I just came across an old email and thought I would share a silicon valley war story. This may prove to be prophetic as we’re expecting a wafer from the fab soon… and then packaged parts… around Thanksgiving. Uh oh.
How many engineers does it take to pick-up a package from FedEx? 4
How many trips does it take to pick-up said package from FedEx? 3
Friday, November 28, 2008 Black Friday – The day after Thanksgiving.
- We were expecting a package from Advotech with packaged parts. It was shipped Wednesday for Friday delivery.
- Jarie checked FedEx tracking. Received in Sunnyvale at 7:26am. At 7:31am FedEx says, “Holiday – Business closed” Ruh-ro.
- Jarie calls FedEx to find out what happened.
- Gerrior decides to drive to FedEx in Sunnyvale. Jarie waits at Tagent for package – just in case.
- At FedEx Gerrior encounters the surly Kathy. “We called all the businesses and you said you were closed.” I ask, “We’re a 10 person company. Who did you speak with?” She goes off to check only to find out they didn’t call and that businesses who don’t get daily pick-up are assumed to be closed today. The package is in an airplane shipping container. It won’t be opened until Monday AM. If I arrive Sat can I get it? No. If I arrive Sun can I get it? No. She tells me, in the future call the night the package is shipped to indicate we’ll be open for business (huh? What schedule is that?). She promises a refund. Gerrior leaves dejected.
- Upon return to Tagent, Anno and Daniel have arrived. We all 4 decide to drive to FedEx to get the package… manpower to help move packages if nothing else.
- Back at FedEx Kathy is pushing back and Jarie asks to speak to the supervisor.
- Dave, the supervisor, and his assistant “Bruno” (we must have freaked Kathy a little when half the Company showed up) says he’ll have some guys at 3pm to get into the shipping container. We leave them a sample package to assist in looking.
- We leave Sunnyvale and as we’re getting off the Whisman exit from 237, Dave calls and says they found the package. It was just inside the container.
- We make a u-turn and drive back to FedEx.
- We return to FedEx all smiles and handshakes and pick-up the package at 11:12am. The package says, “Fri – 28NOV Priority Overnight”.
- Back at Tagent at 11:30am to begin work!
FedEx – when it absolutely, positively has to be there in 5 days.
Purchased two Blu-ray discs last night from Best Buy. It would have been 10% cheaper ($4) for me to purchase them online and select in-store pick-up then to walk in off the street and purchase the product.
You’re in the middle of copying a large directory between drives. You are then presented with this “Destination Path Too Long” dialog:
Thoughts that come to mind:
- Can’t I rename it now?
- Can’t Windows rename it now?
- Can’t Windows show me a list of all the files that fall into this category?
- Can’t Windows present the offending files in a dialog where I can copy the filenames and paths for easier resolution?
- Does Windows really have to bring the copy to halt because of this? It’s already copied a lot of data – what’s the harm if it continues the copy? If I cancel later what’s the harm? Instead the machine is left waiting for me.
Let’s say the user really does want to continue the copy. Here’s the scenario they’re confronting:
- Write down the filename(s!)
- Press Skip and continue to babysit the long copy for other offending filenames.
Once the copy operation is “complete”, here’s the next steps:
- Search for offending file on the source drive
- Rename offending file
- Find the location on the destination drive
- Copy file to new destination
- Repeat this process for every offending file.
Ugh, no thanks.
These two screen grabs from The Incredibles are from chapter 2 – Helen Parr at the wedding alter. They were taken with a Canon PowerShot G11 of a Sony LCD. Disregard the poor photo quality. Instead compare the shape of the dress between the two players.
- LG BD370V
- PS3
My MacBook Pro had it’s logic board replaced and I dreaded what the resulting new MAC address would do to some of the installed software. Time Machine is one of the applications that cares. The machine’s MAC address is used, in part, to identify itself with Time Capsule. I was so concerned that I made a Genius Bar appointment to pickup my repair and talk about this issue with a tech. The tech printed out a tech note entitled “10.5: Repair Time Machine after logic board charges”.
But after I got home I was pleasantly surprised to discover Snow Leopard knows about this problem and has a solution. My first backup with the new logic board resulted in the following dialog: “Would you like to reuse the backup “/Volumes/Data/Nemo.sparsebundle” with this computer? The backup was created on a different computer. If you reuse this backup it can no longer be used by the original computer.” The options were “Do Not Backup Now”, “Create New Backup”, and “Reuse Backup”. Clicking on “Reuse Backup” does all the MAC address fix-up while clicking “Create New Backup” will result in a new Time Machine database being created.
Tonight we tried to watch Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on Blu-ray. It was unwatchable due to audio problems. The sound in the trailers and menu were fine. But when the movie played the “DTS-HD Master Audio Multi Ch” decoding was horrible. It was like a needle scratching a record. The Disc was played on an LG Network Blu-ray Disc Player (Model BD370V, Driver Version: H42301, SW Version: BD.8.16.693.A) which was connected via HDMI to a Sony STR-DA5400ES Multi Channel AV Receiver. I have access to the same Blu-ray Disc Player connected via HDMI to an Onkyo TX-SR806 AV Receiver I will try out in the coming days and update this post.
Update 11/5: It turns out the problem is with the LG Blu-ray Disc Player. The audio scratching also happened with a different LG (same model and software revision level) in a different setup. The disc played fine in a PS3. I tested chapter 1 and chapter 19 to rule out the possibility of a localized disc defect. I have contacted LG and they are escalating.
Musings of a software engineer in Silicon Valley