the test. I needed to add the thread creation logic (StartAppThread), a thread-start function (Run), and a function to wait for the thread to terminate (WaitForEvents):

// Synchronization consts
#define g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX  0

// Stress app run result
HRESULT g_rStressAppResult  = S_OK;

HRESULT
StartAppThread(
    __in  IStressApp*   pIApp,
    __out PHANDLE       phThread)
{
    HRESULT rResult     = S_OK;
    DWORD   dwThreadId  = 0;
    HANDLE  hThread     = NULL;
    UINT    nError      = 0;

    // Validate arguments

    *phThread = NULL;

    hThread = CreateThread(
            NULL,                       // default security attributes
            0,                          // use default stack size 
            Run,                        // thread function
            pIApp,                      // argument to thread function
            0,                          // use default creation flags
            &dwThreadId);               // returns the thread identifier

    if (hThread == NULL)
    {
        // Handle thread errors
    }   

    *phThread = hThread;
    hThread = NULL;

    return rResult;
}

DWORD WINAPI Run(
    __in LPVOID lpParam) 
{ 
    IStressApp* pIApp   = NULL;

    // Validate arguments

    pIApp = (IStressApp*)lpParam;
    
    // Run the app
    g_rStressAppResult = pIApp->Run();

Cleanup:
    return 0;
}

HRESULT
WaitForEvents(
    __in                    IStressApp* pIApp,
    __in_ecount(cEvents)    HANDLE*     ahEvents,
    __in                    UINT        cEvents)
{
    HRESULT         rResult     = S_OK;
    DWORD           dwObject    = 0;
    UINT            nError      = 0;
   
    // Argument validation

    // Wait until thread termination signals       
    dwObject = WaitForMultipleObjects(
        cEvents,
        ahEvents,
        false,
        INFINITE);

    switch (dwObject)
    {  

    // Stress app thread has terminated
    case WAIT_OBJECT_0 + g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX:

        // Get result from stress app thread
        rResult = g_rStressAppResult;

        printf("[SAD: Stress test complete.]\n");
        break;

    default:
        printf("[WaitForMultipleObjects error.]\n");
        nError = GetLastError();
        rResult = HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(nError);
    }   

    return rResult;
}


int _cdecl
main(
     __in               UINT  cArgs,
     __in_ecount(cArgs) char* asArgs[])
{
    const UINT          cEVENTS     = 1;

    HRESULT             rResult     = S_OK;
    IStressApp*         pIApp       = NULL;
    HANDLE              ahEvents[cEVENTS];

    ZeroMemory(ahEvents, sizeof(PHANDLE) * cEVENTS);

    // Parse input arguments

    // Create the application object

    // Start the application, and retrieve the thread handle to use as an event
    rResult = StartAppThread(pIApp, &ahEvents[g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX]);
    // Handle failure result

    // Wait for stress app to finish
    rResult = WaitForEvents(pIApp, ahEvents, cEVENTS);

    // Handle failure and cleanup

    return (FAILED(rResult) ? 1 : 0);
}

Finally, I needed to quit on console input. I decided, in the absence of actual requirements, that [ESC] was a reasonable exit command. For this I needed to change my app to get the standard input console handle use it as an event in WaitForEvents. Again, I needed a non-blocking console input call, so I chose ReadConsoleInput. This meant that I would be capturing all events, not just keystrokes, so the complexity was raised again. So here, in all its glory, is the final result--minus the extra hardening and unessential fluff. If you need a runnable version, let me know.

//
// Global constants ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//

// Synchronization consts
#define g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX  0
#define g_nCONSOLE_INDEX    1
#define g_nTIMEOUT          10000

// Console input consts
#define g_wCANCEL_CODE      VK_ESCAPE

//
// Global variables ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//

// Stress app run result
HRESULT g_rStressAppResult  = S_OK;

//
// Global functions ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Description: Thread callback to run the stress app.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
DWORD WINAPI Run(
    __in LPVOID lpParam) 
{ 
    IStressApp* pIApp   = NULL;

    // Argument validation

    pIApp = (IStressApp*)lpParam;
    
    // Run the app
    g_rStressAppResult = pIApp->Run();

Cleanup:
    return 0;
}

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Description: Create the main stress app thread.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
HRESULT
StartAppThread(
    __in  IStressApp*   pIApp,
    __out PHANDLE       phThread)
{
    HRESULT rResult     = S_OK;
    DWORD   dwThreadId  = 0;
    HANDLE  hThread     = NULL;
    UINT    nError      = 0;

    // Argument validation

    *phThread = NULL;

    hThread = CreateThread( 
            NULL,                       // default security attributes 
            0,                          // use default stack size  
            Run,                        // thread function 
            pIApp,                      // argument to thread function 
            0,                          // use default creation flags 
            &dwThreadId);               // returns the thread identifier 

    if (hThread == NULL)
    {
        // Handle error
    }    

    *phThread = hThread;
    hThread = NULL;

    // Cleanup

    return rResult;
}

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Description: Wait for the stress test thread to finish, or for the user to
//              cancel the test.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
HRESULT
WaitForEvents(
    __in                    IStressApp* pIApp,
    __in_ecount(cEvents)    HANDLE*     ahEvents,
    __in                    UINT        cEvents)
{
    HRESULT         rResult     = S_OK;
    DWORD           dwObject    = 0;
    DWORD           dwCount     = 0;
    UINT            nError      = 0;
    bool            tDone       = false;
    INPUT_RECORD    irBuffer;

    // Argument validation
   
    printf("[Press [ESC] to cancel the test.]\n");
    while (!tDone)
    {   
        // Wait until console event or thread termination        
        dwObject = WaitForMultipleObjects(
            cEvents,
            ahEvents,
            false,
            INFINITE);

        switch (dwObject)
        {

        // Received a console event
        case WAIT_OBJECT_0 + g_nCONSOLE_INDEX:
            
            // Check the input buffer for cancel keystroke sequence
            ReadConsoleInput(ahEvents[g_nCONSOLE_INDEX], &irBuffer, 1, &dwCount);
            if ((dwCount == 1) && 
                (irBuffer.EventType == KEY_EVENT) &&
                (irBuffer.Event.KeyEvent.bKeyDown) &&
                (irBuffer.Event.KeyEvent.wVirtualKeyCode == g_wCANCEL_CODE))
            {
                // Cancel sequence, [ESC], was pressed; terminate the app.
                printf("[Stress test terminated by user.]\n");

                // Signal the stress app to stop (non-blocking)
                rResult = pIApp->Stop();
                // Handle failure result

                // Wait for app to finish            
                dwObject = WaitForSingleObject(ahEvents[g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX], g_nTIMEOUT);
                if (dwObject == WAIT_FAILED)
                {
                    // Handle failures
                }
                else if (dwObject == WAIT_TIMEOUT)
                {
                    // NOTE: A time-out is ok, but we may lose the rollup info.
                    printf("[Time-out waiting for app to terminate.]\n");
                }

                tDone = true;
            }            
            break;

        // Stress app thread has terminated
        case WAIT_OBJECT_0 + g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX:

            // Get result from stress app thread
            rResult = g_rStressAppResult;

            printf("[Stress test complete.]\n");
            tDone = true;
            break;

        default:
            // Handle error
        }
    }

    return rResult;

}

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Description: Get the standard input console handle.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
HRESULT
GetStandardInputHandle(
    __out PHANDLE phStdIn)
{
    HRESULT rResult = S_OK;
    HANDLE  hStdIn  = NULL;
    UINT    nError  = 0;

    // Argument validation

    hStdIn = GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE); 
    if (hStdIn == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) 
    {        
        // Handle failure
    }

    *phStdIn = hStdIn;
    hStdIn = NULL;

    // Cleanup

    return rResult;
}

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Description: Entry-point to the Stress Automation Driver.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
int _cdecl
main(   
     __in               UINT  cArgs, 
     __in_ecount(cArgs) char* asArgs[])
{
    const UINT          cEVENTS     = 2;

    HRESULT             rResult     = S_OK;
    IStressApp*         pIApp       = NULL;  
    HANDLE              ahEvents[cEVENTS];
   
    ZeroMemory(ahEvents, sizeof(PHANDLE) * cEVENTS);

    // Parse arguments
    
    // Create the application object
    
    // Start the application, and retrieve the thread handle to use as an event
    rResult = StartAppThread(pIApp, &ahEvents[g_nSTRESSAPP_INDEX]);
    // Handle failure result
    
    // Get the console handle to use as an event 
    rResult = GetStandardInputHandle(&ahEvents[g_nCONSOLE_INDEX]);
    // Handle failure result

    // Wait for console input or stress app to finish
    printf("\n[Stress test is running.]\n");
    rResult = WaitForEvents(pIApp, ahEvents, cEVENTS);

    // Handle stress failure and cleanup

    return (FAILED(rResult) ? 1 : 0);
}

We Won!

2005-02-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been awhile since I've said that! We had a good game last night, handing the FC Bunglers another defeat. They may be the only team we've beaten, but we've beaten them twice dammit!

delete C++;

2005-02-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

For those of you out there using managed code (.NET) and long for the flexibility and power of a language like C/C++, stop it. Managed code is awesome. Never in managed code did I spend hours searching for a corrupt heap pointer during a cleanup routine. Garbage collection rocks. I hate my life right now.