The Dreaded CISPA is Back

The Perils of Renaming in TFS

Apparently, renaming an assembly is a bad idea when TFS is your version control system.

Earlier this week, one of my co-workers renamed an assembly to consolidate some functionality in our application yesterday, and even though TFS said the changes were checked in, they weren’t.

I got the latest code the morning after the change, and got nothing but build failures. We’re using the latest version of TFS and it’s very frustrating that something like this still doesn’t work properly.

Ultimately, the solution was found at the bottom of this thread.

The only way I’ve found to avoid this kind of hassle is to create a new assembly, copy your code from the old assembly to the new one, change any references to the old assembly to use the new assembly, then delete the old assembly once you’ve verified the new one is working.

Please Learn to Code (Continued)

A couple days ago, I wrote a post on why Coding Horror is wrong to suggest people shouldn’t learn to code.

Here’s a much better post on the same subject by Jon Galloway (hat tip Scott Hanselman, and his e-mail Newsletter of Wonderful Things).

Wedding Website Up

Here it is: http://ebandscott.tying.the.knot.org/

Thanks again to my friend Sandro for setting this up.

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Last month (for Thanksgiving), my dad, sister, a few cousins and I cooked so mom could have a break. The food turned out so well, she asked us to do it again for Christmas–including a candied sweet potato recipe I cobbled together from different ones on the internet. The recipe is below.

Ingredients 4-5 lbs of sweet potatoes 1 20oz can of crushed pineapple 1 1/2 cups of dark brown sugar 1 1/4 cup of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter cinnamon, nutmeg, & ginger to taste

Instructions Fill an 8qt pot 2/3rds of the way with water. Bring to a boil. Boil the sweet potatoes for 15 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool for peeling and slicing later.

In a saucepan, melt the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, add the brown sugar and stir. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger until the sauce tastes how you want it.

After you’ve peeled and sliced the sweet potatoes, lay down a layer of them, drizzle/smear on some of the sauce, and sprinkle on some of the crushed pineapple. Repeat until you’ve filled whatever casserole dish or foil pan you’re using.

Bake this at 425 degrees for 90 minutes.

My VW Passat and the Check Engine Light

I took mine in for service this week for its regular 5000-mile service, and a check engine light that has been going on and off intermittently for the past month or so. When I got the car back, I found out that the reason for the check engine light coming on was the need for a software update.

This is the first time I can remember that I’ve had to take my car to the shop to get new software. I just wonder how long it will be before car companies can beam us software updates by satellite.

Stockholm, Sweden

Yesterday, before our concert at Ekebyholmsskolan, we got to tour Stockholm.  We arrived there from Finland via a Viking Line ferry named Isabella.  Two other chaperones and I spent virtually the entire time touring the older parts of Stockholm, including a number of churches.  Of the cities we’ve visited so far on the concert tour, Stockholm is the most beautiful.  I really like the architecture.  Bicycles get their own lanes.  It’s a city that’s very easy to tour on foot.  The fact that it’s on the water is also a big plus in my book.

We’re getting on our tour bus in another 15 minutes for the drive to Oslo, Norway.

Scandinavia Tour

I’m writing this from a school dorm at Toivonlinna, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Finland.  I’m one of a number of chaperones for a high school choir giving concerts in Scandinavia.  We gave a concert at the school this morning (and I really do mean “we”, since the chaperones got drafted to sing also).  Our concert yesterday in Turku went well enough that the choir went back up to sing an encore.  Iceland was our first stop, and despite its name, it was warmer than Finland is now.  Even as I type, it is snowing.

The next stop on our tour is Sweden.  We’ll be taking an overnight ferry there from Finland (assuming the weather cooperates) after lunch, a cathedral tour, and some shopping.

Taxes

For the first time in a number of years, I had a professional do my taxes.  I’d been a TurboTax Online user for the past 6 years, but got a referral from a friend and figured I’d try them out.  The parking situation wasn’t ideal, and the wait to be seen was long (over 3 hours for me), but the size of the refund I got back made it worthwhile.  If you don’t mind a wait (or the fact that they’re cash-only), visit Newby Tax Service at 6315 Windsor Mill Rd, Gwynn Oak, MD 21207.

Rates are $150 for single filers, $300 for businesses.  The charge for e-filing is an additional $80.

Aftermath: The Failure of Virtual Case File

The FBI awarded Lockheed-Martin (my former employer)  the lead role in implementing Sentinel, a follow-up effort to the failed VCF project, in March 2006.  Nearly two years later, it will be interesting to see what lessons (if any) the FBI learned.

$44.92

That’s how much it cost me to fuel up the Volkswagen Jetta I drive today. $3.59 a gallon, and only because I drove past stations charging nearly $4 a gallon for premium. Buying the same amount of gas in continental Europe or England would have cost me at least double that amount though, so I won’t complain. But telecommuting regularly is looking like an even better idea than it already was.

Never expected to see a cellphone here ...

I finally dragged myself to the gym for the first time in awhile. The combination of business school and full-time work made a somewhat reasonable excuse for not working out, but school’s been over since May.

In any case, I was rather surprised to see a woman next to me working out on the Stairmaster while chatting away on her cellphone. Later in my workout, I saw a guy doing exactly the same thing. I’ve come to expect to see cellphones in a lot of places, but seeing them in use during a workout is a new one on me.

Three Paper Town?

To the Washington Post and the Washington Times we can add another paper: The Washington Examiner. In this age of the Web, blogs and other forms of electronic media, starting a print newspaper seems an odd choice. From my time as a technology intern at the Washington Post, I remember stories from bosses about how DC used to have four newspapers. The Washington Star was the one they remembered most, since a number of them worked there before it closed up shop in 1981.

From this column by Dave Matsio, it sounds like they want to do something a little different with their opinion pages.

The rest of their website looks pretty well done. We'll have to wait and see if the writing is good. It would be nice if they got lucky and broke an important story or two before the larger papers.

For Some Soldiers the War Never Ends

Very interesting commentary on the Defense Department's use of stop-loss orders and activation of the Individual Ready Reserve.

Captain Exum does a great job of challenging the idea that the current U.S. force is sufficient to meet all of its commitments. This makes a strong case for increasing the size of the permanent force. How exactly the individual branches would do it, I'm not sure.

As far as the idea of a draft goes, I'm not sure that's the best idea for the military threats our country faces today. One idea I'd like to see considered very strongly is a draft for first responders (fire, EMS, police, etc). Because so many of our current reservists leave those positions empty when they get called up, I think it would be wise if those positions could have a steadier stream of incoming personnel.

Gen. Anthony Zinni's Remarks at the Center for Defense Information Board of Directors' Dinner

He lays out a series of excellent ideas to be considered for solving the mess that Iraq has become. If only the current administration would listen ...

Read the whole thing here.

Casualty of War

A fascinating piece in GQ about Colin Powell.
How to get out of Iraq

This feature by Peter W. Galbraith makes a compelling case for how the U.S. can extricate itself from the disaster that Iraq has become. Along the way, he does a good job of touching on the positive aspects of this war (namely the removal of Saddam Hussein). To sum up his solution, it is a loose confederation of three separate states, with their own governments, militaries, etc. The only connections between them would be a relatively weak central government and revenue-sharing of oil sales (to prevent the "Sunni triangle", which lacks oil, from being impoverished).
While it is far from the grand Bush vision of Iraq as a democratic example for the Middle East, it would probably be far better than the current situation.
The U.S. reaps a whirlwind in Iraq

This article does a good job of laying out the mistakes that both the U.S. and the UN have made. Especially important is his point that UN involvement won't have the desired effect if they're seen as nothing more than a proxy for U.S. interests.
Iraq duty deters re-enlistment

We can only hope this is a one-time blip instead of a signal of a longer-term problem.

I'm only a civilian, so it's not clear to me why the Army couldn't swap soldiers between Iraq and other bases in Europe or Southeast Asia. While it wouldn't get them all the way home, it would at least get them out of the hot zone so they could decompress before coming home. The long duty has to be grinding these guys down.
Moody's cuts Ciena Corp ratings to B2

This provides perhaps the best summary I've seen anywhere of the current & future prospects of my current employer. The whole firm definitely needs to read it.