Tag Archives: microsoft

25 Years Ago

Leave a reply

The Secret Origin of Windows

Tandy Trower …. was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday’s story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released.

Via Slashdot

The Two Towers

Leave a reply

I am spending the work week in Bloomington (southern suburb) at a class on the Oracle database management system. It is my first exposure to the product.

However, I do know the office complex. It is on the 8th floor of the 8000 W.84th building. I have often been to the 8300 building, where Oracle’s rival Microsoft has its local offices.

Later Saturday

Leave a reply

Later in the afternoon I did some shopping while mia_mcdavid took a nap. I then made one of the changes to the post drill that I had thought of last night. Then a shower, and off to work. Fortunately, that just meant a trip to the basement, where, with a cable modem and VPN, it is almost like going downtown.

The joy of MS Windows

Tom and work

Leave a reply

mia_mcdavid just wrote about what is happening with Tom. I will be taking the day off from work for this. Fortunately, my cred at the office is pretty good right now. The weekend’s server work was way more exciting than I like–there was a really obscure problem with different versions of Microsoft software, but in the end we opened for a normal business day this morning (as a branch of government we were closed yesterday, although I was still working).

A busy weekend

Leave a reply

Friday evening I spent a lot of time configuring two Linux systems here at home. It may be a reaction from having to work with MS Windows at my day job. I am actually very pleased with what I can do with a Linux 2.6 kernel and the XFCE desktop environment, even on a P-III system.

Saturday our big event was seeing Tom. He is doing well. He has lost some weight, or at least it has been redirected from horizontal to vertical. We took him for a walk around Lake Calhoun (SW Minneapolis) and had to work a lot to keep his pants from falling down. He is doing well. We did this in the morning. A good call, because the rain came in after lunch.

Today we went down to Albert Lea. The setup for colgaffneyis big event there next weekend was scheduled for today, but because of stormy weather it was severely cut back. The last 40 miles driving into Albert Lea were quite scary. We got our tent almost completely set up before twolodge arrived with the corporate trailer. After that the big project was to set up the tavern tent, reinforce it with storm stakes and ropes, and then park the trailer in it for further setup later this week. A lot got done, but it was quite tiring.

Note to self

Leave a reply

I actually knew this, but thought I could get away with a few small changes….

Do not ever, under any circumstances, use Microsoft Word as an HTML editor! It will take a clean and simple page, bloat it by an order of magnitude, and make it less portable to the viewer, and far less understandable to the maintainer at the same time.

If you have to use a Microsoft product, use Notepad. It does not have a lot of features, but at least it is honest about what it is doing to your work.