March 2007 | Page 4 of 4 | The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Sit in it!

Raymond ChenMarch 7, 2007Mar 7, 200703/7/07

The title of this entry is a bad pun on a catchphrase from 1970s television. I apologize to those for whom the 1970s are a bad memory. A snippet of Microspeak that bothers me is the verb phrase "to sit in". Example: "I'm in the Nosebleed group which sits in Bob Smith's organization." I think it means "to be a part of" but I'm not quite sur

What was the first parameter to CoInitialize used for?

Raymond ChenMarch 6, 2007Mar 6, 200703/6/07

Larry Osterman explains in a two-part series, The sad story of CoGetMalloc and Why was the ability to specify an allocator during CoInitialize removed from the system?

Things I've written that have amused other people, Episode 3

Raymond ChenMarch 6, 2007Mar 6, 200703/6/07

In an internal discussion of the women blogger conference known as BlogHer, somebody asked, "Why isn't there a BlogHim?" I replied, Isn't that the plural of the word "blog" in Hebrew? This got quite an amused response from the Hebrew-speaking (or at least vaguely Hebrew-aware) members of the mailing list. Not bad for having studied Hebrew

It's official, it's the Hannukah Eve Storm of 2006

Raymond ChenMarch 5, 2007Mar 5, 200703/5/07

(Following up on an earlier entry.) The National Weather Service chose a name for the wind storm of December 2006: It's going to be called the "Hanukkah Eve Wind Storm of 2006". But what is Hannukah Eve? Eh, it doesn't look like anybody's getting too worked up over that. You can download the entire list of entries (over 5000 of them) from

Hiding files is not the same as protecting them

Raymond ChenMarch 5, 2007Mar 5, 200703/5/07

An anonymous commenter suggested that we should give up on "hiding protected operating system files". After all, if we "protect operating system files", that should be enough, shouldn't it? Well, except that some files are still hidden even though they are not protected. For example, your encryption keys are fully accessible to you (after al

Public service announcement for Seattle area taxpayers: Some transit taxes can be itemized and deducted

Raymond ChenMarch 2, 2007Mar 2, 200703/2/07

If you itemize your taxes, there are some taxes you can claim on Schedule A line 7 that you may not be aware of. These taxes are special because they are based on the value of the vehicle and therefore qualify as a "personal property tax" from the IRS's point of view. While you're on Schedule A, don't forget to claim your

The .Default user is not the default user

Raymond ChenMarch 2, 2007Mar 2, 200703/2/07

If you ever gone spelunking in the HKEY_USERS registry key, you've no doubt found the user named HKEY_USERS\.Default. Who is this guy? Despite its name, the profile for the .Default user is not the default user profile. It's actually the profile for the Local System account and is an alias for HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18. (S-1-5-18 is the security id

West Bank Story, the movie that sells itself in five seconds

Raymond ChenMarch 1, 2007Mar 1, 200703/1/07

This weekend, I attended an Oscar-watching party, and when the clips from the nominees for Live Action Short Film were run, I was completely won over by West Bank Story. Five seconds of dancing, finger-snapping Jews and Arabs is all I needed. When filling out your Oscar party ballot, "Live Action Short Film" is one of those categories you ju

If you have to ask, you're probably doing something wrong

Raymond ChenMarch 1, 2007Mar 1, 200703/1/07

If you have to ask about various operating system limits, you're probably doing something wrong. If you're nesting windows more than 50 levels deep or nesting menus more than 25 levels deep or creating a dialog box with more than 65535 controls, or nesting tree-view items more than 255 levels deep, then your user interface design is in ser

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