No, not wsa:To (there's only one of those). Outlook To:, as in, "the To: line on your email". Apparently, some folks think relative order on the To: line correlates to relative importance in the discussion.

DennisPi has the details, and suddenly all the ./ readers think they know why Vista slipped...

Anyway, while we're on the topic of email addressing arcana, one thing I wish more people would do is respect the colloquial difference between To: and CC:.

Basically, my native expectation is that people who are sending me mail because they want me to do something will put me on the To: line. People who are just including me as an FYI and don't require me to take explicit action should put me on the CC: line.

I have Outlook rules that filter To: vs CC: into different folders, and I prioritize each folder accordingly.

In other words, the two headers are each associated with a different MEP -- To: is synchronous request/reply, CC: is asynchronous request/optional-reply. Of course the synchronous path is subject to varying latency depending on server load :)

I've been running the Office 12 beta on my main laptop for a couple weeks now, and I'm loving it.

Now I'm running Vista, too.

I've filed a couple bugs so far, but nothing earth shattering. Lots of "fit and finish" work to be done yet, but the product is shaping up really nicely from my view.

I apologize for the lack of technical content on this blog lately. We've all been pretty heads-down lately, getting this whole WCF thing in the landing pattern for V1. We're at the stage where it's just about time to make sure all the seatbacks and tray tables are in their full upright and locked position and the "fasten seatbelt" sign has recently been turned on (as it were). Doesn't leave much time for blogging.

Anyway, here are some musings about one of my non-technical obsessions: Lost. The finale for Season 2 is next week, and if you haven't been watching you should stop now, because I'd hate to spoil the fun for you. But here are some interesting questions about the show's mythos that are bothering me...

Last week in the show "?", we discovered the Pearl Station which (by all appearances) gives credence to theory that all of the nonsense with the button-you-must-press-every-108-minutes-to-prevent-end-of-world is really all just an elaborate psychological experiment. We saw that the Pearl station could observe the "subjects" doing the button pressing in the other stations...however, there were also video cameras montoring the people in the Pearl station itself. Which of course begs the question who's watching the watchers??  It's possible that either (a) the experiment is double-blind, implying that people in both stations are subjects, even the ones who think they are in control or (b) the experiment is entirely reversed, being carried out only on the people who think they're watching the experiment. The ultimate goal of said experiment remains a mystery. There's also the possibility that we've completely misinterpreted the meaning of the Pearl station Orientation video and that there's no experiment at all.

Speaking of things not being as they appear, this week we got to see bit of The Others camp via Micheal's flashback. This seems to be pretty primitive, yet we know via Claire's flashback that The Others really aren't the dirty bunch of ragamuffins they make themselves out to be. We did see a glimpse of a clean-shaven Mr. Friendly in Claire's episode, and there's the discovery of the makeup kit in that same episode to as well as Walt's warning that "they're pretending" to contend with. The Others are clearly going to great lengths to make themselves appear to be uncivilized; the question remains "to what end?" My guess is that we'd know a lot more if we caught a glimpse of what was on the other side of the hatch door that The Others were seen guarding in Michael's flashback.

Finally, a more thematic question. This whole season has been about a fundamental tension between science (rationality/logic) and faith. Was that really a vision of Walt that Shannon saw? Is Henry one of Them? Can the psychic in the outback really heal Rose? Is the Button real or just an experiment? This whole season has been broadly about duality, a dialectic. Black and White. Rose and Bernard. Locke and Ecko. You get my point. Anyway, all of this is quite interesting in light of this season's central mystery, the DHARMA Initiative. Where did that name come from? It's got to be an allusion to the Buddhist Dharma -- heck, the logo for the thing is practically a yin/yang. Is there an underlying natural/universal law at work on the island?

Other random questions:

• The Others make a binary distinction between "good ones" and "bad ones". Henry said that Locke is one of the "good ones". What makes the good ones good?
• Why do The Others have an obsession with children? Alex, Aaron, Walt...whats so interesting about prepubescents?
• Is the DHARMA Initiative still going on? All the stations appear to be empty, yet supplies are still being airlifted in. Why? Is it possible that the people running the show don't know what's happening on the island?

Anyway, hopefully at least some of this stuff will be answered next week.

The Hanso Foundation may be a benevolent organization founded by a reclusive rich guy to pursue scientific curiosities for the benefit of mankind.

It's also distinctly possible that they're the owners of a mysterious island somewhere between Sydney and Los Angeles where the knobs on the wierd-shit-o-meter goes all the way up to 11.

However, they are definitely the proud owners of a new web site, and their RSS feed doesn't validate:

Sorry

This feed does not validate.

• line 17, column 25: Undefined named entity: rsquo (3 occurrences) [help]

  <title>Joop the Orangutan&rsquo;s 105th birthday</title>

Maybe this XML stuff is too hard after all.

There are few topics outside the realm of technology on which I feel qualified to speak somewhat authoritatively. Coffee would be one of these.

Under the right conditions, I am quite able to wax eloquent about the flavor characteristics imparted by the soil conditions in various parts of the coffee growing world, as well as the effect different processing techniques have on the eventual beverage experience. Fortunately, these are not the right conditions.

Anyway, I've often wondered how we (I mean, humanity) discovered the stuff. I mean, the process by which you go from coffee cherry to hot beverage is not exactly the most intuitive thing in the world. Perhaps it happened this way:

                         MOMENT OF COFFEE DISCOVERY
                                   SCENE 01

EXT. CAVE - DAY. Enter THAD, THAG, and URK.

THAD: Wow, I'm really bushed from today's mammoth-clubbing.
THAG: I know what you mean. I sure could use something to drink.
URK: urk (agreeably)
THAG: I say, Thad -- do you see those little berry things over there?
THAD: You mean the ones growing on that tree?
THAG: Quite! You know, I bet we could make a tasty beverage out of those berries.
THAD: Naturally. All we'd have to do is pick them off the tree.
THAG: And soak them in water till the skins fall off...
THAD: then pick out the seeds and roast them over that hot thing you discovered last week.
THAG: Fire?
THAD: Right! Fire! And once we've done that, we just have to grind up the beans, soak them in water *again* and then we're cooking with gas, baby!
THAG: Actually, no. Natural gas won't be discovered for at least a few more millenia yet.
THAD: Well, at least we've got this "coffee" drink to help pass the time.
URK: urk urk urk!

How on earth did we manage to connect all those dots? The mind boggles.

The really crazy part is that somewhere, some people thought that process wasn't complex enough. Apparently, in some parts of the world, the really really good beans must first fall off the tree and be eaten by a small mammal somewhat distantly related to the mongoose. Only after they are subsequently shat out the other end of said mammal do they become truly fit for coffee making.

You would like to think that I am making this last part up. However, I assure you I am not. The good folks on BBC radio told me about it on my drive home from work today. Apparently this stuff is key to revitalizing the coffee industry in the Phiilipines.

I'm sure it won't be long before I can walk into Starbucks and say "I'd like a half pound of Cafe Mongoosepoop ground for French Press, please".

Posts like this one make me smile for many reasons.

You have no idea how stoked I am for this.

Two things that made me laugh today, both tangentially related to fortune cookies.

First, from CNN, a story of a tragic mixup involving a large delivery of custom fortune cookies to the wrong address:

A box of X-rated fortune cookies was mistakenly delivered to a fundraiser hosted by a Brooklyn politician.

The 350 cookies stuffed with "the most graphically lurid" fortunes got mixed up in a batch of 1,750 cookies ordered for the Chinese New Year event, Borough President Marty Markowitz said Friday. Some guests "were stunned, to say the least."

That's priceless.

Secondly, The Daily WTF has a montage of some hilarious tool tips from a rather "interesting" PBX application that make about as much sense as fortune cookies:

Finally, if I owned a fortune cookie company, I think it would be funny to write fortunes like this:

• You will be run over by Volkwagen shortly after leaving this restaurant.
• I am currently held hostage in fortune cookie factory. Please send help.
• Did the waiter really tell you that was chicken?

But that's just because I'm wierd like that.

In December, job recruiter J-Com's IPO in Tokyo goes awry when a trader for Mizuho Securities types in an order to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (less than a penny) per share instead of the intended 1 share at 610,000 yen (about $5,000). Though the order is for 41 times the number of outstanding shares, the Tokyo Stock Exchange insists that the order be processed as entered. Mizuho loses at least 27 billion yen ($225 million) on the typo, an amount nearly equal to its entire profit for the prior fiscal year.

Oh, wait...wrong text box...d'oh!

Update: This one highlights the importance of double-checking your boolean logic:

A few weeks after eZiba.com sends out its winter catalog, the call center's pin-drop silence begins to worry execs. As it turns out, a bug in a program designed to identify the best prospects on eZiba's mailing list led to the catalog instead being sent to those deemed least likely to respond. "Sadly, our probability estimates were correct," says eZiba founder Dick Sabot. On Jan. 14, eZiba suspends operations while seeking new investors to cover its cash shortfall. Overstock.com later buys the retailer's assets for $500,000.

Ouch.

One thing I remember from my Psych 101 course back in college is that the human short term memory capacity is 7 +/- 2 "chunks" of information. On average, we can only remember between 5-9 discrete units of information before our brains fizzle out and we start dropping things.

I think there's a corollary in the marketing world when it comes to creating "sticky" product names -- you get three syllables, max. I don't know what it is, but three seems to be the magic number. Use more syllables than that and people will either (a) acronymicize your product name down to a three-letter abbreviation or (b) forget about your product entirely in favor of something with a shorter name.

This theory of mine is hardly scientific (actually, I think I first noticed it at the grocery store), but I think there's tons of anecdotal evidence out there. Think of the first three names for companies or products that pop into your head and count the syllables -- anybody end up with more than 3 syllables? Consider these:

• Starbucks (2)
• McDonald's (3)
• Arby's (2)

• Crest  (1)
• Listerine (3)
• Scope (1)
   
• Honda (2)
• Toyota (3)
• Acura (3)
   
• Google (2)
• Amazon (3)
• Yahoo! (2)
   
• Microsoft (3)
• Windows (2)
• XBox (2)

In terms of evidence for the negative case, the three-syllable rule does offer something of an explanation for why Krispy Kreme (3) has a stronger brand identity than Dunkin Donuts (4) and why the McDLT never really took off. Four syllables isn't the kiss of death by any means, as I'm sure there are any number of successful companies out there with longish names. I just can't think of them off the top of my head right now, which is exactly my point. If you want to "stick", you get 3 syllables, period.

One issue that I have with the company I work for is that we don't seem to "get" the three-syllable rule. I think we found some brand name success in the "Windows" moniker and now feel compelled to tack it on everything. Problem is, that's a two syllable overhead right there. So unless you've got a product called "Windows Blah", you're pretty much doomed to be pushed over the three-syllable cap.

One product close to my heart (which I guess would be of the form 'Windows Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah') could have really used those two syllables back and then some :)

The other issue with the Windows moniker is that it W is not a particularly friendly letter to say. In fact, W is itself 3 syllables long...the acronym actually has a negative compression ratio in this case...meaning every TLA for a Windows product is going to exceed the three-syllable attention span of most people. And that's really unfortunate, I think.

At least we got 'XP' and 'Vista' right.

My enjoyment of this site is in no way dampened by my inability to speak Korean.

On the zero-to-fanboy scale, when it comes to The X Files I'm about a 6.

I watched the show only spoardically when it was on the air but caught bursts of it from time to time in syndication. For a while my local Fox affiliate was airing it five nights a week in season order, which made for some great late-night TV viewing during the summer.

The best episodes in my mind are the ones that deal specifically with the overarching storyline -- with the aliens and the government conspiracy and the Cigarette Smoking Man. My problem was that I would always seem to catch the wrong end of the strategic two-part episodes or not be watching the night they revealed some important new piece of the story line. Towards the end, after Mulder and Scully left and the show had truly jumped the shark I lost interest. Which is too bad, because a part of me would kind of like to know what the heck that show was really about.

The show's out on DVD now, but there's like 9 seasons of it and most of the episodes don't deal with this storyline anyway.

However, I noticed that they've released a set of DVD's that have just the uber-story episodes on them. It's about 60 episodes in all across the whole run of the show, and tracks the entire story arc from beginning to end. I picked up the first set (covering seasons 1 and 2) over the weekend, and I'm really enjoying it thus far. Having these episodes all in one place makes the cliffhangers SO much easier to keep track of.

You can find them on Amazon here.

 

As of today, according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition), the official spelling of "metadata" is in fact metadata.

Good. As you can see here, the lack of clarity on this subject has been a distinct pain point for me in the past.

I'm glad we can put that one finally to rest. I feel much better now.

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

David Findley punched “Microsoft Windows Vista” into the Internet Anagram Server and came up with this oddly prophetic, oddly haiku-like transform:

A disco of sin: twist, Mr. Vow…

Leaves one to wonder: who is Mr. Vow? Some elderly Asiatic man, perhaps, with a penchant for 50’s music? Why should he be twisting instead of, say, doing the Jitterbug? Where is this mythical “disco of sin”, and how much is the cover?

Curious.

 

Been very busy lately with work, and hacking on a couple of really fun side projects. Nothing much more to say on that other than “it will be cool, I think”. 

Took a brief break from hacking and finally saw Batman Begins tonight. Wow. That’s a damn good movie. Definitely the best of the series (which is saying a lot, because I’m a huge Tim Burton fan and loved the first one immensely). Nice to see the franchise making a comeback after the horrendous Joel Schumacher years. +1 for Christopher Nolan — this movie rocks.

I can’t tell if this message is a legitimate error or just the result some witty PM making an elliptical comment about project schedules:

 

As much as I would someday like to have a story about me begin

Thirteen years ago, Steve came up with the idea of attaching a flashlight to a pair of tweezers. 

This wasn’t me.

Matt Warren:

I realized then that nulls were truly unknowable.  That they weren't actually nothing, nor were they anything in particular.  They were any and all, yet still undefined, unpinnable.  Always potential, never anything real; the energy of all they could be and yet never will. 

Heh. This totally reminds me of the “Is nothing something?” debates I used to have with my friend Kevin Miller. Always interesting things to talk about when you have philosophy majors for friends. Especially when they like to drink a lot.

In my mind, the answer to “is nothing something” question is a snarky yes. It’s one of those inherently paradoxical things. The argument is that the word nothing refers to some mental manifestation of a concept, and if something can be conceptualized then it exists on some rudimentary metaphysical level. Of course, what we commonly refer to as “nothing” isn’t really Nothing because as soon as you think about it, it stops being Nothing and instantaneously becomse something – at best, the most formless imagination of utter emptiness is but a first-order approximation of the non-void that is (or rather isn’t) Nothing. Since conceptualization implies ontological existence, the best we can do is to create a special type of something (i.e. nothing, or null) to use a stand-in for the concept that doesn’t exist and that we can’t actually ever truly imagine. The only way to really come to terms with Nothing is to not think about it. (But what is it exactly that you’re not thinking about? Ha! Wrong answer!)

The other meaningless debate we always came around to was the question of “Is water wet?” My short answer to that is no, because ‘wetness’ is a name we ascribe to the interaction between water and thing it makes wet; water isn’t wet in an of itself. Of course, Harper et al are entitled to their own interpretation of that one.

 

Given that I have now delegated pretty much all of my long-term memory functions to my Outlook calendar, I figured it was high time I got myself a smartphone. I’ve been toying with the idea of an MPX-220 for a while now (what can I say; I like clamshells), but they’ve been having way too many firmware problems for me to be comfortable buying that phone. Instead, I ended up going with a Scoblephone. So far it’s pretty cool.

I was pretty impressed how easy it was to get Exchange ActiveSync working. Poking around the phone, there are a lot of interesting things to explore. I think it will work out just fine for my needs.

Now all I have to do is get used to locking the keypad before I throw the thing in my pocket so I don’t accidentally dial 911 as I’m walking down the hallway.

I am a Pacman Ghost. I like to hang around with friends, chatting, dancing, all that sort of thing. We don't appreciate outsiders, and do our best to discourage others approaching us. I enjoy occasionally wandering around randomly, and often find that when I do so, I get to where I wanted to be. What Video Game Character Are You?

Ok, I’m a little bit more friendly than that, but the wandering part is dead on :)

Saw Episode III this morning at 9:30. Is it the best movie ever made? No. Is it entertaining? Heck yeah. Is it a fitting end to the Star Wars saga? I think so…it’s clearly the best movie of the first 3 episodes, and it’s up there with Empire in my book for best in series.

Random thoughts (no real spoilers):

• Visually, it’s amazing. It’s easily the most visually dense movie I’ve ever seen — there’s so much detail on the screen it almost becomes overwhelming at times. But overall, it’s a beautiful picture.
• The opening shot that tracks two space fighters careening through this huge intergalactic space battle is one of the best pieces of f/x work I’ve ever seen.
• The biggest defect in Episodes I and II was inappropriate comic relief. Episode III has a couple of strategically placed humorous momements but they’re done well this time around.
• There were a couple of moments in the score that I thought were just fantastic. At one point, John Williams had the Hero theme from Episode IV backed up with a countermelody based on the “Duel of the Fates” theme from Episode I. Very cool. It’s too bad that “Duel of the Fates” was wasted on Episode I, because it’s definitely the musical highlight of the first three movies.
• Ian McDiarmid totally steals the show. His lines just drip evil and manipulation.
• The plot moves very fast. There’s a huge amount of story crammed into 2:20. I guess Lucas figured everybody was familiar enough with the story at this point that he could just get on with things. Still, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more on the seeds of the Rebellion being sewn…

Nitpicking aside, as a Star Wars fan since childhood I’m satisfied with Episode III. It really is a pretty darn good film, and one that I’m sure I’ll see many, many more times…

Only about 4 more days to go until Episode III. I have my ticket in hand – 9:30am on 5/19. Our whole team is going.

I’m doing my best to avoid disappointment by keeping my expectations low, but I’m starting to give into the excitement (hype?) about this movie. Everything I’ve seen points to this one actually being pretty good.

I’m hoping that George Lucas has the decency to introduce Jar Jar Binks to a suitably messy end in this picture, as a token gesture of apology for Episode I. I doubt that would sit too well with the kidlets, but I think it would be pretty satisfying.

Any guesses as to who’s behind http://darthside.blogspot.com? I can’t decide if it’s just a devoted fan with a wicked sense of satire or a really clever viral marketing scheme. Either way, it’s hilarious.

Star Wars Episode III: Here’s hoping it won’t suck.

you find this thread on XML-DEV hilarious. [Via Chris Ferris's weblog]

Nobody expects the RESTifarian Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...
surprise and tedium ...tedium and surprise.... our two weapons are tedium and 
surprise...and an almost fanatical devotion to Roy Fielding...Right!...THREE weapons!...

Ian and Clemens are unhappy with Microsoft's future plans for IDL and are suggesting that you register your objections over at http://classicidl.com,

Now, I think some clarifications need to be made. It's not that IDL is going away per se, it's just that Microsoft is changing its pricing model around GUID's. Specifically, as of next month, there will be a nominal per-GUID fee imposed by microsoft for the creation of new IID's, UUID's, and CLSID's.

Customers that wish to obtain new GUIDs can purchase them individually or in bulk, according to a to-be-determined fee structure. Customers that make heavy use of GUID's may wish to investigate Microsoft's new GUID Assurance program, which will allow them to derive maximal value out of their ongoing investment in GUID technology.

It's important to note that the new GUID Pricing Model will only apply to GUID's used as IID's, UUID's, and CLSID's. Other non-legacy uses of GUID's will still be permitted and will not be subject to the GPM and ancillary GUID Usage Tax (GUT). This means that if you're a customer who has a million rows of data in a SQL Server database you'll won't have to pay for each GUID you use as a row key.

However, to prevent the unlicensed usage of GUIDs, all GUID's currently in use will need to be activated via the new Microsoft GUID Activation Service (GAS). All GUID's that have not been activated via GAS will be rendered useless after 30 days. Activation is simple and can be done over the Internet or with a simple phone call.

This shouldn't be coming as a suprised to anyone. Existing customers have been getting free GUID's for many years now, and the technology has reached a point in its life where its only natural to transition from free-for-all to a pay-for-usage model. So remember: you can still use IDL, you just need GAS for your GUT!

(Oh, hey...what day is it today? Right...)

 

"I loooove Tech Ed. It's better than Cats! I'm going to see it again and again..."

I was thinking about learning styles this evening, and trying to figure out what I am. I think I'm part intuitive and part verbal, but I didn't care enough to actually take the test.

One thing I do know is that a big part of me is an ambulatory learner. That is, I feel this need to walk around as I think through things. It's really wierd. It's like I can feel the seed of an idea germinating somewhere in the back of my brain and feel the need to augment my mental journey with a physical one in order to arrive at the final solution.

I think my old office subconsciously enabled this behavior. At Avanade, I used to sit literally around the corner from the coffee machine. The 30 feet and 30 seconds it took me to go get a refill on my coffee was usually enough to get me over the hump. Net result: when I was working though a tough problem, I usually drank a lot of coffee.

My new office is maximally distant from the coffee machine. It's probably helping to moderate my caffiene intake (which is probably a good thing), but I find that I now lack a good destination to which to pace. As such, I find myself making short little trips about two or three offices down the hall and then spontaneously turning around and going back to work. It looks odd, I'm sure.

I need to find a different way of unconstipating my mental processes.

Last night, I logged into my computer to find a couple of IMs from Scott pointing to the new TechEd video he and Rory produced. I didn't get around to watching it until this morning, and I practically nosed my morning coffee all over my monitor. This thing is freaking hilarious!

Can't wait to see episode II...

Yesterday was my last day at Avanade. As part of the exit process, the made me turn in the Toshiba M2 laptop I'd been carrying around (which is perfectly reasonable, since it's their laptop...).

So I am without a laptop for the time being. And it sucks.

Given the choice between stitting upright at a desk looking a a computer screen and relaxing in the recliner in my living room, I much prefer the latter. Blogging while sitting at a desk feels remarkably like work.