How many of you software engineers out there are not allowed to have local admin rights on your Windows development system? Our IT guy here has it so nobody has local admin rights. If we need admin rights, we have a separate user account that does not have access to the internet or the company network. This is annoying beyond belief. Anytime I want to peek at the device manager I get that annoying windows dialog that says I can't make changes but I can look. [ Can I get that to go away? ] And of course if I want to make changes, I have to log in with admin account via the UAC window. Imagine how convenient that is when debugging a driver or a driver-related problem? That is not the only problem... If I am working on an installer on another day.. I have to go through that each time I run/test/debug the installer. This has been the policy around here for a few years. I have managed to avoid it because my last PC was installed/set up before the policy. Now that PC is about dead and they gave me a new one today and now it feels like they are making me work with my hands tied together. To them, I think they can't understand why the big deal. To me.. it is a flow disrupter. I feel like I am just going to have to stop trying so hard to be fast. But it is more than speed. It is concentration. I can see them rolling their eyes.. but this is real! The reason cited for this is that all kinds of nasties can come in through email or websites. We've got web blockers for the web and spam blockers for the email and on-access virus scanning... So I ask you: How does it go where you work? Do you have admin rights on your PC? I can't believe that this is the only way to solve the "security threat". What policies/etc are in place where you work? -Suzanne

Thank you for the hilarious and helpful suggestions both. The send-off I settled on was (ahem): "I hope all goes well with your project." This suggestion was offered by Forogar and Nagy. No fancy prizes for you, sadly, but THANKS. Me: A little embarrassed to need this kind of coaching today. Oh well, it was fun.

Written.

Here is a dumb question for those of you with too much time on your hands, and/or a facility with genteel English that exceeds my own. I want to wish a developer GOOD LUCK with his new project. BUT I do not wish to use the word LUCK, because that implies that Luck has more to do with it than I mean. I want to use something like the word FORTUNE... but saying "Good Fortune with your project" doesn't scan well to me. Although Fortune means pretty much the same thing as Luck in this usage, to me it sounds less random. And I don't want to imply that randomness should in any way affect the progress of the project. That must make sense to some of you out there. So, if any of you wordsmiths out there have a better word to use, or a better way to use "Fortune", please grace me with your genius. Thanks! -Suz.

And, it probably never will be, because then more people would vote.

Two more Rom Coms, my two favorites. (If you are becoming an expert, bonus points for you!) I feast on these by myself. I could have company, I suppose, but I pick my battles compromises carefully. ;) The Family Stone Bridget Jones' Diary I think I will check out The Holiday too, having just spent Thanksgiving at my folks house where my kids watched "School of Rock" on a loop and I got hooked myself.

I know! The line does not even do what the coder intends it to do. Too bad the compiler did not complain. That alone is reason enough to 86 it, of course. This program is rife with this kind of stuff. Some of it may even work, but as Superman says, I should not have to spend more than a moment understand it..

Sorry I bothered you. Please educate me: Where would you have posed the question?

Thank you. My confidence is bolstered.

A whipper-snapper (sort-of) on my team wrote this:

for (index = 0; index < num\_systems && systems\[index\].type == SYSTEM\_TYPE\_XYZ && (systems\[index\].name, "XYZname"); ++index);

I don't care very much for excessive cleverness. I care for maintainability. And debug-ability. This does not meet that requirement for me. Does anyone else feel this way? I am feeling old and curmudgeonly about this, however I want some honest opinions.

1976 Mercury Capri II. Red. *sigh*

That Cabbage Patch hunt was a nostalgia trip for the folks that aren't into the tech stuff. I'm not sure it is enough for them. That is one example where the show is not 100% about the engineering theme. I'm having fun with all of it. My cousin had a mazda like the marketing guy's. With the flippy-up headlights. That is a mazda, right? RX-7? I'm not sure what car the engineer is driving. A toyota maybe, but it has a little bit of a look like an old Saab. But his character doesn't seem like a saab driver to me. And the code girl is not recognizable to me. But I like her anyway. In fact, the first thing that I thought in the pilot ep was that they *never* would have picked a girl for that job. But the way the depicted IBMers in their intimidating blue suits at least resembled the way I remember thinking of IBM: an elite club. I like the way that ep broke that down. I enjoyed the celebratory feel when they turned the thing on for the first time. Nobody every gets that outwardly happy anymore when we reach a milestone.

Is anybody here watching this show? It is on AMC, Sunday nights in the US. It is loosely based on the birth of the Compaq portable IBM PC clone in the early 80s. Set in Texas. I am finding it extremely fun to identify with engineers and software nerds on tv. It is, of course, not a 100% match to the 80s experience, but I am finding it pretty good fun and no-one to talk to about it. Anybody else? What do you think?

I bet that is very amusing. Blocked by corporate web filter. :(

A little late to the party, I installed VS2013 today. Now it wants me to login. !?!? huh !??!!? My instinct says no no no. However, I am curious. What do I get for hooking it to my MSDN account? What do I get for creating a "Visual Studio Online Account" ? I think I should I run from that. I use VS but I don't want to be assimilated into a VS Borg. But I want to see what it is... I feel like a mousetrap is going to snap if I take a nibble.

It's actually Boston with the paved cattle trails. And a lot more weird pronunciations.

It sounds like you are pregnant. Are you pregnant?

Just wondering. Are there any other women of a certain age in here with more that a couple decades of software behind you? Also, what is the average age of Loungers?