Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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News flash: Big houses have bigger heating bills

July 11th, 2006
Big houses have bigger heating bills. Thanks, Associated Press! I learn something new every day. (Previous amazing fact...

Not everybody with a non-Windows partition type is a geek

July 11th, 2006
In the discussions following why Windows setup lays down a new boot sector, some commenters suggested that Windows setup could detect the presence of a non-Windows partition as a sign that the machine onto which the operating system is being installed belongs to a geek. In that way, the typical consumer would be spared from having to deal ...

Wenn Ausländer Deutsch phonetisch singen

July 10th, 2006
When foreigners sing German phonetically, the results are kind of painful. Listen, if you dare, to Johnny Cash sing "Wer kennt den Weg? (I Walk the Line)" [WMV] [Real]. If you can't get enough, you can grab the lyrics and sing along. Listening to the recording brought back painful memories of my high school German class, where there were ...

Before you can learn to recognize what's wrong, you must learn to recognize what's right

July 10th, 2006
Sometimes, when I'm debugging a problem, I'll ignore a particular thread and somebody will ask, "What is that thread doing, and how did you know to ignore it?" My reply: "I have no idea what it's doing, but whatever it's doing, it's normal." Tess has been running an excellent series of posts on debugging the CLR, but one of the most ...

Mr. T prefers a double-shot of espresso with two graham crackers, go figure

July 7th, 2006
Back in November, Paul Davidson popped into his local Starbucks coffee shop and ended up in line right behind Mr. T. Unlike me, Mr. Davidson actually knew ahead of time what he was going to ask the former A-Team heavy. And the answer was worth waiting for. (Via TV Squad: Mr. T likes espresso, fool!) Mr. T has not ...

No, really, why is it 160×31?

July 7th, 2006
When I discussed some time ago why minimized windows have an apparent size of 160x31, I explained that the minimized icon is a miniature title bar, but I managed not to explain why the values are exactly 160 and 31. The width of the miniature title bar is determined by the member of structure. You can retrieve and change this structure ...

Nearly 20 percent of daily smokers say they exercise three or more times a week

July 6th, 2006
Several months ago, The Seattle Times ran a story on people who smoke and also work out. In the article, personal trainer Will Baldyga compares it to other dissonant behavior such as pigging out on ice cream after a workout. I have to admit that on rare occasions, I lapse into such behavior ("justifying" bad eating habits with exercise), ...

Is the maximum size of the environment 32K or 64K?

July 6th, 2006
There appears to be some confusion over whether the maximum size of the environment is 32K or 64K. Which is it? Both. The limit is 32,767 Unicode characters, which equals 65,534 bytes. Call it 32K or 64K as you wish, but make sure you include the units in your statement if it isn't clear from context...

Retail companies allegedly not collecting personal information as aggressively

July 5th, 2006
Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that retail companies were no longer collecting personal information as aggressively. The poster child for this sort of thing was RadioShack, which demanded your name and address even if you just stopped in to buy a pack of AA batteries. I didn't shop there often, and when I did, I merely ...

Things I've written that have amused other people, Episode 2

July 4th, 2006
Go figure.