Well then what the hell is up with this:

I’m doing something that I think is pretty typical. I’ve created a content type, descended from Document, to go into a document library, like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <!-- Parent ContentType: Document (0x0101) -->
  <ContentType ID="0x010100abd74e6994114664b1ca6a8a710ff8cb"
               Name="Project Document"
               Group="WMC Project Management"
               Description="Document related to a project in the PMO portfolio."
               Inherits="TRUE"
               Version="0">
    <FieldRefs>
      <FieldRef ID="{B61A9DBA-5714-4E44-98AE-D410F84874BB}" Name="PortfolioProjectName" DisplayName="Portfolio Project Name" />
      <FieldRef ID="{811A8F99-3336-41AF-A1B1-C9DC624085C2}" Name="PortfolioProjectUrl" DisplayName="Portfolio Project URL" />
      <FieldRef ID="{938CF8E5-CCB2-49B1-91A6-595EB741F532}" Name="PortfolioProjectListItemId" DisplayName="Portfolio Project List Item ID" />
      <FieldRef ID="{9BE2CEAE-351D-4BC1-881B-44C7091FD501}" Name="ProjectDocumentType" DisplayName="Project Document Type" />
    </FieldRefs>
  </ContentType>
</Elements>

And I’ve created a document library to hold documents of this content type, like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<List xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint" Title="Project Documents" Direction="$Resources:Direction;" FolderCreation="TRUE" EnableContentTypes="TRUE" Url="PMOProjectDocuments-ProjectDocumentLibrary" BaseType="1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <MetaData>
    <ContentTypes>
      <ContentTypeRef ID="0x010100abd74e6994114664b1ca6a8a710ff8cb" />
    </ContentTypes>
    <Fields>
    (blah blah blah)
    </Fields>
    (blah blah blah blah blah)
  </MetaData>
</List>

So can you tell me why I see the following when I hit my F5 key?

Hm, that’s odd. I called my content type “Project Document” not “Project Documents.” Project Documents is the name of the document library itself. Let’s take a closer look at that content type, shall we?

What the WHAT? That’s no content type, that’s a list instance! I wondered what I’d done wrong. It’s certainly not out of the question for me to screw up a SharePoint XML configuration somewhere. Hell, screwing that up is most of what I do all day. So I went to my test server, where I’d deployed a slightly different earlier version. The document library and content type appeared normal. Could there possibly be some difference in the way I deployed the project? I deployed the .wsp manually on the dev box… the very same .wsp I’d just debugged with F5.

But that looks perfectly normal. What about the content type itself?

So… I guess this means I can’t trust content deployed through Visual Studio anymore. Hey, it’s not like I needed a streamlined workflow or anything.

“True to Form”
Friday, February 3, 2012 (TODAY!)
8:00 PM, The PIT Underground, $5

A monthly show in which we explore the structure of improv by performing unique forms provided by the community and abroad. This month we’re doing “The Ghost,” “Memento,” and “The Master.”

“1800′s London” (with “I’m Into Lemurs”)
Monday, February 6, 2012
9:00 PM, The PIT Underground, SUPER FREE!

My newly-created PIT house team teams up with another newly-created PIT house team and we do longform every week.

“PUPPET FACE” (with “The Internet”)
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
7:00 PM, UNDER St. Marks, $(I don’t know, but it can’t be that expensive…)

Improv, with puppets! If you like seeing me do improv while holding a cloth doll over my head, then you will love this show!

Break legs. Relax. Be yourself. Say yes. Listen and react emotionally. Commit. Feel something. SAY YES!

I said, “Say yes” twice, once in ALL CAPS. To which everyone who’s ever taken a Level Zero improv class, or even walked by a room where an improv class was taking place replied, “Well, DUH!”

But saying yes is more than just not saying no.

Sure, at the level at which people are auditioning for house teams, you rarely hear:

A: This is a pink unicorn.
B: No, it’s not! It’s a yellow washing machine!

Good. You passed Level One. Congratulations.

If I have any improv knowledge to impart, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants. And if my knowledge has any breadth, it is because I’m standing on the shoulders of a lot of giants, all lined up together like the Giants defensive line during a goal-line stand.* So this is what some of these giants have taught me about the many ways of saying yes:

From Del (in the canonical text “Truth in Comedy”), and from several of his disciples, I learned Yes, and… Just like everyone else.

From Will Hines at Improv Nonsense I learned that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is an offer to be accepted. Specifically I learned the power of saying “Yes!” to directed questions. Again, once you get beyond Level 1, you don’t get questions like, “Who are you? What is that?” But how many times have you seen this:

A: Sorry I’m late, honey.
B: Are you having an affair?
A: No, I was just stuck in traffic. God, you’re so suspicious!

or

A: I forgot to turn off the oven!
B: What are you retarded?
A: No, I was just in such a hurry to meet you that I forgot.

Mr. Hines posits that these questions are weak, unsure offers, but offers just the same and 99.9% of the time the answer should be, “Yes.”

A: Sorry I’m late, honey.
B: Are you having an affair?
A: Yes, I am. I was wondering how long it’d be until you found out.

or

A: I forgot to turn off the oven!
B: What are you, retarded?
A: Yes, a little. I normally cope well enough but you put so much pressure on me that I forgot my “coping with daily tasks” training.

(If you want to play a fun mini-game, just watch my lips during another team’s improv performance and count how many times I mouth the words, “Just say yes!”)

From Rich Talarico, at his workshop at the PIT, I learned that it’s rarely the best move to be surprised by something. A shocking revelation is a big offer, and a response of surprise is like a “Yes, but…” that takes several lines. For example:

A: I’m having an affair.
B: WHAT? I don’t believe it! With who? How long has this been going on?

Sure, points for honest reactions, but we only have a short time to move this scene forward. But what happens if we’re not surprised?

A: I’m having an affair.
B: I know. With Mrs. Schmidt next door. She’s kind of frumpy. Frankly I thought you could have done better.

I think the more compelling scene lies down the second path.

From Oscar Montoya I learned that while “Yes, and…” is useful “Yes, because…” focuses the scene. Rather than:

A: The souffle has fallen.
B: And the dish is cracked.
A: And the oven’s on fire.

How about:

A: The souffle has fallen.
B: That’s probably because you were jumping on your pogo stick right next to the oven while it was baking.

And finally, from Chris Roberti I learned that it’s always more interesting to be vulnerable than to be guarded. How does that tie into this post’s theme of saying yes? Well, I weave that into Oscar’s advice to create the basis of my entire improv philosophy: “Yes, because I’m vulnerable.”

A: The souffle has fallen.
B: All of my cooking has been a failure since Sheila left…

As always, the path of knowledge is never-ending. This is by no means an exhaustive examination of the myraid ways of saying yes. I’m sure I’ll be learning new ways of saying yes until I’m too senile to perform and the other people at the theater have an uncomfortable discussion to decide who has to tell the old man that maybe it’s time to retire.

But until then, please, SAY YES!

* Go Giants!!!

This is my second time through the audition process at the PIT, and the first time I’ve been through significant cuts. Many people I love, including half of Technicolor, won’t be around for this cycle.

It hurts. I know. I’ve been there.

When I was put on a Harold team at UCB*, I was well beyond cloud nine — I was on cloud a hundred and seventy-four and had a leather steamer trunk covered in stickers indicating the many clouds I’d been on. When I was cut a short time later, I was bereft.

At first I thought, “It’s all right. I’m a bit emotional now, but I just need to take a break from this place.” But then the break became a hiatus. The hiatus became “Whatever happened to…?” Before I knew it, I hadn’t done longform improv in ten years.

Let me tell you: This is, seriously, one of the biggest regrets of my life.

If you need to take time, go ahead and take some time. But please, PLEASE don’t make the same mistake I made. Don’t abandon your craft. Make things happen. Persevere. Be great. I have faith in you.

* Back then, this was not quite the amazing accomplishment it is today. On the UCB retrospective interview that was recently published, someone said, “Anyone who could stand got on a house team.” I could stand. Barely.

In any case, if you wish to see me perform at the PIT, I will be performing Monday nights at 9:30 with the team currently known as 1800′s London. I hope to see many of you there…

So, to put the unsolicited advice I feel compelled as an experienced parent to give all in one place, I’m posting it here:

“Relax. You will be fine.”

Right now, you’re listening to a thousand different voices telling you exactly what you should and shouldn’t do. You’re getting glossy pamphlets from the hospital. Visits from friends. Advice from your parents and in-laws who were expertly trained on you. Books that have titles like, “What to Expect…” which could be substantively replaced by a single page reading, “The Unexpected.”

On top of that, there’s a whole cottage industry out there of parent panic. Am I feeding him right? Is she eating enough? Too much? If I have trouble breast feeding, am I failure? Should I soothe him when he cries, or let him cry it out? Am I swaddling her properly? Are her toys enriching enough? When should he start talking? Walking? If she doesn’t reach these milestones at these times, does this mean she won’t get into an Ivy League school?

“Relax. You will be fine.”

Kids are amazingly resilient. They can thrive in any environment, as long as there’s love and affection. Although none of you know each other, I know all of you and I already know that these kids have love and affection in spades. Kids need to be talked to. Kids need to be played with. Kids need to be loved. All of you guys have hearts so overflowing with love that the very idea of you not meeting these most important needs is ludicrous.

While everyone wants to tell you that everything is dangerous, kids today are incredibly safe. Statistically, they’re safer now than they have ever been. Just the same, they will bump their heads on coffee tables. They will fall down and scrape their knees. There will be boo-boos and Band-Aids. (Pro tip: The ones with Dora on them have greater healing powers.) There will be coughs, sniffles (dear GOD so many coughs and sniffles) and the occasional fever. But, in the end, they will be fine.

So the next time you’re crying over which model of stroller to get (trust me, you will), or panicking about the precise moment to introduce solid food, or waking up in the middle of the night just to make sure your baby is still breathing (no really, you will totally do this), please remember:

“Relax. You will be fine.”

I can’t speak to the parenting experience beyond the age of 5. I can, however, tell you all for certain that when you come home, and your kid jumps up and runs into your arms shouting, “Daddy! I’m so happy to see you!” that it’s pretty much a thousand times more amazing than any feeling you’ve yet experienced.

Good luck, try to get some sleep, and relax. I promise, you will be fine.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go sit in a corner for a while and repeat to myself, “He’ll probably stop wetting the bed before he goes to college.”

Really, SharePoint? You can clearly see that it’s a comment, and yet you still just barf on it rather than just ignoring it. WHY!?

Still here? Great. So, here’s the situation. Tell me if it seems crazy. There are things that, to me as a programmer, don’t seem crazy at all, while more seasoned SharePoint developers would look at what I was doing and scream, “Are you mad?” Like iterating through SPList.Items() in a foreach loop without first putting them into an SPListItemCollection, for example.

Anyway, I have the following situation: A project tracking list, which has a “Primary Technical Lead” field and a “Secondary Technical Lead” field, both of which are single User-type. I need to create a “Team Members” field, which is a multi-User type. Upon creation of that field, I need to populate it with both the value from the Primary and Secondary tech lead fields. Naturally, I chose to implement this one-time setup in the FeatureActivated event receiver.

Additionally, I want to make sure that whenever a tech lead is changed, that that change is reflected in the Team Members field. I also want to make sure that you can’t delete someone from Team Members if they’re still a tech lead. Naturally, I chose to implement this as an ItemUpdating event receiver.

Every time I tried to activate the solution, however, I always got the following error:

Unhandled exception was thrown by the sandboxed code wrapper’s Execute method in the partial trust app domain: The sandboxed code execution request was refused because the Sandboxed Code Host Service was too busy to handle the request.

<Steve Martin>Well, excuuuuuuuuse me!</Steve Martin>

Now, I wasn’t entirely un-clever about this. Of course my ItemUpdating event was firing when I was trying to populate the TeamMembers field. (Okay, I’m kind of lying. There was a lot of blank “WTF?” going on in my head before I realized that the ItemUpdating event was firing. Then I went through the feature activation in the debugger, and noticed that the exception was thrown when I called SPListItem.Update() or SPListItem.SystemUpdate(), which I tried in desperation.) But my ItemUpdating method should have just quickly exited upon not seeing the fields that it was worried about in the AfterProperties. Still, worried about my logic, I commented out my routine line by line. Until finally, my entire ItemUpdating receiver looked like:

public override void ItemUpdating(SPItemEventProperties properties) {
  // Lots of commented-out lines
  base.ItemUpdating(properties);
}

And still, Sandbox is Too Damn Busy.

Then I went to the List Receiver’s Elements.xml file, and commented out the <Receiver…><Type>ItemUpdating</Type>…</Receiver> part. And lo and behold, the Sandbox would suddenly take my calls again.

I then created the simplest test case. One list. One ItemUpdating event receiver which does nothing. One FeatureActivated event receiver that updates a list item. Activation == game over.

Now I understand why updating a ListItem that has an ItemUpdating receiver from a FeatureActivated receiver might be a problem. But, once again, SharePoint has vomited forth one of the least useful error messages possible.

At gates of Improv Heaven stood two men
Each begging entrance to its holy stage.
The first had clever quips beyond all ken
All thirst for knowledge could he quick assuage.
The second man into emotions tapped
A mirror held to nature was his goal.
He scoffed, “O, Clever gent, forever trapped!
You find the funny line, but not the soul.”
The Improv Gods, in semi-circle stood
And in group-mind they all declared as one:
“Like warp and weft in weaving, both are good
So both must enter, else may enter none.”
Which facet of our improv shall we show?
Come to the PIT at nine, so you may know.

“It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. — Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Steve Jobs has passed away. Everyone is talking about him in terms of what he did for the world. His contributions have long since passed “significant” and can without reservation be called legendary. But that will be talked about elsewhere, extensively, and by people far more eloquent than myself.

I’m just going to talk about what Steve Jobs did for me. His philosophy made me a better developer. His relentless pursuit of simplicity and ease of use for the end user changed the way I looked at IT.

I used to be a unix administrator. I used to revel in my knowledge of the arcane. I read the BOFH with glee. I used Linux, but I was always struggling with little things. Editing config files. Building from source. But smart people like me can figure it out, right? And for the most part, I did.

Then I got my first Mac, with OS X. It had the comforting unix command line which got me in the door, but I ended up using Terminal less and less. It just worked. I could still mess around with my computer, but now I didn’t have to deal with the mess if I didn’t want to.

Then the iPhone came. It’s hard to remember the world of cell phones before the iPhone. It seems like we’ve always lived in a world of touch screens. But before iPhone were dark days. I had a Blackberry for work, and I hated it with a burning hot hate. iPhone cut through the tyranny of the cell carriers and showed what was possible if someone, anyone, would just spend a few minutes giving a damn about their users.

Gradually, my entire perspective changed. Steve Jobs showed me that making computers work in an intuitive way is not only possible, but imperative. He showed me that programs that work in simple, expected ways can not only eliminate frustration, but can even be delightful. “User Error” isn’t dumb people. It’s software that doesn’t know how to work with people because no one gave enough of a damn to make it work the way ordinary, non-computer people do.

I work in IT, but I don’t work for IT. I work for some of the most brilliant physicians and researchers in the world. I work for an army of dedicated nurses and medical staff. These people are smart, sophisticated, and know what they’re doing. But they are not “computer people” and any system that requires them to be one in order to get it to work is a failure. There is a PEBKAC error, but the “P” in this case is the programmer.

I’ve been fighting a fight at work recently. No need for specifics, but I was given something from the higher-ups to implement. Implementing it as given would have been easy. But I knew it would be a huge and frustrating roadblock for users. It wasn’t my place but I fought for the users, and while I haven’t won a complete victory, I did get some concessions, and I got some people to really think about how what we do affects these users. It was the spirit of Steve Jobs that compelled me to make that stand.

I’m not a great programmer. I have neither the time nor the resources to dedicate to the loving craftsmanship that’s necessary to achieve perfect Jobsian simplicity. But I care. I fight. I work harder. And I do so because of Steve Jobs and his vision.

Thank you, Steve.