FLiFnotes

February 27, 2009

IE8 in Town

Filed under: Company nights — Tags: , — Deborah Hawkins @ 4:38 pm

The day right after Apple came to visit us, Microsoft came to present as well. They didn’t start with a “Apple sucks” commercial, and I applaud them for that.

The main presenter was Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of Internet Explorer, which was pretty cool since I’m mostly interested in what’s related to the web. He seemed to be particularly enthused about accessibility and talked about IE8′s ARIA support. He also pointed out for any colorblind students in attendence that some of the bulletpoints on one of his slides were a different color from the other bulletpoints, which really isn’t the best way to go about being accessible, but it’s good to see that management can be so enthused about something that really matters to developers, and to many users.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to stay long because I had an ACM meeting to attend, but it was a good talk to attend, and they had some good barbecue chicken too. Yumm.

Red Delicious is my favorite apple

Filed under: Company nights — Tags: , , — Deborah Hawkins @ 4:09 pm

The folks from Apple came to campus the other day to recruit for interns and full-timers. I have a personal distaste for Apple, but I figured it would be interesting to see what they’re up to and what their jobs and internships are like. After all, some of the products they make are pretty cool, even if I can’t afford them.

Unfortunately, the presentation started off with one of those “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, which have always been a huge turn-off for me. Even through Microsoft may not be the ideal company, nobody likes the type of promotion where you just criticize your competitors. Telling everybody to get a Mac just so they can make fun of everyone who doesn’t have one seem just wrong… Or maybe it’s just me.

The coolest part for me would probably be them talking about how the new MacBook Pro has 8 hours of battery life. My laptop doesn’t even get a fourth of that amount, so that’s just amazingly awesome and in itself almost makes me wish I had one.

Nine people from Apple showed up, so we got to see more of the variety in positions that we would at most company nights, which was pretty interesting also. And there were some Apple interns there who talked about what they had done also. I don’t remember his name, but they did have one web developer there, and it would have been great to talk to him. However, I had to be getting home and get some of my homework done.

It’s a good thing I wrote my email address on the sign-in list, though, because when I got home I found that I had received an email from Apple Notice saying I’d been selected to receive a MacBook Air. Woohoo!

February 23, 2009

Powerless

Filed under: RandoMe — Tags: , — Deborah Hawkins @ 7:38 pm

It’s been about a year since I bought my Dell Inspiron 1550n, and for the most part it’s been very good to me. The keys feel good under my fingers. I can turn off the sound with one touch if I accidentally go to a site with annoying advertisements. I’ve never gotten a blue (or other colored) screen of death. The only thing I’d really complain about is that I often accidentally touch the DVD drive on the side and it pops open.

But yesterday while I was getting started on typing up a homework assignment, I noticed that the battery indicator showed the battery was half used up, which was really weird since my laptop was plugged in. Usually, that just means the power cord had come out a little bit, but this time pushing it back in didn’t solve the problem. I tried plugging it into another outlet. No luck. After just a year, my power adapter was dead. I tried every other cord I could find to see if I had another one that fit, but nope. By the time I finished with all my frantic attempts, the battery was depleted also.

So I had to use my husband’s computer to check Dell.com and see how much a new power cord would cost me. They had one available for the Inspiron 15, which I hoped included the 1550 (but which made no sense because all the other models were listed out fully).

As much as I hate being without my laptop, I figured I could save by opting for only second-day delivery. Still, that’s about a hundred bucks all included. And then after entering all my personal information, including my credit card number, an estimated delivery date of March 2nd was displayed–over a week away! That had to be wrong, but I couldn’t take any chances. There was no Cancel option given, but I found my way back to the cart and deleted my item.

Fortunately, my husband took care of it. He went to the electronics store today and picked up a new power cord so it was waiting for me when I got home. And this one was only 31 bucks. Note to laptop manufacturers, though: If you expect any customer loyalty, don’t cheap out on the power cords. Unfortunately, when I’m ready to get a new laptop, it’s going to require a bit more looking around.

February 21, 2009

Every web developer should have a blog

Filed under: RandoMe — Tags: — Deborah Hawkins @ 2:20 pm

I heard that once and can’t quite remember where, but I agree. There’s so much going on in the webdev world. Right now IE8 is in beta. People are arguing over whether HTML5 or XHTML2 is our future. More and more people are accessing websites from mobile devices rather than traditional computers. We check our feed readers to get the news instead of going to various sites. And there’s more and more focus on social media.

And even with all these new things that I have to constantly keep up with, I keep finding out about new things that have really been around forever. Up until about a year ago, I didn’t even know you could use Linux instead of Windows. That’s why I decided to go back to college and study computer science. I’m in a super easy introductory class right now, but this sets up the basics for everything ahead.

I’m ready for it, and I’ve started this blog to keep track of the new discoveries I make along the way. Feel free to leave any suggestions, comments, or encouragements. And thanks for visiting!

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