Here is an absolutely cool blog entry from a Microsoft researcher who analyzes a problem he had getting lunch the other day in software development process terms. Can you tell that he spends his days creating MSF software development process methodologies? Naw.

In addition this restaurant had a broken organizational structure and poor separation of responsibilities. The "Anderson lunch project" should rightly have been the responsibility of the waiter who should have been playing the project manager role (and maybe the program manager role). The waiter should have analyzed our requirements and understood our priorities. This should have been communicated to the chefs and the order of production of our sushi should have been negotiated against the competing orders at the time. The sushi chefs should have been purely responsible for the production of sushi. They should not have had any project management, program management or scheduling responsibility. After all, they had no direct contact with the customer and as the system's capacity constrained resource, they should not have been wasting sushi making capacity trying to do anything else.

As I mentioned, I purchased a new LCD monitor and video card over the weekend. Still loving the monitor.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend who also recently purchased a 19 inch LCD monitor. We got to talking about prices. Turns out, he paid $499 for his (Hyundai make monitors?), while I paid $449 for mine (BenQ). Different brands, of course. But while surfing a local computer store web site, my jaw slightly dropped when I saw an LCD monitor with similiar specs listed for $381. So, since I bought the cheapest 19 inch LCD I could find, by shopping around a bit more I could have saved $70. Damn, I hate that feeling.

Anyways, I started looking for the cheapest price anywhere on the Internet for the same monitor (couldn't find any online stores that sold it cheaper, whew). That led me to start looking for the cheapest price I could find for my video card (which I paid $199 for).

Whoa. First, there are the American sites. Amazon.com has the exact same video card for $82 USD (or about $100 CDN). That's half price, and that's depressing. But I can't compare a price I found in a retail store here with the price off a U.S. based web site - it's an unfair comparison. Amazon.com won't ship the item to Canada, so I have to pretend that amazon.com doesn't exist.

Then I found a Canadian site that offered that video card for $149. Exact same make, model and everything. Ah, I think. Best Buy has a lowest price guarantee. I'll just pop by the store and pick up my $50.

Well, the in store experience started off a bit rough. One employee I talked to said he didn't think Best Buy would honor a price I found online, but I should check with the manager. Another said “We don't match wholesalers. For instance, we won't match a price you find at CostCo, because we just can't compete with that.”  That was an interesting statement, but I guess you have to purchase a membership to CostCo so that is why they can sell things a bit cheaper.

So the young lady goes off to do some “research” on this price I found. In my head I was preparing for battle. I had memorized all the Best Buy “fine print” required for the price match. Heck, it was printed in large font on a poster beside the customer service desk. The price had to be in Canadian dollars, had to be available for immediate delivery, had to include the cost of next day delivery shipping, no special clearances, no restricted sales, yadda yadda. I had an air-tight case, I thought. If they declined, I figured I could even sue in court for my $50, since what I was asking for was clearly covered by their so-called guarantee. It was a chess game, and I had my first 6 moves planned out in advance.

And then she came back from her “research” in the back office, and told me she would refund the money. No problems, no attitude, she was friendly. (I was actually slightly disappointed I didn't get to argue my case.) But still, extra bonus points for not making me fight for it.

And thus, I am able to renew my membership in the Best Buy fan club. My wife says, “It would be stupid of them not to refund the money. You're in here every week.” So way to go, Best Buy. It's so odd to have an experience dealing with “customer service” that results in satisfaction, that I kind of don't know how to react. Should I write them a letter? Well, a positive blog entry will have to do. Oh, and a free link: Best Buy Canada.

Retailing is a tough business to be in. Any schmuck can open an online store (or eBay) and sell goods for 50 cents above the wholesale price. There are even some retail outlets, like CostCo or Tiger Direct, that are happy to make the tiniest sliver of a profit off of most things, and make it up on volume. So a full service store, with helpful staff and a forgiving refund policy would have a tough time competing on price alone. But they do, which is great.

The world is anxiously waiting the next release of Visual Studio 2005 with Team System. I haven't heard any news lately as to what the hold up is. There must be some major bug that has to get fixed before it can get out the door.

Anyways, as I may have mentioned before, I have a version of Team System installed and it has been working great. I'm slowly chugging along at a Team System book I am writing, so this is forcing me to get into all the cool new parts of the system. I am seeing some cool things.

Anyways, I have to get back to writing. But I just thought I should stop and say thanks to all the great people at Microsoft who have worked on this incredible product. All the belly-aching over pricing and licensing is for nothing - this thing is really worth it.

Some people are able to keep the same computer for 4 or 5 years before buying a new one. I am not one of those people. I have a desktop-style computer at home that I call my “server”. I opened the cover a few years back, and have never got around to putting it fully back on. I am always in there, tweaking stuff.

You see, prices keep falling. A 200GB hard drive now retails for about $120 CDN. That's ridiculously low. You can get 512MB of memory for $50. How can you not buy that if you could use it? I see these prices fall - week after week - and sometimes I can't help myself but buy something cheap.

Yesterday I bought a 19 inch LCD monitor (BenQ T903, $450 CDN) and a new video card (GeForce FX 5500, $199 CDN) to match. The 19 inch LCD is a monster - huge screen real estate like I've never seen before. I run the thing in 1280 x 1024 mode. Web pages that used to scroll now take up only half the screen. I run a dual-monitor setup - but now I wonder if I need too. With a screen that large, you can realistically do a couple of things on the same screen.

I'm not a big “gamer”, so the video card I bought was chosen because (a) it supports dual-monitor and (b) it wasn't too expensive. I wouldn't buy the cheapest card I could find, but somewhere in the middle between the low and high end. I ran some 3DMark 2001 tests on the old and new cards, and it looks like just over twice as fast as my old card.

The downside to all this upgrading I do is that I now have computer parts lying all over my home office. I have three extra video cards, two extra CD-RW drives, one extra hard drive, 4 extra SDRAM memory cards, 1 extra laserjet printer, 1 extra scanner, 1 extra 17 inch monitor... I mean, I can open a second hand computer store.

I am hesistant to throw this stuff out - as it still has “some” value. 128MB RAM used to be worth a lot of money - and is still $50 new in Best Buy.

Anyways, the one thing I can't upgrade (and that I might need to soon) is the CPU. 1GHz Pentium 3 is just not cutting it any more. It's probably holding back the performance more than anything at this point.

I have been trying very hard to stay away from controversial issues on this blog. I often find, looking back a few months later, that my opinion on the matter has softened. It's actually a bit embarassing to see what I once considered important ended up meaning so little.

So it is with caution that I write something about the current hot topic of the month: the Terri Schiavo case.

The case is doubly-sad. First, there is the deep sympathy I feel for the woman at the center of it all: Terri Schiavo. 15 years ago, she was a normal, healthy woman. Then she suffered a heart attack that caused severe brain damage. She has been somewhere between comatose and barely conscious ever since. Court-appointed doctors have said she is in a “persistent vegetative state“.

The other sad aspect of this case is how this case has become a lightening-rod dividing people all across the United States. In fact, this case has attracted such a odd assortment of characters and issues, that you need a scorecard to figure out who's who.

What this whole case smacks of is hypocracy. Don't worry, there's plenty to go around for all sides.

Maybe I'm cynical, but when all those Senators flew into Washington two weekends ago to pass a special bill to give her parents standing in federal court, and then the President was woken at 1am to sign it into law, it seemed to be a publicity stunt. It's been almost two weeks, and we have not heard one peep out of the vacationing President on the issue. I bet he wishes it would just go away - one way or another.

At the time he signed the bill, the President made a statement like, “All life is precious“, or something like that. But while Bush was governor of Texas, there were 131 executions in 5 years. Many of those cases had serious legal questions about guilt - including 40 cases where the defence lawyer presented no evidence. There seems to be something odd about passing laws in the middle of the night to save the life of someone who is almost comatose, and letting 131 people, some of which COULD be innocent, die without blinking.

You can't even blame traditional Democrat versus Republican bickering. Politicians of all parties are using this to push their agendas, whatever they may be. But when it got too hot, like it is now, they are nowhere to be found.

The parents seem to be stuck in some type of legal infinite loop. I feel sad for them, because what they are doing is fighting for their daughter's life, but they have appealed this case at least 10 times (6 times to the Supreme Court), and been rejected each time. They should probably just drop the legal appeals of this case, and focus on getting the public on their side. It's probably their only hope.

Jesse Jackson annoys me to no end. “Jesse, come on down to Florida and help us with this case.” “Will the media be there?” If I thought he was the least bit sincere, I wouldn't mind so much. But with Rev. Jackson, it's all about the publicity value. I do appreciate a comment he made a couple of weeks ago, before got involved with the case, about how he opposed the way congress sped through a law in 24 hours to save one life, while they blindly ignore the millions of other people starving in America. Of course, now he's fighting for the camera time, oops I mean fighting for Terri, alongside those same politicians.

Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, is in a tough spot. He's sort of thrust himself out there, to lead the political fight in Florida. But now, everyone has sort of abandoned him - including his brother - so now he fights alone. Activists are calling on him to do something, and will no doubt blame him when Terri dies. So there's a kick in the pants for you - the one guy who I think really genuinely tried, and still tries, to help becomes the biggest goat in all this. Poor Jeb.

Lastly, there is an interesting contradiction here. Apparently, most states currently would allow what Florida allows - for a hospital to remove a feeding tube at the request of a legal guardian. But that causes the person to be starved to death - what a horrible way to die. Since most states clearly allow people to be starved to death in this way, shouldn't there be an option for a more compassionate way to die? This is the contradiction - every day people watch their loved ones travel a long and painful road to death (ie: the last weeks of cancer), with nothing but morphine to ease the pain. There should be some other compassionate options, if doctors, patient and family members all agree.

Also, it should be noted that Terri Schiavo, thankfully, feels no pain. According to an article on CNN.com, people in a persistant vegetative state are not conscious, and thus neither suffer nor feel pain. I really, really hope this is true.

I'm watching a program called Everest, on Outdoor Life Network, and one of the oddest things they show is that there is a team of climbers near the top of the mountain, waiting to do the “final push” towards the summit. They wake up, to discover their oxygen tanks have been stolen...

Excuse me? You are camping at the top of Mount Everest, and in the middle of the night there's a theft? I wonder how frequently that happens. Maybe a full oxygen tank is worth more than gold up there?

A guy who just found out he won the $27 million jackpot in a German lottery responded to the news by saying, “I don't have time to chat right now. I'm late for work.”

Although it comes off sounding odd, I can understand what he means. If I won a lottery, no matter how big, I would still go into work that day (and for the next little while) because I like the people I work with, and I would feel bad for them if my sudden departure causes them undue stress. 

No doubt, I would give my “two weeks notice“ that I intended to leave and would leave sooner than that if I could, but I wouldn't just “not show up” again. There's no excuse for doing that to people you consider friends.