Browsed by
Category: Uncategorized

Office on Windows. The Standard.

Office on Windows. The Standard.

Whether we’re talking Office or Windows, I’ve often encountered situations where open source advocates will stand, pitchfork in hand, and denounce the evil and cost of Microsoft software, and the ill intent of Microsoft. Sure, The Firm does everything they can to keep customers on the proprietary rails of Office and Windows. But there’s more to it than that. Organizations spend a lot on Office. That’s painfully clear to me, due to our work educating businesses on Microsoft enterprise licensing….

Read More Read More

Thoughts on my Nintendo Switch

Thoughts on my Nintendo Switch

A little over a week ago, I purchased a Nintendo Switch. We can perhaps call this impulse closure, but not an impulse buy. I can’t count how many times I walked by the device at stores, seriously contemplated it, and walked on, having walked totally through a logic tree that had it sitting on my shelf, unplayed after some initial joy. Perhaps we’ll get to that point, and perhaps it will arrive sooner than I’d like. But for now, I’m…

Read More Read More

A tenancy to overreact

A tenancy to overreact

I’m often accused of being pedantic. This isn’t something new – my brother used to call me “Perry Precise”, and would intentionally say things incorrectly to set me off. So maybe it’s not all my fault?  My day job is writing about Microsoft technology – primarily Microsoft’s identity and systems management servers and services. But I also write about licensing, and co-present our Microsoft Licensing Boot Camps every other month, around the country and once per year in London. A…

Read More Read More

A blog post a week for a year

A blog post a week for a year

The other day, I pondered deleting my blog entirely. But I realized a couple of things that made me reconsider: Even though my day job is writing, I really do enjoy writing on my own, for fun. I’m not terribly artistic – so writing of any kind is more or less my creative outlet. As my 45th birthday approaches, I find myself reflecting, and sort of missing the challenge that the Honolulu Marathon presented to me – it was a…

Read More Read More

It doesn’t have to be a crapfest

It doesn’t have to be a crapfest

A  bit ago, this blog post crossed my Twitter feed. I read it, and while the schadenfreude made me smirk for a minute, it eventually made me feel bad. The blog post purports to describe how a shitty shutdown dialog became a shitty shutdown dialog. But instead, it documents something I like to call “too many puppies” syndrome. If you are working on high visibility areas of a product – like the Windows Shell – like Explorer in particular, everybody…

Read More Read More

Comments closed

Comments closed

I’m tired of filtering out spam from the comments. As a result, if you want to comment on a post, find me on Twitter. Thanks for reading.

Measures <> data

Measures <> data

“The reason why businesses love measures is because they mistakenly believe that measures are real, hard data.” Karen Phelan, author of “I’m Sorry I Broke Your Company.”

Henry Ford on watches

Henry Ford on watches

“As a lad he became expert as an amateur watchmaker. Disliking farm work because, “considering the results, there was too much work on the place,” he became an apprentice mechanic in Detroit, and repaired watches in a jewelry shop at night. He flirted with the idea of entering the watch manufacturing business on a large scale, “but I did not because I figured out that watches were not universal necessities.” His apprenticeship over, he served with the local representative of…

Read More Read More

Walter Chrysler on Troubled Companies

Walter Chrysler on Troubled Companies

“The first thing I do when I start to look into the affairs of a failing company is to study the personnel of the organization and the individuality of the men. I am concerned first of all with executives, because if their principles are not right it is useless to look for results from the men. When I have measured up in my own mind the capacity of the executives, I get out into the operation of the plant and…

Read More Read More

The Szilard Dilemma

The Szilard Dilemma

Given recent events, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about metadata. The “Patriot”* act, signed in the hazy, fear-driven months after 9/11 was a piece of legislation that was so broad that even one of the authors now says the hoovering of telephone metadata was never the intent of the law. Law, like any type of contract, is a funny thing. It’s not so much what you say, it’s what you don’t say that matters. I was concerned about the potential…

Read More Read More