Phil Frisbie, Jr.

However, sometimes you just THINK you know who your audience is.For example, your boss asks you to provide her with a brief document explaining why your product is better than a competitors.  This is just going to your boss, right?  So you quickly hammer out a document using your companies acronyms, some technical jargon, and maybe even just a little exaggeration.  Why Not? This is just going to you boss, but the next thing you know she forwards it to the head of sales, who forwards it to the sales team, and next thing you know a version of your comparison is being presented to potential clients.  A simple question, “How are you going to use this comparison,” might have prevented this from happening.

Here is another, more concrete example I have been running into for the last year or so.  In my day job I regularly write press releases.  Years ago press releases were written to the media (they were your audience) in order to entice them to to write a story.  The competition between media outlets encouraged them to use the basic facts in the release as a starting point and then contact you, and/or do research, to add more details to make their own unique story.  Your release could be written in a fairly succinct and formal tone, since you could assume the media would add more details and fluff it up before the public saw it.

However, in this economic downturn the media, like everyone else, is running leaner on fewer staff.  They do not have as much time to followup on every press release to add more details.  So, what I have seen is many of my press releases are now printed almost word for word without so much as a phone call for more details.  While not speaking to the media has its advantages (note to my boss:  I am just kidding, I LOVE to speak to the media ), it also means my audience has changed.  I now put more time into my press releases to make them interesting for the public, because the chances are what I write will be all the public sees.  Oh, and make the title descriptive and catchy, because they may just use that also.

One more broad example.  With companies embracing the powerful potential of the web, many are now sharing documents that previously would have been for internal or industry use only.  I would encourage everyone who creates documents to find out what is posted to the web.  Seeing one of your documents posted to the web for all to see is a humbling experience, especially when you did not know it would be posted!

In conclusion, let me say that before you begin to write, think about who your audience is, and then think about who your POTENTIAL audience is.  Ask questions if you need to.  It only takes a little bit of extra time to add explanations in case a technical document is made available to the public.  And if you have the opportunity to write a news release remember to take the time and make it just interesting enough for the public to read in case the media is too busy that day to add anything to it.  Happy writing…..

Anyway…as I said, I installed VirtualBox (here a good tutorial for Ubuntu), then installed my client OSs.  The first client was Windows XP, then Ubuntu 32-bit, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and finally I created a “catch-all” virtual machine.  The catch-all has two virtual hard drives and triple-boots DOS 6.21, Windows 3.1, and Windows 2000.  DOS is there because it is still a widely used OS for single purpose embedded devices like cash registers.  Windows 3.1 is there for nostalgia because it was my first version of Windows, and Windows 2000 is there mainly to make it easy to update the other two.

Here is a screen shot of my desktop:

The screenshot above is from my dual wide-screen monitor setup.  From right to left: Windows XP in fullscreen mode running the free Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, DOS 6.21 (you youngsters may have never seen MS-DOS Shell), then finally OpenSolaris.

Later I plan to set up FreeDOS, Haiku (inspired by BeOS), GNU HURD, other BSDs including PureDarwin (Darwin is the core of Mac OS X), and other Linux distros.  Testing out new OSs or distros has never been easier!  Now on to some serious cross-platform programming…..

I quickly switched to NT 5.0, er, Windows 2000, shortly after it came out, and I used that for about 6 years before finally moving to Windows XP.  I have been happy with XP, as have most users, and never even considered moving to Vista (ME 2.0?).  Delaying or avoiding new versions of Windows is easy when you build your own computers like I usually do, but many of my friends and family are not so lucky, and my lack of experience with the new Vista layout and features, such as a user access control, make it difficult to provide phone support.

So, when I saw an opportunity to purchase an HP computer with Windows 7 for what I had expected to pay to upgrade my current PC, I decided to go for it.  And even though I am writing this while running Ubuntu Linux, Windows is close by in a virtual machine (more on this another time).

So, while my first impression of Windows 7, coming straight from Windows XP, was not very good (Why does Microsoft think that hiding options makes Windows easier to use?), I have grown accustomed to the interface, and like the glass look of the windows.  The Office 2007 ribbon bar drove me crazy until I figured out how it was partitioned (my Office 2002 would not install on Windows 7, and both my wife and I agree that the ribbon is NOT easier to use than the old menus).

The bottom line is that with Windows XP support winding down, Windows 7 will now be my Windows version of choice for as long as I remain using Windows – not because it is better than XP, but because it does not annoy me TOO much.

As young children we made mistakes all the time, but we LEARNED from those mistakes.  The adults who excel have either re-embraced the idea that mistakes are not bad, or they were lucky and did not succumb to conditioning.  They are not afraid to learn and try new things, to push themselves into situations which are not comfortable, and others notice them.  They are the ideal employees, who do not hesitate to take on new challenges where others would balk or  say it was not in their job description!

More importantly, not being afraid to make mistakes is the first step to innovation, because if you are REALLY pushing the envelope, working on the bleeding edge, or blazing a new trail, most of your ideas will not work as expected.  However, if you carefully evaluate those mistakes you WILL learn something you can apply to your next try, and you will be far ahead of those who play it safe.

Innovators will always have work because most businesses realize that innovation is a large part of staying competitive.  So go ahead, I dare you to make mistakes!  Push yourself.  Learn how to innovate.

The next step is system preparation.  The very first thing I do when I purchase or build a new system is to run Memtest86 on it to insure I will not have any memory problems.  This has saved me several times when I either purchased bad memory, or the motherboard used too aggressive  timing settings on a module.  It is also a tool I use on existing systems when they show any sort of flakiness, since memory errors can manifest themselves in all sorts of strange ways.

After I ran Memtest86 for two full passes, I booted into Windows for more testing, and here is where I took a wrong turn!  I downloaded Prime95 and loaded up all 4 AMD CPU cores overnight with no problems.  Of course, to download Prime95 I automatically installed Firefox first (I avoid browsing with Internet Explorer at all costs).   And I automatically uninstalled the Norton free trial and installed AVG for virus protection.

At this point I wanted to try freeing up some disk space for Ubuntu by shrinking the Windows 7 (Win7) partition from within Win7.  I have always relied upon Ubuntu to repartition  a drive, and it has always worked in the past, but I like looking at new ways of doing things.  My goal was to shrink the partition down to about 100GB so that I would have about 500GB for Ubuntu.  But there was a problem: the Win7 partition, which only had about 18GB of data, would not shrink below 280GB.  It seems when I installed the additional software it wrote some files way out in the partition, and Win7 will not move files during a shrink.  No problem I thought, I will just go ahead and install Ubuntu and let it move those files.

So, I boot up Ubuntu, perform the install (shrinking the Win7 partition to about 100GB), and then reboot back into Win7.  Or at least, I tried to boot into Win7.  Win7 complained about a dirty shutdown (as it should after Linux shrinks an NTFS partition).  But it crashed before getting to the desktop, even in safe mode. SIGH!  Good thing HP provides a simple system recovery.  So I recover the system, and this time before booting into Win7 I install Ubuntu and shrink the partition.  Ha! There is always more than one way to do things.

So I now boot into Win7 to go through the first-boot ritual again, and it crashes!  Win7 does not like the dirty flag set on an NTFS partition on the “first” boot. There is no safe boot on the first boot, and apparently there is also no chkdsk either to scan the partition and reset the dirty flag.  So, I run the HP system recovery again….

Third try!  Boot into Win7, and soon as the first boot was finished I shrunk the partition to about 100MB.

Now I installed Ubuntu and could finally begin to set up my virtual machines…

As  planned to begin blogging, I allocated a number of hours per week to compose blog entries.  I was not naive; I knew there would be spam comments which would need to be weeded out.  But I thought that I could lift the manual approval after determining how much of an issue it really was, and simply delete spam and improper entries periodically, perhaps once per week.  Well, that is NOT going to happen anytime soon.

No, the spam problem is WAY bigger than I anticipated.  For every post I approve (and I have really tried to be lenient), there are 5 to 8 others that do not make it.  So, in the interest of saving your time, and mine, here is how NOT to get your comment approved:

• Cut and paste the same seemingly sincere comment more than once. Like Star Trek philosopher Montgomery Scott (Scotty) once said, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
• Include a link to male performance drugs, or any other type of drugs.
• Include a link to a blog that has been up for weeks with no content.
• Include a link to illegal content (warez).
• Comment in a language other than English.  How can (or should) I approve something I cannot read?
• Include a link to a business without a sincere comment.

Reviewing each comment carefully and following the links takes time; time I could be writing.  However, I will keep plugging away at this to try to post useful content.

It has everything I wanted, plus a 640GB hard drive, 6GB RAM (instead of 4), and a LightScribe DVD burner.  It also has Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, so I guess this will be a dual boot rig.  However, this will now provide me with a side-by-side comparison for future posts.  More after I burn in this new rig to insure it will last a while….

Why do you answer all these stupid questions by dumb people like me?

Do you get paid for it or are you just that kind?

My reply:

Because you are in desperate need of help But seriously, I skip the really stupid questions.

No, I do this on my own time an hour or so per day. I do it because it was not too may years ago that I was first getting into programming (with DJGPP) and learned allot from those people that answered questions for others. So this is a little pay back when I can….

So go ahead and send me your questions!

I was told you have a Commercial and Personal [insurance] Lines Agency Management System, is this correct? If so what is the cost and do you have info on capability?

My reply:

I am sorry, but have reached Hawk Software.  You are probably looking for Hawksoft Inc. at www.hawksoftinc.com

I wish I DID have this software;  I get these misdirected messages every 3-4 weeks!