The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

Erik Darling

00:15

@SeanGallardy it didn’t find me attractive

@JoshDarnell 👴

Sean Gallardy

Better luck next time!

Paul White

00:35

@SeanGallardy Same

Progression was BASIC, 6502/6510 assembler, Turbo Pascal, Forth, VB, SQL, C#

The sheer audacity of some people. Leaving an answer in a comment and flagging the self-answer as Not An Answer. I don't know what to do with you people some days

Erik Darling

01:00

My comment wasn’t an answer. It was an attempt to clarify what the problem is.

If the OP responded that it answered their question I would have migrated it to the answer box.

J.D.

@PaulWhite ever have the pleasure of dabbling with FoxPro?

Paul White

01:36

I think I was given the opportunity at some stage but didn't take it up

@ErikDarling if it's not an answer how could it be migrated to the answer box

Anyway, it's the combination of comments from Trusted Users not just yours

And to be fair the question is terrible

But I'm not interested in being fair

I'm having a vent

Paul White

02:41

73

A: How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?

What is the "not an answer" flag and what is its purpose? The "not an answer" flag is a moderator flag that users can raise to notify moderators and privileged users1 that a posted answer does not make an attempt to answer the question, and should be deleted. When should I use this flag? Use this...

Zikato

08:03

@ErikDarling or the time you've tried using PowerShell

Hannah Vernon

Wordle 630 4/6*

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@JoshDarnell some of my best work involved local static variables lol

@J.D. and to think I assumed you were young

@PaulWhite 6502 - that was in the TRS CoCo computer if I remember correctly

Paul White

@HannahVernon VIC-20 and C64 for me

Paul White

09:07

@HannahVernon Apparently, that used a Motorola 6809E en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer

Paul White

09:49

> 99,835 questions

J.D.

13:24

@HannahVernon heh, 33. Not sure if you'd call that young or not, but I forgot my own age the other day, so I'm starting to feel old.

To be fair, I was only about 11 when I was playing around with QuickBasic.

@PaulWhite Sorry, I do love fluffy bunnies, and kiwis are cute too 😉, but is this really more of an answer than a clarification comment? - dba.stackexchange.com/q/324628/150011

If OP's answer to my question is Yes, then I'd figure a real answer around that would involve a code example on how to use transactions. But I'll delete my comment if you think otherwise.

Paul White

@J.D. Yes, of course. You're not clarifying the question at all. You're asking if the answer you have in mind would be accepted.

Answers can always be expanded via edits, or deleted if they turn out not to be useful.

Same goes for Rohit's comment.

Also bear in mind you're not just answering the OP. Other people with similar questions may see your answer in future and find it useful. They would no doubt find a code example helpful.

They won't see it if you leave it in a comment.

2

The question of what is a comment versus what is an answer seems to perplex many smart people. The answer to both can be found in the SE FAQ linked just above in the transcript.

11 hours ago, by Paul White

73

A: How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?

What is the "not an answer" flag and what is its purpose? The "not an answer" flag is a moderator flag that users can raise to notify moderators and privileged users1 that a posted answer does not make an attempt to answer the question, and should be deleted. When should I use this flag? Use this...

For convenience.

J.D.

14:01

@PaulWhite aw you called me smart. 🫶

Comment deleted, cheers.

Zikato

15:02

The safest option is to never comment or answer a question.

Paul White

@J.D. I don't think I did.

0

A: Delete records in different tables

You can't ordinarily delete from more than one table in a single T-SQL DELETE statement. It is possible to achieve the same effect using triggers or cascading foreign keys with an ON DELETE CASCADE option, but that's probably not what you need. If you just want to submit a single batch of text an...

Hannah Vernon

@PaulWhite amen to that

@Zikato This Is The Way

I'm getting a new mattress and a new Samsung S23 Ultra arrives today. So, I'm thinking of setting up the bed, and laying in it all day while I configure my phone.

Paul White

My wife bought us new pillows the other day, so I can relate to some extent

My chess.com puzzles rating seems stuck around 1925. I might have hit my limit.

Zikato

15:32

tsk tsk

now I have to try it just to see what's my rating

Paul White

Takes a while, you only get three puzzles per day unless you send them money

Zikato

I got 7

But yeah. Lichess doesn't have this limit

Paul White

More to start with, perhaps

Lichess doesn't give a rating though, does it?

Oh, it does. I seem to be at 1986.

2029 now

I wonder why I stopped using Lichess

John K. N.

15:59

morning

Paul White

16:11

@ErikDarling Regarding that -5 question from yesterday, I came across its origin dba.stackexchange.com/a/324571/1192

Erik Darling

@Zikato we don't talk about that.

@PaulWhite oh dear me

Paul White

@ErikDarling You have to feel some empathy for the person trying to follow the instructions 😀

> If you have a new question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. Include a link to this question if it helps provide context.

A link to the question would have been great context

Anyway, another ystery olved

Erik Darling

you should start a detective agency

Paul White

I would've found it quickly by looking at their other posts. Instead, I found it while trying to locate a duplicate ha ha

Erik Darling

16:27

you've got a knack

Zikato

16:54

Kusto Detective Agency
https://detective.kusto.io/

Paul White

I take it you joined?

Zikato

I did, it was good fun

Paul White

Did you get promoted?

I'm wondering what the final boss is like

Zikato

You get promoted and get badges on Acclaim

Erik Darling

When do you get a gun

Zikato

17:00

Why would I need a gun?

yesterday, by mustaccio

Perhaps in your "culture" this kind of jokes is innocuous, but I wish you'd refrain from them

Paul White

17:20

Hm. The network seems to be in read-only mode

As I read stackstatus.net it looks like only Teams should be under maintenance

Paul White

17:32

And it's back. Weird.

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 3 hours ago, by g3rv4

there's a Teams migration in progress. We expect no issues affecting the public network, but please ping me if you see anything weird

🤣

Zikato

I'm around 2k on lichess puzzles as well

John K. N.

18:41

all sites still down for me

cept chat

laggy baggy

Paul White

Oh that's new

It was fine just a moment ago

John K. N.

> We are currently offline for maintenance
> Routine maintenance usually takes less than an hour. If this turns into an extended outage, we will post details on the status page.

No details on the status page.

Paul White

Failover in progress apparently

Seems like the Teams-only maintenance really wasn't

Main is back

John K. N.

yup

Erik Darling

20:35

@Zikato that’s something that detectives have, as they are part of the law enforcement community.

Paul White

20:48

Sounds like local factors might apply

As in, not every country's law enforcement officers are routinely armed

I would have to Czech

> All uniformed police officers belonging to the Police of the Czech Republic (PČR) and all Municipal police departments usually carry firearms.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country

Confirmed

Erik Darling

Local factors will always apply, and I’m happy to learn something new

Paul White

> In nineteen countries or territories, the police do not carry firearms unless the situation is expected to merit it

That's quite a bit lower than I had anticipated

I wonder if Czech detectives are uniformed

This might be one of those rare occasions when it is appropriate to ping @Zikato

Erik Darling

21:06

Territories, heh

Paul White

twitter.com/svb_financial/status/1632818336391213059 😬

Erik Darling

gartner magic quadrant material for sure

Paul White

All based on science you know

Possibly enhanced with AI

mustaccio

@PaulWhite uninformed

ftfy

Paul White

21:36

I suppose that makes sense

If they were informed there'd be little to detect

this works perfect for me. thank you — Ichigo Kurosaki 1 min ago

Jay Dee will be pleased

@Charlieface I know question authors sometimes add answers that aren't answers. I have some practical experience with that on this site. In my estimation, this is not one of those times. You might have a different opinion, or hope for a better/more comprehensive answer. That's fine. Questions often receive more than one answer. Sometimes what solved the author's original query isn't satisfying for everyone

0

A: Name in sys.availability_groups_cluster returns double character length

The difference is driven by cluster(s) set up. If I get the value from sys.availability_groups instead of sys.availability_groups_cluster it returns the results as expected.

Context

It's a judgement call of course

In a perfect world, the question would be better and they would have responded to the various comments. That hasn't happened yet so we are where we are, making judgement calls

If it turns out the author was intending to add information to their question, I'll happily convert the answer to an edit.

For the time being, I see it as a partial explanation and a workaround

For what it's worth, my guess is the cluster call is padded with char zero in some cases (not spaces)

People are paranoid about buffer overruns these days

J.D.

22:28

@PaulWhite 😁

How pleased would you be if my initials really stood for Jay Dee?

@PaulWhite btw if you're feeling saucy: dba.stackexchange.com/q/324658/150011

Seems like they didn't get the memo on transactions...

J.D.

22:54

Wordle 630 2/6

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Transcript for

The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®