The user manual — a 410 page PDF file, yuck — contains this nugget of wisdom on page 228:

When you have finished reviewing performace data you can save the session file.

1. Close the session file window in Visual Studio. DevPartner prompts you to save the session file.
2. Click OK to accept the default file name and location.

DevPartner saves session files as part of the active solution. They appear in the DevPartner Studio virtual folder in Solution Explorer.

Telling the user to close an unsaved file in order to save it is very bad advice! Closing an unsaved file is a destructive operation, i.e. it will blow away your unsaved data. Just because most well-behaved programs will prompt the user to save first is no excuse for telling the user to close a file in order to save it.

So, what happened when I closed my profiling session without saving it? Mind you, this was done as an experiment, purely in the interests of science, or something. BLAM! Visual Studio and DevPartner dutifully vaporized an hour’s worth of work without a single hint of a save dialog.

Way to go, Compuware.

Of course, it would have been cooler if Firefox hadn’t crashed…

Actually, I’ve spent the last few years at work filling engineering notebooks (and occasionally writing code, too). I’ve kept notes on every bug and piece of code I’ve touched in that time, which now amounts to three complete notebooks dating back to 2001, and almost half of a fourth one. My engineering notebooks are all Roaring Spring marble cover quad-ruled notebooks purchased from Cal Poly’s bookstore.

Recently, writing in my engineering notebook began hurting my hand. I attributed the pain to two major factors:

1. gripping the pen/pencil too tightly;
2. my blocky, ALL-CAPS handwriting.

To address the first point, I consciously began holding my writing instrument more loosely. I have found that larger pens make this easier. Now, whenever I notice that I’m holding my pen or pencil tightly, I take a second to loosen my grip.

The second point was more challenging. I decided to completely change my handwriting from blocky all-caps to a smoother, mixed-case style. This page on handwriting tips was my inspiration. My handwriting has become more fluid, with loops where there once were sharp corners. I’m also beginning to join certain characters together, though I still consider my handwriting to be printing rather than cursive. It took a couple of weeks of intense practice, but the end result is much easier to write without stressing my hand. There was also an unexpected benefit: my handwriting is now much easier to read!

Coworker: “Why are being so emotional?”
Coworker’s wife: “Because I’m pregnant!”
Coworker: “Well, what’s your excuse the rest of the time?”

“HardCopy is a far superior solution for this type of output than the ‘traditional’ method of printing in standard Open Inventor—namely, using a SoOffscreenRenderer to render a bitmap to a file,” says [eengstro] of [eengstro's employer]. “The vectorized output from HardCopy is much smaller than the bitmaps produced by other methods, and scales up easily to large-format printers.”

Wow. I wrote that. Somehow, I feel… unclean.

Coworker: “Hello honey.”
Wife: “Hi. Did you know that Phil Jackson is coming back to the Lakers?”
Coworker: “Yes, I had already heard that.”
Wife: “Oh… you already knew?”
Coworker: “Yes…”
Wife: “Oh… ummm… well, that’s all I had to say. Bye.”
Coworker: “Bye.”

Phone conversation ends.

Coworker to me: “Sometimes I should pretend not to know these things.”

Indeed. Lesson learned.