Notes from new company launch

A few notes about new company launch found while tidying up my desktop

"Software that works like you do"

benefits of bigger company VS benefits of smaller company

Quality

• processes / mgmt systems
• in everything
• delight customers

Belief

• believe it can be done

Teamwork

• meet team objectives

Trust

• each other
• the company?

Precision

• order
• attention to detail

the people who do it first are remembered (in sport)
- does this hold true for software? - I don't think so

Passionate about software
Proud of the software we make

opportunities for personal development (?)
we have a large customer list, that many would be envious of. But what does that really mean for new customers/users?

quasimodal shift

The above image is from SourceGear's Vault. It demonstrates a bad use of modes within software because it forces users to remember something they shouldn't have to, if they want to hide this dialog most of the time.
They have to remember that when they select the option which (can/used to) display this dailog they have to press a button if they want more advanced options.

Better would be to hide this dialog and perform the operation based on the default/previously selected option, unless the Shift key (or any other predesiganted key is pressed). This way the functionality is stil available to all and no one needs to remember anything. (A note explaining this feature could be put on the form, rather than the above checkbox and label.)
This is an example of a Quasimode.

NOW() + n in Excel and weekends

In Excel:

Display the current time plus two days:
=TEXT(NOW()+2,"dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss")

Display the current time plus two working days (skip weekends):
=TEXT(WORKDAY(NOW(),2),"dd/mm/yyyy") &TEXT(NOW()," hh:mm:ss")


N.B. If the WORKDAY function is not available, and returns the #NAME? error, install and load the Analysis ToolPak add-in.

1. On the Tools menu, click Add-Ins.
2. In the Add-Ins available list, select the Analysis ToolPak box, and then click OK
3. If necessary, follow the instructions in the setup program.

Companies don't buy software

Just read a post by Martin Parry where he states that All Software is Compromise. In it he says that "I think most businesses that buy software are also of that opinion: the software should be perfect."

This misses an important point:

Companies don't buy software. People do!

Christmas songs

Every band/group/artist should make a Christmas song.
This way there would be more Christmas songs and we'd hear more than just a dozen or so songs on a loop throughout December.

MSI to text

Debugging Installshield projects is a right pain. Who changed what to break the install?

Having spent ages trying to work out what had been changed in an InstallShield project so that it no longer upgraded files. I eventually found a solution using MSIDIFF.

This is a brilliant tool which can convert an MSI file to text.

I used it by taking the old and new versions of the MSI files, converting to text and then comparing the files using WinMerge to see what had been changed.
I then went back into the InstallShield project to make the necessary repairs.

helpful?

I normally want more than this when I click on Help!

cmdline DTS to DTSX

When migrating a command line executed package from SQL Server 2000 to 2005

1. Use the migration wizard to turn the DTS file into a DTSX one

2. Change the command line.

From:

dtsrun /FC:\Scripts\GetLatestDataFromDev /NGetLatestDataFromDev /A"TargetServer:8=(local)"

To:

dtexec /FILE C:\Scripts\GetLatestDataFromDev.DTSX /Set \package.variables[TargetServer].Value;(local)

Hi null null,

Here's a partial snapshot from an email I receive most days. Notice who it's addressed to:


There's something ironic about this being an email about Dilbert .