Started the night writing a knowledge base article on a product. Next thing I know it is midnight and I'm waist deep in a hex editor finding undocumented features.

My setup

Ask someone for their Java windows service and installation instructions for testing our integration. They reply with info on how to install Java.

I have a coworker who comments every line of code he writes and it doesn't matter how simple the code is and it drives me crazy when I have to look at it. A real life example:

// Gets the total length of the server name string
var total = serverName.length;

Is it just me or do other people think those tutorials you run across on YouTube where it is just a screen recording and background music are super annoying. I would like at least a little explanation other than you typing in notepad.

Playing Sierra Online games like Kings Quest and Thexdar on an Epson 8088 with duel 5 1/4 floppy drives and no hard drive. I don't miss the days of having to swap disks when moving between different areas in the games.

I remember when my dad got a 486 DX/2 with a 300 MB hard drive and I could fit all my games on it. Prior to that on the 286 that had a 40 MB drive I created a batch file with a menu to select a game that would unzip the game and launch it, then when I exited the game it would zip it back up and delete the directory.

I have an array of 1037 records. The soap service only accepts 100 at a time. So, I write code to send an array of 100 records at a time to the soap service in a loop and get a response back of, "The maximum number (100) of records allowed for this operation has been exceeded." Well, I'll try 99 records then. Nope same error. I'll try 50 records, nope I'll just bang my head on the desk now since the documentation and error say it is a record limit of 100. 😠

Look at my code again. I was grabbing 100 records out of the array of 1037 records and storing it in a new array, but I was sending the original array with 1037 records instead of the temporary array in the loop. 😢 I'm going to bed.

I've been wanting to play with and do some development on Linux again. However, my only spare computer is an old Asus netbook. Has anyone loaded Linux on any of those $150 to $200 mini PCs you can find on Amazon? Do they work well and have driver support? I was thinking it would make a good little machine to just have on my desk.

Sitting here reading Clean Code and read the heading, "How Would You Build a City" at the beginning of chapter eleven. Damn it now I just have the urge to put the book away and play SimCity.

I decided to try out a vertical mouse. So, far I really like it. I do need to get use to the fact they are taller then traditional mice. I keep knocking it off the mouse pad or over when I move my hand from the keyboard to mouse.

So, my wife sends me this picture because our car had 111,111 miles on it. Of course she called me a nerd when I told her, "That is awesome because if you ignore the .3 on the trip odometer it is 63 and that in binary is 111111"

Whenever I read a rant where someone talks about their first Linux install or distribution they used I feel old. I remember installing Slackware back in 1995 on a 386DX that was previously used to run Wildcat BBS.

I write a lot of custom code for a program my company sells and there is no good way to run tests on it. I just spent a bunch of time wondering why the change I made didn't work only to find I accidentally clicked paste shortcut instead of paste when copying the file. I really need to take some time to write a program to copy all my code for me instead of relying on a manual process. I guess a new night and weekend project.

Giving a short talk on technical debt at our monthly meeting tomorrow. I hope it helps people in my organization understand why we need to take care of all the quick and dirty work we do. I'm tired of people saying how long updates take and the reason is because we cause the problems.

One thing I hate about documentation and tutorials is they always seem to use the simplest examples they can think of. They show you how easy it is, but if you want to use it in the real world start digging further.

I don't know why, but there is something about watching the files disappear and appear in the VS Code window when I switch and merge branches. Maybe it is because it reminds me my work is safe and sound. Unlike before my company used version control.

I found working from home and not having to interact with coworkers, unless it is about work, makes me very productive.

Note to self, don't fix a minor bug that will not effect the demo right before the live demo. My program that was working great didn't work anymore during the demo because of my quick bug fix I figured I had a few minutes to add to my code.

One reason I hate working on hardware and prefer software. Spent all weekend trying to get this Canon photo printer to work with a raspberry pi for a photo booth project. Tried multiple cables, compiling the latest cups and gutenprint, etc. Only could get it to print via wifi. Finally, I go to the store and buy a new micro USB cable and it works right away. 😠

I like the VB and VB.net lines.

I'm going to pray tonight that a judge puts an injunction on a new tax law tomorrow. Just found a problem with some code and I am rushing to fix it. I could use the extra time.

I haven't had to work with much legacy code other than mine. I always wonder what I was doing every time I have to fix something in an old project. At least it verifies I am learning and improving my programming skills.

Was going to work on learning more about creating APIs in ASP. Net core today. Instead playing video games with my son. Much more fun!

I hate it when people ask for help, but then they don't stop and listen to what you are saying to help them. They just continue trying stuff on their own.

Through skype chat today I asked a coworker what the log said and provided the exact location of the log file. After he keeps sending me messages for 10 minutes on different things he is trying and changing, I ask him to just send me the log file and I'll look at it. His response was, I don't know where the log file is for this program.

Sitting here doing some programming and watching Sneakers, one of the movies that really made me want to learn more about computers. Just wish my career was more exciting like in the movie. 😁

Superpower would be to stay motivated to work on learning and getting things done when I get bored.

Is it even possible to get good enough at regular expressions where you can just write it and you don't have to search stackoverflow for one that works?

I started with books as I only had dialup BBSes for additional resources when I started to learn. I really started to learn faster when I began building programs that related to something I was doing or needed rather then just the examples in books. Still works out better today if I apply a tutorial to something I work with or am interested in.

On Friday I was planning on working on getting the MVVM pattern down in C# and WPF. Today I watched episodes of Smallville all day. I seem to have a lack of motivation, but I guess it is the weekend. 😜

Today I had a co-worker ask how we can set a value in the registry since this other program we are working with encrypts it. My response was, "It isn't encrypted, it is little-endian." Then I went into the whole endianness topic. After finally telling him how to convert the hex values in the registry back to the original decimal value that the program is storing, he said, "I'll just take your word for it."