His goldfish died while the customer was installing your software. So it must be your fault. That’s why he sends you a three-page e-mail.

2. The ignorer 

You wrote that the customer should do 1. … 2. … 3. … to solve the problem. The customer writes back that he did something completely different, that it still doesn’t work and that your support sucks.

3. The insister

Tells you that you’re all wrong, ignores everything that you wrote and insists that you’d better send him a solution RIGHT NOW.

And probably there are many more types…

When you’re programming, you’re often…

• typing something
• Then you browse through the same file, look for something
• copy something
• And now you want to get back  to the place that you previously edited.

There’s a secret hotkey (actually a sequence) for that which works in most editors: Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y.

Works in Visual Studio, Word, text editors, etc.

It’s great tool when writing e-mails. Basically I wrote it because I was fed up with typing “copmuter” again and again. If you find this (or other typos) in your own e-mails, check out my auto-correction software.

bool EnableWindowsDependingOn (CWnd *pParent, DWORD DependingOnThisCheckbox, DWORD Value1, ...)
{
 va_list marker;

 bool bState = (((CButton*)pParent->GetDlgItem(DependingOnThisCheckbox))->GetCheck()!=0);

 DWORD i=Value1;
 va_start (marker, Value1);
 while (i != 0)
 {
 if (i<=0xffff)
 {
 if (pParent->GetDlgItem(i))
 pParent->GetDlgItem(i)->EnableWindow (bState);
 }
 else
 ((CWnd*)i)->EnableWindow (bState);

 i = va_arg (marker, long);
 }
 va_end (marker);

 return (bState);
}

It excepts the this pointer of your CDialog and the id of the master checkbox. Then you can append any number of sub-element ids or pointers. And finally a NULL. Example:
EnableWindowsDependingOn (this, IDC_CHECK1, IDC_EDIT1, IDC_EDIT2, NULL);

This would enable the two edit boxes if the checkbox is enabled.

Except, if you’re using Windows 7.

For some reason the 3d-flipping mode with Win+Tab still works. And allows you to switch to the debugger.

Step 2: Curse Microsoft

Step 3: Throw out the MS way and program it yourself.

Repeat for every trivial issue.

I’m talking about being a customer for a  change. I tried to check out AISIP’s member forums and one has to pay for that. Okay, I tried. I filled in the reg.net order form, hit the submit button only to see the same form again. I double-checked my data, I looked for marks that I forget something. Nothing. Same form again. I triple-checked my data, tried another browser, another computer. Even my iPhone. Nothing worked. I contacted AISIP (three times). No reply. I contacted reg.net and got a standard mail. My reply to that mail was left unanswered.

So I want to pay, but I can’t. It’s frustrating.

Hope you’re treating your customers better than that. I know that I do, but I wonder if I should test *my* payment processor…

I know, it sounds ridiculous.  But I’ve tested it. It’s MUCH faster now. The switch works by enabling multi-core processing. I have no idea why Microsoft has hidden this, instead of making it a big, obvious feature.

Anyways. You can enable it by adding /MP to the “Additional options” in “Configuration properties > C/C++ > Commandline”.

(Found it at 1 and 2)

Wrong. So wrong.

Mobile internet access is ridiculously cheap and easy in Jersey. In fact the only problem was finding out where they sell it (Jersey Telecom, 18 Queen Street, St Helier; Mo-Sa 9:00-17:30). I paid only £9.99 for 1GB of traffic. I wish mobile internet in the Netherlands was that cheap.

And it worked just wonderful. No technical problems (like in Scotland), almost no coverage problems (as in Spain) and no trouble with the charging (as in the Netherlands). Great.

This code looks harmless enough:

CFileStatus rStatus;
CFile::GetStatus (MyFilename, rStatus);

And it will work most of the time. But CFileStatus uses CTime, which is limited to dates after 1.1.1970. If you apply this code to a file with a file-modification date of e.g. 1.1.1960, GetStatus will raise an exception. (Which it isn’t documented to to.) And if you don’t catch that, it will terminate your program.