There is a huge group of people in the software development community who love to trash Microsoft. Every good story needs a villain and MS keeps playing the role so well. I’m not a fan of Office, ASP, .Net, etc., but its hard to argue with the impact that Windows has had on both businesses and consumers worldwide. Having worked on many complex enterprise applications I also appreciate the complexity of the MS world: The thousands of coordinated decisions that must be made each day in order to just survive much less thrive. Its easy to talk about a clean solid code base for your single application in a greenfield. Try it when you have dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of demanding customers, all running a different set of versions, patches and customizations.
» Continue reading “Oh, Microsoft”

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This weekend I flew to Seattle for an hour. My flight left Minneapolis at 9:55 pm and I was back home at 6:00 am the next morning. To mark the occasion I purchased a genuine Seattle ballpoint pen for $2.99 in the only gift store open in the airport. I made this 2,650 mile, 8 hour, overnight journey to keep my elite status with Northwest (soon to be Delta) Airlines. I needed to fly 2500 miles before the end of the year, and Seattle was the cheapest flight I could find.

I was too tired to do any real work, and too awake to sleep, so I mostly thought about why I’d make such a crazy trip.
What I came up with first is a list of real annoyances that disappear when you are a “preferred” flier. » Continue reading “flying to seattle for an hour”