Microsoft to Lay Off 10,000 Workers as It Looks to Trim Costs — msn.com Google to lay off 12,000 employees, the latest tech giant to cut thousands of jobs — usatoday.com Regal Cinemas is closing 39 more movie theaters. See the list — cnn.com Another day, another round of layoffs and closures, another sunshine up the butthole economic report from the Biden administration: We’re not in a recession! Employment numbers are great! Someone is lying to me and I don’t think it’s Microsoft, Google and Regal Cinemas. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Microsoft
A Matter of Low Importance
It’s funny that Microsoft Outlook gives you the option to send email and flag it as “Low Importance.” If it’s low importance, why send it at all? Read more →
HIS and HER
I work at an educational non-profit. Whenever I type the abbreviation HSI (High School Intervention), Microsoft Word automatically “corrects” it to HIS. When I worked at a healthcare organization and typed EHR (Electronic Healthcare Record), Word helpfully “corrected” it to HER. There’s a nice symmetry to that: HIS and HER. Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
If you don’t know me and I don’t know you, don’t call me up and shout, “Hey Paul! It’s Zach Flack with Equity Staffing!” as though I might have been sitting by the phone thinking “Wouldn’t it be a little slice of heaven if I got a call from Zach Flack over at Equity Staffing?” If I don’t know you, but I might recognize your name, then possibly some heightened level of emotion is warranted, e.g., “Hey Paul! It’s Bill Gates with Microsoft!” or “Hey Paul! It’s Pope Francis at the Vatican!” Otherwise, tone it down and stop annoying people. Read more →
The Cure for Missing Attachments
I wrote an email in Outlook 2013, concluded by saying “Details are in the attached doc,” then clicked Send without attaching the aforesaid document. I must not be the only person who does this, because when I clicked Send, this dialog box appeared: Obviously, Outlook is looking for words like “attached” or “attachment” in emails that don’t contain an actual attachment. It turns out that this behavior can be turned on or off in the Outlook Mail options: I have to admit that I don’t remember if “warn me” is the default option, or if I turned it on at some point in the past and forgot about it. Read more →
Agile, ALM, and Agile 2.0 — Putting the Cart Before the Horse?
Speaking of selling chickens still in shells, an august panel of industry giants laid out their recent improvements and plans for ALM products (Application Lifecycle Management, for those not in the know). These guys dazzled the audience with how they’ve moved far beyond simple source code repositories and testing tools to a complete integration of all modern software practices. Quite a coup, indeed, since most real live software developers I’m seeing out there today still aren’t using the practices automated by the ALM tools. . . . In other words, many software developers aren’t using practices such as test driven development or source version control. Yet here are HP, Microsoft, and IBM announcing new ALM tools that automate more advanced practice in areas not even in use in the first place. Unbelievable. — Ken Schwaber Read more →
The Stupidest Thing
[Bill] Gates quickly became legendary for telling people that their idea was the stupidest he’d ever heard — so much so that [VP Paul] Maritz would assure them not to worry, “because they weren’t going to hold the record for long.” In an interview last week, Gates feigned disagreement when it was pointed out that he would often spice up the phrase with an expletive. “No, no, no,” he said, laughing. “Literally, I do say, ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’ Some people think I add some other word in there, but I don’t — usually.” — seattlepi.com Read more →
Twitter: 2009-05-07
@ReporterHaley I love acai smoothies. Where do you get them? in reply to ReporterHaley # RT @MSFTResearch: Microsoft Research has updated the humble Post-it note .. http://tinyurl.com/dkn2bq # I am hearing reports that the Swine Flu can be cured by…SUSHI ! # @ReporterHaley Have U tried Juice It Up acai bowls (not smoothies)? I’m addicted! Aliso Viejo store makes ’em the best… in reply to ReporterHaley # Read more →
Best and Worst Software Features of the Week
I was typing in Microsoft Word and I started a bulleted list with an item like this: Topic1. A sentence about Topic1. And another one. Then I hit the Enter key. What do you think happened? Not only did I get another bulleted list item, Word set the font to bold! So I typed this: Topic2. And as soon as I typed the period, Word turned bold off!! Not only did it figure out that I’m creating a bulleted list, it figured out that I’m starting each bullet with bold font, followed by a period, followed by more text in regular font, and it takes care of everything for me automatically! That’s pretty sophisticated. Compare that to Lotus Notes, which can’t even figure out when I hit Enter twice that I want to turn the bullets off! We use Notes at work and I swear to God, if I type… Read more →
Like Father, Like Son?
The number of students majoring in computer science is falling, even at the elite universities. So [Bill] Gates went stumping at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling students that they could still make a good living in America, even as the nation’s industry is sending some jobs, like software programming, abroad. — The New York Times, “Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up Computing as a Career” My brother is a doctor. He doesn’t encourage his kids to go into medicine though, because he’s incredibly frustrated by the fact that you go to school for 20 years to learn something, only to have clerks from insurance companies decide if a procedure you’ve recommended is or is not “medically necessary.” I’ve worked in computing for 20 years. I don’t push my kid to get into it because during that time, it’s become less and less… Read more →
Profiles in Management: The Tank Commander
In the military, when I was in tank warfare and I was actually fighting in tanks, there was nothing more soothing than people constantly hearing their commander’s voice come across the airwaves. Somebody’s in charge, even though all shit is breaking loose. . . . When you don’t hear [the commander’s voice] for more than fifteen minutes to half an hour, what’s happened? Has he been shot? Has he gone out of control? Does he know what’s going on? You worry. And this is what Microsoft is. These little offices, hidden away with the doors closed. And unless you have the constant voice of authority going across the e-mail the whole time, it doesn’t work. . . . You can’t do anything that’s complex unless you have structure. . . . And what you have to do is make that structure as unseen as possible and build up the image… Read more →