The Old New Thing

Intelius cancels its cell phone directory, saving me the trouble of having to opt out of it every three months

December 1, 2009 Dec 1, 2009 12/1/09
Raymond Chen
A few years ago, I wrote about a new cell phone directory that charges $15 to give you incorrect information, and from which you have to renew your opt-out every three months. Well, apparently, less than a year later, due to "complaints from consumers and Verizon Wireless," Intelius decided to discontinue the service. Intelius is back in ...

Umpires are the lymphatic system of the baseball diamond

November 30, 2009 Nov 30, 2009 11/30/09
Raymond Chen
When I go to a baseball game, I try to remember to watch the umpires. They move around in a counter-intuitive way: They don't run toward the ball. They don't run toward the runner. Even when the ball is far away, the umpire runs from what appears to be one irrelevant position on the field to another equally irrelevant position. Yet no matter ...

Where did WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN come from?

November 30, 2009 Nov 30, 2009 11/30/09
Raymond Chen
Commenter asdf wonders where came from. The symbol was introduced in the Windows 95 time frame as a way to exclude a bunch of Windows header files when you include . You can take a look at your file to see which ones they are. The symbol was added as part of the transition from 16-bit Windows to 32-bit Windows. The 16-bit header ...

How does Raymond get rid of his excess pennies?

November 27, 2009 Nov 27, 2009 11/27/09
Raymond Chen
Commenter Boris mentions that he uses NJ Transit to get rid of his excess pennies. But what do you do if your area isn't served by NJ Transit? I use the self-checkout line at the grocery store. The machine has a slot for accepting coins, and you can drop pennies in there until your arm falls off. I don't do this when the grocery store is ...

Caches are nice, but they confuse memory leak detection tools

November 27, 2009 Nov 27, 2009 11/27/09
Raymond Chen
Knowledge Base article 139071 has the technically correct but easily misinterpreted title FIX: OLE Automation BSTR caching will cause memory leak sources in Windows 2000. The title is misleading because it makes you think that Oh, this is a fix for a memory leak in OLE Automation, but that's not what it is. The is the string type used by ...

I want to take all your chocolate milk

November 26, 2009 Nov 26, 2009 11/26/09
Raymond Chen
My older niece visited me at work one day, and I got her a carton of chocolate milk, which she very much enjoyed. Some days later, she told me, "I want to go to your work." "Why?" I asked. "I want to take all your chocolate milk." Missing from the story is that upon returning home after that first visit, she told everybody about her awesome...

The magic of chocolate milk

November 25, 2009 Nov 25, 2009 11/25/09
Raymond Chen
While enjoying a meal with my nieces (at the time, ages 3 and 5), I diluted my chocolate milk to cut the sweetness. The nieces then demanded that I dilute their chocolate milk as well, because as far as they could determine, it was a magical way to create more chocolate milk...