Reality Me

Today’s Technical Challenge

Written by

Doug McCaughan

in

,

About every 5th character I type, regardless of application (be it Twhirl, Firefox, MS Word, CFStudio..) the window I’m in loses focus. This means I have to click back into the window that I’m trying to type. Terribly annoying but I can deal with it because I have to be on my code today instead of on troubleshooting. I’ll run some antispyware checkers in the background while I work. This is terribly frustrating.

Update: This computer has an ethernet card and a wireless networking card. I’m using the ethernet so the wireless is unnecessary but the wireless connection manager kept polling for available networks and that was stealing the focus from the other applications. Disabling the wireless networking connection did the trick.

Comments

6 responses to “Today’s Technical Challenge”

  1. willfull Avatar
    willfull

    Serious question: considering the technical difficulties you have been experiencing in Windows recently, have you ever thought about using an alternative OS (namely, Linux) for development, with a virtual install or additional box for the Windows testing/necessary apps? Just curious. I’m starting to gravitate my development workspace towards Ubuntu, and one of the chief reasons is portability: with one thumb drive, I can duplicate my dev environment in less than a minute between any number of machines. It’s a capability that doesn’t really speak volumes until you’ve had to do it a time or three – including times when speed is a factor (under pressure). Just a thought, let me know what you think.

  2. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    I’ve actually been planning that my next workstation will be Ubuntu. The technical challenges are not always on my machine. It might be one day on my machine and one day on Tommy’s or another child or another day on a friend’s computer that I might be cleaning. Often the fix for the problem takes less time than the post but if I can post about it and update it with a solution that helps someone else then I have done a good thing.

    I’m really over Windows. I know I will always have to have at least one Windows box for software compatibility issues and software testing. But my Ubuntu experiences have been so positive that I’m very comfortable migrating all future computers in the house to Linux.

  3. willfull Avatar
    willfull

    > “I’m really over Windows.”

    I’m with you on that one. Just bought a used Mac mini last night, something to use as my multimedia workstation (photos, music, video, etc), off-loading some of the reliance from my PC. It seems like the more time that passes, the less value my Windows machine has, dwindling in importance until I finally relegate it as the games machine (something that Windows does remarkably well). And it’s not just me: Dad is perfectly happy with the iMac he bought three years ago after his last spate of malware/viral infection on his PC; Mom’s getting close to a refresh, at which point I’m going to urge her towards a Mac mini as well (*crossing my fingers that Apple comes through and keeps the mini line alive*); as an ‘experiment,’ I replaced the hard drive in my girlfriend’s HP desktop with a blank 80 GB and installed Ubuntu 8.10, and it’s been a smashing success – she actually finds Intrepid easier to navigate than Windows XP Home and more intuitive to use (and, as a bonus, like the color orange).

    Once you go Ubuntu for your dev environment, do me a favor and post your config specs. I’d like to hear what apps/utilities you’re using for your work. (We’ll swap notes.)

  4. LissaKay Avatar
    LissaKay

    On one of my computers, I have Google Sync running – it syncs Google calendar with Outlook calendar. After it does its thing, it leaves the Outlook process running for a time, and that causes the same thing where the focus changes back and forth.

    I figured this out by opening Task Manager to the processes tab, sorting by CPU (click twice on the column header to sort descending), then watching to see what process jumps to the top when the focus changes.

  5. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    “Once you go Ubuntu for your dev environment, do me a favor and post your config specs.” Will do but its going to be a little while because I have to justify the expense of the hardware.

  6. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    LissaKay: Good call. I’ve probably got something similar going on.

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