Software Sleuthing
Software Testing, Development, and Related
StrCmpLogicalA
Due to a policy around supporting and encouraging internationalizable software, there are certain...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 04/28/2008
Validating a company email alias with Outlook
Most of the process related tools we use (bug databases, work items, test cases, etc), will keep...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 04/21/2008
Automating DOC to PDF Conversion
The COM object model exposed by Microsoft Word gives us the power to save any document which Word...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 04/14/2008
Automating GIF charts from Excel
Using the COM object model exposed by Excel, we can programmatically open files, generate graphs,...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 04/09/2008
NULLize the throwing new
Old versions of Microsoft's C++ compiler supplied a form of the new keyword which would return NULL...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 03/26/2008
Writing Strings with OLE (CCommand)
This last weekend I was writing a COM object for submitting/editing entries into a SQL Server 2005...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 03/18/2008
Zune Floor Mat == Coaster
So if you get the "Zune Car Pack", then it comes with a cool little floor mat, which can be used as...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 03/17/2008
Poor-Man's Profiler
Microsoft's C/C++ compiler supports the /Gh and /GH switches, these options allow the developer to...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 03/12/2008
Selecting Random Seeds
A few months ago I ran across some test code which was using GetTickCount() + timeGetTime() as the...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 03/04/2008
API Testing Best Practices
MSDN just published my article on API testing: "If you ask several testers how to write good API...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/29/2008
Poor-Man’s ISAPI Filter
On IIS, writing an ISAPI filter can give you flexible control over the URL path which users pass...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/18/2008
Zune-Arts + Valentines = ?
The newest artist expression over at Zune-arts throws in some Valentine's Day craziness. View at...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/14/2008
Electrical Catastrophe and Waste
Last fall, and all within a span of a month, I had two computers and a gaming console die on me. I...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/14/2008
Tester Center: White-Box Fuzzing
The Tester Center recently added some more content. One of the new articles is a pretty good piece...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/12/2008
Zune Combos
Because nobody reads the (online) manual anymore, I've collected the some of the common "keyboard"...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 02/06/2008
Organizing My Favorites (Dewey Style)
I currently have around 900 browser favorites/bookmarks saved and my initial "organization" scheme...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/29/2008
Custom Debugger Auto-Expansion Tips
There is a fair amount of existing information (plus the official “EEAddIn” sample) on the subject...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/24/2008
Zune == 1337 + 1
For all you music fans, we just launched an updated Zune player, which you can either get from...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/23/2008
Testing Your PDB Files
Very little attention is often applied to PDB files, but if you do ship them to customers, then you...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/10/2008
There Be HRESULTs Here
I've often found that searching for and browsing through the various standard HRESULT error codes...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/08/2008
Google’s Chart API
Throughout the software development cycle there is a wide array of areas where you need to generate...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/07/2008
Social Experiment
So I ran across Michael's post about being "Don't Known" on LinkedIn, which prompted me to try an...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/05/2008
Leak Tracking with PowerShell
One of my holiday tasks was to learn some PowerShell. While reading/skimming through a book on the...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 01/04/2008
Date/Time Formats and Conversions
In C/Windows land, there are a handful of different formats for storing date and time values....
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/19/2007
Searching MSDN
MSDN has such an amazingly huge amount of content that it can often be cumbersome to find what you...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/14/2007
Serving iCalendar from ASP
As a follow up to the previous post...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/12/2007
Creating Calendar Items
It is nice to be able to allow team mates to optionally add meeting requests or reminders to their...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/10/2007
Online Numerical Recipes
An online version of the Numerical Recipes book has been available for a while now, but it has...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/05/2007
Debugging a BugCheck 9C
Disclaimer: A BugCheck 9C is a generic catch-all error code which signifies that the hardware has...
Author: Josh Poley Date: 12/03/2007