by Aaron

Lighten your load!

My backback I carry daily and on trips was extra heavy this morning. I was doing a bit of packing for an upcoming trip (trying to see what would fit, what wouldn’t) — and after filling my backpack with the necessities and hefting it onto my back, my wife turned to me and pointed out how heavy the backpack looked.

I emptied the various nooks and crannies to see what I was actually carrying. I’ll spare you a photograph of the pandemonium that is my backpack, but I will say that if your bag contains things like mine (did), it might be time to lighten the load:

  1. Network crossover adapter. I don’t know if I’ve ever used this.
  2. USB extension cable. Neat, but again, I cannot think of a time I’ve needed to extend a USB cable while on a trip. I should leave this in my den/office where it might actually come in handy!
  3. USB male-female inverter thingy. You’d think there had been a USB emergency at some point for me to carry this.
  4. Three mini-to-full sized USB cables. I only have 2 USB ports on my laptop. It’s rare that I need more than one thing plugged in at a time while traveling.
  5. Wireless mouse & wired mouse. I’ll stick to the wired mouse — it’s for travel anyway. I leave a wireless mouse at work.
  6. Over $4 in change. Yeah, just in case someone needs change or there’s a vending machine that won’t take bills or a credit card.
  7. Airport Express. When hotels didn’t have wireless, this was useful. Now, it’s just dead weight.
  8. A unopened box of sleeping pills. This was for a trip a year and a half ago. But I’ve been carrying them around just in case I’m too wide awake….
  9. Various ailments related to digestion… (I had a bad case of food poisoning at the last PDC which inspired me to always have these on hand).
  10. 2 USB memory sticks. One 8GB and the other 2GB.
  11. 6 cough drops. Hack, hack, hack.
  12. Bandages. Maybe I’ll get a nasty cut from an extra usb cable …
  13. Dental floss. (Just a small package — I can’t decide if this should stay or go).

What’s the silliest thing you carry around that you don’t need? I’m not a pack-rat at all … so I find it funny that I’ve been carrying around all of this unnecessary weight for so long!

by Aaron

Do you have a coupon today …?

From a document on the exp-platform at Microsoft (download here).

Most of the changes in the upgrade were positive, but the coupon code was the critical one: people started to think twice about whether they were paying too much because there are discount coupons out there that they do not have. By removing the discount code from the new version (B), conversion-rate increased 6.5% relative to the old version (A).

Coupon code fields often make me think I’m not getting the best deal I could be when I encounter them as part of the check-out process on a web site. (I hate it when someone in a retail business asks me, "Do you have any coupons today" and I answer no — as I’m sure that I must be one of the 3 lame customers of the day who do not have a coupon ….").

by Aaron

How many days are left in my Vista trial license?

(I’m trying to sell my MacBook Pro laptop, and haven’t wanted to activate my copy of Vista Ultimate until the last possible moment, hence I wanted to extend my trial license as long as I can. I have found the warning dialog about activation in Vista to be inaccurate by more than a week …).

From a command prompt in Windows, type:

slmgr -xpr

You’ll need to wait for 5-10 seconds …

The answer appears ….

image

I’ve noticed that in repeated runs of this tool, the specific time the grace period ends shifts from run to run. So, don’t wait until the last possible moment. :)

Remember that if you want to extend the Vista trial license, you need to run this command (as an Administrator):

image

slmgr -rearm

Wait for the acknowledgement (typically 5-15 seconds), then you must reboot your Vista machine for the extension to take effect.

by Aaron

Technical Interview Question #1

Interview Series

I need you to build a fuzzy clock. When asked by others, "What time is it?" do you answer precisely, "7:34 AM"? I don’t. Many would instead answer, "About seven-thirty". Write the code necessary to provide the fuzzy clock response. Consider a few of the valid responses to be, "quarter-past", "half-past", "quarter-till", "about N-o’clock", etc. Be creative.

Write a function which returns a string with the properly formatted current fuzzy time. Your function is provided the current Date and Time (in the appropriate format for your environment and language choice).

by Aaron

Technical Interview Question Series Starting

I’m going to begin posting weekly a technical interview question. Generally, each question should be solvable in less than 30 minutes time. Often, much less. Some amount of coding is typically necessary to solve the problem (either actual code or pseudo-code), but occasionally, just a plan or discussion-style response is expected.

I’d consider these questions to be of the Microsoft technical interview style questions (having worked there, I both was interviewed and interviewed others, so I have some experience with them). If nothing else, you might find them interesting problems to think about for a couple of moments during your day. That’s my primary reason for posting them: a little brain teaser during your day.

I’d really like to see who can answer them first, BUT, given the nature of the Internet and time zones — it’s not really practical. If you have an answer that you’d like to show off and you have a blog, put the answer on your blog, and link to the question and post a comment (if trackbacks aren’t working). Otherwise, feel free to post the answer in the comment. There often will be more than one answer!

Code it in any language you’re comfortable with! There’s no right or wrong language for these questions (unlike many interviews at Microsoft that have historically considered C/C++ the "only" language you should use).

By the way, a long answer isn’t necessarily a "wrong" answer, but it’s probably not the best answer. :)

(I’ll go as long as I can with the series … if you have questions you’d like to see added, feel free to contact me using the contact form in the header, or send an e-mail to coder at this website).