Microsoft Word

I like Excel, but Word is just horrible. That autocomplete functionality is annoying and a pain to disable. And that voice data option! A total bug when working with Japanese text.

how does your design hold up?

Just how good is the code that you write?

The true gauntlet comes when you start testing and fixing bugs.

*How easy is it to find your bugs?
*How easy is it to fix your bugs?

I started to write "and more importantly, how easy is it to fix your bugs," but both questions are equally important, as hard to find bugs are naturally hard to fix.

The true test of the flexibilty of your design is when you have to make changes to allow for changes in the specifications, mistakes in the specifications, misinterpretations of the specifications, and plain bugs.

Good designs are easier to change than bad designs. They're less brittle, so changing a feature won't cause other features to break.

In the long run, a good design saves a whole lot of headaches in the testing phase and beyond.

My boss pointed out that the most experienced (and best) programmer should write the core functionality and samples so that the less experienced programmers can use the code as templates to implement other portions of the system. It's a very efficient way to make use of your programmers.

And, the most important aspect of any project is communicating the requirements.

rss feeds are great!

Easy opt-in, easy opt-out. Hehe. Push content so I don't have to run around checking all my favorite sites. Of course, I can easily see how this can get out of hand. But at the moment, it's not a problem. Reading is fast, anyway. Um, yes, not atom feed for this blog yet; just my main one has it. I mean, who really reads this anyway?

Apache Jakarta Struts tag html:multibox

I have a recurring issue using html:multibox, specifically with indexed properties.

Used normally, it's a pretty straightforward and pleasant to use tag. Some links:
* html tags FAQ
* introduction to using multibox
* an example of multibox in action
* another example of multibox

In the case of Struts 1.1, multibox cannot take indexed properties.

identity theft and the SSN

There's an interesting discussion of identity theft at Slashdot.