I feel your pain - we're just starting up Scrum where I work and it's certainly a challenge getting past the fears our stakeholders have!

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I haven't had reason to post in a while, but I needed to express my heartfelt support for you and yours at this time, Pete. My deepest sympathy and condolences for your loss. :rose:

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

There are actually lots of churrascarias in that area - I think there are at least 3 on International Drive, if I recall from my last trip down that way, including that one called "Crazy Grill" (which I've heard bad things about before). There's a chain called Texas de Brazil that recently opened one there. I'm not sure about that particular location, but the other restaurants in that chain that I've visited are generally pretty good - really excellent salad bar with lots of upscale choices, a selection of soups, and the meats and the sides have always been well-prepared and plentiful. The service was always prompt and attentive, too. My husband absolutely loves a good churrascaria, and I admit I really like them, too. But we've been to a couple of them which were very off-putting, so I certainly understand your issues!

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Churrascarias can actually be an excellent dinner out if you want meat and lots of it of all different varieties. The good ones tell you what they're slicing before putting it on your plate, and will make sure you get the level of doneness you prefer. They usually have an assortment, from beef (sirloin, tenderloin, maybe some flank steak), lamb, sausages, chicken, and even grilled prawns. The better places have at least a dozen choices circulating on a given evening. If you don't like meat fresh from a rotisserie or a grill, you won't care for it. If you don't want to primarily eat meat and instead indulge more in the salad bar and sides, it may not be as good a value for you. And woe to someone who goes into a mediocre one. You'll probably pay premium prices, but get far less variety offered to you, and it will be sub-quality.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Hey, you got Charlton Heston, but you forgot Chuck Norris! How could you?!?!?!? Trish

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Well, I'll concede to wine or whine, take your pick, and gamblin'. I'll leave the wimmin' to you. I think my husband might have something to say about it ;P Trish

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Okay, I don't usually post here (In fact, I'm not sure I ever have!) but I do lurk here now and again for the amusement factor. So, if a lurker can be said to have any say, The Back Room works pretty well as a name - it represents a place that isn't in view of the average customer, and where things might take place out of sight and out of mind.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

The Bum's Rush The Vocal Minority The Dive Hot Tub (oh, wait, that's the thing at the top of my wish list after a long day at work!) The MashUp The Pit I kind of liked the suggestions of Pub and Speakeasy, too.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I actually find that I like Windows 7 quite a bit. It seems snappier to me on equipment that was previously running Vista. It's still a beta, and I expect there will be some changes, but I'm quite hopeful that this will be a worthy successor to XP. Not that I dislike Vista - I use it on my primary desktop at home, and once I tweaked it into submission, I'm quite comfortable with it. However, it's definitely a pig unless you throw lots of memory, a current generation CPU and fast hard drive at it.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I'm sorry to hear this! You have my best wishes that you do well as possible now, and you can get another transplant when it's time. :rose: Trish

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Ahh, but Roger, how about those who have domains for email purposes, not a website? That's also a legitimate use of a domain, after all.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Wow. That article should count as two or three articles. Well-written, articulate, clean and easy to follow, it's a cut above much of the drivel that comes though!

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

You would be correct. The 5000 figure refers to full time employees. 1400 were laid off as of today, with the rest expected to be laid off over the next 18 months. Most of the positions were in support roles, including some IT people. This will be partially mitigated, apparently, because they will be hiring within other roles. Expected net job loss in 18 months is expected to be 2000-2500. There will also be reduction in contract and vendor positions. Apparently, the expected reduction is approximately 15% of the corporate budget for those positions. Speculation is a total of anywhere from 2000 to 6000 contract positions will be lost, either through attrition (non-renewal of contracts, no backfill of previous contract positions when they become open, etc), or outright immediate termination of contracts.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I am running it as the primary OS on my laptop, but I also have a complete, verified backup of the old system. So far, so good - no crashes - but I haven't really pushed it that hard yet. I've only used my laptop for some light activities when I didn't feel like being tied to my desk, like code updates, documentation writing, and a bit of web browsing, mostly. I've been able to run all my required software so far, and there were drivers available for everything, though not all of them were in the box.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I don't know exactly when I actually started reading, but I know when I found out I already knew how to read - I was barely 5, and was sighing and wishing I knew how to read so I could hurry and finish the book my dad was reading to us each night. My mom turned to me and said, "Honey, you can and do read already, didn't you know that?" She proceeded to write a short story for me made up of words she knew I knew, and lo and behold, I could read the story! I dived right in. Picture books? Hah! Only when they made me read "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run!" at school. I went straight for what I thought of as REAL books, not books for babies. I started with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys almost immediately, read The Hobbit, followed by The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of seven, and my first exposure to sci-fi was a couple of Heinlein juveniles just before I turned 8. I can't imagine why a school would want to wait that late to start kids reading.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Arrrrgh! Just when I thought I was safe, you HAD to bring this one up again. I managed to not get started with that one the first time (thanks to having too much work to do to even THINK about playing a game). But I had a few minutes to spare. Hey, what the heck. Might as well amuse myself for... 4 hours?!?!?!?!??? Where did the afternoon go? Arrrrgh.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Durian. To me, it smells like something crawled away and died a couple of weeks ago while carrying a load of onions and garlic. I'm told it's really good once you get past the smell, but I haven't been able to acquire a taste for it.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

As someone who did test for Microsoft for a long time and still works in the QA industry, don't assume that a professional tester didn't find it. I'd be surprised if basic injection wasn't tested - it was a large segment of test when I worked in Microsoft.com's test organization several years ago, and I doubt it's any different over at MSDN. However, just because the test organization found the issue doesn't mean that it was decided to fix it. Just wanted to speak up for those who may not be at fault here. Test in many companies (and in some, but not all divisions at Microsoft) is often considered an advisory capacity, but the decision about the priority of the bug may actually be determined by the business folks. That's a horrible place for it to happen, since often the business team doesn't have the expertise to make that determination, but the business folks DO hold the purse strings. And, to be fair, it could be that for some reason it would have been very costly or counter-productive to fix it, or there may have been some reason why they chose to allow it. I saw all of those scenarios at one time or another, at one company or another. I'm not saying I agree with that, just pointing out that it's not fair to imply that the testers were at fault, necessarily.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

Gary R. Wheeler wrote:

Hey, I've felt your pain in the past. I do just fine getting through the crunch. A couple days later and the migraine truck runs over me, stops, backs up (running over me from that direction), and then repeats until I'm a gray messy paste in the road.

Wow, that sounds familiar. While the crunch is on, I'm pretty much good-to-go, and I'll work crazy hours. Then the crunch is over, and here comes the migraine train, with 6 engines and what seems like five miles of fully-loaded cars. Somehow, it doesn't seem fair.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)

I can vouch for this answer as someone who knew the site first-hand not-so-long-ago. Microsoft.com has run on Windows Server/IIS since at least 1999 (the point at which I became personally knowledgeable about it). I presume it did before that, as well.

Caffeine - it's what's for breakfast! (and lunch, and dinner, and...)