There is No Such Thing as a Stupid Question (Google-Fu)

Have you heard this statement before?  I have; a lot.  I’d like to amend it though by adding, “unless you haven’t at least run it through a search engine yet.”  Constantly I find that people won’t even take the time to copy and paste an error message into a search engine before they post to a forum, send off an email or go bug another developer. Part of being more than a code monkey is doing a little thinking on your own. As a developer you need to hone your problem solving skills and become a better researcher. At least learn to ask the right questions. It’s one thing to go to another developer for help (which I encourage); it’s quite another to do so without even attempting to find the answer with a quick search. 

The above is a snippet from the most recent blog post in my friend Mike Wood's "Be a Better Developer" series.

The first thing I do EVERY TIME that I run into an error message that isn't familiar, self descriptive, or obvious to me is paste it into Google and see what comes up. More times than not, one of the top few posts will provide a solution.

The software development community in general and .NET developers specifically do a good job of blogging error messages that they receive and roadblocks that they run into and the solutions for them. Three of the posts on my site that get the most traffic (though each of the three are at least 2 years old) are those exact types of posts.

Nothing pisses me off more than to have someone ask a question about an error message without searching for that error message on one of the major search engines first. It should be the first basic step of troubleshooting!

I work with a great group of developers so I don't see this behavior anymore. But I used to spend a great deal of time helping people out on Microsoft's ASP.NET forums (http://forums.asp.net). I cannot tell you the number of "stupid questions" that get posted that would not be if people would just search first. Sometimes I would get so frustrated that I would just ignore the question, thinking to myself "I can't help you if you won't help yourself".

I rarely visit the ASP.NET forums anymore, unless a search leads me there :), but if I were to participate more I would make sure I answered those questions with "Search on Google for that term, the answer will be #2" or something like similarly appropriate.

I ask that the next time you run into a situation like this that you do the same. Tell them to search first then come back to you if they can't find an answer. Or have the first question that you ask be "Did you search for that error message on Google?". Or you could go the smartass route and use "Let me Google that for you".

The "Build Your Own Social Home!" post on css-tricks.com shows a couple of very simple scripts for displaying a Twitteer, Flickr, and Scrnshots widget using JavasScript only. Make sure to view the Demo to get the full effect.

Step by step process

Did you know you can restore lost files from any PC on your home network that has been backed up with Windows Home Server? Here's how you do it:

Step 1: Open the Windows Home Server Console With the Windows Home Server Console, you can see which of your PCs have been backed up and the backup status of each. To view your PCs, click the Computers and Backup tab.

Step 2: Select your home computer Select the PC you'd like to view, and then click View Backups to see a list of all the backups performed on that PC. Select a particular backup, and then click Open to view all the files backed up from that PC.

Step 3: Browse the backup library window Once you open a particular backup, you can easily view all the files that were backed up. And you can easily drag the files you want to restore to a folder on your computer.

I've had a Windows Home Server for about a year now. Fortunately, today was the first time I needed to use it to restore anything from backup. I came home yesterday to find that one of my data drives on my dev rig was toast. Every time it tried to spin up it would let out a "clink-clink-clink" sound and then shut back down.

I didn't fret, though. Luckily all I needed to do was go to MicroCenter this morning to get a replacement drive, open up the PC and replace the busted one with the new one, format it and then use my WHS backup to restore all the files from Friday night's backup. Piece of cake.

Of course there are plenty of backup solutions that would provide the same functionality, but I don't know too many that will back up every PC in the house and also serve as a file server, a print server, and a streaming media server.

If you have multiple PCs in your household, have lots of family photos or videos that you'd like to keep safe, or just like cool stuff then I highly recommend you invest in a Windows Home Server, whether it be a pre-packaged product like the HP MediaSmart Server or one you build yourself.

GUNPAL is an alternative to PayPal™ that donates a portion of the proceeds from every transaction to a Non-Profit Organization of your choice.

GUNPAL does not discriminate based on the nature of your transaction, requiring only that the merchandise or services you buy and sell be legal. See our User Agreement for more information. (PayPal™ is a Trademark of eBay, Inc.)

This morning I was looking at an item in an online auction and I noticed "preferred payment through GunPal". At first I thought it was just a joke - a wink-wink nudge-nudge. For a while now (from what I understand) PayPal has refused to allow their service be used to pay for any type of transactions involving firearms, firearms parts, accessories, etc. I guess the PayPal people think they are doing their part to get rid of "evil guns". That's besides the point and the topic of a different discussion, best served over a few cold ones. Anyway, a lot of transactions for firearms and parts and accessories are still done over PayPal with the unspoken understanding that you won't tell PayPal that the transaction is for a firearm. Now you can see why when I first read "GunPal" I thought it was just a satirical poke at PayPal.

Lo and behold! There really is a GunPal. You can see right up front what their mission statement is. Basically it goes something like this:

"All you firearms enthusiasts that PayPal refused to serve and pissed off. We'll take you. In fact, we'll serve you proudly and cherish you AND we'll donate a portion of each transaction to your favorite charity - hopefully it's the NRA."

Kudos, GUNPAL for realizing that while brokering transactions for firearms is a niche service, it is a pretty big niche with average transaction amounts being much higher than those for normal online auction tchotchke (yes I had to look up the correct spelling). It is also fairly recession proof: when times are hard people sell their heirlooms for cash.

I also noticed that within the last few weeks Auction Arms (http://auctionarms.com), one of the larger firearms auction sites and official auction site of the NRA, named GUNPAL as it's preferred payment processor.

Good luck to you GUNPAL, I'm sure our paths will cross.