ADO Guy_s Rants and Raves

New Features Should Always Support Disabling 

I use a Dish Network satellite dish for my TV.  They pushed an update last week to all their subscribers.  This new feature is a great idea: if an HD channel is available for a channgel (e.g. ESPN, Local Channels), tune the HD channel instead of the non-HD version.  Normally that would be perfect...except...not all HD versions of channels have the same programming.

For example, Discovery channel ahs an HD version they call Discovery HD Theatre.  They are actually two different channels with two different programming.  For example, two of my favorite shows are not shown on Discovery HD because they aren"t in HD (Discovery HD is completely HD, they never show non-HD shows (AFAIK)): Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters.

The way they implemented the feature is that in their guide it shows both channels and lets you pick which one you want. For most users of the dish this works fine.  They can pick which channel they want. 

For me I don"t watch much live TV.  I record most shows.  When my PVR thinks its recording Mythbusters, it changes the channel on the dish to the channel #.  But now the Dish changes to Discovery HD which has a completely different show on.

Dish Network acknowledged to me today that the feature should have a way to disable it but it doesn"t. When I called them to find out how to fix it, they said that I couldn"t...but if i"d give them a month to fix it, they"d credit me for a month of service.

The lesson here is that no matter how good a feature you think you are about to push out to customers, you should always have a way to revert the feature. As developers, we are usually nothing like our customer base so we often can"t see the forest through the trees when it comes to new features. Its a lesson I have certainly learned before...

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What Pictures say about me:

What Pictures say about me:

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I saw "300" today.  While I certainly enjoyed it as it was spectacularly beautiful...I was left with a bit of an empty feeling.  I was hoping this movie would be a bit more of...well, I don"t know. Just more.

I particularly enjoyed the fighting scenes and the main character (the King) was spectacular.  I would suggest seeing it, but don"t expect it to change movie making. 

I saw "300" today.  While I certainly enjoyed it as it was spectacularly beautiful...I was left with a bit of an empty feeling.  I was hoping this movie would be a bit more of...well, I don"t know. Just more.

I particularly enjoyed the fighting scenes and the main character (the King) was spectacular.  I would suggest seeing it, but don"t expect it to change movie making. 

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My new favorite feature of Visual Studio is the ability to click on a typename and have it automatically add the using/imports statement for me.  It won"t do it if you don"t have the assembly already referenced, but otherwise this is a huge time saver for me...I don"t know why I never noticed it before.

My new favorite feature of Visual Studio is the ability to click on a typename and have it automatically add the using/imports statement for me.  It won"t do it if you don"t have the assembly already referenced, but otherwise this is a huge time saver for me...I don"t know why I never noticed it before.

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I have gotten involved in the Messenger campaign that makes every IM I send (once you sign up) that starts with "i"m"  turn into money for charities.  Several charties are supported. I am support the Boys and Girls Club.  Get involved!

I have gotten involved in the Messenger campaign that makes every IM I send (once you sign up) that starts with "i"m"  turn into money for charities.  Several charties are supported. I am support the Boys and Girls Club.  Get involved!

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I"ve reworked my web site. It was looking a bit more like the uniform of a NASCAR driver than a web site, so I reworked the layout to make it cleaner. I admittedly stole many of my ideas from other web sites and templates I saw.

The other reason for the change was to eliminate ViewState.  I noticed my pages ballooning from the sheer size of the HTML that was being generated, much of it as ViewState.  I"ve eliminated ViewState in almost every case.  For example, the size of the HTML of my home page was reduced from 134K to 48K.  That"s just HTML size, not images...so the real size change should be even more dramatic.

Let me know what you think and if you find anything not working.  Thanks!