About Your Host
I'm Jim Lyon, an avid technology fan. At present, I'm employed by Microsoft in the Windows Home Server group, where I've worked (and reworked) Backup and Drive Extender. Before WHS, I worked on Exchange Server, SQL Server, COM and Transaction Server at Microsoft. Before that, I spent ten years working at Tandem Computers, primarily on TMF (Transaction Management Facility) and RDF (Remote Database Facility). Before that, a few years at a pair of startups. Before that, well, you probably don't care. Suffice it to say that I've been around the block a time or two, having written my first Fortran program back when Lyndon Johnson was president.
It's sobering to think that I'm probably best known for one of the sins of my youth, INTERCAL, committed when I was 18.
Outside of computing, I find that my family occupies the bulk of my time. My wife, Linda, is the artist of the family, whle my two sons (teen and pre-teen) are both incipient geeks, following after their dad. I also enjoy music -- I play handbells and recorder (decently), tuba (mediocrely) and sing (badly). I also enjoy aviation, holding a private pilot's license which has been inactive for the last 15 years, leaving me more of a spectator than a player. I also enjoy puzzles of all sorts, and am afflicted with an incurable case of paronomasia.
In these pages, I intend to discuss bits of wisdom, technique and attitudes that I've picked up over the years. Some of them are things that you definitely should do if you're a professional programmer, while others and things that, if used in production code, will give your boss fits and get you lynched. As I go along, I hope it's obvious which is which.
Of course, I reserve the right to stray off-topic whenever the mood strikes me. If what I'm saying doesn't interest you, feel free to skip to the next post.