English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

KitFox

21:00

I don't. Well, that's a bummer.

Currently, she has this:

 Selection.Find.ClearFormatting()
        Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting()
        With Selection.Find
            .Text = "656183"
            .Replacement.Text = "001855"
            .Forward = True
            .Wrap = wdFindContinue
            .Format = False
            .MatchCase = False
            .MatchWholeWord = False
            .MatchWildcards = False
            .MatchSoundsLike = False
            .MatchAllWordForms = False
        End With

For 24 or so replacement pairs.

24.

It's like I've not taught her anything.

Johan Larsson

it is reading a textfile, doing stuff and saving a textfile?

KitFox

Seems it.

She sent me the script but no file.

Mitch

@KitFox betcher bottom dollar

Johan Larsson

how does she know what to replace what with?

KitFox

It's a conversion from the number the vendor uses to identify the store to the internal id number.

I think I can use Replace, but I have to think about how to read the file.

Johan Larsson

21:06

string s = File.ReadAllText(filename);

if the file is huge consider foreach(var s in File.ReadLines()){...}

KitFox

Oh yeah. I forgot about ReadAll.

I think I can also split on the line terminators, but I don't know what the files look like.

Doesn't matter. Point is, it is above her skill level.

I need a nap.

blows kisses

tchrist

I’m not a fan of the anti-pattern of slurping in the whole file instead of iterating by line — it has a code smell to it — but sometimes that’s really the easiest way to do things. Well, for the programmer; maybe not for the box.

There seem to now be two entire generations of students coming out of ACME Computer Science School who weren’t taught there was anything wrong with this. When you see them attacking 14 gigabyte files that way — and failing miserably — you just shake your head.

Robusto

21:28

Nobody expects 14 GB files.

Or even 100 MB files.

Johan Larsson

i don't think I ever met a 14 GB file

Robusto

But you might one day.

Johan Larsson

yes and then I will fail one way or the other

Robusto

But I think the point is that you shouldn't just assume you can open an entire file and stick its contents into RAM.

I mean, at least check the file size first. If it's small enough, go ahead. If it's beyond a threshold, start reading it a chunk at a time.

Johan Larsson

solid advice, I hedged on the row below

tchrist

21:34

@Robusto I deal with 100 megabyte files a zillion times a day.

Robusto

We are showered with cheap memory these days, so much so that we forget that even though we have all this RAM, certain operations are way slower when you try to deal with (what used to be) big chunks of memory.

tchrist

We’re never allowed to slurp. Ever.

Robusto

@tchrist I wasn't talking about you.

tchrist

There’s something about handling 5-10 billion lines of data a day that breaks you of any urge to slurp in the whole file.

Robusto

I would imagine.

There was a power line down on my route home. Drove by this sparking, twitching blue-eyed blacksnake hanging from the utility pole. Wish I could have snapped a picture.

tchrist

21:38

Wow.

Robusto

We've had Florida storms here intermittently all day.

tchrist

You mean storms that are come up from Florida?

Well, or have.

Robusto

I mean sudden gushers with high winds and lightning, then clearing and muggy, then more storm, then calm and hot, etc.

Unsettled weather.

tchrist

Summer afternoons in the Rockies are like that every single day.

Hence the fires.

Robusto

But you don't have the heavy rains that come from a large body of water being nearby.

tchrist

21:43

No, these are dry-ish.

Lotta virga.

Or hail.

More shock than sop.

Robusto

At one point today it was raining so hard that the sound of it on the roof of our building made it impossible to hear people talking five feet away.

tchrist

That happens, though not often. It is always preceded by hail.

Robusto

That's Gulf weather. That's Houston and New Orleans kinda rain. Where if you were driving you wouldn't be able to see the front of your car.

tchrist

It’s when the hail is so loud you can’t hear people that it’s time to move away from the skylights.

Robusto

I would think.

tchrist

21:45

You get that kinda rain out on the Great Plains, too.

Robusto

Biggest hail I've ever seen was the size of golf balls. That was in South Dakota.

I just parked under an overpass and watched it.

tchrist

It’s not really always the size but the depth. Couple summers ago it hailed for 45 minutes, hard. Had like 10" of it on the ground. One of our squads got flooded out at an intersection. Really funny picture.

@Robusto So did the cop. :)

Robusto

Good plan. It's all you can do.

tchrist

Underpasses aren’t a good place in a flood situation.

Robusto

It depends on the proximity of rivers, etc.

tchrist

21:47

And if it’s raining that hard, you have to wonder whether the storm sewers can take it — or for how long.

Robusto

You have to appreciate what a lot of empty space there is in South Dakota.

tchrist

Boulder has 19 perennial streams coming down from the mountains. Any of which can flood. But the floods I’ve seen are always when storm sewers back up. Well, mostly. Sometimes a bit of river overbanking.

I’ve had two red beeping EMERGENCY messages about flash floods to my phone this past week.

I wonder if that is because of where my address is, or where the phone is at the time.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

You can send some here. We're two inches under.

tchrist

Do they blast it out to anyone whose address is in the zone, or anyone whose current tower is?

This is an emergency service, so it is exempt from the “don’t track me” thing.

Robusto

And then there was the Rapid City flood of 1972, which happened when I was visiting a college buddy there. What a nightmare. I saw a D-9 Cat get swept away trying to build an embankment.

tchrist

21:50

72, eh?

Robusto

Yup.

tchrist

We had a flood here in 76 (well, here in Colorado; I was in Geneva) that killed 144 people.

> The Big Thompson flood of 1976 was the deadliest flash flood in Colorado’s recorded history. On July 31, between 12 and 14 inches of rain fell over a four-hour period in the mountains around the resort town of Estes Park. Unusual weather patterns allowed the huge storm system to stall over the area as it dumped its load.

Robusto

The Rapid City flood killed 238. I was damn near one of them. It was definitely a shit-your-pants moment.

tchrist

That’s bad.

> Approximately 4,000 people were in the canyon during Colorado’s centennial weekend, most of them from outside the area. For some, the only alert of the danger was by word of mouth. Telephone lines were ripped and mangled – power poles and bridges destroyed.

Robusto

What was worse was the aftermath. You might not think of this right away, but one of the worst problems with floods is that there's no water you can drink. Seriously.

tchrist

21:52

You couldn’t get emergency info to them today any quicker. Well, storm sirens, but visitors don’t understand those.

The canyons have no cell coverage.

> Many who tried to drive out ahead of the storm were trapped in their cars and swept to their deaths.

Our canyons now all say “In case of flood, climb to safety.”

You aren’t going to outdrive it down a snaky road.

> One legacy of the historic event can be seen in the number of signs that now dot Colorado’s mountain roads and highways: “Climb to safety” in case of flooding.

Robusto

Cats.

tchrist

Why were you in Rapid City?

Stack Exchange

Unicorn Daily: Had to post this!!

posted on July 23, 2013

Had to post this!!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

O_O

Cerberus

22:18

@tchrist So was your Geneva colonised from Switzerland?

Then why does it bear the English name for the city, instead of Genève?

C'est pas mal, eh?

Robusto

38 mins ago, by Robusto

And then there was the Rapid City flood of 1972, which happened when I was visiting a college buddy there. What a nightmare. I saw a D-9 Cat get swept away trying to build an embankment.

@Cerberus "I'm American. Our names don't mean shit." —Butch (Bruce Willis), Pulp Fiction

For example, I live about ten miles from Berlin (pronounced BUR-lin). And 15 or 20 miles from Worcester.

Cerberus

22:35

But surely there is a history behind those names?

Someone thought of them.

tchrist

@Cerberus No. The settlers saw Lake Geneva and Lake Como, and named them for those.

Cerberus

You mean "had seen"?

But OK.

tchrist

No.

I meant saw.

They saw these two lakes in Wisconsin, and named them Lakes Geneva and Como.

> Originally called "Muck-Suck" (Big Foot) for a Potawatomi chief,[8] the city was later named Geneva after the town of Geneva, New York, located on Seneca Lake, to which early settler John Brink saw a resemblance. Geneva, to avoid confusion with the nearby town Geneva, Illinois, was renamed Lake Geneva; later the lake was renamed Geneva Lake. In practice both forms are used for the lake but never for the city.

And it’s named Big Foot Beach State Park, not Muck Suck Beach State Park.

I have no idea why.

History of Lake Geneva, including horrible things done to Indians.

As always.

Cerberus

22:54

@tchrist Okay, then your references are borked.

Or at the very least proleptic.

Or perhaps teleleptic.

tchrist

I would be surprised if they were proleptic; most Americans are circumcised.

Well ok, half of them.

Cerberus

TMI.

tchrist

We frown on this when applied to the Other Half.

America != Africa

Cerberus

No idea what you're talking about. Probably don't want to know...

tchrist

Female circumcision.

Did you know that Columbus landed on Puerto Rico?

If that isn’t discovering America, I don’t know what is.

Of course, you can say that Columbus didn’t discover America because it wasn’t called that yet.

But nobody will listen to you.

Cerberus

23:00

I don't want to know about your Puritan perversions!

tchrist

Then which of our perversions would you like to know about?

We have so many to choose from.

Geek show

Geek Shows were an act in traveling carnivals and circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The Online Etymology Dictionary give the following for "geek": "sideshow freak," 1916, U.S. carnival and circus slang, perhaps a variant of geck "a fool, dupe, simpleton" (1510s), apparently from Low Ger. geck, from an imitative verb found in North Sea Germanic and Scandinavian meaning "to croak, cackle," and also "to mock, cheat." The modern form and the popular use with reference to circus sideshow "wild men" is from 1946, in William Lindsay Gresham's novel Nightmare ...

Cerberus

None.

We have enough of those at home.

tchrist

Snake handling

Snake handling or serpent handling is a religious ritual in a small number of Pentecostal churches in the U.S., usually characterized as rural and part of the Holiness movement. The practice began in the early 20th century in Appalachia. The practice plays only a small part of the church service of churches that practice snake handling. Practitioners believe serpent handling dates to antiquity and quote the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke to support the practice: And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongue...

Aw come on, I’m just getting warmed up!

Wait till I tell you about the Y.

Cerberus

I wonder what effect the migration of Puritans had on your genetic pool...

Nah, it's probably mainly cultural.

MετάEd

I love it when Kit runs my flags.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

23:20

►

Damn.

Is everyone grooving on that or did I kill the chat again?

MετάEd

groovy

youtube.com/watch_popup?v=5SnPpY8CsIs

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@MετάEd O_O

MετάEd

23:46

♫ straighten up and fly right ... straighten up and stay right ... straighten up and fly right ... cool down, papa, don't you blow your top! ♫

KitFox

23:57

@MετάEd What? What did I do this time?

MετάEd

@KitFox You did good.

KitFox

So what's your avatar?

MετάEd

"One small step for [a] man"

it was just the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

KitFox

That was three days ago.

MετάEd

Right! Good on ya.

I don't have another avataversary until late August :-(

KitFox

23:58

Get with the times! You should be celebrating my ex-sister-in-law's birthday.

Or my dad's birthday, which is on the 27th.

MετάEd

And that will be August 18, Bad Poetry Day.

KitFox

Hahaha

MετάEd

And also my sister's birthday.

KitFox

Tesla's birthday is sometime around now.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…