Early this week at work I was volunteered to take an existing iPad app I designed and to build a working prototype of the same app on a Windows 8 Tablet. Seems simple enough, until I realized what I was up against in working on Microsoft products after a long welcome break. I last worked on a Windows machine 3 years ago. I have used only Apple products at home for over 10 years now. I guess you just forget how simple and lovely life can be until you re-enter the dark side of computing.
I really enjoy working on new things as that is what makes me wake up ready for work early in the morning. It can be scary at times as there are so many unknowns and not only from the technical side but also from the business perspective. I had a hard deadline of January 7th where this app will be shown at a trade conference. The Windows 8 Tablet would ideally work just like the iPad app but that is impossible since it is totally different hardware and user interface. From start to finish the original iPad app took 72 man days which includes design time and all of the time to develop it. I essentially have only 30 man days to get the same design working on a brand new version of Windows on a platform I know nothing about. That would normally mean it is time to panic.
Yesterday, I reviewed these concerns with the customer to make sure it was clear that the task was daunting and yet possible with caveats. We had to agree to set expectations that a full Windows 8 app just like the iPad app was not possible but a great demo can happen if everything falls into place. Then the first bombshell happened as I found out that the brand new physical tablet would not be in my hands until the week before Christmas at the earliest. Still not time to panic yet.
In preparing for that meeting, I first read the Windows 8 guidelines to get a feel for what was possible. Since geographic maps are a key part of the app I am prototyping, I needed to learn about them for Windows. After some digging I discovered that in Windows Mobile 8 they switched from Bing maps, which were used in Windows Mobile 7.1, to Nokia maps. That is kind of scary, but at least HERE.com has been used elsewhere for a while and then Nokia purchased them and now they are available for Windows 8.
The biggest question of the week is what do I use for a development machine? I found an article on the Windows 8 SDK requirements. I also read that using my Mac is out of the question as the emulator will not work on virtual machines, like VirtualBox. So how do I find a machine that fits the strict Hyper-V requirements? It turns out that no computer manufacturer has this information on the web. I tried Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Samsung, Acer, and Best Buy web sites. Some made it hard to even find out if Windows Pro was available and whether 64-bit machines are the default. I could write a long article on the usability of shopping for a laptop as most of these sites did not help me. I could write another long article on live chat services since I tried chatting with sales and technical staff at Lenovo, Dell, Asus and Samsung. At least the Lenovo sales person told me he did not know but would find out for me and then re-directed me to a technical person who could only find a match in a desktop machine. The number one problem with web sales chat programs is that they timeout if unused, which I fully understand. The problem is while the sales person is searching if they don't say anything and I don't say anything then the session times out and is terminated. This means I get to start all over again. One of the people I chatted with could not get on the web so my Microsoft SDK link was not even visible to them. Then I contacted Dell as I thought that may be a better user experience for me. Turns out it was much worse. I tried 5 times to chat and every time the session expired before I could get help, so I finally gave up. Most of the chat programs send a transcript of the session by email but that was 5 emails I immediately trashed. The person at Asus was the most helpful as he admitted immediately he had no idea but told me to go to BestBuy and get them to reboot the computers I thought looked good and then view the BIOS settings to see if they matched the Microsoft specs. Finally someone who had a novel and useful idea. I wanted to complete my due diligence and chatted with Samsung and the first person I found gave me the best customer experience of all time. He told me it would be a couple of minutes and sent a message every minute to make sure the session did not time out. He pushed a link to me with an machine that met the specs. It was a bit pricey so when I asked about a cheaper model, he sent me a list of all of the models Samsung sold that matches the spec. Within 10 minutes I had more useful information that the couple of hours I spend trying to find a computer elsewhere.
Then I went to Best Buy last night with the intent to buy a Samsung computer since my chat experience was so great. Turns out that BestBuy had sold out of the model I needed that fit my budget, so I turned to find a BestBuy sales person. I had printed off the Microsoft specs and gave it to the sales person as I was disappointed in thinking I had to start a very long process to find the correct machine and I had an evening meeting I needed to attend within 45 minutes. The sales person was like a kid but he knew how to be helpful so he took me immediately to a machine that fit my needs. Not that I didn't trust him but for $1000 I wanted to make sure I got the correct machine. He looked up the Microsoft article, rebooted the machine and checked the BIOS settings. One of them was not visible, so he downloaded a standalone program to check the remaining one, followed the 10 steps and found my answer than indeed the machine had what I needed. It was just as the Asus man described and I walked out with the computer and today starts my next story...
Friday, November 15, 2013
When to give up
I have decided to resume blogging and the best place to start again is to honor the honorable god of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, who is retiring from cricket at the age of 40. I am sure he must have faults but he really impresses me with his gentlemanly attitude in the age of self glorification in the sight of money and fame. There are very few famous people I have any interest in meeting but this 5' 5" legend would definitely be near the top of my list. When professional athletes world wide are turning into tattooed, self indulgent, ego maniacs, I am so happy to finally see a person worthy of the title of hero and role model. Maybe one day in my visits to India I will get to meet him.
This all reminds me when I was 40 and retired from playing basketball publicly. I still remember the Christmas I turned 7 when I received the wonderful gift of an orange basketball rim. I can picture my dad putting up a square piece of solid plywood above the garage, painting a black square on it and then mounting my shiny new goal on it. I played basketball on that driveway for hours daily for years. Sometimes I would long for people to stop by to play with me no matter how much older they were than me. Hours on end I would dribble around the edge of our long driveway and shoot endless numbers of free throws. My life and dream for many years was to be a professional basketball player. Then I hit high school and I failed to keep growing so was just too short for the basketball team. I switched to cross country running but still loved to play basketball every chance I got. My first year of college I suddenly grew 6" and suddenly I was a reasonable height again for the hardwoods. What made it interesting is that I was always a guard when I was young as I had great ball handling skills from the hours and days of practice and was very fast. Now that I was taller, I was automatically playing forward which I had never done before. All of that self inflicted training paid off.
Well into my late 30's, I typically played basketball a couple of hours every other day. Since I never had any serious injuries related to my knees I made a huge decision to quit at age 40. I had some bad basketball related accidents. While playing in Saudi Arabia, I got hit in the mouth and lost 1/4 of one of my back teeth. In Houston, I was playing with old worn out shoes and the whole side of the shoe blew out when I tried to stop quickly, which resulted in a horrible 6 months of pain and surgery for plantar fasciitis, followed by 5 years of wearing hard orthotics. The best thing to come out of that time was that I now have real arches as up to that time my foot was totally flat. The scariest injury was when a clumsy fellow who played nasty ran up to me from the side and bumped into my knee at full speed. That resulted in 6 months of daily swimming to rehabilitate my knee so I could play basketball again. I always seem to get injured and my wife would comment on how injury prone I was since I had to go all-out, full steam when playing. Still for me I did not have any ACL or major injury so I played basketball for the last time publicly for my 40th birthday. The only times I have played since it to teach my youngest son that someone twice his age can beat him any time I want!
This all reminds me when I was 40 and retired from playing basketball publicly. I still remember the Christmas I turned 7 when I received the wonderful gift of an orange basketball rim. I can picture my dad putting up a square piece of solid plywood above the garage, painting a black square on it and then mounting my shiny new goal on it. I played basketball on that driveway for hours daily for years. Sometimes I would long for people to stop by to play with me no matter how much older they were than me. Hours on end I would dribble around the edge of our long driveway and shoot endless numbers of free throws. My life and dream for many years was to be a professional basketball player. Then I hit high school and I failed to keep growing so was just too short for the basketball team. I switched to cross country running but still loved to play basketball every chance I got. My first year of college I suddenly grew 6" and suddenly I was a reasonable height again for the hardwoods. What made it interesting is that I was always a guard when I was young as I had great ball handling skills from the hours and days of practice and was very fast. Now that I was taller, I was automatically playing forward which I had never done before. All of that self inflicted training paid off.
Well into my late 30's, I typically played basketball a couple of hours every other day. Since I never had any serious injuries related to my knees I made a huge decision to quit at age 40. I had some bad basketball related accidents. While playing in Saudi Arabia, I got hit in the mouth and lost 1/4 of one of my back teeth. In Houston, I was playing with old worn out shoes and the whole side of the shoe blew out when I tried to stop quickly, which resulted in a horrible 6 months of pain and surgery for plantar fasciitis, followed by 5 years of wearing hard orthotics. The best thing to come out of that time was that I now have real arches as up to that time my foot was totally flat. The scariest injury was when a clumsy fellow who played nasty ran up to me from the side and bumped into my knee at full speed. That resulted in 6 months of daily swimming to rehabilitate my knee so I could play basketball again. I always seem to get injured and my wife would comment on how injury prone I was since I had to go all-out, full steam when playing. Still for me I did not have any ACL or major injury so I played basketball for the last time publicly for my 40th birthday. The only times I have played since it to teach my youngest son that someone twice his age can beat him any time I want!
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
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| old softener & filter |
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| always a battle to change the filter |
 |
| new improved setup |
I never intended to be a plumber on Saturday, but all week long our water has been tasting worse with each passing day. When I shaved each morning, the hot water in the bathroom sink was very yellow and taking a shower was a smelly affair. I ever received complaints that white clothes were turning yellow, so yesterday I decided to take action.
Friday night I removed all of the salt from the old water softener and turned on the bypass valve so it was not being used at all. I then took photos to show the plumbers at the local Home Depot what I needed to replace and to get an idea of the total cost involved.
Saturday morning I returned to Home Depot at 7am ready for action and my list of what I needed. On arriving I got my first indication that my day would not be smooth. There was no plumber at the store and no expected arrival time of one. I found great help so tried to remember what the plumber told me the night before. Five trips and 28 driving miles later I had everything I needed - thankfully Home Depot is close by!
One of my goals was to make changing the water filter easier while replacement the broken water softener. Also pipes coming out of the moulding seemed like a poor idea so that needed some redesign. I did not want to get too radical so I bought the newest models of the same equipment so the installation would good smoothly. I would probably be still working on it if I didn't make that wise choice.
Today in looking at my handy work, it just does not look like a job that would take 10 hours, but clearly I am not a plumber and just an amateur. I really don't want it to be a hobby either but if I have to do it I will.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
more drawings by Jess
These are the latest set of drawings by my daughter from her 9th grade Art class.
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