« first day (970 days earlier)      last day (3958 days later) » 

7:00 PM
And...hygiene.
 
@tchrist *checks glasses* No. Not steamy.
 
@tchrist It's just you.
@Cerberus Hygiene?
 
Oh, I better go turn on the AC.
 
@KitFox Well, why do you wear underwear during the day? Oh, wait...
 
Why in the world would you get cold shoulders? That’s why you have covers, after all.
 
7:01 PM
@Cerberus I don't rub my areas on my sheets.
 
Cover never end up quite where one wants them.
 
I think maybe you're not doing it right.
 
Hmm.
 
@Cerberus Various reasons. Partly comfort. (I'm currently wearing a pair of shorts with a velcro fly. I've tried these without underwear, and it isn't good.)
 
@Cerberus I like to prop my feet up.
 
7:02 PM
The main reason for most people has always been about cleaning, I would say.
 
And walk up stairs.
 
Well, I'm people wouldn't mind, on the contrary.
 
@KitFox Ancient Israelite priests had laws about that.
 
@Cerberus People might not mind, but I would.
 
Ancient Israelite priests had a law about something? I'm shocked!
 
7:03 PM
Cleaning?
 
@tchrist Underwear.
 
I'm not the kind of person who likes to show off her vulva.
 
@KitFox OK, sure, with skirts, you have an additional reason.
Although kilts are worn without underwear, as we all know.
 
Chafing.
 
Kilts don’t fall off as easily as sarongs do.
 
7:05 PM
They had to wear underwear so that people couldn't see their bits as they climbed the steps to the altar. It's in the Bible and everything. (Also in the Bible is the bit about them changing the design of the altar to have a ramp instead of steps, so people couldn't see up the priests' skirts at all. The rule about underwear was not, however, relaxed.)
 
I suppose there is no simple way to transpose a table.
 
@TRiG Such a freaky book.
 
@tchrist Isn't that partly the point of a sarong? Or, for that matter, harem pants? Cf. Nobby Nobbs in Jingo.
 
Obsessed with sex.
 
@Cerberus I've sucked many things, but I think I was a baby the last time I sucked a book.
 
7:07 PM
...because you suck all things freaky?
Oh.
Damn.
 
@Cerberus Well, you are a hellhound.
Damnation seems appropriate.
 
nods
 
@KitFox I went to a parochial elementary school. During fire drills, the nun would lead the students down because she was afraid someone might look up her habit. Better that straggling children should die than that they see a nun's underthings.
 
@Robusto I went to a single-story elementary school. And secondary school, actually.
 
That's why I'm so much better educated than you, obviously.
 
7:09 PM
Parochial schools only tell one story, too.
 
@Robusto Funny.
Habits are long.
 
A bad habit is a vice.
 
@Robusto I recall someone writing about the first time she saw a nun's washing line. Nuns wear underwear! goggle
 
And it's very hard to cut short.
 
The Flying Nun is an American sitcom produced by Screen Gems for ABC based on the 1965 book The Fifteenth Pelican, by Tere Rios. It starred Sally Field as Sister Bertrille. The series originally ran on ABC from September 7, 1967, to April 3, 1970, producing 82 episodes, including a one-hour pilot episode. Overview Developed by Bernard Slade, the series centered on the adventures of a community of nuns in the Convent San Tanco in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The comic elements of the storyline were provided by the flying ability of a novice nun, Sister Bertrille. In the hour-long series pi...
 
7:13 PM
BTW, speaking of things you wish you could unsee: don't run right out to watch Hit & Miss. I was searching through Netflix for TV fodder and started to watch and ... long story short, I turned it off after about 90 seconds, and wish I hadn't seen what I saw.
 
You’d think everyone would have seen Sally Field’s underwear whenever she flew.
 
@Robusto Oh wow, that sounds awful.
 
@tchrist That was a body double.
 
@Robusto That couldn't possibly be as bad as it sounds.
 
Well ...
Let's just say I didn't need to see Chloe Sevigny wearing a prosthetic phallus that day.
 
7:18 PM
...
 
Guess they wanted to drive the point home.
 
England has been playing this kind of trick on us for years. First with The Crying Game, then The Full Monty, now Hit & Miss. For shame, England. Are you listening, @MattЭллен?
For shame.
 
Which trick would that be?
Prostheses?
 
The Brits like to show us penises.
Because they are intimidated by our guns.
 
At inappropriate times and in inappropriate contexts.
 
7:22 PM
@Mr.Shiny You played Jedi Academy, right?
 
They even have a term for it: cock-up.
 
@KitFox yes, I really liked it
 
I was thinking of buying it on Steam to try out the new gamepad. Is it gory?
 
@KitFox gory? hm. I don't recall any gore.
If you want, I can install it tonight and check.
 
I think the boys would like to watch, but I don't want them to know about it if it's too scary/gory/creepy.
 
7:28 PM
hm. Well, I think the swordplay gets pretty violent. arms, heads cut off, etc.
otherwise, it's standard SW violence.
 
A lot of games have a gore-reduction setting fer the kiddies.
 
Do you enjoy watching gore in games?
 
Me? Not particularly.
 
I always turn it off.
I find it fake, ugly, and childish.
 
Well, Jedi seem to like cutting off heads, so that was a surprising line that was already crossed with my kids and they quickly desensitized to it.
 
7:31 PM
I've become desensitized to it from both ends.
 
@KitFox if you're okay with decapitations, the game should be fine then.
 
I was never sensitised in the first place...I just don't like it. I'm not shocked or anything.
 
Minifigs, I think, were what made it not so shocking for them.
 
I really have no idea what that does to a young child's mind. Maybe nothing much?
 
but it's an action/shooter/swordplay game where you defeat all the bad guys using violence.
 
7:32 PM
I do like to head-shot zombies, though. That wouldn't be nearly as much fun if the heads didn't explode.
 
We'd seen a lot of exploding minifigs prior to the decapitations, and all of it has been cartoon violence, so...
 
I know my kids are not ready for the violence of Jedi Academy.
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hmm. We probably have enough of those.
 
But they haven't seen the movies either.
 
Shooting people (from afar) is one thing, decapitation another.
 
7:33 PM
@KitFox There is a "moral" tale in the storyline. I'd explain it but that would be thpoilerths
 
@Cerberus Like I said, exploding minifigs.
 
@Cerberus what about force-choking an enemy until you can fling them off a cliff?
or using a kind of force-lightning that steals their health and gives it to you?
 
There are certain tactics that I probably ought not to introduce to my eldest yet.
 
@KitFox I have no idea what that looks like, but it doesn't sound as gory as decapitation with blood and stuff?
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose it depends on the way it's depicted, but it sounds less shocking.
 
seriously, the force-choke thing is one of the first powers I upgrade in that game. comes in VERY handy. especially in maps that are supposed to have difficult lightsabre battles atop unlikely-narrow bridges.
@Cerberus there's no blood in lightsabre amputations as per canon: the lightsabre sears the wound shut.
 
7:36 PM
Right.
It's just that removing parts off someone's body adds an extra bit of shock to violence.
 
anyway as far as first/third-person action shooters go, I really enjoyed Jedi Academy. (and Jedi Outcast, it's predecessor).
@Cerberus A bit, I guess. when it's bloodless either way, dead is dead and that's that.
 
@KitFox Whoa, spoiler alert.
 
@KitFox well, needless to say, Jedi Academy has a "light side/dark side" story where one or more characters goes to the dark side.
 
But still, I would feel ashamed to make ruthless choices in front of him.
@Robusto Yeah, OK. Sorry.
 
but on the bright side, since in JA you play as an unknown character, you get to design your character to look like whatever you want. Half-naked Twi-lek with green skin? you got it.
 
7:39 PM
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Blood adds another bit of shock value. But I think stomping someone once, or shooting him, is less shocking than removing part of his body, even if the result is in both cases death.
 
@Cerberus I guess.
 
I once saw a scene from a Manga film where a woman was raped by the tentacles of a huge monster in every orifice. I think I must have been 10 or so.
Or maybe younger.
That really shocked me.
 
I've seen that.
 
@Cerberus you should not have been watching that movie at that age
 
And there was once a really scary episode of Dungeons and Dragons which, according to my parents, kept me awake at night, but I don't really remember. Other than that, I was never really shocked by anything.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Of course not. Somehow I caught part of a film on television, I was alone.
 
7:43 PM
@Robusto sorry, I accidentally took a nap
 
so @kit Steam has JA for $10 but the whole Dark Forces collection for $20.
 
My parents were probably upstairs or something. I have no idea why I was watching that, I wasn't allowed to watch television at all except with my parents between 8 and 10, or between 6 and 7 with my brother.
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yep. Saw that.
 
@MattЭллен You always seem to conveniently take a nap when you're supposed to be bearing the shame for your compatriots.
 
And there's pretty good support for the gamepad.
 
7:44 PM
@KitFox I enjoyed all of those games. But the older games are not likely to work well, and have really dated graphics.
 
@Robusto it's a talent
 
So anyway, I wouldn't be too afraid of shocking your children, and anything other than shock can be countered by a good upbringing/education. But then I don't know what happens if they're really really young, so...
 
I'm not afraid of shocking my kids. I'm afraid of turning them into amoral leaders.
Plus, that would be a really, really lame way to turn my children into ruthless psychopaths.
 
Feb 8 '12 at 16:08, by Robusto
@MrShinyandNew安宇 I made the mistake of letting my son watch Aliens on TV with me when he was eight. Bad dad. But I honestly didn't remember how horrifying it was.
 
Eight? Wow.
 
7:51 PM
The only thing that saved me was that I told him he needed to go and get his nerf gun. That made him feel safer. And we stuck it out to the end so he could get some kind of closure. I think that sounds weird, but it was the right way out of that mistake.
 
I agree about the closure. He's gotta know how to imagine that he wins.
Jun 18 at 20:10, by KitFox
Speaking of which, in the car a couple of days ago, my almost 3-year-old son says "Mommy, when I'm big enough to be a pirate, I'm gonna kill all these cars with my sword."
 
A natural reaction.
 
I don't know if you were there for that story.
Jun 18 at 20:10, by KitFox
I said, "Why would you do that, honey?"
Jun 18 at 20:10, by KitFox
He says, "Well, because they wouldn't listen to me."
And I thought, it's probably too late already.
 
It was too late when he was nothing but gametes.
 
I've turned my children evil.
 
7:53 PM
When I was a kid my traffic solution was more sophisticated: twin-mounted mini-guns with explosive ammunition.
 
Is there a simple way to return Null as 0 instead in a Count?
0
Q: How return a count(*) of 0 instead of NULL

alamodeyI have this bit of code: SELECT Project, Financial_Year, COUNT(*) AS HighRiskCount INTO #HighRisk FROM #TempRisk1 WHERE Risk_1 = 3 GROUP BY Project, Financial_Year where it's not returning any rows when the count is zero. How do I make these rows appear with the HighRiskCount set as 0?

 
when I was a kid, I'd sit in church and imagine that the elaborate sculptures and decorations behind the altar were actually part of a fortress, and that all the crosses were really cross-bows just waiting to swivel down and fire on the invading hordes.
 
Well, that was quick and useless. Much like sex.
 
Good day, again.
 
Hola.
 
7:57 PM
@KitFox No, it's too early. At age three, a child has innate instincts to be helpful, but hasn't yet gained a sense of when other beings suffer. That's something that comes more like five or six.
 
@KitFox If sex is quick and useless, you're doing it wrong.
 
@Robusto Don't I know it.
 
@KitFox I remember researching that for my foray into the pulpit early this year.
 
I remember reading it.
 
@KitFox what do you mean by this?
 
And the pulling legs off spiders. I was moved by it.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I am counting misses using grouping thusly
Select interventionFK, COUNT(missReasonFK) As TU
From idec_MissedLessons As M
Where missReasonFK = 4
Group By interventionFK
If there aren't any, I want a 0 instead of a null.
I can apply an IsNull to a superselection, but...
 
@KitFox Cool. Then you know (or at least I think I know) that at age 3 or 4, kids are still largely oblivious to the suffering they cause.
 
Yes, I know it, but I don't feel it. The eldest has always been very conscientious.
Oh shit. I was supposed to be somewhere right now. Bye!
 
@KitFox hm. on Oracle, I get zero even if there are no rows in the result: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM DUAL WHERE 1=2 gives 0 and not NULL. On MSSQL it would give null?
on MySQL it gives zero as well.
I don't have any other DBs handy to test.
 
8:18 PM
Since when is any DB handy?
 
@Kit this answer on SO suggests that you can only get a null from SELECT COUNT (in C#) if you forget to read the record from the DB
@Robusto I dunno. I like DBs well enough, when they're behaving.
I just hate DB language designers. SQL is awful and every programming language based on SQL is worse.
 
I hate the hidden gotchas in SQL.
 
Does anyone know what the symbol § means?
 
Segno.
 
I can't google it.
 
8:22 PM
Meaning a sign.
Hmm, well actually I was thinking of this:
 
@Alraxite Section.
 
:"Section break" redirects here. For the term's use in overhead lines, see Overhead lines#Breaks. In books and documents, a section is a subdivision, especially of a chapter. Sections are visually separated from each other with a section break, typically consisting of extra space between the sections. They are a concern in the process of typography and pagination, where it may be desirable to have a page break follow a section break for the sake of aesthetics or readability. In fiction, sections often represent scenes, and accordingly the space separating them is sometimes also called a...
jinx
 
@Alraxite you can wikipedia it though
 
Usually used in citing references.
 
The section sign (§, Unicode U+00A7, HTML entity §) is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section of a document, such as a legal code. It is also called "double S", "hurricane", "sectional symbol", "the legal doughnut", . It is frequently used along with the pilcrow (¶), or paragraph sign. When duplicated, as §§, it is read as the plural "sections" (§§ 13–21), much as "pp." (pages) is the plural of "p." (short for the Latin pagina). The likely origin of the section sign is the digraph formed by the combination of two S'es (from the Latin signu...
 
8:25 PM
I wonder how many times I'd have to use it before it's more usual use is to annoy other people.
 
@MattЭллен OVER 9000 times.
 
@Robusto ha! that's trivial
 
i no rite
 
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm certain something better than SQL would be possible. Better in every conceivable way, in fact.
 
People who use section signs can massage my pilcrow.
Ha, some anonymous user tried to edit a post to replace it's with it is in two places, and to undo an ellipsis with the addition of that. I fried his little hiney down to a nubbin and kicked him out of the queue.
 
8:30 PM
@TRiG yes. but SQL is just one aspect of databases.
 
So the statement, 'in his book "History of mathematical notations", §313 ...' is referring to section 313 of the said book, right?
 
Apparently.
 
Okay, thank you all!
 
@Alraxite Aye. That's how I'd use it, anyway.
 
well, I must be off.
 
8:37 PM
Ta-ta.
@MattЭллен: Why do Brits say "chin chin" as a salutation or farewell? I'm just pondering the etymology of that and not getting far.
 
@Robusto maybe related to "chin up"? I'm not sure
In fact, I don't know
 
Well, but you're a Brit. You're supposed to know this stuff.
 
it must be buried deep in my subconscious somewhere
 
@MattЭллен You're at Oxford, right? Go look it up in the Bodleian Library. I'll wait.
 
@Robusto well, I'll check the OED first
 
8:43 PM
Slacker.
 
Etymology: < Chinese ts'ing ts'ing.
 
So Lord Elgin stole it from the Forbidden Palace or something?
 
must be. Back when the East India were pedalling heroin
 
You can pedal heroin? Like a bike?
 
apparently.
although I might have misspelt peddling
 
8:46 PM
Actually I typed in ts'ing ts'ing.
Why would it tell me it can't find something I didn't ask for?
If I were writing that software, I'd put something a lot funnier in there. Like you type in ts'ing ts'ing and it tells you it can't find douche frijoles or something.
 
This is better: chin-chin.
 
1253!
had the British met the Chinese by then?
 
That was at the end of Genghis Khan's reign, no?
请请
 
8:52 PM
Close enough, anyway.
 
toodle pip!
 
 
2 hours later…
10:42 PM
I rather like SQL.
@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 thanks for that though.
 
11:00 PM
Hi
 

« first day (970 days earlier)      last day (3958 days later) »