Consider feeling fewer angry.

considers

don't listen to the owl

also, good morning!

Good morning.

I got this email this morning:

> Out of curiosity, is the demo site still functioning? If so, whats the web address? If not, that's fine

headdesk

omg, why isn't this closed yet?

I only just saw it.

Look again.

@Robusto hooray!

@JSBᾶngs "Another way for gnomes to say ... hooooooo-raaaaaaaay."

@KitFox gives beautiful flowers

Oh thanks.

with some weird but interesting insects on them

Even better.

and the insects sympathize with your plight

Aww. Best of all.

and the insects are tasty ...?

and some of them are quite delicious, if you're into that stuff—dilemma...

jinx

Jinx!

meta-jinx

I can't believe this guy would ask me about the f-cking demo site after the meeting where we told him it is an incredibly bad idea to do live demos.

Just tell him it's not working right now. It may appear as if it's working, but it has lots of flaws, such as being a demo site.

And after I spent days cleaning screenshots for him.

I replied:

> The demo site is still up, but its integrity is questionable.

Tell him it's all finished and working great, except for one minor defect: you can't see it. It's invisible.

He responded:

> So I am reading don't do it?

And I wrote back "Fucking duh."

But I didn't press the send button.

At least it's not as bad as the time I went to speak to our systems manager, and we had a two hour meeting where I finally got him to agree, in plainly-spoken language, that we needed to do X. By the time I reached my desk, not even 30 feet away from his desk, he had already emailed the company stating that we would be doing Y and not X.

Oh that's awful.

I was furious

The irony of it is that I set up version control yesterday and brought the test and demo sites into sync.

@KitFox cool!

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Understandably so. Did he try to justify himself?

Version control is maybe the second most important tool you can have, after a compiler/IDE. Maybe third most if you count your compiler and text editor separately.

@Kit call him a smeg-mouthed dope-donkey

Great idea!

i got that from chuck wendig just now, and had to share it

@KitFox No. I emailed him back (cc: all) and he replied to-all "let's chat about this later, in person, when you're feeling calmer about this."

Gotta love the Wendigo.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 i.e. "when I'm less afraid that you are actually going to kill me."

@KitFox no, the key was that he wanted to do it in person, so there'd be no record.

What a douche.

I again replied-to-all and said "let's do this in email, so that you can't later deny that we had this conversation." GODS I was mad. even thinking about it now makes me mad.

The nerve of that guy, to tell me to fucking calm down in front of the whole office.

That is pretty insulting.

Sounds like he needed to go back to management class.

Clients are like kids in a mall. They don't listen to a thing you say, they make impossible demands, and they run off in all directions while you're trying to make progress.

I have been debating whether I want to push to take over project management for this project.

@Robusto if ONLY this guy was a client. Clients I can deal with. I slip into my salesman persona and wrap it around me like a cloak. This guy was a coworker.

@Robusto i refuse to watch pink floyd videos

@MrShinyandNew安宇 And one you had to rely on for the sweet stuff, yeah?

@KitFox Hint: project management can be fun but involves no technical advancement on your part.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I think it would lower my blood pressure.

brb

i guess i've been blessed with having competent bosses in almost all places i've worked

Can I come work there then?

sure. send us an application.

I don't suppose I can telecommute?

And really my boss isn't bad, just the project lead. And the big boss has put me in a snit now too.

smeg-mouthed dope-donkey

wait, i meant to paste something else

one small step for a robot, one giant leap towards the robot apocalypse

@JSBᾶngs Is this a religious thing?

@Robusto i've given up pretentious british rock for lent

@JSBᾶngs So I'll take that as a yes.

Don't you love it when an app on your smartphone has an update and the "What's new" text just says "Fixes"? Thanks for clearing that up.

Huh. That never happens on my phone.

And Google makes me agree to the Google Books EULA before I can update any of the seven other apps that are telling me I have updates. If I decline, no updates of anything. Thanks, Google. Here's your new corporate motto: Don't be evil.

@KitFox What phone?

I have a Desire.

But I think I've installed about four apps.

Desire? That's not a phone, it's a streetcar.

You should have bought a phone.

Also, my middle name.

Your middle name is a streetcar too? What is this fixation you have?

I'm just a stardog champion.

Oh, I just had a harrowing experience.

(Which is way better than a winnowing experience, by the way.)

@KitFox That's loser talk.

I went to the vending machines to get a snack and just as I was pressing the button for crackers, I saw Twix bars...

Terrible, I know!

But it turned out OK, because I had another dollar in my pocket.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 You got it.

I like that song

The little one was dancing like a maniac and laughing to this song on Monday.

I'm surprised you know it. You're maybe the third person I've met who's heard of this band

Well, you can't listen to Temple of the Dog without knowing about Mother Love Bone.

@KitFox I dunno. Maybe it was different in the US. Here in Canada most people only knew Pearl Jam.

Since they dedicated the album to What's his name.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh yeah.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 That's probably true here too, but I had a little thing for Eddie Vedder. Then Mother Love Bone was also on the Singles soundtrack.

I wore that CD out.

First time that had ever happened to me.

@KitFox how is that even possible

@KitFox You're not supposed to play those on the turntable.

It developed scratches from being inserted and removed from the player so much, I think.

I always kept it in the case.

Of course, there may have been external forces at work.

I still have that CD. It was the one that finally broke through my hatred of Smashing Pumpkins and turned me into a fan.

I have long suspected that my high school sweetheart did not actually like grunge music.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh right! I forgot they were on that.

@KitFox impossible!

He introduced me to Helmet, Soundgarden, and Tool.

Soundgarden! That's the band I was trying to think of the other day!

@KitFox Of those, I didn't really know or like Helmet, I liked that one album from Soundgarden, and I always wanted to like Tool but they never clicked for me.

Motoring. Laterz.

cya

Bai.

Tool you have to shop through to find the album or songs you like.

I liked Helmet a lot more after I realized that they were a bunch of math geeks.

I "borrowed" a couple tool albums from a friend, and listened to them a lot, but I never really felt like I liked them.

I never liked whole albums of theirs. Just many individual songs.

I guess I like Tool, but not enough to put the CD on.

I also liked the videos quite a bit.

Yeah their videos were pretty good.

And I went to a Tool concert once, and I really enjoyed it.

Although Tori Amos was the best I've ever seen in concert.

Not that I've been to many.

I don't usually go to concerts. I saw Spacehog once in a small club in Toronto. And I went to see Tim Minchin last year.

envy

it was great. everyone there knew all his songs.

Well, for Tim Minchin. I don't know Spacehog.

youtube.com/watch?v=TDkhl-CgETg

I guess it's not true that I haven't been to many concerts. When I was with the drummer boyfriend, he gigged a lot and we hung out with bands all the time.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh those guys.

@KitFox They were the first band I wanted to see when I first moved to Toronto. But it turns out that they were also the last, because I didn't have much time for concerting and my friends didn't like the same stuff as me.

I haven't been to a concert in ages.

It was cool being a rockstar girlfriend, and I kind of miss those days. But not too much.

I was all out of vacation days in 2003 or else I would have gone to SARSStock that summer. 500,000 people at Downsview park, music all day long, capped by AC/DC and the Rolling Stones.

I don't even know what to do with myself today.

Skyrim!

Nah. I'm not at home anyway.

Oh. Uh, learn C#?

Maybe.

I was going to learn Linq, but it looks like it's not going to work well.

I've heard that Linq is very good.

I should probably write a custom control.

Why won't it work? Linq, that is.

Well, I use a lot of dynamic queries, and Linq doesn't do that well.

At least, I don't think it does.

Ah.

@KitFox what's a dynamic query

do you mean a query where the SQL statement is constructed on the fly?

Select stuff From Table Where things = @variable

@MrShinyandNew安宇 More or less, yes.

@KitFox linq should be able to handle this

blog.bvsoftware.com/post/2008/02/27/…

It looks like it can, but not simply. I will look at it more though.

Well, your sample sql that you just posted is probably the most basic use-case that it supports.

For cases when the where clause is constructed on the fly, that is, where more conditions are added to the where clause, it looks like linq can do it pretty much as easily as if you were adding strings together to form an sql statement.

Yeah, but really I am talking about more complicated stuff. I think maybe I should sit down and look at my sprocs again.

You know what I would do? just start using linq for new db access.

leave all your old code in place.

And when you come to a conclusion about which one works better for you, start migrating the other ones as needed. Remember, your existing code isn't broken.

I know, but I want to go back and pretty up some stuff. Like those listviews I have everywhere.

@KitFox front-end pretty-up?

No, code pruning.

OMG, sometimes I am a genius.

Holy crap. Something like 20% of my pages use filtered listviews. I guess that justifies writing a control.

So, @Cerb, seams you were right about the USB port on my monitor.

This new meme seams extremely irritating to me.

Hello :)

I have a question about English language again.

It seams I missed something again.

@Anonymous Some friends who speak.

Thank you @KitFox

Because friends is plural

Teach the man to fish.

Teach the fish to man up.

Nah. I'm allergic to fish.

@KitFox Do you mean you can't eat fish?

Up the fish to man teach.

Teach the man to fish - We have phrase "teach the man to catch fish". Do they have same meaning?

@Anonymous Well, I can eat fish, but it makes me vomit profusely.

@Anonymous Probably.

Ahh I see :)

KitFoxen are to like fish by virtue of their name alone.

@Anonymous The full phrase is "give a man a fish, feed him for one day. teach a man to fish, feed him for the rest of his life."

And there's also "Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Speaking of teaching, where is that @JSB when I need him?

@KitFox right here

I actually wonder, what is there in fish that can make you allergic to it?

Does the second phrase is just for fun?

@Anonymous yes :)

@JSBᾶngs Eep!

It's from Terry Pratchet.

lol.

There are so many different fishen, the only thing they have in common is, I dunno, atoms?

@RegDwightѬſ道 I have no idea. Shellfish makes sense because of the iodine.

PS you should write "Is the second phrase just for fun?"

@MrShinyandNew安宇 oh noes don't remind me of poor Terry.

@KitFox Well, Shellfish allergies are common, and often related to peanut allergies.

And I am allergic to shellfish in the same fashion.

Which technically, I suppose, is not an allergy.

I seem to genuinely be allergic to onions, but I eat them anyway.

@JSBᾶngs I joined two tables in my Linq-to-sql class, and I want to select one column from one table, but have the where clause from the other table. Is that ridiculous?

@RegDwightѬſ道 Allergens.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 And don't forget the dreaded peanut fish, and all the allergies it causes.

@KitFox developing allergies to Linq

is becoming more and more confused by Linq

@KitFox Allergies cause confusion. Also, rashes.

I've given up Linq for lint.

@Robusto (not really to Robusto as he chose to ignore us - right decision, by the way, debating with facts and valid arguments really requires patience – but to others who will read it) “There are your precedents” – Well, I do admit that

Russia might’ve started assassinating people earlier than the USA. It is really quite possible because Russian history about 5 times longer than the history of the USA.

“Putin's murder of Litvinenko happened in 2006” – it’s really funny how in the west people are 100% assured that Litvinenko was poisoned by Putin. I kind of tired to tell people: “Care to show me the proof!” I haven’t seen any

clear proof yet presented by the west that Litvinenko was poisoned by Putin. Don’t get me wrong – I do admit that it might have happened by Putin’s order, however, before passing any

judgment here, the proof is still needed. Another thing that really strikes me here as extremely funny is that the west always remembers that Putin is a “KGB thug” and always forgets that Litvinenko was just one of those “KGB thugs” as well.

Except this thug has sided with Russian enemies – Chechen Muslim terrorists who have killed hundreds of Russian innocent children – while Russia was (and actually still is) waging war against them.

I wonder how the USA treats its defectors, especially during the war time.

“Stalin had Trotsky assassinated in 1940” - And another thing that is also funny is how they put the equality sign between “Russia under Putin” and “Russia under Stalin”. My grandpa was captured by the Germans in the very end of WWII.

wjw

tl;dr

When the war was over he was sent to a prison in Siberia for the simple reason because he was captured by the Germans – that was one of Stalin’s order forbidding people being captured.

the only thing worse than american politics is russian politics

My grandpa was released only after Stalin’s death, so he spent 8 years in prison. He is 92 years old now. He hates Stalin to the uttermost. The stories that he told me about that time are just damn terrible.

@KitFox that is not ridiculous. it should be straightforward, actually

However, this time my grandpa was voting for Putin. It seems to me that people in the west don’t realize that if it were Stalin today instead of Putin, then I would be already either shoot dead or in a prison camp.

@JSBᾶngs :)

@JSBᾶngs I wrote a quick join, and that worked, but I can't figure out how to use a variable with it.

@KitFox paste your code?

Dim schoolInfo = From s In db.Schools Join t In db.CurrentPermissions.Where("personPK = @0", Session(PubConstants.USER_ID)) On s.schoolPK Equals t.schoolFK _
                        Select s

Which is not right, but I can't figure out where to put the Where.

Dim schoolInfo = From s In db.Schools Join t In db.CurrentPermissions On s.schoolPK Equals t.schoolFK _
                        Where t.personPK = 9 Select s

This is the one that worked fine.

visual basic?!

Dude. You know I program in VB.

yes, but i don't

I can do it in C# if that helps.

it shouldn't matter

What do you use then?

C#

Dim schoolInfo = From s In db.Schools Join t In db.CurrentPermissions On s.schoolPK Equals t.schoolFK _
                    Where t.personPK = Session(PubConstants.USER_ID) Select s

does that work?

@JSBᾶngs No, it doesn't like that.

That was the first thing I tried.

what error does it give you?

Hang on, I'm getting it for you.

> Method 'System.Object CompareObjectEqual(System.Object, System.Object, Boolean)' has no supported translation to SQL

aaaaaaah

what is the type of t.personPK?

Oh, wait.

Ha. Bloody typing.

Thanks. I think we had a brain jinx there.

That's fixed it. Hmm. I am cautiously optimistic about the amount of space I could save using Linq.

Also, my co-worker said they had used it before and it made their pages faster.

I am not sure why they are using bare query strings now.

so... i fixed it? yay?

I think we both fixed it simultaneously.

Yay, thanks!

yay! clearly we are awesome

You enhance my internal processing capability.

For that, I am eternally grateful.

Enough with the flirting already.

What? We're just stroking each other's egos. That's not remotely flirting.

There, you have summoned a unicorn. Are you happy now? Are you happy now?

Yes!

claps hands

Thought so.

Just don't operate the door after midnight.

You can toggle it though.

@RegDwightѬſ道 I suppose there's no point in continuing to fight Aksala now?

Um. Lemme check!

@RegDwightѬſ道 Yes. I never seem to be able to find the toggle, though, so I just use the knob.

You're such a knob.

Yeah, new active war.

Empty deck! I haven't seen that in ages.

You can easily construct one yourself to look at it as often as you wish.

Hello everyone!

Helloes.

These phrases are going to sound awkward to you, but I really need some help. I am proofreading and correcting something.

Is it the Bible?

The phrase I'm looking at starts with "It is shown that the considered system ..."

This sounds a bit awkward to me

So it is the Bible.

"It is shown that the system under consideration..."

Sounds like a typical abstract.

1st question (going for minimal modifications): is it better to say "the considered system" or "the system considered" when this is the subject?

@KitFox Thanks!

@RegDwight Yep, it's the abstract

@RegDwightѬſ道 Hi!

Hies.

I was trying to catch up, but there's too much code and politics cluttering our transcriptses.

@aediaλ Some of us are developing allergies already.

Sorry.

I'll go get lunch. That will make it all better.

Not if you have peanut fish.

Selfish shelf-ish shellfish.

@KitFox Otherwise, is "the system considered" okay as well? "the system [that is being] considered". The thing ends in "under ... conditions", isn't that too much under? The abstract wasn't written by me, but I want it to be clear ... and not sound too weird.

Huh. @Cerberus seams to be right about my front USB port having its seams go to the left.

@Szabolcs Why don't you post the whole sentence?

@KitFox Whoa! Aksala => Alaska! mind = assploded

Because I feel awkward. Yes, I know that is stupid.

@KitFox "It is shown that the system under consideration exhibits partial synchronization under unexpectedly general conditions."

@Szabolcs Are you this shy in the doctor's office?

Fortunately it's been a while since I needed to visit the doctor.

@Szabolcs The considered system demonstrates partial synchronization under unexpected general conditions.

Or the system considered.

Or maybe "the system considered partially synchronizes even under unexpectedly general conditions."

Thanks

I hate it that even after so many years I still feel so limited when I need to use English

I am not sure exactly what you are trying to say, but that is shorter. I would consider dropping "considered" anyway, since you are talking about "the" system.

Even though I use it daily.

"Under consideration" is ok but in this context to me sounds slightly more like it's in the running for something, like it's under consideration for purchase, so that's not what you want

@Szabolcs Technical writing is difficult even for native speakers.

Also, it's so much more difficult to correct an awkward sentence than to write a non-awkward one from scratch, isn't it?

Meh. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

@KitFox I agree I like just "the system" if "considered" isn't important"

What are "unexpected general conditions" anyway?

Yeah that was my next question - how are these conditions unexpected(ly) general?

@KitFox You know, for the past few years I needed to speak English daily. After a while it didn't improve my English any more, it just made me immune to mistakes. I don't usually talk to native speakers.

@aediaλ Right. It's kind of like saying "the system that we are talking about."

After a while you just go for being understood ...

@Szabolcs You could refer to "the system in question" ...

Well, we can correct you if you like, but we have plenty of non-native speakers here, so you shouldn't feel awkward about asking questions.

Thanks :-) Let me finish proofreading this, I want it to be submitted tomorrow.

And I was getting some lunch. BBL

I should start reading in English again. That usually improves my English a bit.

For those living in a country where Spotify is available: open.spotify.com/album/5UyhRMvDUSmLcbRb7VMlMN :-)

A painting is hung on the wall but a convict is hanged for his crime. Correct?

Funny how these words change.

@Szabolcs That's right.

@Szabolcs pleasantly surprised

You might wonder how that's related to my paper :D

Nope.

:P

Don't worry, I have hung, not hanged :D

@Szabolcs But a convict may be well hung and well hanged at the same time.

rolls eyes

@MrShinyandNew, @aedia: D'oh! Quite handy, huh?

Well, I'll be. I can just convert all my existing everything over to Linq.

I can even call sprocs with it.

!ih

Hello