roger's blog @ cymbeline.ch

... the other day. It contained lots of material for me to read through and a form to fill in. But that's not the reason why I'm typing this.

In order to still participate in certain elections and votes back in Switzerland, I have to register with the Swiss consulate in San Francisco. After doing so, they sent me a letter with additional info and forms. What I find most intriguing is that, even though they're based in the US, they must have had their paper and envelopes shipped from Switzerland.

I decided to start with a new series of posts (oh well, I guess it'll turn out later if it's really going to be a series) of Here's to ... Xyz posts to praise (or slam; go figure it out!) stuff.

So here's to changes. If someone told me a year ago where I would be in a year and what I would be doing, I would have smiled at them and thought something like 'Yeah, whatever.' But here I am: After almost 4 years in Microsoft's Development Center in Zurich, Switzerland I decided to pursue new opportunities and to move to Redmond in the state of Washington, where I am now working as part of the Windows Services and Content team in the Windows client organization. Which gets me right to the point: Changes. For me this really was a big change and so far I think it was well worth it. I have to admit though, that I did underestimate the work and stress invovled in the relocation (and I'm not completely done yet). On the other hand, what I gained so far already is priceless. So maybe in a year from now, you should ask me what I think about this. And maybe I'll still tell you the same thing. Changes can be a good thing, if you give it a try.

... in order to pick up the changes you've recently made to the environment variables.

Alright, to cut a long story short, I'm using the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard at work. It has these (5) 'My Favorits' keys on top to which you can assign custom commands. I typically make heavy use of that to

1. Start a new console for the build environment
2. Start PowerShell
3. Start a lightweight editor with syntax hightlighting for many file types
4. Start PaintDotNet
5. Start a new (blank) console

I typically use #5 for checking out small things and starting remote user debugging sessions. From time to time, I tweak the environment a little bit by adding new environment variables or modifying existing ones (like e.g. adding new places to the %PATH% environment variable). To verify, I use the command line. Except that existing processes don't automatically get the new variables. I was recently tricked by this, since I pressed #5 to get a new console and test the changes. Nothing there. Hmmm. When I start %COMSPEC% they are there. So why not with #5?

Well, the process which starts #5 was started when the changes to the environment variables where not yet made. That's why also the processes started from this process don't have the changes. So all I've got to do in this case is to kill itype.exe and then start it right away again. Now it works!

Microsoft has announced yesterday the release of Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) to manufacturing, Windows 7 will be available on October 22^nd. And just to show you how much fun we have when we RTM a product, check out the Windows 7 RTM Sign-off video on YouTube ...

Today's comic @ xkcd is just too funny. I guess even people who don't know "War Games" may actually find some fun in it :)