One of the methods of diagnosing illnesses and diseases in medicine is differential diagnosis (DDx), which is the method of creating lists of symptoms and cross-referencing them with diseases, then testing or eliminating possible diseases from the list. For example: Patient pX shows symptoms sA and sB. The doctor then draws up a list of all diseases that have sA and sB as symptoms, as follows:
| Disease | Symptoms |
|---|
| dA | sA |
| dB | sA |
| dC | sA |
| dD | sA |
The doctor then tests for sE, which either confirms or eliminates dA and dD, and so on until one disease is confirmed to be the cause. This method has gained more attention in recent years thanks to the TV show House, where they use it extensively. It was actually through the House Wikipedia article that I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article on DDx (never say that TV doesn’t enrich our knowledge).
Going through the article, references to various studies of how the use of general search engines like Google and specialized search engines on sites like PubMed are increasingly being used to generate these lists with greater accuracy—compared to traditional methods like memorization or building one’s own list. This instantly reminded me of my days doing technical work, when I searched high and low for solutions to problems I encountered. The process of diagnosing those issues was very similar. What was lacking, for whatever reason, were curated lists—I’ve never seen any compiled, nor have I attempted to create one myself. So how do we go about building such a list?
Well, we need a format that contains this kind of information—not another bloated format, but a lightweight one. While a simple table works for a static example, the goal is to share this data, so we need something both human- and machine-readable. Before dismissing the idea as irrelevant, consider how formats like ATOM and RSS enabled content syndication. Imagine if we could have a tool like an RSS reader, but for these diagnostic lists? Or if Google could deploy a specialized search bot for this data and present it in a unique way? The true power becomes clear.
So far, I’ve been experimenting with a format, borrowing some ideas from RSS/ATOM. Here’s my initial template. If you have suggestions, email me at
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ddx>
<cause name="Active Directory Authentication Configured Incorrectly" moreInfo="https://www.sadev.co.za" causeId="{A498231B-C651-4779-9FC8-43044598E795}" extendedSolution="Configure the active directory authentication.">
<symptom description="User cannot log in on desktop." moreInfo="https://www.sadev.co.za" symptomId="{F1565DE1-6F4A-4734-8BAE-B5E6D9680FEB}" />
</cause>
</ddx>`
I had the experience that only new adopters get yesterday with my fresh Vista install. I tried to see this Ultimate Extras content and received an error 8024402C. Somehow in Vista, help isn’t the requiem of the weak-minded, so I hit the “Get Help” button with the knowledge no one would take away my manhood. So it came up with a paragraph on making changes to IE settings, which I tried—no luck—and decided to look into it that night.
While at home, I decided to try again, and the same error appeared. For some reason beyond reason, I clicked Help again and no longer saw one paragraph—now a lovely three paragraphs surrounded it. The experience of actually seeing online help update, and contain something useful, was one that only the strong and brave will ever get to see—but I hope I’m wrong. I hope this isn’t something that stops after 6 months, or a year, or even 2 years. I hope this updating of help only stops when the product comes to end of life, but previous experience paints a different picture.
This past weekend I spent at a management session at the wonderful Crocodile Kruger Lodge. It really is an amazingly beautiful place with the best food I’ve ever had at a hotel, lodge, or guest house. I also had the chance to feed a zebra—as they literally walked right up to where I was standing. While not enjoying the outdoor activity, I did spend considerable time indoors discussing all kinds of things (many of which hurt my head) that will benefit the company I work for in amazing ways. I’m slowly beginning to understand concepts that don’t fit neatly into a try..catch..finally block.
So, during this time, I took the chance to reinstall my laptop and get Vista on it. The first thing I did was pop the DVD into the machine and looked for a way to run the Vista File and Settings Transfer Wizard (assuming it would run on XP and be better than XP’s). Easily enough, I found it on the splash screen. Interestingly enough, it’s now called Windows Easy Transfer, which I laughed at since we’ve moved from FAST to WET😉 (if you didn’t get the fact that I’m geeky from the try..catch in the first paragraph, hopefully, you are getting it now).
I then ran the XP Backup to back up my files (just in case WET had a problem) and dumped it all to an external drive. Next, I rebooted and went through the process of installing Vista (complete with formatting the hard drive). Once done, the machine rebooted, and I was greeted by the wonderful sight of Vista loading fine.
Now, one thing I didn’t take was the driver CD for my HP nx8220 laptop, so I was a little worried it wouldn’t work without it—but it worked perfectly, with the only items not having drivers being the sound card and the smart card reader. Those were easily sorted by using the "search online for drivers" feature (which never worked in XP, so +1 to Vista).
I then installed all the usual requirements (Office 2007, VS, etc.) and realized I needed to join the work domain to get my email. The problem was, I was using a wireless network to connect to a coworker’s laptop, which was sharing a GPRS internet connection (no 3G or ADSL where we were). So, I tried the idea of connecting via VPN, joining the machine to the domain (crazy, I know), and it worked! Now, to log in, and damn—"No logon servers available".
I logged back into the local account, connected the VPN again, and used the runas command-line tool with the /profile option to launch Notepad under my domain account (phew, that’s a long idea). But it meant the profile got copied down to the local machine even under a different account, which meant when I logged out, I could log back in.
And now to restore my profile using WET, and OMG—what a better tool! It copied my RSS feeds (Outlook, Windows, and IE ones), my Office preferred theme, my custom search providers for IE 7 (and kept Google as my default), and even the command-line colors I use! What it didn’t copy (which FAST used to) was all my internet and VPN connections, but it’s a simple job to set those up again.
All in all, it was an amazingly pleasant and easy-to-do install.
You cannot call yourself a CCF developer until you have fired up Reflector a few times to understand the internal workings of the system. So it is with great joy that I can say version 5.0 is out for Reflector. All the details about the new version are available on Scott Hanselman’s blog.
Last week I posted about the floating panels option—well, there’s another option for panels: hiddenPanel. This setting causes the application to not show at all. Interesting ideas around this...
Debugging is not a tool—it’s a methodology. Saw it on a blog yesterday, but I didn’t think to copy down the name. 😕
Found this very true. Reposted from Noah Coad's blog:
A good friend will tell you what you want to hear. A true friend will always tell the truth. A good friend seeks to talk with you about your problems. A true friend seeks to help you with your problems. A good friend will be there for you all through school. A true friend will be there till the day you die. A good friend will bail you out of prison. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn, that was fun!" A good friend brings a bottle of wine to your party. A true friend comes early to help you cook and stays late to help you clean. A good friend hates it when you call after they’ve gone to bed. A true friend asks you why you took so long to call. A good friend wonders about your romantic history. A true friend could blackmail you with it. A good friend thinks the friendship is over when you have an argument. A true friend calls you after you’ve had a fight. A good friend, when visiting, acts like a guest. A true friend opens your refrigerator and helps himself. A good friend has never seen you cry. A true friend has shoulders soggy from your tears. A good friend doesn’t know your parents’ first names. A true friend has their phone numbers in his address book. A good friend expects you to always be there for them. A true friend expects to always be there for you. A good friend is someone you enjoy hanging out with. A true friend is someone you need. (Neil Diamond, Heartlight)
I ended up typing this over MSN to a few people today (don’t ask why), and I thought this is entirely possible—and amazingly easy—to customize MSCRM to do this (hell, half a day’s work at most). The sales vibe is partly inspired by the Microsoft CRM Demo Days happening between the 13th and 15th February at Village Walk, which we are involved in.
I haven’t posted this to the Information Worker blog since some people may not appreciate my style of humour.
New MSCRM ad: Are you a hitman, assassin, or garden-variety serial killer? Do you spend too much time trying to plan murders? Do you have problems identifying the right match of criteria for your next murder? Well, fear no more—with MSCRM 3.0, you can easily track all your potential victims with details specific to each of them and then use the powerful scheduling system to plan that murder so you’ll be home in time to watch Friends or wash your mother.
And wait—if you order in the next 15 minutes, we’ll preload your MSCRM installation with all your family members’ details!
Order now!
You know what’s really great about SharePoint 2007 (which www.informationworker.co.za runs on) vs. Drupal, which this site runs on? I can type my content in Word 2007 or copy and paste from Outlook directly into Word 2007, then publish with a few clicks (Office button → Publish → Blog), and get full rich text editing, the ability to save and revisit the draft, and even spell-check.
Here, I have to log in, navigate through the site to create content, then to the blog section, and type it all out manually. If I want to add a link, I have to manually enter the <a href> tags (and hell, just to make the angle brackets appear, I had to use <). The experience is just that much more cumbersome.
I know there are Drupal add-ons that can give me rich editing—but that requires extra work to install. I’ve even seen users claim it’s possible to publish from Word 2007 to Drupal, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how. There’s no compatible format listed under blog providers or the "Other" options.
Again, SharePoint 2007 + Word 2007 means users don’t need to worry about Drupal modules or special blog providers. It’s simpler, better(?), and faster! 😉
About a week ago, I posted about how the logic at my hosting provider Hetzner was flawed regarding their upgrade policy—and how it seemed like a punishment to want to pay more. Well, I emailed them, and was recommended to send an email to the customer service manager, so I did that one morning. Later that day, I got a phone call from a very happy-sounding woman (sorry, I can’t remember her name) saying she was the customer service manager. She was investigating and asked if it was okay to respond the following day.
The next day, there was no call, but I did get an email from Hans Wencke, who is the managing director. I was honestly shocked—his email was great. He explained why the system is the way it is (it now makes complete logical sense) and also outlined a plan for a review of the policy since changes had been made to their systems since the policy was originally put in place. Finally, he offered my upgrade for free! This is one of the best customer service experiences I have ever had.
