Certainly this isn't the full encapsulation of the economics of software development, but it certainly is the portion that we developers are most likely to see clearly.  I know that I was in the "bug free product" mindset when I first start developing.  Unfortunately I didn't have any people around me who could clearly explain the fact that some bugs shouldn't be dignified by being fixed.  Yah it's nice to be able to claim that you produce bug free software, but if you walk around stating this fact with a straight face you most certainly are living in Wonderland.  This comment by Jonathon Gibb states it at the root.  When you think you have no bugs, it's time to rework your test scripts, look harder or learn more about how your users are using the software.

K. Scott Allen's design pattern explaination for bar rooms.

Today I spent the day at the Edmonton Launch event.  The sessions were fairly interesting, the swag was great and the check-in and departure processes were horrific.  Pictures courtesy of Sasha here.

The day was split into two sessions.  The first, and least attended, was the TechNet session on SQL Server 2k5 and BizTalk 2k6.  It was interesting to see some of the stuff in the demos, but huge things (like Database Mirroring and Database Snapshots) that I thought pertained to the TechNet side were not even mentioned.  There was however a good primer on Analysis Services that got me thinking about possible solutions.

The swag was just as expected.  The usual marketing propaganda from a number of VSIPs, a certification exam voucher, a T-Shirt (apparentally XL is the new medium) and of course VS Standard, SQL Server Standard and a voucher for Biztalk Developer Edition.  The only thing that was weird (only because I've never seen it before) is that we received a one CAL license to SQL Server.  Not that I'm complaining, just observing oddities.

The Canadian Launch Tour blog say's that we should trackback so that they can get some feedback.  We'll here's the part of my feedback that these guys probably didn't ever want to have to hear. The check-in and departure processes at the event was a debacle.  We got to Silver City at a reasonable time this morning and were shepherded through the check-in process with ease and efficiency.  Yeah there were only about 15 people waiting, but it worked at the speed that it should have.  Then the time came to leave the theater for a lunch time stretch, perhaps a little Q&A at the cabana about Reporting Services (which got very little screen time outside of it's uses in VSTS) and, of course, picking up the morning session swag.  Well, I was seated about 15 seats in a row right at the exit and it took me over 30 minutes just to get out of the theater.  Then about 20 of us got pulled to the side and told to wait so that we could get our swag from a new processing area which never arrived, so it was back to waiting for that.  After getting our swag, we had to get back into line so that we could complete our registration for the afternoon session and pickup a survey form so that we had a shot at winning the XBox 360 (sweet prize guys!).  I don't know what would have worked better here, but certainly it was something to do with which theater was used (not much room out front for the masses of people leaving session one and waiting for session two) and the lay out of the lines for registration and swag.  It was a situation that made the computer shipping problem, that Sasha blogged they had, almost irrelevant as we damn near didn't get a second session started to use those machines.  To deal with the backlog of people, the second session was shortened.  BizTalk was basically cut from the presentation and Smart Client stuff was glazed over like a donut at Timmy's.  The general impression I was got was that the other attendees were irritated by the situation, but the majority took it with a smile (it still beat dealing with data modelling hell).  Thanks to the presenters for making it abundantly clear that they were sorry about the situation, and I know it probably was almost entirely out of your control.

On the good side, John proved that he was a great presenter and, even after telling the story the night before about meeting his presenting idol's blue screen incident, he managed to have a horrific compile at one point.  He and the other main MSDN presenters were full of energy, information and enthusiasm.  I'm still wondering if John really does have Brittany on his machine though......

It's picnic time in the forest folks and all the little ants are going to be showing up to take a piece of it away.  Last night I was out at the MS/.Net User Group VIP event (I felt so VIPish).  It was held at Cargo and James on Whyte.  They were good enough to reserve a small section for us and MS was good enough to buy a couple of rounds of tea.  According to Sasha (aren't we a dapper group), Edmonton was the first show to sell out, so we're off this morning to get a good and early start to the proceedings.  I'm pretty stoked to see and hear how they're flogging these producst, but, like a true geek, I'm most interested in getting my mitts on the swag.

Don't you just hate it when you go to tie your shoes and you're greeted with a pleasant snap followed by a lessening of resistance in one arm (two if it is going to be an excessively crappy day)?  This morning I had this happen on my one pair of work shoes (well I have workboots, but they're covered in shit from the dog team I'm training to take me to work this winter).  Of course, these types of shoes provide you with only the least amount of lace possible, but just enough that they're still capable of being tied.  Now I have to find a place that carries shoe laces that will look OEM with these shoes.  Easier said than done.  Why the hell can't shoe companies ship a separate pair (not just one, but two) of laces with the shoes?  Wouldn't that just be a fucking novel idea?  Shirts ship with at least one, and most often two, button sewn to the inside of the shirt-tail.  These guys have figured out that a lost button doesn't mean that the shirt is no longer any good.  They don't expect us to cough up for a new shirt just because one stinkin' button is gone.  Shoe manufacturers seem to have missed this memo on customer service and satisfaction.  I should just go back to wearing rubber boots (trust me, if I could get a pair of pink My Little Pony rubber boots that fit, I'd wear them every day) or maybe cowboy boots.  Shit, I'm so pissed I'm considering getting a pair of velcro, no-name, SAAN special runners and just say to hell with looking like a trailer park dork.  At least my shoe laces won't break.

So if any CEOs of shoe companies are out there and reading this (right....well, if the Pope is reading this, I'm sorry mate.  I couldn't say it anyother way) they can pucker up to my pasty white arse and kiss away.  And while they're bent over doing that, can someone put that shoe up their collective asses?

I'm the barefoot Igloo Coder and I'm wondering "If I'm doing it doggie style should I be saying 'Mush, mush'?"

For the last few weeks I've been busier than all get out at work and thus haven't been posting much.  We've been working to push the first release of our software to the client's production environment.  We finally got ourselves to that point on Friday, but it didn't happen without some hiccups, late nights and weekends.  To top it all off I've been working on some code at home.

I'm thinking that we're going to be a little slower over the next few weeks so hopefully I'll have the energy to post about some the technical things that I've been working on.  These are going to focus on VS and SQL 2005 as that's what I've been using at home.  I'm going to start doing some work on embedding Reporting Services in to a WinForms app so I'll be posting the long coming addendum to my original Crystal vs Active Reports write-up.  I'm attending the Launch Tour in a couple weeks so I'll post some info on that.  For those of you attending the Canadian events and didn't know, attendees will be receiving some nice toys.