January 23rd, 2012
Holy crap. The degree of dislike I have for Windows Installer service is already kind of pegged. An object lesson in overengineering for very little gain. Well, it could work awesomely if it wasn’t a backwater in Microsoftland and if the Microsoft supported authoring framework wasn’t an “open source” initiative that is completely understaffed.
Then there is the issue of instance transforms. Holy mother of god, these make vanilla installers look as attractive as your first crush. This is the way to kludge together support for upgrade installs of transformed installations that don’t unilaterally overwrite every other transformed installation on the target machine.
So—guess what I’ve been working on all day.
Tagged with Microsoft : Transforms : Windows installer : WIX
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September 22nd, 2011
So you’re in cmd.exe and you type ‘ls‘ expecting to get a directory listing. Instead cmd.exe gives you the finger. You give cmd.exe the finger back. Just then your boss walks by and sees you flipping off company property. Next thing you’re in her office having a discussion on appropriate workplace behavior. Having had enough of ‘The Man’ you flip off your boss.
Now you’re sitting at the bus stop waiting for the bus that will take about 90 minutes to get you home. Just about 7 minutes faster than if you walked. But it’s cold outside. No job, no car, no prospects. Life sucks. And then you learn that you could have been using DOSKEY to set up persistent aliases in cmd.exe.
Just one simple DOSKEY ls=dir later and it doesn’t matter which platform you’re on. Assuming you already set aliases in .bashrc for all of your bad cmd.exe habits that is.
Chin up, young squire! Now when you’re fired from your next job, at least it won’t be on cmd.exe’s account. You can thank me later.
Tagged with Bash : cmd.exe : Microsoft : Productivity : Terminal : Windows
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September 22nd, 2011
I think “first world problems” is the intelligentsia’s “you may be a redneck if…”
To wit: If you’re complaining that your download from MSDN is running at a measly 650KB/sec average, you’re experiencing first world problems.
And yet, I can’t believe how long it is taking to download some old-assed .iso so I can build some ancient bit of architectural cruft that is both so integral to our workflow that it demands a special place in the VM migration strategy and not important enough to devote development resources to usher it into the modern age.
And, since I’m still waiting, is it a second order first world problem to have a problem with the idea of first world problems? I mean it just feels like some facile way to dismiss legitimate structural problems the world faces, not to mention the day-to-day annoyances we have to muddle through just because we want to survive day-to-day in whatever society we’ve been blessed to be born in to. See, I am smitten with the phrase “first world problem.” On the other hand, when someone other than myself uses it, I feel like dickpunching them. Like, yeah, you’re the enlightened being who has achieved complete balance.
Tagged with First world problems : Jeff Foxworthy : Louis C.K. : Microsoft : MSDN
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