The first instance (emphasis added):

Microsoft is starting this month to send updates to Windows computers in Europe so that when computer users log on, they will see a pop-up screen asking them to pick one or more of 12 free Web browsers to download and install, including Microsoft.

Microsoft is allowing users to choose one of more than 12 free web browsers, because the EU didn’t like Microsoft bundling its own free web browser into Windows. Call me strange, but punishing a company to give something away for free because it blocks out other companies from giving their own products away for free strikes me as odd.

The second instance (emphasis added):

The EU’s executive commission said giving consumers the chance to try an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that comes with the widely used Windows operating system would “bring more competition and innovation in this important area.”

Wait, didn’t we just read that there are “more than 12 free web browsers”? That doesn’t sound like lack of competition and innovation to me at all. How many industries offer a choice of over a dozen free items? None that I can think of.

I am aware of Microsoft’s predatory practices in the web browser arena, particularly related to the browser wars between them and Netscape. Microsoft muscled out Netscape by giving away its browser for free, something Netscape didn’t do until early 1998. Isn’t that a good thing for consumers? Further, client software (such as Navigator) was a small portion of Netscape’s revenues, and at the time, “Netscape has successfully shifted its business over the past year toward enterprise software sales and to revenues from its Web site business, and away from standalone client revenues” (source: Mitchell’s Blog). If Netscape was successful in transitioning away from a client product, but ultimately failed in the enterprise marketplace, why is Microsoft being punished?

In the end, Microsoft was penalized for providing a product for free – and forcing the market leader to ultimately transform their business (“successfully”) and offer their own (similar) product for free. The fact is, Microsoft’s efforts were largely responsible for the explosion of free web browser alternatives – yet the EU still feels a need to punish them because there is “[not enough] competition and innovation in this area,” as they say.

Final point: let’s not mention the pain and suffering that novice users will have after installing other browsers, wondering where their bookmarks went, and wondering why they are being prompted to (re-)install Adobe Flash so they can play YouTube videos.

Some things are better left alone. This is one of them.

There are plenty of well-known rules when commuting, and I try to respect them all: be reasonably quiet, keep the headphone volume low, put your bags and packages at your feet or on your lap, don’t eat, and similar courtesies. One rule of commuting that is not well-known is related to how to choose what passenger you sit next to during your commute — and that is today’s topic.

Though I don’t do it as often now, I occasionally take (and used to always take) an express bus to work. These buses have four seats across, facing forward, split into pairs by an aisle. On an express bus, choosing a passenger to sit next to is easy: find the smallest person with reasonable hygiene who is not yapping on a cell phone. More often than not, this means an attractive woman. (I do not have bias to women; it is just that they are often smaller than men, and when given a choice, I would prefer to sit next to the more attractive one. My wife may not be pleased, but I have no doubt she understands; for years, she was a daily express bus passenger, and undoubtedly had guys sitting next to her for similar reasons.)

Picking the person who sits at your side on a 60-minute bus ride can make a big difference. Pick the right person, and you enjoy a pleasant commute (and maybe a follow-up dinner or movie, if you play your cards right). Pick the wrong person, and your commute can be a miserable one.

The same holds true for life. We must pick our passengers wisely and carefully. The people who sit by your side can make the difference between happiness and sadness, achievement and failure, passion and despair, a good fit or a bad fit.

So the next time you are alone, out in the world, looking for a seat, wondering what passenger to ride withm think about your ideal, and find the best match. You’ll be glad you did.

With an empty beer bottle in front of me, I find myself thinking back on the year that ended, and the highlights and lowlights it brought me…

• Not changing jobs in the course of a calendar year for the first time since 2004.
  It’s hard to believe to most people, but it is true: 2009 was the first time in the past five years that I didn’t change jobs during the calendar year. As of today, I have been employed by the same company for 13 months. With 14 jobs in the past 18 years, averaging one year and three months per job, if past history repeats itself, I will be expected to change jobs this year. As they say in the financial world, past history is not a predictor of future results… but we’ll see what happens.
• A new addition to the family: Jessica Emma DeMarzo!
  Born on February 20, 2009, Jessica is absolutely adorable, with the biggest cheeks on a baby that I’ve ever seen, and with blue eyes that are nothing short of astounding. For nearly four years, my older daughter, Alyssa, was our only child; in an instant, when Jessie arrived, everything changed. To experience again the wonderful experience of bringing a baby into the world, and to add to that the experience of seeing your own daughter become a sister (and a big sister at that) is nothing short of heart-stopping. Having had one child for quite some time, and now having two, I can tell you this: if you have the means and the opportunity, don’t have just one child, if not for yourself or your spouse, but for your children. It’s a lot of work, but the rewards are immeasurable.
• Realizing the limits of what I can do.
  Sometime back when I was in my early 20s, my mother warned me of burning the candle at both ends. I’ve burned the candle at both ends ever since, and the burning has only gotten more intense as I’ve gotten older, with more demanding jobs and a family to care for. For the first time, I can honestly say that I think I’ve reached the limit of what I can do. Maybe it’s me getting older, maybe it’s the increasing demands that life puts on me, maybe it’s the increasing demands that I put on myself. Reaching the limit doesn’t mean I am going to stop pushing myself; instead, I’ll put a greater emphasis on prioritizing and focusing my energy most effectively, and I’ll take more time for myself every now and then to recharge the batteries.

The funny thing about reaching the limit of what you can do is that it doesn’t stop you from doing more. My plans for 2010:

• Put the band back together. I’ve been an on-and-off musician throughout my adult life, and have been largely out of the music thing for nearly a decade. No longer; I’ve picked up the guitar and started tickling the ivories once again, and plan to be in a band that is ready to play gigs by the end of the year. I also plan on resuming the classical guitar lessons that I abandoned 17 years ago.
• Finish rewriting CSFBL — really! For nearly four years I’ve been talking about and working (on-again, off-again) on rewriting my baseball game, CSFBL. It’s time to get it done, and this year, one way or another, it’s going to happen. I have some traction and a game plan, so for the first time, I can go into a new year with a feeling that the end of the rewrite journey is within my grasp. For the sake of the thousands of people who have stuck with the game for all these years, I had better deliver!
• Getting involved in local politics. Those that know me personally know that this has been something in the back of my head for a long time. Late in 2009, I hooked up with some folks of the Libertarian Party, and I’m in the process of working with them to start a chapter in my home town. I’m still not convinced this is my final political resting place; though I am more Libertarian than Republican, I also have concerns about the limitations of a third political party in a two-party system. Still, I will be at the first meeting of the Staten Island Libertarian Party on January 6, 2010, and we’ll see where it takes us. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll see my name on a voting ballot? (I’d hope you’d consider voting for me!)
• Clearing up the book back-log. I just got a Kindle, so I really have to start getting through the pile of books waiting to be read. If necessary I will cut out reading some magazines, at least temporarily. I’m sure the folks at Discover or Scientific American will understand, so long as it is temporary.

This is all very interesting to me, but who else cares? What does Joe Average care about my New Year retrospectives? Why do I write on this blog, anyway?

Everything I’ve written in this blog has a target audience.

• The tech articles are intended for the tech audience, in hope that I spare them some of the pain that I’ve experienced.
• The opinion articles are intended to give people a perspective which, hopefully, they feel is thoughtful and worthy of consideration.
• The personal articles are written in part for my friends and family (though few actually read them)… but mostly for my children. I hope that some day they can read this and learn things about their father that I forgot to tell them, or that I had forgotten altogether.

In the end, this blog is the best legacy I have to my children. It is about me, what I’ve experienced in life, what I’ve learned; this blog is here for me to share the many different sides of me, the “Sides of DeMarzo”… and anyone who knows a little Spanish will know that “de marzo” translates to “of march” – hence, the “sides of march.”

So thanks to all those who have the patience to sit through my maximum verbosity. I hope you learn something about yourself through my experiences. In any event, a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year to all, and to all a good night!

“We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable,” Mr. Obama said in remarks broadcast on television from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.

OK, I know, the President of the United States is never really on vacation, but it is funny nonetheless.

The boundless creativity of politicians and bureaucrats to develop new and more complex regulation is bounded only by the bureaucracy’s inability to implement them.

Considering the 2008 Federal Register is 80,700 pages, and that it grows every year, it’s safe to say that there appears to be no upper limit to scope of the problem.

Incredibly, the Federal government actually believes that people should, or could, read the Federal Register. It even answers the question, “Why should I read the Federal Register?”. The only real reason should be to cure insomnia.

Metrics on reading the Federal Register

Let’s presume you had to read the Federal Register, taking the following assumptions:

• The document, as of its final 2008 version, is 80,700 pages.
• You sleep eight hours a day.
• You have a full-time job, five days a week, eight hours a day.
• You commute to/from work for an average of one hour each day.
• You spend two hours a day for personal and domestic matters – bathing, eating, housekeeping, etc..
• You spend four hours on each weekend day to address random matters (paying bills, playing WoW, etc.).
• While reading, you take a 15-minute break every two hours.

Considering that, you have about 39 hours per week to read. If you can read two pages per minute (a good clip that assumes comprehension rates don’t matter), it would take you nearly 121 days (17 weeks) to read all 80,700 pages of the Federal Register.

Keep in mind that such a clip requires reading on average 5 1/2 hours per day. In reality, the average American spends just 21 minutes a day reading. At that rate, the average American would take nearly 2,000 days (about five and one-half years) to read the 2008 Federal Register.

To make matters worse, the Federal Register continues to grow, at a pace of about 1.5% per year (Federal Register Pages Published Annually, PDF). That means an extra month of reading each year for Joe Sixpack if he wants to read all the applicable laws in 2013 after spending more than five years reading the 2008 Federal Register.

In closing: To understand the laws of America, start reading now, and don’t plan on stopping for over five and one-half years. Then, expect to spend a month of reading each year just to catch up.

Of course, this doesn’t include the state or local laws where you live… but that’s a whole other matter.

Both during and after my time with the hardcore punk band Kulturkampf, I spent a fair amount of time writing music. In the beginning, both the lyrics and music were woefully amateurish. However, I was maturing quickly as a musician, studying classical guitar under Ed Brown, and maturing quickly as a young adult; as a result, the music I wrote quickly improved.

The Home Recordings

As is common with me, most of the songs I wrote were never completed. What few I did finish writing, I recorded in my makeshift home studio, playing guitar, bass guitar, and keyboards; scripting simple drum tracks (on an Alesis HR-16 drum machine); and recording it on a TASCAM Portastudio 4-track recorder.

The songs I wrote reflected my taste in music at the time: a blend of hard rock of the 70s and 80s, progressive rock, and heavy metal. I wrote songs out of inspiration; as a result, they were reflective and often melancholy, usually written from the perspective of someone looking to the past rather than the future.

Unfortunately, none of these recordings survived over the years. Then again, I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to share them with you if they had! What did survive, however, is some sheet music and lyrics, but nothing that makes any sense to me today.

Dirt Man’s King

In college, I teamed up with guitarist/singer Bart Cambria. He had just finished writing and recording a six-song demo with his band. We played one gig doing those tunes; I played rhythm guitar and keyboards and sang background vocals. The songs were in the heavy metal/progressive rock genre, and were decent, but Bart and I soon moved into a new direction.

Scott Mesorana, the drummer and creative force behind Kulturkampf, wrote the lyrics to three songs of a “concept album” and handed them off to Bart, who in turn shared them with me. The lyrics were good, and told the story of a reluctant prophet and leader of men. It was up to me and Bart to come up with the music.

The initial musical inspiration came one afternoon, when Bart and I wrote the basic chord progressions to the first two songs. Back in my home studio, I hashed out more details to the arrangement, adding drum tracks and keyboards. It wasn’t long before we had written all three songs, including a musical interlude between the first and second song. We began rehearsing the songs with a bass player and drummer, and the following winter we recorded the songs in a professional recording studio in Manhattan.

Sadly, the story of those songs ended soon thereafter. For whatever reason, we stopped playing together, the songs forever relegated to the dust bin of my basement. Thankfully, I held on to the recordings, and recently copied them to MP3 format. With no further fanfare, I present to you the music of what came to be known as Dirt Man’s King (when you hear the lyrics, you’ll know why).

Playlist:
Dirt Man’s King
World of Wonder (instrumental)
The Fools
The Great and Secret Show

Words by Scott Mesorana
Music by Bart Cambria and Brian DeMarzo

Download MP3 (17:04, 15.6 MB)

What happened next for me? It was the end of the line for me trying to write original music. Instead, I started playing other people’s songs, and before long was in a band again. Over a hundred shows later… but that’s a story for the next blog post.

Personally, I am not interested in working more.  I am very interested in accomplishing more.  Trying to accomplish more just by working more is the brute force “assembly line” method. It doesn’t scale.  Eventually, you will reach a point where you can’t do any more without having harmful side effects.

Honorable mention to Mark Shead’s comment on that statement:

There are a lot of things in business (and government) that could be simplified if people would simply ask “what would happen if we just stopped doing this?”

Thinking of that, I wonder what would happen if I just stopped writing on my blog? Hmm…

In their defense, kids have the deck stacked against them. Patience is learned; some kids take a long time to learn it, and some never do. Kids have a poor concept of time, and of time differences. Worst of all, kids often seek instant gratification, the yang to waiting’s yin.

The actions of kids, and the language of their parents, has come to reflect the difficulty of waiting. Consider the following quotes, which every parent can relate to:

• “Can you wait until you get home before opening that?”
• “Please wait for your sister to finish before leaving the table.”
• “Wait ’till your father gets home…“

As adults, waiting doesn’t get easier. We spend an incredible amount of time waiting. We wait for doctors, traffic signals, and commercials to end. We wait for friends and family to arrive, and then wait for them to leave. We wait for good news and for bad news, then wait for our problems to get better (or our good luck to run out).

Waiting is everywhere, and it’s hard.

Fortunately for me, I’ve learned two valuable lessons to making waiting easier. My fortune is now your fortune, as I’m going to share those lessons with you — and I promise not to make you wait.

Lesson 1: One step closer…

When my daughter was an infant, I had the dubious job of the 3AM feedings. On any given night, I didn’t know how long it would take her to fall asleep after drinking her bottle. It could be five minutes or 95 minutes.

The process of getting her to sleep involved me walking in what I eventually called “the circuit”: a circular path through my kitchen, dining room, and living room. I would talk softly to her along the way, and rock her gently in my arms. I was a lumbering, shuffling mass, barely able to lift my ridiculous slippers off the floor. One benefit: the hardwood and ceramic tile would have a polished look every morning, at least along the circuit.

How did I get through these sometimes long nights? With each walk through the circuit, I reminded myself: “That is one step closer to the last step.” Of course, I didn’t know how many more times I’d walk the circuit, but I did know that it was one less time.

Summary of lesson 1: Remember that every moment you wait is one moment closer to when you can stop waiting. Waiting is, as a result, a self-healing action; the longer you wait, the less time remaining that you have to wait. Be relieved as each moment passes; it is one step closer to where you’d rather be.

Lesson 2: Enjoy it!

I often think of the teenage kid working at a fast-food joint. He is miserable; he hates his job, the smell of the cooking oil, the whole experience. He could care less about his job or his co-workers. All he cares about is his paycheck – it’s not much, but at least it’s something.

Every day, that kid gets to work and can’t wait to get home. Sure, he can heed lesson 1, and remind himself (as optimistically as he can) that each moment is a moment closer to going home, but he is still miserable.

The opposite of that is a lady I worked with at Republic National Bank. I don’t recall her name; she was a secretary to someone of importance, whose name I also forget. What I do remember is that, whenever I saw her and asked, “How are you?” she gave the same answer:

“Never better.”

What’s the difference between those two people? Granted, the secretary may have a better work environment than the fast food cashier, but for all I knew, she hated her boss, was appalled by the stuffiness of the office, and thought her job was meaningless and irrelevant, a total waste of time.

The difference between them was that she was happy, because she made the effort to enjoy what she was doing, to make the most of the effort.

How does this correlate to waiting? I will provide two examples.

1. When waiting for the bus/train/airplane/doctor/psychologist/next cashier/parole officer/whatever, don’t fret about the waiting. Instead, read a magazine, daydream, hum a song, people-watch, or strike a conversation with a total stranger. You’re there; there’s not much you can do about it; so make the most of it.
2. Remember that we’re all waiting for something; we’re all experiencing the same frustrations. Our reasons may be totally different, but we’re in the same boat. Instead of losing your patience, smile about it, curl your eyebrows, and remember lesson #1.

Summary of lesson 2: Make the most of it, no matter how miserable it may seem, and remember it’s not permanent. Waiting isn’t all that bad when you think of the positives.

It’s about what you’re waiting for

In the end, remember that waiting is the price you pay for something worth waiting for. If your doctor is worth waiting for, then wait; if he isn’t, find a new doctor. The same goes for all things in life: traveling, friends, family, lovers. If it’s worth having, if it’s worth keeping, than it’s worth waiting for.

That doesn’t mean waiting isn’t hard. Sometimes, it’s the hardest part. It’s up to you to make the most of it.

The waiting is the hardest part…

Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you
Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you

Thanks to Mr. Petty for giving me a title to this article, and thanks to the person who gave me the inspiration to write it!

So true… it deserves its place right next to YAGNI!

                     /"\
                    |\./|
                    |   |
                    |   |
                    |>~<|
                    |   |
                 /'\|   |/'\..
             /~\|   |   |   | \
            |   =[@]=   |   |  \
            |   |   |   |   |   \
            | ~   ~   ~   ~ |`   )
            |                   /
             \                 /
              \               /
               \    _____    /
                |–//”`\–|
                | (( +==)) |
                |–\_|_//–|

In order to illustrate some functionality, I needed to write a simple console application that used the code that these other devs wrote, so I referenced it and tried it… and was given an exception (the computer version of the middle finger):

Unhandled Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0×80040154): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {29AB7A12-B531-450E-8F7A-EA94C2F3C05F} failed due to the following error: 80040154.

My first instinct was to search through the registry for the CLSID. Sure enough, it was there, and everything looked right. It has to be — otherwise, the unit tests (which use the exact same code) wouldn’t work.

The next thing I tried was unregistering and re-registering Redemption.dll (using regsvr32). No luck; unit tests work, console app fails.

Reboot? No luck; unit tests work, console app fails.

I did some reading, and apparently MSTest runs as a 32-bit application (though it can be run as 64-bit). I tried forcing Visual Studio to compile in x86? No luck; unit tests work, console app fails. Forcing Visual Studio to compile in x64 didn’t help either.

More reading, and I started to understand more about what the “Any CPU” platform compilation means, and the trials and tribulations of programming for 64-bit Windows. Now I am smarter, but I still can’t get my damn simple console application to work!

Seemingly out of options, I found myself staring at the Debug output directory, and noticed something:

SimplePstExtraction.exe
SimplePstExtraction.vshost.exe

I went ahead and turned off the Visual Studio hosting process, and viola! Everything works fine. I don’t know why, exactly (though I’m sure it’s related to the difference between 32- and 64-bit processes), but it fixed my issue, so if you have the same problem, hopefully it’ll fix yours.