David Huffman as a professor

I was just reading a recent article on slashdot about boron buckyballs. The article seems interesting, and the buckyballs remind me of a session where Huffman passed out some copies about buckyballs back in 1992. It was quite curious what this was doing in a graph theory class. It seemed relatively oblique in terms of relevance, but we check it out. My memory must have been bad, but I there seemed to be some interesting information in there. Huffman never really told use really how much of anything related to anything to be honest. He would just give us some information, and we'd have to basically hunt for the rest.

Anyway, back to the current, and clicked on the link and found a Donald Huffman, which, from searches, seems most likely his brother. It was a way to express him being a proud brother, as his brother helped with work on the buckyball. Hats off to him, and I found it a chuckle to really understand why he passed out that article. It seems like I'm always finding out reasons for his seeming quirkiness the older I get.

Hats off to Dr Huffman, and hopefully he'll rest in peace as another ex-student continues to remember, and recognize the things he did in class. I'll have to post one day about the graph theory class.

Changes in expected behavior in the Vista RTM

So here I am, plugging away at an auto update component for Windows Vista that checks to see if IE is running. The old code that worked on XP used the usual ShellWindow. It's been seen in plenty of places. Here's an old link that gives you a little bit of the original source material.

I've updated it slightly, and I think it's a bit nicer. Easier on the eyes, etc. There's no more real need to import the shdocvw.dll. (Why would I want to slow down my compile time for the compiler to do an import?)

#include
#include

IShellWindowsPtr iWnd;
iWnd.CreateInstance( __uuidof(ShellWindows) );
long count = 0;
iWnd->get_Count( &count );

Pretty straight forward stuff, with all error checking stripped. So I run this application, and print out the count.

Windows XP Professional SP2. Result of total # of instances: 1.
Windows Vista RTM. Result of total # of instances: 0.

Now that is amusing. I'm not sure if they will update this or not, but this is problematic. I'll have to fix my code for specifically for to check on the number of running instances. I was thinking of using the ROT, but that was out of the question.

Now the real question is, why did they change the results? Doesn't the one I just created count as one anylonger?

Professional engineering books

On my spare time at home, I'd been reading "Professional C#" and you would think it is really for professionals. The problem is that is that it's overly verbose, for many of the different components.

How does a software engineer not know what an interface is, or what a stack/heap/dictionary is? It goes into detail with language that seems to be geared towards the 9 year old. Come on! You don't have to explain everything to make your book so thick. So there seems to be a ton of whitenoise in it compared to real information.

Next time, I'll sit through reading it a lot more before jumping into purchasing my next book. Also, I think I'll most likely stick with authors who I recognize and have read before, because it is just awful.

More interviewing stories

I kind of wonder, what truely I should do when an interviewer comes into the room and starts interviewing me with alcohol on his breath. And heck, it was before lunch time! That's what happened to me a while back, and still, to this day, wonder what the proper ettiquete would be in that instance.

Flex fuel cars

This seems to be in the news a whole lot, and it seems that a number of companies are pushing towards it. Some people say that it costs ~$100 per car, to be fitted to have flex fuel.

Some manufacturers, Toyota, and Honda, were not overly thrilled with the idea of flex fuel.
1) They have their hybrid technology, which they want to push.
2) The use of ethanol causes the formation of formic and acetic acid, which could damage your engine, as well as seals.

In order to counteract this, there are products out there to prevent the corrosion, but it could be a matter of time for the components to fail, due to improper protection with the preventative measures. I think Toyota will be coming out with a new flex fuel car that is not a retrofit. Instead, the parts, will be more resistant to the corrosion. For the completely deranged (like me), I like my car to last basically forever, with little maintenance.

Personally, I'd be leary of the retrofits, and instead, go with something built from the ground up, to handle the acids from E85.