Warning: XMP tag is an officially deprecated tag as of HTML specification 3.02. So follow this advise at your own risk.
HI THERE!
XMP is sweet.
I don't know why such as useful tag is deprecated.
My multi line content inside a paragraph <p/> tag
All we have to do is use a CSS class as we would in any other case:
For example: we could do the following:Listing 4:
<xmp style="color: blue; font-weight: bold;">Content</xmp>
Confidence != Perfection;
Confidence != Arrogance.Hide(Inferiority);
What do we do when a user asks for a facility for a matter of convenience and where the cost of providing such convenience far outweighs the value of the time saved from the convenience?
There's a dictum that states: "Customer is King." If we want to be responsible subjects to our king, it is our duties to say to the King: "Your Majesty, if you wear this 'clothes' you will be naked; is that what you really want?" and instead of: "Yes Your Majesty, we will use the finest invisible silk thread to match the invisible royal garb you ordered."
A smile in spite of what's around.
You know... these days I sensed a lot of unhappiness around me—not from me, mind you—around me. So I took a few minutes out of my day and scoured the Internet to see if I could find some quick, inspirational statements people say about how we can reach happiness since I don't seem to be doing well in inspiring happiness for others.
Here's what I found:
From Dennis Wholey:
Quote #1: Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results.
Quote #2: Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.
Here's another from our favorite genius, Albert Einstein:
Quote #3: If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.
From an unknown smartie:
Quote #4: Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them.
Quote #5: Some pursue happiness; others create it.
How are these useful for me? Eeh, they aren't new to me, really; they're what I already naturally use for me. And I'm happy in a happy-go-lucky-sort-of-way-kind-of-guy; see if these could be as useful for you as they have been for me.
A rather challenging act to perform.
It's not just about having a job nor about the money that the job brings.
It is a constant juggle to balance our personal and professional lives.
I've shared with many people I encounter in my careers a personal attitude that may help reduce one's own stress in a work setting and be able to feel secure on and of our own: that work is just a vehicle for us to meet new friends and earn income to support our family.
Professionally, the level of quality of my output and my team's output is much less driven by our individual talents, but more about the principles we go by and use in our teamwork:
1. If he is belligerent and makes my team and employees unhappy.
2. If a customer makes me choose between unreasonably serving his business or my relationship with good colleagues and employees. My employees come first. (This is along the line of: "If an employer makes me choose between unreasonably serving his business or my devotion to my family. My family comes first.)
3. If his business is bad for my business: we all have a finite amount of resources serving a customer that does not further our own goal. For example, serving a bad customer who takes so much more time and efforts where consequently we are unable to provide an equal or better time and service for a good customer, we'll have to say goodbye to the bad customer.
4. If he is unreasonable despite our best effort to serve him/his company with a good service, and that they have been receiving good attention and services.
5. If we happen to get a glimpse, somehow, that he doesn't treat {another person | his own employees | general public} fairly and with dignity as it is a telltale of what is to come for us as an outside vendor.
The first month of 2008 came and went.
We've gone through 31 days of a new year so quickly, we barely had a chance to reflect on the past year due to piles of backlog tasks that seems to increase faster than we can keep up. It's a blessing and a curse.
Speaking of a curse, I was in the middle of debugging an application last night and was unable to find the Immediate Window in my VS2005 IDE. It had been there before; I sought for it in all of the menu and sub-menu items and couldn't find it. I still don't know what caused its disappearance. Perhaps it was a recent VS2008 IDE installation that might've affected the 2005 environment settings; perhaps others unknown reasons.
Suddenly, a simple thought sprang to mind 
A few days into the new year, a sleeping sick baby and an offline HQ—I found a few moments of peace.
So here's a piece of advice: When trouble brews, be calm and proceed to the nearest exit, brew a cup of hot cocoa, lounge, and read.
If your trouble is specifically of the message:
"The current identity (NT AUTHORITY NETWORK SERVICE) does not have write access to 'C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\V2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files'. This error may be cause by having installed visual studio C# or by group policy settings."
Please, oh please don't manually assign the permission to the folder through the folder property; you should instead run the following from a command prompt to wish your trouble away:
prompt:>c:
prompt:>cd \windows\micro*\frame*\v2.0*\
prompt:>aspnet_regiis -i -enable
Happy New Year!
Be it software, technical documents or emails.
If any man wish to write in clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
~ Lord Acton
I too am an apprentice, always—learning as much by failing as by succeeding, as much by following as by leading.
~ antonius
So don't despair that no one agrees with you and point your mistakes, for "... when you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."
~ Randy Pausch
Software entropy refers to the amount of disorder present in a system.
Entropy usually creeps in by way of logical inconsistencies at the thought-level, even before any tangible work begins to implement said system. As the system and its parts are developed, these logical inconsistencies manifest themselves in various forms of errors of all sizes. The smallest ones considered negligible are typically the clichéd primordial stew of chaos in software systems.
When coupled with what's frequently unfortunate timing of most software development schedules, the hacks we are forced to place into the system here and there by necessity of meeting some established deadline further exacerbate the condition.
Now plagued with such level of anomalies any additional issues encountered are prevented from meeting their resolutions simply because it's no longer feasible.
They say, only two things are certain in life: Death and taxes; well... in software Chaos reigns supreme if unchecked and snipped in the bud. Entropy is contagious.
What's the moral of the story kids?
冰冻三尺，非一日之寒
Three-feet of ice didn't result from one day of freezing weather.
Do the job right the first time or don't do it at all.
Better yet, get out of the way of anyone who's trying to do the job right the first time.
It's easy to say; it's hard to understand.
The right thing for a relativist unreliably varies from context to context.
For an absolutist with an extremist mentality, the right thing may turn out to be just the opposite.
It's complex, yet so simple.
For when one's inhibition is gone;
when one's civility is in ruin;
when one's regards for morality, law and politics vanished; and,
when one's regards of relationships discharged,
the right thing will still be there down in the heart of heart.
It is the faintest voice that keeps one awake at night when the world is deep in its slumber.
It is the voice of conscience in one's subconscience.
That is the right thing.
Jane Doe and Richard Roe are a couple of consultants discussing and sharing their experiences in the consulting business from their viewpoint.
Jane: "Consulting is not at all what I thought it would be when I started in the field eight years ago."
Richard: "What and how do you think it would be?"
Jane: "My vision was that we would be called in as helpful experts, work with business stakeholders to help them overcome their business problems or get the business to the next level. We would be trusted to analyze every bit of details about their business, uncover the problems and provide recommendations to resolve the problems."
Richard (laughed): "If only it were that easy. I had one like that once, but just once long ago."
"We have to realize that clients call us in for a lot of different reasons only some of which they fully disclose. There were often internal power struggles we may not be aware of. There are also clients who may have heard how wonderful the solutions we had for a different company, and they wanted us to come up with the same solution for them while disregarding the potential adverse effects a similar type of solution may be for their business."
Jane: "So why do consultants have such bad reputations? Many consultants seem to continue to have uphill battles with their clients, where it should have been collaborative. Ideally, we would have the client's good faith trust. After all, we are here to help them succeed in their business and objectives."
Richard: "I think it's because we do the job we think we were hired to do, and maybe that isn't what the client wanted, yet the client may not or does not, for whatever reasons, share in-full their complete objectives in hiring us as their consultants. Even when we find clients who do want us to succeed in helping them, but if no one else in their organizations really cares then we'll find they won't work with us. Sometimes they feel threatened and actually work against us."
Jane said, "Sure, but are we ever the cause of the problem?"
Richard: "Sure."
"It's all simply because consultants are usually seen as outsiders. And the fact as business cost factor, we are pricier than employees—never mind that we are also often better, specialized helps."
"Moreover, we do make mistakes just like anyone else. Unfortunately, once we make mistakes, no matter how trivial it may be, the odds are stacked against us much heavier than even when there had been no mistake. It takes an astronomic remedial effort and outstanding result just to get back to the original standing we had to begin with the client."
There was something fascinating about the number 12032003.
Of course, one could say the same about just any other similarly patterned numbers like 12042002, 12052005, 12062006.
Even more so for 12312003.
But I'm not gonna be around blogging on that day.
