Digi-key

My work brought me to USA for couple of months now. Since I cannot live without solder-smell I had few electronics order here and there. Something from SparkFun, something from Mouser, something from others…

I always pay with my credit card (issued in Croatia) and I had no problem what-so-ever. That is until I tried Digi-Key.

I filled-out the order, payed with credit card and went to sleep. In morning I got:

_Thank you for your order. However, before I am able to proceed, I do need some additional information.

You are shipping to the USA and billing to Croatia. Are you shipping to a freight forwarder? If so, please provide name and website as this can change the tax status of the order. Would you always ship to this address?

Please verify the phone number for the shipping address and for the Croatia address.

Please also provide more information on the application of the parts. What type of application will this product be used in? Example: automotive, medical, telecommunications, etc_

This is annoying. If I say that I want it shipped to USA, why is there questioning of that decision? All other stores could live with me moving to another country. Why can’t Digi-Key?

And this is not the first mail I got from them, they already confirmed my address once. Will I go through same dance every time?

Why do I need to tell what I am using this chips for? Cannot somebody order chips without any particular project in mind other than to have fun?

It might not seem like a huge issue, but I hate this “customer must be wrong approach”. It forces me to babysit my e-mail after sending order and makes everything late by one day at least.

P.S. They did send package, but only after calling my hotel and checking me out. I really appreciate being called liar…

Windows 8

Windows 8 download is here. Go get it.

And, while you are at it, get Windows 8 Server beta and a Visual Studio 11 beta.

[2012-03-01: I just finished installation and it cannot either install .NET Framework not it can do Windows Update. Somebody screwed-up something…]

P.S. And I still cannot run my own software without running through hoops since Windows 8 “protects me”.

P.P.S. And, since my computer has no SLAC, Hyper-V as single reason for upgrade is there no more… :(

Solving a Mess

If Tom’s Hardware is to be believed, we will lose Windows 7 Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Business/Enterprise/Ultimate mess. Instead we will have Windows 8, Windows 8 Enterprise and Windows 8 Professional.

I do not know about you, but I do feel this is MUCH better. Until they start adding new releases…

[2012-03-03: Having three editions for Windows 8 was too good to be true. It seems that there are plans for 8 different versions (not including ARM). I am sure that everybody will be thankful to Microsoft for being forced to read various comparisons only to find later that some critical feature is not supported in selected edition. I can hardly wait…]

[2012-04-17: There might be some hope for Microsoft. It seems that count will stop at two (and few extras).]

IsRunning

In quite a lot of code I see following check for whether thread is running or not:

public bool IsRunning {
    get {
        return (this.Thread != null)
               && (this.Thread.ThreadState == ThreadState.Running);
    }
}

This code has big chance of working except in one quite often used case - if you have Sleep() inside of your code. Once that enters your main thread loop, you cannot count on your thread being in Running state all of the time. And Sleep() might not even be in your code (e.g. it might be in some external library).

Better check would be:

public bool IsRunning {
    get {
        return (this.Thread != null)
               && ((this.Thread.ThreadState == ThreadState.Running)
               || (this.Thread.ThreadState == ThreadState.WaitSleepJoin));
    }
}

P.S. If you like to mess with IsBackground thread property, also check for ThreadState.Background.

WinDays 2012

I will hold a presentation on WinDays 2012.

This year theme will be .NET Micro Framework. Although this platform works very close to hardware, I will try to avoid too much electrical engineering theory and just show what can be done with it in practice.

All examples will be shown on Netduino Plus, probably cheapest way to start working with .NET Micro Framework these days.

[2012-02-29: Unfortunatelly, I will not attend. My stay in USA got prolonged and, due to certain limits of physics, I cannot be at two places at same time. :(]