Well where to start with this wonderful story. So I'm talking on the phone this afternoon, trying to schedule a meeting with admin from another office. I'm looking through my Outlook calendar hoping to find a few hours free in the next two weeks to book her in for a conference call when I hear three really loud beeps come from the ThinkCentre tower on my desk. These beeps were loud enough that the person in the next cube heard them. Then my screen went black. Pitch black, like in I'm screwed pitch black. AWESOME!!! So I try to start it back up. I get the same three loud beeps and shut down. WTF. Pull power cable, wait 30 seconds, plug back in. No power to the box now.
Well I can see that the quality IBM was bringing to the desktop and laptop market went out the door when Levono purchased them. I've used IBM laptops, desktops, and servers for over 10 years. I have never seen the failure rate as high as it has been since Levono purchased them. I won't even go into the T60 notebooks. My blood pressure can't take it. Thinking happy thoughts, puppies and kitties. O.k. I'm better now...
I got Mobile 6 on my Treo thanks to some wonderful people in Russia and Google. Mobile 6 runs like a charm so far. I really do like it a lot. Much faster, and the battery life is even better. I know some might find this hard to believe, but after a full day my battery is way fuller than normal, AND I have been using the phone more today than normal since I'm looking at all the new features, GUI, etc. I only feel for you suckers that are left in the Windows Mobile 5 world, or worse yet, Pocket PC 2003. For all you dev's, .NET Framework 2.0 Compact is now in ROM. Yes, you read that right. Isn't that the cat's meow?!! Oh and Bubble Breaker, Google Maps, and MAME still work in Mobile 6.
I've been looking hard at those MacBooks. A kid in the VB.NET class I'm taking has one and man that new screen is just WAY too sexy. I could see the Costoda using that instead of his 24" iMac at home. Now if I could get it into the building at work without El Guapo having the snipers shoot me down because I'm carrying an Apple product.
Last but not least big thanks to Mac Daddy Micheal at work for scoring me a new 2 GB iPod Nano from the Apple store in Milwaukee after my current one did the "white screen of death". I love my iPod Nano and running hasn't been the same since I've been forced to use my 30 GB iPod video.
Needless to say I predict a new iPod in my future as Apple has a new event scheduled for September 5th. What can I do? The Steve says I should buy all his good warez because Apple rules. I must obey the Steve, for he tells me all that is good in the universe comes from Apple....
-Costoda
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
VB.NET 2008 vs. C# 2008 - Round 1
OK, so if you don't already know the Costoda is taking a VB programming class. Ok I know a lot of you are already thinking, WTF - how is he going to last in that class and whom is that poor professor that has to deal with the Costoda for 18 weeks? Well to start, the instructor is really cool, although I do feel sorry for him.
So according to Microsoft the only difference between VB and C# is syntax because everything is converted to MSIL. Ok I will drink this kool-aide. So I start up Visual Studio and make a new VB project. I make some private vars and then make my first method. I go through and type in a new method that I haven't created yet, expecting to use Visual Studio's awesome refactoring tools to generate a stub method. Right click on the name, what's this, NO CREATE stub method... WTF!!! So next I take some code and release that really this code should be in another method, so I select the code and go to right click on the code and refactor it to another method, and NO refactoring menu option. WTF!!! Come to find out, these are only available in C#. Wait, I though they were the same except for syntax. True, but Visual Studio's editor doesn't think that way. Instead C# get's all the cool features in Visual Studio... Oh they are equal, R.I.G.H.T.
Next WTF is up with the complete different terminology for stuff like static, I mean Share. Another example is this whole Me vs this object. C++/C#/Java I get the 'this' object, in VB that's the 'Me' object. Then I see this Dim is sometimes private and sometimes not. I see this crap all over the place. How do VB programmers talk to C# when you have all this damn terminology crap that makes a barer between the two. But wait, they are equal. R.I.G.H.T.
Ok so my conclusion is that they are NOT equal until I can do the same crap in my VB project in Visual Studio as I can in C#. Until then, VB.NET is always going to be some kind of candy language given to VB 6.0 programmers so they don't jump ship to Python and open source.
-Costoda
So according to Microsoft the only difference between VB and C# is syntax because everything is converted to MSIL. Ok I will drink this kool-aide. So I start up Visual Studio and make a new VB project. I make some private vars and then make my first method. I go through and type in a new method that I haven't created yet, expecting to use Visual Studio's awesome refactoring tools to generate a stub method. Right click on the name, what's this, NO CREATE stub method... WTF!!! So next I take some code and release that really this code should be in another method, so I select the code and go to right click on the code and refactor it to another method, and NO refactoring menu option. WTF!!! Come to find out, these are only available in C#. Wait, I though they were the same except for syntax. True, but Visual Studio's editor doesn't think that way. Instead C# get's all the cool features in Visual Studio... Oh they are equal, R.I.G.H.T.
Next WTF is up with the complete different terminology for stuff like static, I mean Share. Another example is this whole Me vs this object. C++/C#/Java I get the 'this' object, in VB that's the 'Me' object. Then I see this Dim is sometimes private and sometimes not. I see this crap all over the place. How do VB programmers talk to C# when you have all this damn terminology crap that makes a barer between the two. But wait, they are equal. R.I.G.H.T.
Ok so my conclusion is that they are NOT equal until I can do the same crap in my VB project in Visual Studio as I can in C#. Until then, VB.NET is always going to be some kind of candy language given to VB 6.0 programmers so they don't jump ship to Python and open source.
-Costoda
Monday, August 27, 2007
Why buying from the Internet is so much easier than buying from Best Buy
Ok where to start? Saturday the Costoda decided that his piece of crap Microsoft wheel mouse on his 24" iMac has out lived it's usefulness. So, the decision was made to pick up a super cool Razer Death Adder mouse. This is the same mouse that is on my 64-bit workstation UGM (Ultimate Gaming Machine). Getting Vista 64-bit is a whole other blog post.
So anyhoo I take a trip to the Best Buy on the west side of town. They had one left in stock. Perfect. I purchase and take my prize home. I get home plug it into the mac, great blue light comes on, but no mouse movement. Ok, I reboot. Still no mouse movement.... Ok, plug into the ThinkCrap. Still, same thing. Ok plug into UGM. Same thing, no stinking mouse movement. *sigh* It's 11 PM by this time, which means I'll have to return it on Sunday.
I go to Best Buy at 12:15 PM. After standing inline for 20 minutes I explain how the mouse looks awesome but doesn't work and I want one that does work. She states I should go and get one to replace it with from the shelf. Ok, I go and look, no stinking mice on the shelf. GREAT!! So I go back and stand in line for 10 more minutes. After a few calls she states the store on the East side of town has a few and I should pack up my crap and go there. Needless to say by this time I'm already late for another appointment, so this will have to wait until Monday, which is today.
So after work I go to the store and stand in line. I explain my store AGAIN and she looks in the computer. Ok they have one left in inventory. I go to the shelf, no mouse. GREAT!!! I go back and explain to her that it's not there. She looks around. 15 minutes passes. Some dude comes up and states they will have to get another one from a different store. He attempts to make his Cisco VOIP phone connect to another store in Wisconsin. 1o more minutes pass by. As he finalizes the day, the chick returns from the back with the last mouse they have. They found it. So after like over 2 hours of running around I finally have a working mouse.
So explain to me why this is worth paying way more for a mouse when I could order it from Newegg have it here in 3 days and pay a LOT less for it? I want to drink the help out the local community by purchasing crap local, but man oh man, sometimes they make it really hard to swallow....
Costoda
So anyhoo I take a trip to the Best Buy on the west side of town. They had one left in stock. Perfect. I purchase and take my prize home. I get home plug it into the mac, great blue light comes on, but no mouse movement. Ok, I reboot. Still no mouse movement.... Ok, plug into the ThinkCrap. Still, same thing. Ok plug into UGM. Same thing, no stinking mouse movement. *sigh* It's 11 PM by this time, which means I'll have to return it on Sunday.
I go to Best Buy at 12:15 PM. After standing inline for 20 minutes I explain how the mouse looks awesome but doesn't work and I want one that does work. She states I should go and get one to replace it with from the shelf. Ok, I go and look, no stinking mice on the shelf. GREAT!! So I go back and stand in line for 10 more minutes. After a few calls she states the store on the East side of town has a few and I should pack up my crap and go there. Needless to say by this time I'm already late for another appointment, so this will have to wait until Monday, which is today.
So after work I go to the store and stand in line. I explain my store AGAIN and she looks in the computer. Ok they have one left in inventory. I go to the shelf, no mouse. GREAT!!! I go back and explain to her that it's not there. She looks around. 15 minutes passes. Some dude comes up and states they will have to get another one from a different store. He attempts to make his Cisco VOIP phone connect to another store in Wisconsin. 1o more minutes pass by. As he finalizes the day, the chick returns from the back with the last mouse they have. They found it. So after like over 2 hours of running around I finally have a working mouse.
So explain to me why this is worth paying way more for a mouse when I could order it from Newegg have it here in 3 days and pay a LOT less for it? I want to drink the help out the local community by purchasing crap local, but man oh man, sometimes they make it really hard to swallow....
Costoda
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)