dev « Barron of Blog

3Jun/0810

A Few Gripes For You, Mr. Microsoft

Windows logo Dear Mr. Microsoft,

I have a few gripes:

Outlook sucks. If I click "Reply", but then decide not to reply and close the window, it still marks the message as being replied to. That's stupid.
Also in Outlook, when I am composing a new message you like to save my drafts in the Inbox, even though there is a beautifully labeled (and empty) "Drafts" folder right next to it. That's just bad form, good buddy. Thanks Matt!
Why, for the sake of sweaty donkey balls, does Windows limit the total path length of every file on my computer to 256 characters. What the hell is wrong with you Windows?
Explorer doesn't allow me to create/rename files that begin with a period. I can think of numerous programs that use this naming convention (".project", ".cvsignore", ".classpath", etc). However, when I ask Explorer to create or rename a file to begin with a period it tells me: "You must type a file name." Well I did, dumbass. The file name is ".project". Just because it starts with a period doesn't make it an invalid file name. Even your sorry excuse for a command prompt allows me to create/rename files that begin with a period. Stop being such a douche, Explorer.
Hey Explorer, I'm not done with you yet! How about when I am renaming a file and accidentally make a mistake (such as including an invalid character or typing the same name as an existing file). Do you keep what I have entered so far and allow me to fix my error? Oh no, my friend. You declare that if a single character was mistyped then ALL of my changes must be erased and forgotten. Yeah, good decision there chief.
And finally I come to cornbread. Ain't nothing wrong with that.

love,
Mike

Filed under: dev, geek, rant 10 Comments

22May/080

All About Mie-Mie: Sassy Jackets

As many of you probably know I develop websites as a fun side project. A website that I created just launched a few weeks back and I wanted to share it with you.

The website is an online store called "It's All About Mie-Mie". I created it for a neighbor's mother who has these fabulous jackets. They were selling very well at various local craft fairs so she decided to make the big leap to online retail. The jackets have fun names like "I'm Too Sexy For This Jacket" and "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner".

This was my first time creating a store from scratch, and overall it was a fun and interesting project to work on.

Filed under: dev, neighbors No Comments

18Dec/0723

Post Levels 1.1.1 Fix

Geek waving I use Fortes' excellent Post Levels Plugin on this site. The latest release of WordPress (version 2.3.x) broke this plugin, so I took it upon myself to fix it (since Fortes is currently unavailable).

You can download the updated version here:
Post Levels 1.1.2

If you are curious, the problem was due to a regular expression that was not expecting the SQL "FROM" clause to use an alias for the "wp_posts" table. My solution, which is a bit hacky, was to insert expressions to create and then properly handle this alias. I wish a better solution exists, but to my knowledge WordPress doesn't expose these SQL statements through hooks.

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Filed under: dev, geek 23 Comments

21Jun/070

Stupid Programmer

I work on a computer for a living: in my current position I code Java, JavaScript, and SQL. The codebase in this project is very large, so many different groups across several different companies are constantly modifying something.

Usually the incoming code we see from these other coders is ok. But occasionally we see some astounding bad code that deserves to be put on a wall of shame.

I give you Exhibit A, a nice little snippet of JavaScript stupidity:
if ((document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || (document.Form1.theField.value == " ") || .... (continues for 30 more lines!)

Yikes! I sometimes make small mistakes or typos, but this... this is insane.

It's more than incompetent: the programmer should have their keyboard access permanently revoked. I wouldn't trust this person to write an e-mail without accidentally formating their hard drive.

Oh, and if you're wondering, the picture in this post is Bill Gates posing for a teenie magazine spread (back in the day).

Filed under: dev, geek, rant, work No Comments

12Jun/070

Letters From Tim

Tim is a good friend of Shannon and mine that is currently training in preparation for service in Iraq. His mission is to provide medical evacuation capabilities to soldiers on the battlefield. They evacuate the soldiers by flying their Blackhawk helicopters unarmed into the battle to extract the wounded soldiers.

I helped Tim and Tiffany set up a site so they could share a sort of public diary of their lives as they both walk the difficult paths ahead: LettersFromTim.