The Old New Thing

Seattle to Portland (STP) 2007 trip report, part 2 of 4: Spanaway to Toledo

July 25, 2007 Jul 25, 2007 07/25/07

Raymond Chen

Note: This story makes much more sense if you read Part 1 first. It won't be any more interesting, but at least it'll be a coherent sort of boring. 12:20pm: We arrive in Spanaway for the lunch break (54 miles) [pic]. The consensus among seasoned riders appears to be that the Saturday lunch is pretty lame this year. It consists of a...

What is Dave's frame class?

July 25, 2007 Jul 25, 2007 07/25/07

Raymond Chen

Back in 2004, we lost Dave's frame class. Dave's frame class, or more accurately, DavesFrameClass, was the window class that drew the CPU meter on the Performance page of Task Manager. As you might have guessed, Dave was the name of the original author of Task Manager. (If the checked version of Task Manager from NT 4 encountered an ...

Seattle to Portland (STP) 2007 trip report, part 1 of 4: Seattle to Spanaway

July 24, 2007 Jul 24, 2007 07/24/07

Raymond Chen

Note: I found some other riders who blogged their experience on the STP, and I've slipped in links to some of the more interesting ones. All statistics are approximate. Prologue Biking to and from work the Monday before STP, I noticed that I had more saddle discomfort than usual. Could it be residual effects from that training ride? Am I ...

Just because you say something in my presence and I don't raise an objection doesn't mean that I agree

July 24, 2007 Jul 24, 2007 07/24/07

Raymond Chen

This is a sneaky trick that people try to pull occasionally. They'll say something while I happen to be present (either physically in person or virtually by adding me to an email conversation) and see what my reaction is. If I don't say anything, then they assume that I agree with whatever it is they said. Just to make it official: Just ...

Tips for doing the Seattle to Portland (STP) in two days: What I learned in 2007

July 23, 2007 Jul 23, 2007 07/23/07

Raymond Chen

Two weekends ago, I participated in the 28th annual Seattle to Portland bicycle ride, wherein I joined up with 8999 of my closest friends for a friendly ride through western Washington and Oregon. Earlier this year I provided tongue-in-cheek bad advice for preparing for STP. Today I restore the balance with proper advice. This was my first ...

The real cost of compatibility is not in the hacks; the hacks are small potatoes

July 23, 2007 Jul 23, 2007 07/23/07

Raymond Chen

Commenter Myron A. Semack asks how much faster Windows would be if you took out the backward compatibility stuff. Myron is so anxious about this that he asked the question a second time. Asking a question twice typically counts as a reason not to answer it, but since I had already written up the answer, I figured I'd post it anyway. Oh ...

Apparently some people consider this a vacation; I consider it insane

July 20, 2007 Jul 20, 2007 07/20/07

Raymond Chen

One of the little cards that came in the STP information packet is an advertisement postcard for Epic Cycling Climbs of France. For $3299 (+airfare) you receive the "privilege" of cycling up the Alpe d'Huez and other notorious mountains. I'm sorry. If I'm going to go up l'Alpe D'Huez you're going to have to pay me, not the other way around...

Screwing the computer parts back together is the most dangerous step

July 20, 2007 Jul 20, 2007 07/20/07

Raymond Chen

I had removed the cover from one of the computers in my office in order to upgrade one of its hard drives (from 20GB to 200GB, woo-hoo). The hard drives are kept in a removable cage, so first I had to unscrew the cage, then unscrew the drive from the cage, then swap in the new drive. Of course, you don't screw everything back in until you've ...

Food products that are offenses against nature: Fast Franks

July 19, 2007 Jul 19, 2007 07/19/07

Raymond Chen

My colleague (who posts under the pseudonym Cloudy Starlight) tipped me off to some wonderful products which made me just stare at the screen agape, unable to express my, um, awe. I'll focus on one of the products today; the others will have to wait for another day. First, let's suppose you've got a hankerin' for a hot dog. Your adventure ...

You don’t optimize for the case where somebody is mis-using your system

July 19, 2007 Jul 19, 2007 07/19/07

Raymond Chen

Like this is something that should be optimized?