Shog's Worklog

Live Search is a funny sort of bird.

Ok, technically, it's not a bird at all - it's a web site (or "web app", which is the trendy name for anything on The Internet that isn't a MySpace page...). But of course, I'm using "bird" here as slang for an unusual person.

...Which doesn't really work either, since, as I already mentioned, Live Search is a web site (or web app) and not at all a person (which for the sake of this discussion I'll define as, "something you could converse with over lunch without having to carry both sides of the conversation and eat both lunches").

In case this has become confusing, allow me to try again: Live Search is a funny sort of web site. And not just because it seems to exist for the sole purpose of proving that Microsoft is every bit as hip as Google, like some sort of corporate 40-year-old in baggy shorts. Nor am I referring to the strange promotional tactics involving paying companies to use Live Search, though I could extend the metaphor to involve said 40yr-old buying beer for the kids.

No, I find it funny today for a much more subtle reason:

Now, how many pages of results are there... One, or thirteen?

You can probably guess that the thirteen refers to the total number of results, but if you're guessing that they're all on Page 1, well, by the time you get to the end of the page you'll know you're wrong:

Go figure, eh?

Funny 'ol Web App...

Given the site's MIA status, a few other WDevs alumni have started new blogs or are maintaining alternate sites:

Rob's Ultramaroon rises again
Leppie's xacc.ide
Colin's Stuff that's in my head
Marc Clifton's Blog
Josh Smith on WPF

Sadly, plenty of others are just gone.

This is one of several exceptions that started cropping up recently in a little web app I'd written to display bugs in our TestTrack database.
Turns out, the value represented a null date (the server is located in CDT, GMT-5); however, the .NET SOAP framework doesn't seem to handle such things. I don't know enough about SOAP to say which party is in the wrong, but it turns out the value was part of a source control record that I wasn't particularly interested in anyway, so I just ditched the field altogether - filename + revision # should be enough.

The Interface called The Engine to verify The Data before passing The Data to The Framework. This is redundant, as The Framework is already responsible for verifying any data passed to it. Bug #1.

The Framework called The Engine to verify The Data. Except, it skipped the call in all but two obscure scenarios. Bug #2.

The Engine was broken, and would always fail anything passed to it for verification. Bug #3.

None of this was unit tested, and so The Bugs lived in The Field for more than a year... Programmer Error!

WDevs seems to be down, so I've moved some stuff here on the off-chance that it's of interest to anyone.