The social skills of a thermonuclear device Archives

I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my callstack. Debug me maybe.

Raymond ChenFebruary 26, 2018Feb 26, 201802/26/18

There was that time a team was hosting a two-day plugfest, and I was volunteered to assist them with debugging any issues in my area that may arise. They booked me to spend two entire days in a conference room with them. I showed up in the morning, and asked, "So how does this work?" They said, "People might come in at various points during

The social skills of a thermonuclear device: Ruining a conversation

Raymond ChenSeptember 20, 2016Sep 20, 201609/20/16

On an internal distribution list that a bunch of Microsoft bloggers hang out on, somebody asked a question about how to accomplish X, and another person suggested using the Y plug-in. I replied to the thread by saying, "The Y plug-in is not allowed on Microsoft-hosted properties for legal reasons. See this Web site for more information." Ned

Sorry for the interruption, but it doesn’t happen often

Raymond ChenJune 23, 2015Jun 23, 201506/23/15

Many years ago, my feature manager and I were called into the project leader's office for some reason or other, I forget exactly what. We were about five minutes into the meeting when the project leader's mobile phone rang. This was back in the days when mobile phones were not commonplace, and having one was a way of showing off your status.

Bitter or acerbic? or does it make a difference?

Raymond ChenJune 9, 2015Jun 9, 201506/9/15

One of my colleagues told me that my name came up in conversation, and somebody said that they thought I had a reputation for being bitter. My colleague defended me. "Nah, Raymond isn't bitter. He's, I dunno, acerbic." "Acerbic? What does that mean?" My colleague looked it up. "It means, um... bitter."

You can read as well as I can, or maybe not

Raymond ChenJuly 2, 2013Jul 2, 201307/2/13

Occasionally, somebody will ask for help on a distribution list, and it turns into a really annoying case of hand-holding. From: X I'm using the XYZ toolset to do some document management, and I want the server to run a script whenever somebody tries to modify the master template, so it can run validations before accepting the update, su

If you're asking somebody to help you, you want to make it easy for them, not harder

Raymond ChenNovember 6, 2012Nov 6, 201211/6/12

A customer liaison asked a question that went roughly like this: From: Liaison My customer is having a problem with the header file winfoo.h. The environment is Windows Vista German SP1 with Visual Studio 2008 Professional German SP1 and Windows SDK 6000.0.6000 German. When they try to include the file in their project, they get an error o

The day I stole Joe Belfiore's mouse

Raymond ChenSeptember 18, 2012Sep 18, 201209/18/12

He's now the head demo-monkey/cheerleader for Windows Phone, but back in the old days, Joe Belfiore was the head demo-monkey/cheerleader for the Windows 95 user interface design. A team-wide meeting was held to show off the new interface that they had developed. Wow look, we have a Start menu (though it wasn't known by that name yet), a

Management fallacy: If I send people email, then they will work harder

Raymond ChenJune 30, 2010Jun 30, 201006/30/10

A project many years ago neared the conclusion of one of its project milestones. Things were getting down to the wire, and upper management was concerned that the project may not reach the milestone on schedule. To ensure success, they decided to send email. From: Senior Manager Subject: READ NOW!!!! More than one bug Please see the attac

The best way to prove somebody incompetent is to make up stuff and then point out that it's idiotic

Raymond ChenJune 23, 2010Jun 23, 201006/23/10

One way to show that somebody is incompetent is to tell them that something they're doing is stupid, even when it's not what they're doing. Take for example this comment saying that it's stupid for copy and paste to use data objects which can allow code to execute. Um, we were talking about drag and drop, not copy and paste. And in fact, the

A decidedly Canadian response to the shambles that was the running portion of the modern pentathlon in Beijing

Raymond ChenFebruary 12, 2010Feb 12, 201002/12/10

Living so close to the United States-Canada border means that there's a lot of friendly teasing of the many Canadians in our midst. It's a good thing Canadians as a whole seem to have a pretty good sense of humor about it. (Well, except the Quebecers. Those humorless grumps.) The final stage of the modern pentathlon is supposed to be a cross-

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