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Optical Drive Door Virus?!

Chip Lemmon — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:16:30 GMT

Okay, this is too precious to keep to myself! My DVD Rom door keeps popping open on my laptop. Probably a worn out do-hicky or an out of place gizmo right? Well I thought I'd just hit up HP tech support for an answer. Basically I want to know if I can fix it myself or if I should just buy a new drive. Here is a very funny tech support exchange:

HP Tech: Hello Chaz.
HP Tech:: Welcome to HP Total Care for Pavilion Notebooks. My name is Marisa. How may I assist you today?
Chaz: HI Marisa. I have a dv5140 US. The DVD/CD Rom door keeps popping open even when i don't hit the button to release it. Is there a tweak I can do to fix this?
HP Tech:: Let me see what best I can do for you today.
Chaz: okay, thanks.
HP Tech:: I understand from the above information that your Notebook CD/DVD drive tray suddenly pops out.Am I right?
Chaz: yes
HP Tech:: Could you let me know since how long have you been experiencing this issue?
Chaz: probably a couple of weeks now.
HP Tech:: May I know the recent Software and Hardware changes made in your computer before the issue started?
Chaz: that is a difficult question. Hardware there have been no changes, but software,I am a developer. I always download patches automatically and the volume of software I install and uninstall on my computer is large. However, I don't see how software would be an issue here.
HP Tech:: Thank you for the information.
HP Tech:: May I know the version of windows installed in the notebook, Is it windows XP or Vista?
Chaz: Vista
HP Tech:: The cause of the issue you are experiencing seems to be due to the virus affected to your notebook hard drive.
Chaz: really?
Chaz: I have an anti-virus that is up to date
HP Tech:: May I place you on hold for 5 minutes while I lookup my database for the exact information?
Chaz: sure
HP Tech:: Thank You.
HP Tech:: I am in the middle of trying to find an appropriate solution .
Chaz: great thanks
HP Tech:: Thank you for staying with me while I researched.
Chaz: no problem
HP Tech:: To isolate the issue let us try with removing and reseating the CD/DVD drive.

*** THIS IS WHERE I START MESSING WITH THE TECH SUPPORT PERSON ***

Chaz: how do I do that?
HP Tech:: You can find the manual for removing and replacing the drive in the below link:
HP Tech:: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00649956&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=499849&rule=44274&lang=en
HP Tech:: Please do not click on the link, instead, Just Copy and Paste the entire link onto the Address Bar of your Browser and press ENTER Key.
Chaz: so are we assuming this isn't a virus then?
HP Tech:: I have confirmed from my supervisor that it could not be Virus problem.
Chaz: oh good.
Chaz: so do you want me to follow the instructions you sent to me now?
HP Tech:: Exactly.
Chaz: You realize that I am communicating with you on the laptop in question right?
HP Tech:: If the issue persists get back to the chat with the results so that CD/DVD drive is replaced for free if the Notebook of covered under warranty.

Wow, could you imagine if a person that didn't know any better had this conversation? They'd be running anti-virus solutions all day and night with no resolution! This would be funny if it wasn't so common. When are companies going to hire competent tech support?

Simply amazing!

--chaz

Bad Verizon Policy

Chip Lemmon — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 04:12:32 GMT

So you are a loyal Verizon customer, huh? You are up for your "New Every Two" upgrade, huh. You hate your old cell phone because the up arrow and 9 key are broken. Well it is a no-brainer then, run don't walk to your Verizon store and get that new phone.

WAIT! STOP RUNNING! Do you have applications, games or ringtones on your current phone that you have paid $6 or $7 for? Hmmm... did you ever wonder how you were going to get those applications, games or ringtones on to your new Verizon phone? Oh maybe you should just download all that stuff again on to the new phone. Then just call Verizon customer service and ask for a credit. Right? Well, in a word, NO!

Verizon's policy is that if you upgrade phones, they will penalize you for continuing to use their service and purchase a new phone. The policy says, you can get your old apps by downloading them again. Oh and congratulations, you get to pay for them again too. That's right kids. Not only are you blessed with paying $90.00 or more per month for your cell service, but you get to buy your downloaded applications again and again and again each time you upgrade your phone.

Wow, just when you thought the telecom industry couldn't get more sleazy. They have found a way to drain even more of your hard earned money from you by creating applications with a limited life span. Isn't it bad enough that the cell phone itself is "disposable"? Now you get to throw out your applications right along with the old phone.

Maybe you don't really need to dial a phone number with a 9 in it. Maybe you should just keep your existing phone. At least you still have your applications!

--chaz

Dear ALT.Net Attendees:

Chip Lemmon — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:12:44 GMT

This is an open letter to the attendees of the upcoming ALT.Net gathering in Austin TX.

Dear Friends,

Sadly I will not be able to join you at ALT.Net due to some poor planning on my part. I regret missing out on the opportunity to surround myself with some of the brightest minds in our industry. If I were to attend ALT.Net though, my goal would have been to represent the "marginal developer". The developer who gets it, but doesn't practice it in the work place due to circumstances beyond his/her control. Or the developer who wants to get it, knows he should get it, but just doesn't.

My biggest fear is that the top 1% of the class is getting together and they will come up with things that will leave the "marginal" developer behind. Please remember to check your egos and agendas at the door and do what is best for the community. There are countless developers out there that look to you guys to blaze the trails. So long as your final message is not condescending or too abstract you will set the pace for others to follow.

To be clear about this what I mean is that there is a tendency to feel as though we are all unworthy to call ourselves developers right now if we are not an Agilest. Even if that is not the intent, it is the perception. And we all know that perception is reality. Please don't let that happen from the ALT.Net effort. You guys are on to something here.

If there is one thing I have learned from ALT.Net already, it is that a namespace is not something to take lightly. From the countless posts about what ALT.Net really is one might say that our industry is jam packed with anal retentive literalists. Let's move past the term ALT.Net already. Just don't change the namespace to ShoveItDownMyThroatLikeAgile.Net ;) Oh, just kidding, lighten up!

Oh and my final word on the ALT.Net thing. It makes me laugh when people argue that this is a movement against the Microsoft tool set. It is especially comical when non .Net or anti-Microsoft developers comment on how bad and evil Microsoft is. And how the horrible empire is following its own vision and not ours. Shut up already with this crap. Bottom line is that this is not a Utopian society. Microsoft is trying to make a buck on its efforts. And here is a dirty little secret... So are all of us. So use their tools, or use somebody else's but don't throw your hate around anymore, because it is just old.

Yes a lot of us do things for free to better our profession. But if we were all honest we do this because it puts bread on our table and not for the betterment of man kind. So great, there are languages out there that are grass roots, that don't come from an "evil empire". If that's your thing, go ahead and use it. But just stop the Microsoft bashing non-sense. I don't love MS but I don't hate them either. I think I have a practical perspective on what they are and how they help me do what I need to do for a living. In the end they are a business like any other. So enough already!

Well I guess that was a bit more than a final word, but I had to get that rant off my chest. It has really been killing me.

So ALT.Netters, have fun, keep it real and bring home some good ideas!

--chaz

Infragistics Web Grid on a Web Tab

Chip Lemmon — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 19:04:22 GMT

I am writing a bit of client side code to move data from one Infragistics UltraWebGrid to another. To do this I have given the user a button on each row of the main table. If they click the button in a row the contents of the id and descrition columns should be inserted into the destination grid.

This all should have been real simple. Except my javascript did not work. Here is my original code:

So the code is syntactically correct. My destination grid has an Id of MergeGrid. But remember my UltraWebGrid is on an UltraWebTab. This causes a problem. When I run this function, my row is never added to the grid. That is because behind the scenes, my grid was renamed. This is how I finally got the function to work.

Notice that I replaced the MergeGrid name with UltraWebTab1xxctl0xMergeGrid. I found this name by running my ASP.Net web project and viewing the source of the page from the web browser. There may be a better way to do this and if there is I'd like to know.

--chaz

NJUX Re-cap

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:01:00 GMT

The NJUX meeting was a great event. Thanks to everyone who turned out! A big lesson learned is that South Orange may not be the most ideal location to get to. We'll need to figure out a new location when the time is right.

There was some really meaningful dialog about just what a "User Experience" group should focus on. The consensus seemed to be that User Experience (especially in the Enterprise) is still in its infancy. So that will bring some challenges to the group. Some of the ideas that came from the meeting follow;

The group must engage the designer & developer communities. Presenters will be challenged to address both communities.

The presentations (at least for the first year) should be at Level 200 (aka introductory).

WE NEED TO BE VENDOR NUTRAL. I will always evangelize Microsoft technologies because that is my background and how I have made a living for countless years. But, when it comes to the User Experience there are vendors like Adobe that cannot be overlooked!

There will be a lot of UX news coming out of the upcoming Mix '07 Conference in May. This will give us plenty to cover as we kick off the group in a more formal meeting location. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR MIX, IT IS GOING TO ROCK!

The overarching message for the group will focus on designers and developers working closely together. Similar to Agile's paired programming I think we have to realize that the User Experience isn't a singular responsibility. Better User Experiences will come from collaborative work between the developer and designer. A major challenge for us is to figure out how to get the designer community to come out and join the group. If anybody has any recommendations please post them here or e-mail me through this blog.

A really great discussion we had Thursday night is about how to make the User Experience relevant in back office Enterprise applications. The challenge for the design & development community is to show stake holders that a significant ROI may be appreciated by well designed back office applications as well as customer facing ones. And as someone had pointed out just putting a pretty UI on a terrible application will not make the application any better. So as User Experience creators we need to challenge ourselves not to masquerade crappy architectural practices with pretty UIs.

NJUX will take a pause while we watch for the news from Mix 07 and watch Adobe’s Apollo mature (still in Alpha release). Then we will plan and collaborate to put together some great content that will get folks excited about UX technologies.

Who knows, we may even look to host some sort of kick-off event to show off some of the best stuff from Mix. The event will embody the true spirit and purpose of NJUX.

Keep watching this blog for more on NJUX!

--chaz

It is all about the SWAG!

Chip Lemmon — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:08:00 GMT

Peter Laudati asks a very interesting question... Why do you or don't you attend a user group? It's all about the SWAG! You know the goodies they give out at user group meetings... software, tee-shirts, and pizza...

Actually this is a really great question to ponder as I am trying to start a new user group (NJUX) myself. Why... why go through the trouble of setting up a meeting place, scheduling speakers and coordinating with other user groups.

Well as Paul Kimmel so eloquently states a lot of it has to do with being around like minded people. There are just certain things you can't talk about to people outside of the industry. And being a consultant, sometimes that is a huge void that needs to be filled both socially and professionally. I think a user group provides a great place to get that kind of interaction. Something you can't get from a web-cast. So yes I am tired after a long day of work and I may even need to boot up after a meeting and burn the midnight oil. But for a couple of hours per month I get the social and professional interaction I need to feel a little less isolated.

And then there are the speakers. Yeah sure you can see them on a web cast or read their blogs/white papers, but how amazing is it to talk to somebody that helped invent SQL Server, WPF, Vista... etc. Being able to interact with somebody so overwhelmingly smart that they aren't working on the current technology, they are developing the next two generations of that technology is mind blowing. Live presentations are by far superior to watching a video or reading an article. It is the difference between TV and HDTV!

So to expand upon Peter's question, why am I trying to start the New Jersey User eXperience (NJUX) group? Well for one thing I think people are less likely to go to a user group meeting if they have to travel too far from their job or home to get there. So I am trying to fill a geographical void for myself as well as others. Secondly, User Experience is so critical to most everything we do and yet it has been given so little emphasis until recently. Let's face it; we can build the most brilliant software that does the most amazing things, but if people are not drawn to using it for its simplicity and beauty it will fail. Presentation matters.

I hope you go to a user group near you. If you don't I hope you think about doing it. Your time is a small price to pay for so many benefits.

--chaz

NYC Code Camp II Announced

Chip Lemmon — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:40:00 GMT

As per Peter Laudati... NYC Code Camp II has been announced for March 3, 2007. Get the word out and think about presenting.

For the Communit, By the Community!

--chaz

Data Center Move

Chip Lemmon — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:44:00 GMT

Man, I've done a lot of stressful odd things in my career, but a data center move must be among the worst. One of my clients has contracted with a large 3rd party to maintain their infrastructure. As a part of that there is an effort to consolidate data centers. Of course my distributed system is one of the affected systems. I'm hoping we will all sigh with relief Monday when we pull the trigger and go live. I'd also like to get back to my regular responsibilities of architecting and developing solutions for the business. This move has been all consuming.

Oh yeah, since I have little time to blog I'll include a quick update on the NJ UI Designer & Developer Group. We have 5 interested members... Please let me know if this type of group strikes you as interesting. I think there is a lot of good stuff we can do with this group.

--chaz

How Do You Tech Out?

Chip Lemmon — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:11:00 GMT

I've been sitting on this post for a long time... I just read a post by Chris Williams about a technical interview he conducted today. It is very funny and it has inspired me to write this.

Now I have been on both sides of the fence in a technical interview as both the interviewer and the interviewed. I really hate this process from all sides. Obviously as an employer you need to figure out what somebody knows and if they are qualified for your job. As a candidate you want to put your best foot forward.

My most recent experience comes to mind when discussing this topic. I had a very technically talented interviewer. And I got one of the most grueling interviews of my life. Questions ranging from "Name 4 of the nodes you will see in a SQL Server Management Studio Tree" to "How to change the color of text in a simple html page containing only the <HTML> and <Body> tags" to "Can you Inherit from multiple classes in C#".

I was warned ahead of time by the internal recruiter that this interviewer was an MCSD and had gone through great pains to develop a technical interview that he was very proud of. And rightfully so. The breadth and depth of this interview was significant.

From an Employer standpoint, this very syntactical/text book interview is not my style. I'd much rather know that you can think. I'd like to know that you know where to find the answer to things you don't know. I much rather know what you contributed to your last project. Yeah, sure you need to know the basics, but if we are talking about MVC/MVP, or a data access block you know how to code... we've moved past the basics. Syntax is relatively insignificant. Now sure knowing that you can't inherit from multiple classes in C# and that you work around this by implementing multiple interfaces from abstract classes is important. That tells me you are an advanced developer. But knowing the syntax for what attribute to set on the <Body> tag to change the text color is irrelevant. Tell me you'll Google that or even better you'll go to WebMonkey.Com to get that answer and I'm happy.

One of my most favorite questions as a candidate is anything regarding ADO.Net. Anybody that knows me knows that I am not a very big fan of datasets much less ADO.Net. Sure it has it's place in the world and is gaining a little more validity beyond simple data transport (much to my chagrin). But I am from the use ADO.Net as a data transport mechanism via the Data Access Block camp. Pass me a dataset to hydrate my business object and get rid of ADO.Net from there. So do I know ADO.Net... well not really. But does it matter? I know how to use the Data Access Application Block. Isn't that enough? Is it?

I don't know if there are any really good answers to this. But if you do get past the trawling recruiter slime out there, you are only 50% there. You still need to pass a technical interview. As I did in my most recent experience, I simply told the interviewer to move on to the next question when I did not know the answer. I made a mental note of the question, looked up the answer later and in my thank you for your time e-mail submitted back the answers to about 10 questions I had skipped.

You are not without your computer and thus resources to research syntax, technique and tools in your daily job. So why then should you be expected to tech out (specifically syntax) without these tools. And yes maybe Visual Studio has made us lazy developers, but come on, how many of us haven't browsed the drop down list of options from intellisence. Ya gotta love the intellisence!

--chaz

devCouncil NJ & NJ UI Designer & Developer Group

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:49:00 GMT

Thanks to Peter Laudati for a great event! The devCouncil NJ on Thursday in the Iselin office was awesome. I got my first look at WPF and Expressions. Very very cool stuff. And very timely for my hopes to start a UI developer group.

In fact, I met a designer at the devCouncil and I realized after talking with him that the name of the group NJ UI Developer's Group my be exclusionary. So I think (if it gets off the ground) we should call it the NJ UI Designer and Developer Group or NJ UI D&D Group for short. The group will present UI development and design practices and tool sets. Although design and development are two different skill sets, sometimes we have to play both roles. And at the very least designers and developers need to work together. So I think this is a great blend.

Also after reading Don's blog trying to help me get the word out, I realized the location of Berkeley Heights may be a limiting factor for some people. I would like to keep the group in the boarders of Union county. So if you know of real estate (a roof, electricity & seating for a small group) we can use once per month to host the group in Union County which you prefer more than Berkeley Heights, please let me know. I am open to suggestions.

Just remember there is a great brew pub in BH if we do locate the group here. Would be a great social location after the meeting.

--chaz