My posting rate has dropped to an all time low of probably one post every 2 weeks. I know, the old excuse: I've been busy. Yes, that is true, but it is not why I don't post more often. I always wanted to put very thoughtful, well written (hardly) and comprehensive post. So, I keep baking this postings in my mind or as a draft until I'm not interested on the subject anymore. And the posts die.
From now on, I'll try to post more often and shorter posts. Which means I won't be answering all the questions and I'll make a lot of mistakes, but hey, at least I'll give you some to read.
Bloglines has been really weird on the last few days. Sometimes it says there are 3 news posts for a blog, but once I click it it has none. The other problem is that a few blogs that I read I know they have been updated, but Bloglines is not showing them, this includes TechCrunch.
Two days ago I wrote about how BlogLines is having some issues. As a good "feedbacker" (Shotgun on the term!), I sent them an email. Here is their response:
Thanks for writing. We are aware of the situation you have reported, and our technical team is working towards resolving this issue as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and regret any inconvenience this may have caused.
Software is tough. I'll guess I'll wait. Although, I've been thinking on trying NewsGator. Bloglines better watch out.
We "finished" migrating our code to .NET 2.0. We have not deployed it yet, but things are going fine. The VS 2003 to 2005 solution migration was flawless, despite that I have some very tough set up schemes since I had to edit my SLN file manually. The .NET 2.0 compilation did find some interesting stuff. The most stupid was something like
a.Value = a.Value;
Turn out the assigning a value to itself was not caught on C# 1.1, but it is on C# 2.0. Now, here is a few of the issues that we found...
Finalize() method
I have several classes that implement a method Finalize(), which is usually the opposite of the Initialize(), just a harmless method. But C# 2.0 thinks that I'm trying to create a destructor and gives me a warning. Not problem, I just rename all the functions to something like "FinalizeIt()".
FileStream.BeginWrite()
Turn out that I was opening the log file stream not passing the Async flag, but then calling BeginWrite for an async call. That worked fine on .NET 1.1, but on .NET 2.0 the function locks and never returns. Either .NET 1.1 did a synchronous call even if I called BeginWrite, or it ignored the constructor and did async anyway.
String.GetHashCode()
No, you didn't. Yes, I did! I used the GetHashCode value as a checksum on our database. Turn out that you are not suppose to use GetHashCode for anything but short lived run-time structures. The great thing about the Sampa Database engine is that it has a lot of self-healing functionality, so, once it detected some stuff was corrupted, it automatically kicked in a routine to fix as much as it could, and, on this case it could recover 100% of that data. The only real fix here was to replace all the instances of GetHashCode with our own version.
Over the past 8 years, I've bought many many Dell computers for me and my family. I also bought Dell servers and computers for my business (www.sampa.com). But the change over the last 2 years has been dramatic (anything to do w/ Michael Dell stepping out of the CEO role? Dunno.) Here is my list of 7 things Dell did that put them into trouble (and made HP look like a well-oiled money machine):
1) Support They had it coming. They think they could cut their support cost by 4X without any consequence. Did you ever call Dell recently? My last conversation not only I was treated as an idiot, but at one point I thought I was talking to a speach recognition system since the guy (from India, of course) kept repeating the same things over and over again.
2) Spam It used to be that I'd receive one email a month or so with some promotions. That didn't bother me. But now I receive about 2 emails per week on average. Some don't even look like they are coming from Dell, but they are certainly bringing revenue to Dell, so they must be responsible for it.
3) Pre-installed software First thing you should do when you buy a Dell: reformat the hard disk! That is the only way to get all the crappy software out of there. Before it would come with some Multimedia and anti-virus software, and that was cool, but now it comes with software that doesn't let you forget to buy the full version of Quicken every other week. How nice of them to add a reminder to the boot of Windows? And some other 30 useless crappy default changes. Dell, do you really think that when I open the Search Pane on IE I want to use Dell's Search Engine?
4) Insane Price Strategy Here is Dell's secret to hook you: Sell the base unit for very little money and make money on memory and HD upgrades. Before, Dell was more expensive then HP, Compaq, IBM, etc., but you'd be getting a premium hardware as well. Now, Dell is pretty much the same as everybody else, but they think they can use some Game Console strategy for pricing. Turns out that I can't buy a full system from Dell without feeling cheated. $200 for 1GB of RAM, $200 for a 160GB HD, etc. Heck, I buy a Dell for $500, add all the extras for $500 and just saved $800 from their site.
5) Exploding batteries Denial won't get you anywhere. Toshiba survived some bad times with their laptops as well, and they've got pretty bad PR back them. Why didn't Dell look a history to learn something?
6) Personal vs. Business (small vs. medium-sized) If any business is not buying Dimensions (instead of OptiPlex) it's loosing money. Their business line offers less than their personal line and costs more. Did Dell hire somebody from the aviation industry to teach them how to set price? Not only that, but they have server offerings that have such disparate prices. For example, an entry-level server on Dell might cost you $400, while the next level you'll need to pay around $2000. I assume they create this huge gap to force people to buy the more expensive ones, but again... that feeling of being cheated. True story: one time I've bought 4 servers from Dell for about $4000. The next day I've got a call from a sales rep telling me that I've bought the wrong servers since that line was too entry-level and not reliable enough. Really? The Pentium 4 is different? The HD is different? Thanks, but no thanks.
7) Dude, you're getting a Dell. Ok, maybe the "Dude" was not the coolest kid on the block, according to a teenager, but he sounded pretty cool for the teenager's parents. Dell had a pretty good marketing campaign, and had a very decent brand strategy: "Don't buy a PC, buy a Dell". I'm sure that it worked, since Dell grew steadily during that period, despite the fact it was during the low cycle of the tech industry. Now, quick, can you remember the last Dell commercial that you saw?
8) Promo, promo, promo. I can't buy a Dell anymore without thinking that I'm being duped. Is the price going to drop next week? Will I get double the RAM for free? Or a free upgrade to a flat panel? Has Dell become the Macy's of the PC world? I'm sure the have same SAP software that computes the optimum price and promotion for that week, but are they considering the long term consequences of this strategy?
Dell needs a lot of fixing. It might take a few years after they start making some pretty deep changes for it to take effect. For now, I'll be looking into some HP Servers and some Lenovo or Toshiba Laptops.
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has been really weird on the last few days. Sometimes it says there are 3 news posts for a blog, but once I click it it has none. The other problem is that a few blogs that I read I know they have been updated, but Bloglines is not showing them, this includes 
September, 2007