DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Responsible web developers test their systems in all popular web browsers.

I personally don’t bother, because, really, you don’t really expect me to run Windows, do you?

A recent A List Apart article describes using a low-end Mac as a cross-platform web design testing station. The article is insanely detailed, and it inspired me to restore my own ancient cross-platform testbed, which was a copy of VirtualPC 1.0 (dating from about 1997).

Because the ALA article recommended it, and because it is a lot cheaper, I bought a copy of FWB’s RealPC. This was a big mistake. The electronic version is incomplete and broken: the documentation refers to files that are not supplied, for example. So do FWB’s support reps. The site-search at fwb.com points to a CGI that does not exist as of this writing. And when I tried to call FWB, all their phones were misrouted. I returned the software for a refund.

Next I purchased and downloaded VirtualPC from Connectix. So far, I’m impressed; it’s well worth the extra $70. It took an evening to install Win98, IE5, IE5.5, and IE6, but now I’m about 20 seconds away from testing a web page in any of those browsers. Considering that Microsoft makes it impossible (AFAIK) to run multiple versions of IE on one computer (well, within a single installation of Windows), this emulated solution is significantly faster: I can save the state of these virtual machines, with IE already running, so I can jump from the MacOS into already-running IE within Windows, in mere seconds.

To be fair, Windows emulators are also available for Linux and even Windows; this is not strictly a Macintosh solution. The point is that for testing web systems, emulation is absolutely the way to go.

Here’s a handy tip for medical professionals everywhere: if you’re going to be getting in someone’s face later with an otoscope, why not forego the plate of garlic fries at lunchtime?

Congratulations to AXIS Dance Company for staging a hugely successful show at the Olympic Arts Festival in Salt Lake City!

Preview: AXIS Closes the Gap Between Dance and Disability

Review: AXIS program shatters barriers

Taking another step in my ongoing exploration of alternative diets, I took a day’s reprieve from solid foods, instead drinking 4 meals’ worth of fresh juice. It was pretty much a non-event, by which I mean it was neither as difficult nor as interesting as I anticipated; I mention it here just so I can point out that kale juice tastes really bad.

I now realize why extractors come with recipe books. If you juice indiscriminately you are likely to end up with a tall glass of nastiness. Sure, it’s high in vitamins and vital living enzymes… if you can manage to choke it down.

As a senior in college I was recruited by the consulting division of Arthur Andersen, a company now facing criminal charges for, basically, lying. Since that time, the consulting business has split off, and even at the time of my interviews in the late 1980s, “Andersen Consulting” was beginning to divest itself of its association with what we called the “bean-counter” side of the business, even though the two groups shared a name and office space in downtown San Francisco.

So anyway, midway though my interview day, I was sent to lunch with two recent recruits — guys who had been with the company for a year or so. The idea was to give the interviewee a chance to ask “real” questions — about the work, the corporate culture, the people — without fear of being judged for asking the questions. In fact, the HR person told me to ask specifically those questions that I would be afraid to ask of the managers and partners during my interviews. “Ask whatever you want; it’s all off the record,” she enthused.

I was still a bit shy, and probably overwhelmed to pry too deeply, so I didn’t ask anything that might incriminate me. And it’s a good thing I didn’t.

Six months later I returned to the same office for my first day of work. The HR rep welcomed us to the company, and congratulated us on being offered jobs. “How did you think your interviews went?” she asked us all. “Did you expect to receive an offer?” And then: “Did you realize that the people who took you to lunch reported to me on everything you said?”

This was an object lesson in what I perceived to be Arthur Andersen’s SOP: say whatever you have to say to get people to do what is most beneficial to the company. Or in other words: lie. So although many years have passed, and most of the players have changed, I am not surprised to see this particular Big-N accounting firm sink so deeply into an abyss of accusations and corruption that its future existence is threatened.

Just for fun, you can search Andersen’s website for fraud or jail time. In an apparent failing of their indexing system, a search for destruction of evidence returns no results, which is darn ironic, don’t you think?