Horoscope on Software: June 2009

May 30th, 2009
  • Days of possible critical problems: 5, 14, 24
  • Days of unfortunate computation: 10, 20, 27
  • Days of good enough software behaviour: 3, 11, 22, 25, 29
  • Fault-free days: 8, 18, 25

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Horoscope on Software: May 2009

May 1st, 2009
  • Days of possible critical problems: 4, 23, 31
  • Days of unfortunate computation: 8, 19, 26
  • Days of good enough software behaviour: 6, 24
  • Fault-free days: 2, 10, 21, 29

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Horoscope on Software: April 2009

April 1st, 2009
  • Days of possible critical problems: 3, 11, 21, 30
  • Days of unfortunate computation: 7, 17, 26
  • Days of good enough software behaviour: 19, 28
  • Fault-free days: 5, 14, 24

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Horoscope on Software: March 2009

March 1st, 2009
  • Days of possible critical problems: 7, 15, 25
  • Days of unfortunate computation: 1, 11, 20, 29
  • Days of good enough software behaviour: 3, 13, 23
  • Fault-free days: 9, 18, 27

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Build Date: December 14

February 25th, 2009

The Day of Software Exhibition

Modules, products or systems built on December 14 impress potential buyers at software exhibitions viewing their GUI but they rarely open their internals to show what they really are inside and what they are really computing. December 14 components have very complicated code and complex architecture. Many of their computations are bizarre. Their code is not ordinary, is self-aware and often confronts their parent processes and computational authorities. Sometimes it is not even possible to fit them into a predefined algorithm and even if it works initially later it causes enormous problems, for example, outraging a customer. However the good side to their challenging behaviour is that they are catalysts for software change. Modules, products or systems built on December 14 should be very careful with accidental violations. Their code might not be understood or they themselves might not understand their environment and that could result in their withdrawal from computation.

DLL, SYS and EXE born on this date:

ialmrnt5.dll Wed Dec 14 20:47:26 2005
ialmdnt5.dll Wed Dec 14 20:47:19 2005
ialmdev5.DLL Wed Dec 14 20:47:09 2005
ialmdd5.DLL  Wed Dec 14 20:54:40 2005
ialmnt5.sys  Wed Dec 14 20:55:38 2005
lknuhst.sys  Thu Dec 14 22:11:24 2006
lknuhub.sys  Thu Dec 14 22:11:15 2006
cygwin1.dll  Fri Dec 14 19:21:07 2007

Weaknesses: Excessive computation. Isolated code.

Strengths: Original and provocative UI. Daring computation.

Advice: Make your code fix suggestions quietly while carefully considering what you propose and what you say to another engineer. Choose the middle way in troubleshooting, debugging and code reviewing and be philosophical with your peers, internal and external customers.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Build Date: December 13

February 10th, 2009

The Day of Software Craft

Modules, products or systems built on December 13 strive to compute every detail. They do it so precisely without departing from the big picture of their computational goals that there is a danger that they become stuck. Being a kind of computational psychologists or detectives they can go though interface facades and various superfluous defences. As a result components build on December 13 must respect privacy. Modules, products or systems built on December 13 are mostly crafted to help with the design of objects and less often to output persistent data. Unfortunately they can show erratic behaviour, component peculiarities and create difficulties in maintenance. Components build on December 13 should adapt themselves to be not so demanding and compromise for the harmony of computation. Being designed for design, products and subsystems built on December 13 can be overly concerned with self-checks and have strange built-in computational paths to deal with troubles. Good maintainer who is sceptical about the latest software engineering methodologies and tools is their best friend. Readjustments of their detail-driven event processing and moderate computation are encouraged.

DLL, SYS and EXE born on this date:

oleaut32.dll    Thu Dec 13 08:49:29 2007
srv.sys         Wed Dec 13 21:19:02 2000
taskhost.exe    Sat Dec 13 02:02:54 2008
uhcd.sys        Sat Dec 13 02:37:25 2003
usbehci.sys     Sat Dec 13 02:37:43 2003
kdcom.dll       Sat Dec 13 00:28:28 2008
hal.dll         Sat Dec 13 00:24:05 2008
mcupdate_GenuineIntel.dll Sat Dec 13 00:26:34 2008
PSHED.dll       Sat Dec 13 00:32:30 2008
CI.dll          Sat Dec 13 00:32:19 2008
cdd.dll         Sat Dec 13 00:19:06 2008
symmpi.sys      Mon Dec 13 21:03:14 2004
dump_symmpi.sys Mon Dec 13 15:03:14 2004
dump_arcsas.sys Wed Dec 13 11:54:58 2006
arcsas.sys      Wed Dec 13 11:54:58 2006
metsrv.dll      Tue Dec 13 05:10:41 2005

Weaknesses: Disturbing computation. Irritating UI.

Strengths: Attentive and perceptive UI. Thoughtful code.

Advice: Keep moving on when you finish your piece of code. Remember about good enough rule when feeling urge to polish code again and again.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Horoscope on Software: February 2009

February 3rd, 2009
  • Days of possible critical problems: 3, 11
  • Days of unfortunate computation: 7, 15, 26
  • Days of good enough software behaviour: 5, 13, 23
  • Fault-free days: 9, 18, 28

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Winter Computations

January 18th, 2009

This is a short summary of behavioural and structural characteristics for modules, products and systems built during Winter time:

  • Follow the large picture
  • Tend to be dominant components ruling process and kernel space. Often initiate process space reformation
  • Flexible data manipulation
  • Interface acceptance
  • Frequently the source of creativity

During Winter, software constructors live in expectation of coming Spring, less active, more conscious with internal aspects of their being and this channels into code construction and then into built modules, products and systems. Build activities, design of expressible and powerful UI and marketable features are diminished during this period. Some old components are even face possibility to enter the end of their life cycle.

Computational life cycles also have their winter periods, called χ-Winter (from χειμώνας, Greek) which might not coincide with the same physical periods due to the lag time of channeling. There can be one to many correspondence between one physical winter period and χ-Winter periods with some boundary overlapping due to the presence of Riemann surfaces (*) in computational space-time.

(*) Riemann surfaces are manifold representations of multivalued functions that explain side effects of many computational algorithms when doThis() function gives several unexpected results instead of the expected one.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Build Date: December 12

January 17th, 2009

The Day of Assembly Language

Modules, products or systems built on December 12 emphasize the importance of hardware and interfacing with it is their main goal. They have a window into physical memory. Components built on December 12 are active and computationally healthy regardless of being thin or fat clients and give impression of being comfortable with hardware even when computing expressively. They let other components know about their presence. The voice quality of a module, a product or a system built on December 12 (*) is more important characteristic than what they are voicing. In order to grow, December 12 components must deeply explore hardware resources. However they shouldn’t be overly attached to ageing hardware. They must learn values of limits and correspondingly restrict their computational activities. Structuring their idle time and data consumption are paramount to their security. Here local data is better than remote with its network system excitations.

(*) The voice of EXE, DLL or SYS component can be generated with the help of Dump2Wave tool.

DLL, SYS and EXE born on this date:

WMEncEng.dll Thu Dec 12 13:09:17 2002
CHDART64.sys Tue Dec 12 20:07:25 2006
volmgr.sys   Tue Dec 12 22:29:12 2006
msisadrv.sys Tue Dec 12 21:42:18 2006
pci.sys      Tue Dec 12 21:42:27 2006
swenum.sys   Tue Dec 12 22:28:16 2006
mssmbios.sys Tue Dec 12 21:42:24 2006
termdd.sys   Tue Dec 12 22:53:43 2006
COMMONFX.SYS Wed Dec 12 02:47:17 2007
CTEDSPSY.SYS Wed Dec 12 02:47:15 2007
CTEDSPIO.SYS Wed Dec 12 02:47:12 2007
CTEDSPFX.SYS Wed Dec 12 02:46:05 2007
ctprxy2k.sys Wed Dec 12 02:45:54 2007
ctaud2k.sys  Wed Dec 12 02:45:52 2007
ha10kx2k.sys Wed Dec 12 02:45:39 2007
ctoss2k.sys  Wed Dec 12 02:45:38 2007
ctsfm2k.sys  Wed Dec 12 02:45:34 2007
emupia2k.sys Wed Dec 12 02:45:33 2007

Weaknesses: Expensive, stuck in development.

Strengths: Hardware expressive, computationally expansive.

Advice: Don’t spend too much time with hardware. Be realistic about software and not overly attached to its objects.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -

Software Meaning of First Names

January 14th, 2009

Interesting observation that reinforces my belief in astrology of software:

What’s in your name? A Debugging Perspective

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareAstrology.com -