VBA Rubberducking

inner join dwd.OrderTypeNames ot on case when po.OrderHeaderId is null then detail.OrderTypeId else 1 end = ot._Id -- force placing orders' order types

mansellan

we should probably work out how to save this room's transcript, just in case.

Hosch250

9:07 PM

IIRC, you can download it from the API?

Mathieu Guindon

I KNOW! LET'S SCRAPE THE SITE WITH VBA!!

3

@Hosch250 AFAIK chat is nowhere in the API

mansellan

@MathieuGuindon I don't know how. Lemme just post a question to SO

Mathieu Guindon

> HI STACK OVERFLOW. I NEED TO SCRAPE Y'ALL. HOW DO I DO THAT. THANKS.

BigBen

hahahhahahaahah

this

not part of SO's data dump?

Mathieu Guindon

9:08 PM

missing typo "I NEED TO SCRAP Y'ALL"

Hosch250

Hmmm.

FreeMan

@MathieuGuindon checks out for the weekend

Hosch250

I know EBrown scrapped the chat.

BigBen

@MathieuGuindon even truer than the first comment

Hosch250

It honestly wouldn't be hard to download each message and put it in the DB.

Mathieu Guindon

9:09 PM

@Hosch250 nice!

@Hosch250 a DB? Heresy!! PUT IT IN A WORKSHEET!!

Hosch250

OTOH, how much of it do we need? Do the bookmarked conversations have the important stuff?

Mathieu Guindon

there's even totally unimportant stuff bookmarked

but no, the convos have far from everything important

Hosch250

True, but it's easier to find them out of 22 bookmarks.

Yeah. So, it would be super easy with Selenium. And you have a server...

I've got too many projects going on right now, or I'd offer to write a scrapper.

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 De Niro face you tawkin'o me?

eh, the chat servers will be up for the foreseeable future, no rush

SO is good at "scrapping" itself tho ;-)

this

instead of scrapping, write a script to send each day's transcript to archive.org

problem solved!

Mathieu Guindon

9:23 PM

actually it shouldn't be too hard to do this, even in VBA

could be fun, even

this

may take a looongg while

Hosch250

No, but why would you use VBA?

I mean, with C#, you could batch it.

this

IIRC, archive.org can take up to 2-5 seconds to process a request

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 because I'm a masochist

Hosch250

LOL.

this

9:24 PM

Besides, I think you really want to mutli-thread it

otherwise, it'll take months

Hosch250

Note that SE paginates chat--you'd need to at least parse it and figure out if the day was paginated and find the pages.

Mathieu Guindon

@this nah, last thing you want is to get IP-banned here

Hosch250

@MathieuGuindon Nah, just reset your router.

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 huh I was thinking 1 request = 1 transcript day

this

hmm. do they tell you how much you have left?

Mathieu Guindon

9:25 PM

pretty sure they don't

this

@Hosch250 depends on whether they ban the specific IP or a block

Mathieu Guindon

ask @Duga how fun SE rate-limiting is

Hosch250

True.

this

Lovely.

Hosch250

LOL, SO bans all of Quebec because you are scraping their site.

Mathieu Guindon

9:26 PM

I could run the script on my server and have a request for a day's transcript sent every minute

this

We'll give you API to our service but we hate you so we won't tell you if we think you're being a hog and we'll just ban you without telling you. Screw you!

Mathieu Guindon

there's no chat API, just plain HTTP(S) requests

this

which makes it even worse....

Mathieu Guindon

maybe I'm mistaken here though

but, there's a reason the (defunct) SE app never implemented the chat part

this

OTOH, I kind can see why they wouldn't bother reporting 4XX status code for request limit exceeded.

that might encourage bad actors to figure out where to toe the line

Hosch250

9:28 PM

I wouldn't do the Archive route, TBH.

SE could have them taken down that way.

Like they did several posts on Meta about Monica.

this

Seriously?

Mathieu Guindon

huh, isn't the transcript CC-BY-SA like everything else?

Hosch250

Yes, they removed answers and the archives people started using.

@MathieuGuindon Yes.

Mathieu Guindon

@Hosch250 that was just bad politicking

pretty sure SE/SO would just hand us the transcript if we kindly asked for it

Hosch250

Probably.

this

9:30 PM

"hi, can you please give us 5 years worth of rubberduck and random nonsense?"

Hosch250

Just saying, you might want it completely separate so they can't claim any ownership.

this

"what? what have you guys been doing?!?"

Hosch250

Anyway, TTYL!

Mathieu Guindon

later!

mansellan

proxies, no? or do SO have all of them banned already?

we should ask @Duga to send daily transcripts to archive.org

fyi - MSIX is not remotely suitable if you want to do anything interesting... no COM registration, no elevation, no kernel, no HKLM persistence, no process interaction, not even writing to it's own directory... the list is huge. It's almost like your PC is a phone!

The actual installer though is lovely. I wish they'd unlock it for local domains, like ClickOnce.

this

9:44 PM

why do you even want MSIX then

mansellan

because it isn't EOL

ClickOnce will never play nice with net core.

it's also much nicer to develop for than ClickOnce, but that's unimportant

this

so why not WiX? Inno Setup?

mansellan

that was plan B. But you know MS... their toys like to play together.

this

uh, you just said it doesn't!

:)

mansellan

uh, their current toys.... they don't talk about their parents...

this

9:47 PM

Besides WiX is actually led by a MSFT employee (#FunFact it was one of the first few open sources to come from MSFT, way back when MSFT was still anti-OSS)

But you said it can't do x, y, z. That's not not talking to parents; that's just missing limbs.

The downside, however is that WiX is not fun'n'easy to author.

mansellan

well, I've sunk the cost into MSIX now, it's merged. If there's a late gotcha, I'll look into WiX again, thanks for the reminder.

this

on the bright side, WiX now has C# front-end

if I ever redo the installer, I might even try that. Anything that'll get me away from the freaking Pascal....

mansellan

I guess I just didn't like the transpiling nature of it. Scared me, perhaps unreasonably.

this

I honestly don't know whether anyone else can read the pascal script.

even with comments.... perhaps even in spite of it.

Well, WiX is still MSI-based.

mansellan

but tbf, my work stuff doesn't do anything on the forbidden list. Um, yet.

this

9:52 PM

oh cool, WiX can do MSIX

mansellan

I guess I just posted here to say: "Nope, RD is NOT suitable for MSIX. Look elsewhere."

this

I suspected - it's just me nerdsniping myself

ooo, a new shiny! wanders off

Vogel612

10:14 PM

@MathieuGuindon there is an undocumented REST API

mostly used for loading initial context and posting messages

after that it's websockets, and transcript is plain http

this

not sure that'd work if you wanted to get transcripts from other days, right?

Vogel612

transcript is basically available under /roomid/transcript/yyyy/MM/dd

and it can be paginated

this

in which case we're back to just using HTTP to scrape

Vogel612

yeap

this

That said: who's going to sit down and replay the 5 years + worth of chat? Pretty sure we aren't going to release The greatest hits of 2015 RD chat anytime soon.... right? Right?!?

mansellan

10:21 PM

@this speak for yourself, I do that every day!

Vogel612

fwiw the greatest hit of all time in here is all variations of "I'm an idiot" anyways

mansellan

point of order: I'm an idiot. It's been proven. Many, many times over.

Seriously though, there's an enormous repository of knowledge in this transcript. It needs to not be lost.

this

sure, the issue is more about making it easily searchable

if all you do is dump it into a big text file, that doesn't lead to good searching experience.

mansellan

True. But it won't be searchable if it doesn't exist. Second-order problem.

Vogel612

@this probably still better than chat search

3

mansellan

10:25 PM

N++ Find in Files.

this

@Vogel612 sick burn

Vogel612

also wrong, because chat allows searching messages from a single user in a single room

the implementation for that is ... annoyingly bad on the UX side, but it works

mansellan

I honestly think that SE/SO could implode in ~12 months if they keep this up.

Vogel612

hmm ... behind the scenes info suggests it's not going to be quite that quick

if things go ... well? the company might actually turn around

mansellan

heh, #NotAMod, but to this armchair spectator the signs are not looking good

I'm hearing that they have a plan. I hope it works.

Vogel612

10:33 PM

they aren't looking good to this armchair spectator with slightly better seats either

mansellan

lol

Vogel612

but I can sometimes catch a glimpse of the people behind the curtain

IvenBach

11:01 PM

^ Todays man behind the curtain is pretty benign thankfully.

I mean look at how friendly and cheery he looks.

this

Nice!

Now, he might be cheery, but he has that strange propensity toward busting through walls and possibly maiming kids who happens to be too close by.

IvenBach

Glad I'm an odd duck not bound by normal walls.

@MathieuGuindon Am I included a clueless user that contributed to the endless September?

I miss out on good chat discussions.

this

11:28 PM

@IvenBach ask your boss to let you slack more.

IvenBach

Half day today. I was taking care of grandma.

Old people luck the life out of you. That's why older people are living longer now.

They're vampires, but with wrinkles.

Thankfully she's still lucid and self-sufficient. If not... "mumble mumble she stumbled mumble fell down officer mumble :shrug: mumble."

mansellan

@IvenBach did you print that?

IvenBach

@mansellan #OooohhhhhYeeeeaaaaahhhhhh

mansellan

Oh No!

IvenBach

At this point I regret not getting my printer sooner. Very enjoyable.

mansellan

11:35 PM

As a Brit, I've never even seen the ad. To me, it's just a running gag on Family Guy. is it everywhere?

Vogel612

@IvenBach no, you basically never were, because you put effort into asking questions

IvenBach

Classic Kool-Aid Man Commercial Compilation (OH YEAH!)

►

mansellan

@IvenBach Uh, I hope those clips are from the (19?)80s, otherwise I really don't wanna drink the Kool-Aid...

IvenBach

Late 80's & early 90's.

I don't even know if they use him in ads anymore.

mansellan

You still have Tang? I remember that from American college in Egypt.

(I say 'college', I was like 8)

this

11:42 PM

somewhere, I think

mansellan

I used to eat it raw...

this

?

in powder form?

IvenBach

Did you think it was Marmite?

mansellan

@this yep

this

but why?

IvenBach

11:43 PM

And this was when you were 8?

if so, that might explain why.

mansellan

because I was 8 :-)

IvenBach

:bingo:

mansellan

Cairo American College

Cairo American College (or CAC) is a pre-K-12 international American school located in Maadi, Cairo, Egypt. It caters mainly to dependents of the local American embassy and other international students. The school works to recreate an American schooling experience within a Middle-Eastern nation. It was recognized in 2014 by the School Academy Awards as the best school in the Middle East and Africa. == Curriculum == CAC follows "American Education Reaches Out" (AERO) standards. International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement programs are offered within the high school, giving students the option...

My dad worked fo Mobil at the time

this

nope, still don't get it. WWWWHHHHHYYYYY

I mean, 8 years old me would not like hte idea of eating powder directly

mansellan

Because it was, uhm, tangy

My mum didn't like me doing it, tbf.

this

11:46 PM

I'm dreading how it'd be all grainy in my mouth (even if it'll dissolve...) too much like eating sand.

I'd be even more concerned if your mom didn't mind.

mansellan