LOST

This week was the season finale of LOST on ABC, and after watching it something occurred to me.

The title LOST... doesn't refer to the survivors of the plane crash and their being stranded on an island. It refers to the viewers, and how they feel at the end of every episode.

Most episodes focus on a single character and show flashbacks of how they got to this point in their life, often relating to what things they are dealing with on the island at that time. Most of the time, there are things that make you just scratch your head and wonder, and at the end of every episode, they might explain one small thing, but open up a few more crazy topics and just keep hinting at them more and more in later episodes... the season finale was no different.

WARNING! The following contains spoilers from the final episodes, if you do not want to know what happens or have a heart condition, do not continue!

Midway through the season, a metal hatch in the ground was found, and a couple of characters spent a great deal of time trying to get in, thinking it was important, all the while the question is in the air... what is in there? At last, in the season finale, they find some dynamite and use it to blow the hatch off... as they look down, the camera pans back down through the tall tunnel revealed, we see a ladder along the wall... and then just bare walls, the ladder is not complete... and the camera keeps going and going and going to show the depth of the new mystery.

In another side story, the raft that was being built through half of the season finds a ship at long last, and at the end of a brief conversation of someone on the boat saying "What are you guys doing here?" and those on the raft saying "We are survivors of a plane crash"... a man on the boat simply says "I'm going to need to take the boy"... which gets repeated a few times, resulting in a small gunfight, the kid being taken and the raft being set fire to and blowing up.

I don't understand why I keep watching... but yet I do, and I now am more LOST than I ever was.

Outlook Errors Will Inform Vikings

I am pleased to announce that this morning I passed Microsoft Exam 70-316, "Developing and Implementing Windows-based Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET", putting me just two tests away from an MCAD (by just using C# tests) and one away if using VB.NET tests.

The reason for the title, is that that is the mnemonic I came up with last year when studying for 70-306 for remembering the order and values of Trace levels (Off, Error, Warning, Information and Verbose) and is a topic that came to mind last night when taking a final practice exam from the back of a study book.

It quickly occurred to me that the sample exam was testing areas more in-depth than the previous tests had, and almost completely ignoring others. Being suspicious, I hunted out a few more sample tests online and they confirmed my suspicions... 70-316 samples seemed to be focusing on security and deployment far more than 70-306 samples in my view. On the other side, connection string knowledge was covered far more in 70-306 samples.

After taking the test today, I am even more confident in my suspicions.

If I had to guess, the logic is as follows:

Despite VB.NET and C# being equally capable of building the exact same applications, historically, VB and now VB.NET have been used for more data access programs while C and C++ (in many cases being replaced by C#) have been used for more functional and in-depth programs (ie non data centric).

Of course... officially confirming this theory is difficult as a look at the preparation guides for 70-306 and 70-316 on Microsoft.com seem to indicate that topics are equal between the two tests (other than the language of course).

Still puzzling none the less.

I600 Smartphone Experience

As some may know, I've been having issues with my wireless carrier for a time now. The phone I purchased back in August has developed some serious issues. Often when I speak with someone on it, both sides hear a horrible amount of static, often requiring nearly screaming in order to be heard. To give you an idea of how bad this is... when I dial someone, 9 times out of 10, I hear this static while it is ringing, even with 4 full bars of signal.

For reasons that I will not go into, simply replacing the phone with one of the same make and model is not an option.

After some talk with my carrier, we came to an agreement for me to upgrade to a Samsung I600 phone (yes, the Smartphone). It arrived Friday and I was quite excited by the possibilities of it.

Not long after activating the phone while playing around with it, I decided to try my hand at programming for it. Minutes later with the Smartphone 2003 SDK installed, I had a quick and simple application that I built with C# loaded onto the phone and working fine.

Things began to be less friendly when I noticed the signal strength I had was not too stellar, often showing a single pixel of strength (the first 'bar', and so small it didn't look much like a bar) and during the few phone calls I made and received that night, the other party often couldn't hear me.

Later, I decided to call my carrier and see if they could identify any problems remotely. They couldn't. As far as they could tell, the phone was performing just as it should. Having a suspicion though, woman I was speaking to put me on hold for 10 min while she talked to some official techs.

During this on hold time, I pulled out my last two phones from this carrier and put them on a window sill, side by side along with the new I600 and compared signal strength. 4 full bars on the 3 year old (to me) phone that I'm back to using now, 4 full bars on the 9 month old (to me) phone with the static issues, and 2 very small bars on the I600.

When she returned, she told me they had found what was wrong. Where I was at the time was within the coverage of at least two towers, and I was on the outer edges of one of them. Rather than be intelligent and do what it is (presumably) designed to do and use the stronger signal, the phone was using the weaker signal.

The solution suggested by the techs? Manually specifying the tower that I am using.

Being puzzled, and shocked, I asked how often I would have to change that setting and was told that that I would have to change it whenever I moved out of the coverage area of the previously specified tower.

Shame I commute ~50 miles to work each day. Changing the tower at least twice a day is not an option. I informed her of this and told her I would be sending the phone back and reactivating the 3 year old phone that I brought out of mothballs due to the issues with the 9 month old one.

I was rather looking forward to having my own version of the Scoblephone, shame my carrier uses only CDMA and the bigger TDMA/GSM carriers do not officially have services out here in South Dakota.

More of 'Whats Wrong With It'

I think this latest one is pretty clear, to quote the listing:

This has been a business as well as living quarters for families for years - It is a funeral chapel as well as a home - the business is not being sold - only the real estate -- a charming old home with a lot of character -- beautiful open staircase wonderful huge rooms a fantastic 3 season room off the kitchen and family room an oversized 2 car garage and sits on a gorgeous corner lot just a block from downtown. This is a wonderful opportunity to buy a great property at a fantastic price.

From the sounds of it... the lucky owner of this house will have a nice home, but also have dead persons stored and shown off in their home. Quite a pleasant thought... seems to explain the price, well, that and the location.