I am mightily impressed. It takes UPS 1 month to deliver a package from just across the border - NYC. It takes FedEx 1 day to get something from the UK to me. I placed the order 02:30 London time on the 17th. It arrived just now. That includes processing / billing / logistical time.

Yes I know with time zones it is more like 1.5 but still.

In C#, many years ago, some stupid person decided it would be a good idea to allow the use of the keyword var to define a variable without explicitly identifying its type, as type can many times be inferred from the RHS of the assignment.

So instead of defining code as in the old olden days below:

foreach (string mask in someList) {
  // Do something
}

Seems like I am getting slightly better at this. Peppermint and eggnog flavoured macarons.

Ever had the problem where Visual Studio keeps on crashing when trying to open a Windows Form to design it? Well, I am building an Excel VSTO add-in that uses Windows Forms and an embedded User Control written in WPF to work around mixed HDPI and standard DPI monitor scaling issues. All went well until one day seemingly randomly Visual Studio refused to load the form. It had no issue loading the visual designer for the user control though.

Eventually I found this article, written 14 years ago. I am embarrassed that I did not think to do this myself. It turns our, I had combobox control in my user control that had a Grid_Loaded event attached. In the Grid_Loaded event handler I had code like this:

if (Globals.ThisAddIn.Credentials != null)
{
    textBoxURL.Text = Globals.ThisAddIn.Credentials.URL;
}

So this website claims this puzzle cannot be solved by a modern chess engine like Stockfish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCJalNkTEI

I let Stockfish 12 lose on my Mac Pro and after 43 minutes it found the solution: