myShoggoth

Running Windows XP Safely

I was just reminded in a conversation with a friend that something I do that I now take for granted is actually quite rare.

I run, on my own machines (home and work), as a Restricted User.  That means I have very little rights to install things, make changes to the system, and so on.  I do this for safety, by running with the lowest privaledges possible on a normal basis I make it hard or impossible for viruses or spyware to infect my machine.

It does make a number of things annoying or painful, like installing software or changing system configurations, etc.  The way I get around this is by using the MakeMeAdmin.cmd and MakeMePU.cmd scripts from Aaron Margosis's WebLog.

When I need to do something as an administrator or power user, I run the right script which then requires me to enter both the Administrator account's password as well as my own again.  I then have a command prompt with the appropriate privilege level, from which I can launch other programs at that level.

Some tricks:

• To launch a control panel from the command line, go to %windir%\system32, dir *.cpl, find the one that looks like the one you need (takes some practice and trial/error) and run 'control x.cpl' where x is the name of the control panel.  For instance 'control appwiz.cpl' will launch the Add/Remove Programs control panel.
• If you need to run Internet Explorer as an administrator/PU (be careful, this is the easy way to get viruses and spyware), shut down all windows of it, then launch %ProgramFiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe.  I heavily recommend shutting all windows down again once you're done doing whatever you needed the higher access for.
• If you want to run Task Manager as an admin (to shut down a rogue process or something), run 'taskmgr.exe'.
• To install most software, put in the CD/DVD and exit out of the installer that comes up by default.  Inside your command window go to that drive (d: or e: or whatever it is) and most have 'autorun.exe' that you can run to get the same UI with administrator rights.  If not there's often a 'setup.exe'.

The next version of Windows (Windows Vista) will make all of this a lot easier, until then this actually works very well and I've been pleasantly surprised how easy it is to deal with.  I just don't have virus or spyware problems on any of my machines, and I credit this approach as 95% or more of the reason.

Post Op Checkup

This morning I went to see the doctor for the first visit after surgery, usually this is done a week or so after but due to travel and holidays that wasn't possible.  Everything looks like it is going well, the joint is less flexible than many people at this stage but that's consistent with what happened last time for me, too.

I'm now scheduled for physical therapy (same therapist as last year), have less potent painkillers, and the okay to start weaning myself off crutches and out of The Boot and try to get more mobility.  Great news since it will make things much easier when I get back to work.  Crutches suck.

I mentioned the numbness on the top of my foot that I've had since the surgery, and he tapped part of my leg which caused that area (and the whole area that had been numb) to twinge.  His theory is that some scar tissue has developed around a nerve and it should work itself out, which seems consistent with what has been happening.  Hopefully over the next week or two the last remaining numbness will go away.

Present Reviews #1

Civ 4

Apparenly this game absolutely requires to ability to get into 1024x768 direct x full screen mode in order to launch.  I'm using my Samsung DSP HDTV as my monitor while I recover from surgery, so it won't run (the Samsung supports 1280x720).  Lame.  I'll try it again when I can move back to my normal monitor.

The Fiefdom Syndrom by Robert Herbold

I read about 75% of this book during the wait for the flight and the flight back home yesterday. I'm really enjoying it, I vaguely remember the guy's name from when he was at Microsoft, but it is clear both in his direct and unattributed examples that he did spend the time here.  It is giving me a lot of food for thought both for my personal career and for the impact I want to have on my new team. 

As I've mentioned, I have worked with many on the team before, but I am still an outsider coming in to the team in a fairly senior role.  I need to prove myself to those who haven't worked with me enough already and find ways to get things done that often I can't do alone.  I had some sense of the 'personal fiefdom' Mr. Herbold talks about in his book, and I very much have seen that in action in the company, and although I knew I wanted to avoid that kind of situation I didn't have as concrete an idea what I was trying to avoid.

The book has also made me rethink a proposal I made to development management on the team before vacation, when I gt back I'm going to retract that one and rethink a better way to accomplish the same basic goals (which are important).

I recommend this book in general, it is important for those who want to make a broader impact but also for people who want to avoid career pitfalls.

Boxing Day

I did squat today, but the ankle is definitely improving.  Took my first painkiller at around 6pm, and I'm using one or both crutches still but going through the full walking motion and putting a little weight on it.

We go home to the Seattle area tomorrow.  I'm really not looking forward to flying again, we're hoping to use frequent flier miles to upgrade (and thus get me more legroom), but the flight is apparently very full.  Here's hoping.

Calling the day after Christmas "Boxing Day" is additionally entertaining this year since my wife boxed all of our presents up to be shipped back home so we can avoid as much luggage as possible.  Not quite the old English custom, but it isn't like we have servants.  I got to Microsoft waaaay too late for that.

Christmas Day

Got some very nice gifts this year, a few computer games (Civ IV, BF2 Special Forces, Pirates!), some DVDs (2 Family Guy sets, Sopranos, Simpsons), a couple CDs (both with Bela Fleck, one his duo CD with Edgar Meyer), and four books on software and/or the industry.

Hope your holidays are going well.

Photos

Just a word about the photo albums, most if not all of the photos you'll see are taken by my lovely and talented wife.  Occasionally (quite often if you ask her...) I will borrow her camera and take a couple, but for the most part she's the photographer and a damned good one at that.  I'll be posting some of my favorites and some that are particularly topical here.

In Colorado

Things have been hectic to say the least.  We got here and soon after went to a small party with friends of my parents.  My brother got into town around the same time we did, completely jetlagged since he was fresh from Tokyo.  We went to this party with me on crutches and him barely awake.

When we got back we couldn't find my wallet, and after a lot of searching still could not find it.  Phone calls went into DIA and United's lost and found offices, and to credit cards and banks to make sure if someone stole or found it and wanted to try to buy their own Christmas cheer with our monies they wouldn't be able to.

Taking some suspense out of that story, we found the wallet two days later in a place we all thought we had checked multiple times.  So now we only have to deal with the fallout of having cancelled a couple credit cards, much better than the alternative.  The lesson:  Don't leave the guy on painkillers in charge of his own wallet.

Otherwise it has been nice, a couple episodes of pain.  This morning I woke up around 6:30 in incredible pain, enough to wake up my wife who thankfully ran to get painkillers and water and then comforted me for the half hour or so it takes for them to take effect.  Not fun.

To Colorado

Yesterday was nice and relaxing, which will help since today involves travel.  We went on a vacation last year after I had surgery, but I don't think we did so nearly as soon after and it was still quite uncomfortable.  Even then we got ahold of the airport/airlines and arranged a wheelchair to get me to/from the gate, and this will be no different.

We're headed off to visit my parents for Christmas, maybe see some of my friends from when I was growing up in Fort Collins depending on how mobile I am, and generally enjoy the holidays with family thang.

Oop, breakfast is ready.

At work

I did make it in to work today, it is great to be out of the house, off the couch, and so on.  Pretty painful to come in and move around, I had to take some pain killers pretty early on.

I'm working on the task I was trying to finish up before surgery, happily it doesn't involve a lot of hard thinking so the medication isn't affecting me too much for it.  I'd really like to get it done before vacation so there's a hope of stabilizing on those changes before we release our next update of the beta.

There's a delicate balance in releasing software where you want to get as much stuff in to a beta as possible because that way you can find out big problems earlier with more time to correct before the final release.  On the other side, if things are not stable and usable you won't get the feedback and usage you need to make the release worthwhile.  Figuring out where to draw the line is an art form I think you can only get good at with a lot of practice.

I'm part of the small subteam withing MSN Messenger that tries to achieve that perfect balance point where the versions people beta test are good enough to use but still have all the new stuff in that can be.  We want feedback and we want to know about issues, but in order to get really valuable information from the betas we need it to be high enough quality that a lot of people are willing to use it as they normally would use Messenger.

In fact, I wrote something up on this on my other site (still not sure if I'll fully switch to here or not): http://andrewboardman.typepad.com/myshoggoth/2005/09/the_nature_of_t.html.

Substantial Progress!

Without going into details that no one, including myself, really wants to know about, I'll just say that there are side effects of general anaethsia and narcotic pain killers that are very annoying.  I haven't taken any pain killers today (except advil), and while my foot hurts a lot those side effects have... been resolved.

And I'm much happier.  The pain is tolerable right now, saving the painkillers to make it easier to sleep at night, since the prescription ran out and nothing can be done short of an emergency until Monday.  I'm thinking a lot more clearly (naturally), and it gives me hope that I will be able to operate well enough tomorrow to go into work.  Considering that I start on vacation on Tuesday, it is my last shot to get something productive done until the new year.