Category Archives: Rants

O(n^2), again, now in WMI

Posted on December 8, 2019 by

I recently hit some multi-minute delays on my workstation. After investigating I found that the problem was due to a lock being held for five minutes, and during that time the lock-holder was mostly just spinning in a nine-instruction loop. … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, Programming, Rants, uiforetw, xperf | Tagged , , , , | 45 Comments

Zombie Processes are Eating your Memory

Posted on February 11, 2018 by

Zombies probably won’t consume 32 GB of your memory like they did to me, but zombie processes do exist, and I can help you find them and make sure that developers fix them. Tool source link is at the bottom. … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, Rants | Tagged , , | 81 Comments

What We Talk About When We Talk About Performance

Posted on February 4, 2018 by

TL;DR – the phrase “90% faster” is interpreted by people in two different ways: 90% less time The speed (ops/sec or km/h) is 90% greater I strongly prefer #2 but due to the ambiguity this phrase should never be used. … Continue reading →

Posted in Math, Performance, Rants | Tagged , , | 27 Comments

The Spoils of Law (Moore’s Law)–a New Laptop

Posted on June 26, 2017 by

I just got a new laptop (Lenovo P51, four-cores, eight-threads, 32 GB RAM, multiple drive bays). My old machine was more than six years old so it was probably overdue. I wanted to record some of the reasons for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, Rants | Tagged , , | 31 Comments

A modest proposal for a more natural KB

Posted on March 14, 2016 by

I recently wrote a blog post saying that I thought Windows Explorer should use the more natural base-10 meanings of the kB/MB/GB/TB prefixes, instead of the base-2 meanings that are a few percent larger. I convinced nobody. I was told, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fun, Rants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Base Ten For (Almost) Everything

Posted on February 13, 2016 by

It’s 2016 and Windows still displays drive and file sizes using base-2 size prefixes. My 1 TB SSD is shown as 916 GB, and a 449 million byte video file is shown as 428 MB. That is, Windows still insists … Continue reading →

Posted in Rants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 77 Comments

Home Network Printer Setup That Works

Posted on January 5, 2015 by

Whenever I add a network printer to one of my Windows computers at home I end up with a reference to a hard-coded IP address. That means that the next time my home router reboots and assigns a different IP … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, Rants | Tagged | 18 Comments

Windows Timer Resolution: Megawatts Wasted

Posted on July 8, 2013 by

The default timer resolution on Windows is 15.6 ms – a timer interrupt 64 times a second. When programs increase the timer frequency they increase power consumption and harm battery life. They also waste more compute power than I would … Continue reading →

Posted in Performance, Rants | Tagged , | 170 Comments

Verizon’s Poor Customer Service

Posted on June 30, 2013 by

We got a smart phone for my daughter two months ago. The only reason we got it was because the Verizon representative assured us that the 4-GB/month data plan would work in Canada, where my daughter goes to university. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Rants | Tagged , , | 6 Comments