The Whiteboard

Jimmy Hoffa

1:34 AM

@WorldEngineer you like sci-fi and have an interest in the study of theology; tell me you watch Supernatural?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I've seen maybe one episode

user20683

I might watch it at some point but it's not something I can see with my girlfriend so it's hard to say when.

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm always curious what someone who has actual strong knowledge of the christian biblical history thinks of it

@WorldEngineer Heh yeah, that's rough. I'm lucky like that; neither I nor my wife knew how much she would love Doctor Who and assorted sci-fi until we were together for a while. She struggled through the first season then was hooked. Supernatural she had actually watched before I..

user20683

@JimmyHoffa My girlfriend loves Doctor Who and Babylon 5 and all that but the horror stuff gets to her.

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer Anyway, Supernatural has a lot of stories with angels and demons by name where supposedly the character has a whole biblical story related to them that I know nothing of, am always curious what kind of things about their character I'm missing out on because I don't know the christian history

user20683

1:39 AM

@JimmyHoffa yes and no, a great many of those stories are either from Apocrypha, other early Christian texts or Dante's Inferno or similar medieval works

user20683

there's also a manual of demonology from the 1500s (1600s maybe) that details much of what makes it way into modern retellings

Jimmy Hoffa

And have you studied these texts personally?

Or is that less common as the mythos stuff is largely sidelined as not actually having had much real impact on the theology or history for that matter

maybe I should ask the christanity.SE site, there is one of those right?

Ah I don't suppose I genuinely care a great deal..

user20683

2:13 AM

@JimmyHoffa Biblical Hermeneutics if you want to know about what a particular passage means or its origin. Christianity if you want to know how Baptists read John or why Anglicans sing in strange voices (Gregorian Chant).

user20683

I've not studied most of that stuff personally

gnat

7:33 AM

reviewers beware...

0

Q: Post with down and close vote picked for known good audit?

Post that has been presented as a "known good" audit item is one I voted down and close about two weeks ago (close vote expired). Is the algorithm to pick such items consciously designed to allow posts having down and close votes? I've seen many known good audits but so far these seem to be pic...

gnat

12:25 PM

just found this gem in old MSO post:

1

A: What's wrong with asking if there are any resources that cover a particular topic?

I think it could be migrated to programmers.stackexchange.com, but I think it is not off topic.

gnat

12:35 PM

advice about migration is bad one, see Please stop using Programmers.SE as your toilet bowl — gnat 21 secs ago

Jimmy Hoffa

3:16 PM

@MichaelT did you submit this to daily WTF?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Nope, not I at all, though quite amusing.

Jimmy Hoffa

> "I work for an IT department in a large department store and while scanning through some old code, I ran upon this gem,"

user55340

I worked retail, not department. It had departments, but isn't what one would considered a department store.

user55340

And I can be fairly safely say, thats not likely my previous employer.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I do all my shopping online, I don't know the difference

user55340

3:23 PM

Sears, Target, Macys - those are department stores in the traditional sense.

user55340

I worked at a home improvement store (which would be one department at a department store - each department at my previous employer would be a single isle if in there at all).

user55340

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment with a building open to the public which offers a wide range of consumer goods such as clothing, housewares, furniture and appliances. It typically offers a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in different product categories (known as "departments" hence the name). Department stores usually sell products including clothing, furniture, home appliances, toys, cosmetics, gardening, toiletries, sporting goods, do it yourself, paint and hardware and additionally select other lines of products such as food, books, jewelry,...

user55340

Fairly interesting reading.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT They're all just wal-mart victims in my book

user55340

Under the 'United States' section:

user55340

3:27 PM

> Department stores tend to target different socio-economic and geographic segments:

Jimmy Hoffa

Going to be a cold one for my kid's halloween tonight, but no snow..

There should always be snow on the ground for halloween

user55340

I put on a Santa hat and give out candy canes for halloween. Confuses the kids to no end.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Mine might end up pretty mad when you don't give him a present

user55340

Nephew's birthday (2 years old) is next week... got him a nice dump truck (he's into pushing trucks around).

Jimmy Hoffa

3:44 PM

@MichaelT yeah, nieces and nephews are great. Mine love seeing me so much more than my own kid does heh

user55340

Part of it (I believe) is that I'm always interesting and fun (we do fun things when I'm there). So, I'm an indicator of good times.

Jimmy Hoffa

You really shouldn't indicate good times when they're a multi-day drive away

0

Q: I need help Line 596 coding error

So I am having a problem with my cms coding. It is a database for keeping track of certain people. I need help because an error pops up that says "Notice: Array to string conversion in line 596" Line 596 of templatev3.php (file) $m_query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM mbrlist WHERE sid = '" . $f_...

php cms query

Really, you're going to claim you need help solving an error and just think the error is "line 596" ??

18 hours ago, by Robert Harvey

People who can't troubleshoot their own code also have trouble writing good questions. People who can troubleshoot their code have no use for Stack Overflow unless their question is conceptual, and that's Programmers.

I'll say..

user55340

I just found a method that takes a number, divides it by itself, multiplies the result by 100, and appends the string "%"

enderland

@MichaelT ... by itself?

hopefully it at least checks for /0 :)

user55340

It kind of does.

user55340

3:57 PM

That bug lead me into this class to write some unit tests and refactor it...

user55340

Its a BigDecimal, and it tests vs equals(BigDecimal.ZERO)

enderland

ok maybe I'm missing something but shouldnt that method just return "100%" as a string each time?

seems like an easy refactor

:)

user55340

however, BigDecimal.ZERO is "0 scale 0" while the value "0 scale 2" is not equal to "0 scale 0"

user55340

Its not called anywhere... the refactor will be "delete"

enderland

even more awesome hahahhahahahahahahhaha

user55340

3:59 PM

But yea, a divide by 0 bug lead me into the code... and I'm going to clean it up.

user55340

Its not unit tested at the moment, and I'm going to do some more significant changes to it, so I'm writing unit tests to verify functionality and came across this one.

enderland

I've fallen in love with unit testing honestly

Jimmy Hoffa

4:17 PM

@MichaelT I sware in a previous position I got tired of div zero checks and errors and came up with a way of identifying percentage that never risks div by zero... though further attempts to redivine it have been failures. I'm sure if such exists it's known and online somewhere

@MichaelT My favorite refactoring

enderland

5:42 PM

@MichaelT if you want to play collider games this question of mine would be wonderful - workplace.stackexchange.com/q/15436/2322

user55340

6:09 PM

Had the company halloween party. The CEO dressed up as the marketing person (was rather amusing). Owner dressed up as main character of Breaking Bad. Project manager had a shirt that said "Go Ceilings go!" (a ceiling fan).

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Heh ceiling fan, that's a good pun. We didn't have any comedic costumes, one of my colleagues was luigi, we had a guy as a samurai with wicked mustache and dyed hair, John Snow from game of thrones, and a few others

Oh and Flo from progressive commercials, which was spot on.

user55340

One of the sales guys shares a name with a rock musician (plays in dive bars in Minnesota). Another sales guy went as the rock musician (complete with music).

user55340

Ie: John Smith (sales) and John Smith (rock 'star'). Josh Jones (sales) went as John Smith (rock 'star').

user55340

6:45 PM

@RobertHarvey [le sigh] - there are still holdouts for NPR.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ricardo I appreciate that discussion is necessary to find certain information, but it's explicitly out of the scope of this site to have questions that require such discussion. I removed the second two questions as they can't really fit in site scope. You can undo my edit if you like, but I'll close vote then (my close vote isn't binding, it requires 4 others to agree). Your call, though keep in mind with the one answerable question there's still the possibility that the ancillary info you want will come to light, you just can't illicit it because it can't be authoritatively answered. — Jimmy Hoffa 23 secs ago

@MichaelT Always.

user55340

The validation of the table is a rather reasonable question. Not great, but doesn't get my 'want a discussion' senses tingling.

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT There always will be, so long as you get new users who come from forum environments and jump in without reading the site instructions first, or looking at some other questions and answers.

user55340

There are two sets of problems there - there's the "new user who has a good question and is hesitant" and the "new user who has a poor question and jumps in."

Robert Harvey

I'll never quite understand that attitude, that everything on the Internet works like Facebook, Twitter or a support forum. When I first came to Stack Overflow I was profoundly careful asking my first couple of questions. I was deeply concerned about working within the community's norms, not placing my personal stamp of individuality on it.

user55340

6:57 PM

I'm from the usenet generation... and I remember the strong "lurk first" meme that existed there. I still do it with any community I join. See what is there, whats acceptable and not.

user55340

FAQs were regularly posted on the news groups and people were directed to them.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey It's just the mainstreaming of eternal september. Even the once back-coves of the internet like industry expertise sites such as SO find themselves amok with the folks introduced to the internet 5 years ago, who have no sense of communal norms rather thinking of the internet as a tool of theirs to be treated as they treat their hammer rather than an organism they interact with as they do their dog.

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT That's what I did. I lurked for probably a week before asking my first question.

user55340

It is more challenging with today's generation (I believe) that has been immersed in technology since an early age and things are just "natural"

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa Are DI frameworks intended primarily for large applications, or should you slap one into every application you write?

user55340

6:59 PM

Jan 18 at 18:36, by MichaelT

Pardon my age, but back in the days of usenet it was known and proper for an individual to lurk in a group a bit before diving in. It acquainted a person with the norms of that community and what is and is not accepted. Frequently the FAQ was there and read by all. I am dissapointed that the current generation doesn't follow similar practices... but then I've got a few gray hairs and may just be getting to be an old guy who wants the kids off his lawn.

user55340

Jan 18 at 18:37, by Rachel

@MichaelT Yeah, I'm part of the "younger generation" that grew up online and is used to using the internet to find answers to any question that pops into my head... if I have a question and see a Q&A site that appears to answer questions related to mine, I'll ask my question :)

Yannis Rizos

Didn't get an inbox notification for our latest Meta-q. On the one hand, it's a bug and I should report it. On the other, I'm not sure I want it fixed...

user55340

@YannisRizos you know you've got an answer just simmering in there...

Jimmy Hoffa

Yannis Rizos

I'll wait to see if it's a temp glitch (<- my excuse for not reporting it)

Robert Harvey

7:03 PM

@JimmyHoffa Perhaps I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but see the comments here:

-1

A: Dependency Injection: What point am I allowed to create a new object?

My two cents here: I am refactoring a php application and I am trying to do has much dependency injection as possible You don't state if you are using a dependency injection framework. You definitely should, although they are usually quite small and lightweight, doing DI manually beats th...

@YannisRizos It's probably in your spam folder. :)

Yannis Rizos

That's not a bad idea, the SE inbox could use a spam folder...

user55340

@RobertHarvey Smaller applications don't need DI. Adding it prematurely falls into the YAGNI realm - unless you are building something that will need it in which case, its easier to design it so that later refactorings aren't needed.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey That's better. Yeah I was going to be really surprised to hear that question from you, knowing enough about your design philosophy I could have written those comments for you ;P

Robert Harvey

@MichaelT Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. These young folk... Always over-engineering their applications.

Yannis Rizos

Who went crazy with the comment flags again?

user55340

7:08 PM

@RobertHarvey Its not uncommon to have people 'taught' with patterns... and if you start building it from that, you're going to have something over engineered from the start.

user55340

@YannisRizos Not me this time.

Yannis Rizos

Will decline all of them, and then delete the comments. For science!

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Ah nobody told me we were playing that game again, I always enjoy playing that..

@RobertHarvey The problem is nobody knows where a design sense comes from for sure or how to impart one. I know Paul Graham's an evangelist of the TV melodrama kind, but still: paulgraham.com/taste.html

Chad

@RobertHarvey Back in my day we didnt have no linked lists and forign keys. It was all flat file all the time and we liked it...

Jimmy Hoffa

When people have a good design sense they know how to come up with well-organized nicely extensible approaches that will allow for DI when it's big enough, or not need it by staying small enough. Bad design means people say it's too small to need it, then design it poorly so it grows like crazy and then their design wasn't extensible enough to accept DI later.

user55340

7:12 PM

I'm gonna write a PMD rule for identifying "BigDecimal.multiply(new BigDecimal("1(0)*"))"

Jimmy Hoffa

I think good design is probably 60% experience, 40% magic, and frankly 60% just isn't enough for good software.

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa 20% experience, 20% magic, and the rest is dumb luck.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Reality is a nightmare, living in Greece you should know better than to reveal any of it to people. No wonder you drink so damn much.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa @MichaelT @RobertHarvey

user20683

amiami.jp/top/detail/detail?scode=FIG-KAI-6089

Jimmy Hoffa

7:17 PM

@YannisRizos @RobertHarvey Did I do the right thing with my edit to this Q?

@Ricardo I appreciate that discussion is necessary to find certain information, but it's explicitly out of the scope of this site to have questions that require such discussion. I removed the second two questions as they can't really fit in site scope. You can undo my edit if you like, but I'll close vote then (my close vote isn't binding, it requires 4 others to agree). Your call, though keep in mind with the one answerable question there's still the possibility that the ancillary info you want will come to light, you just can't illicit it because it can't be authoritatively answered. — Jimmy Hoffa 27 mins ago

user20683

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer O man I want to give one of these to my kid so bad now... but in my memory the eye was bigger...no?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa maybe? There's also a Pain Elemental

user20683

store.bethsoft.com/cacodemon-plush.html

user20683

US link

user20683

7:19 PM

:)

user20683

store.bethsoft.com/accessories/pain-elemental-plush.html

user20683

Jimmy Hoffa

I'm wrong, the eye was about that size

@WorldEngineer What's that supposed to be the one that made that chainsaw sound when running up to you and biting you?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I don't recall, I barely played Doom. Heretic was more my thing

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Yes, that's a good edit.

Yannis Rizos

7:41 PM

10K+ link of the day: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46835/…

user55340

For the non-10k'ers - the question includes this picture:

user55340

user20683

I'd have called it "Kernel", it's a cat - the fur which is like an OS - the userspace.

user55340

userspace is fuzzy?

user55340

Of note, skin color of a cat is the fur color too. The white one would have been a turkish van style fur pattern (white body, orange ears, orange tail). The other one is a black cat with white spots.

user55340

7:54 PM

user55340

8:17 PM

Awww... Coffee proposal was closed.

user55340

100

Coffee

Proposed Q&A site for people to share knowledge concerning brewing appliances, modifications, methods, techniques, coffee blends, roasting and grinding. Everything related to the coffee world. Coffee is pleasure and science!

Closed before being launched.

user55340

On the other hand, still going strong for a proposal...

user55340

123

Beer

Proposed Q&A site for beer aficionados and collectors

Currently in commitment.

user55340

Which has an odd overlap with

user55340

1088

Homebrewing (Beer, Wine, etc.) – homebrew.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for dedicated home brewers and serious enthusiasts.

Currently in public beta.

user55340

8:22 PM

(btw, gave all the testers for this release a bottle of wine... I had a bunch of typos in the code being tested (things like 'diver' rather than 'dRiver') and did several "oops" redeployments - including one deployment of the wrong branch to be tested).

user55340

This was the wine - cedarcreekwinery.com/?q=wines/CedarburgSpice

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT A Tom cat

user55340

In my mind, Tom the cat is more the all orange one...

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Nope, that's a Tabby

user55340

8:30 PM

@JimmyHoffa Don't mess with the orange ones, they'll mess you up (see Kitten Huffing).

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT This absolutely needs to go through for one reason: So we can all larf at SE's real toiletbin, Drunk.SE

user55340

0

Q: My "Cider" has the consistency of puree - what to do?

3 weeks ago, I set up a batch of apple to make hard cider. I chopped the apples in a kitchen machine and added yeast. The yeast I put into a smaller batch of the mashed apples before, after ading some sugar there was vissible fermentation (bubbles). For most of the three weeks, I guess the fermen...

fermentation cider

Jimmy Hoffa

That's the SE equivalent of throwing matches at a gas can because while you know what's going to happen, you still want to see it

(not the homebrewing one, that one's actually a great idea and likely to be very succesful I would guess)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa My parents had a turkish van cat named "Sammy" - very nice cat - purred if you looked at him. Generic names were given to the strays that showed up. One of them (an orange tabby) was named "Tom".

user55340

Tom meowed a lot in short meows. All muscle, former house cat (he was socialized) who completely deferred to the house cats when they were outside (even though he could beat them in a fight with three legs tied behind his back). Very nice cat.

user55340

8:38 PM

return totalTime.divide(totalTime, 10, RoundingMode.HALF_UP);

user55340

another "check usage, refactor delete"

Yannis Rizos

9:20 PM

I wonder who's going to moderate this:

69

Moderators

Proposed Q&A site for people building and managing digital communities: moderators, user-relations admins, channel operators, helpdesk, portal creators and consumer advisors — building, maintaining communities and resolving PEBKAC problems professionally.

Currently in definition.

gnat

@YannisRizos what about guys suspended at Physics? They seem to believe that they know enough to teach how to moderate...

-37

Q: Physics is rotting into a bad situation, a request for community manager intervention

Physics Stack Exchange is experiencing the throes of very bad days. Lots of main and key users (compared to the total number of them) have left or are leaving. Examples of the community destruction include, with the leave: Have we lost the necessary critical mass of professional physicists? I...

discussion community

and how to moderate moderators

Yannis Rizos

9:36 PM

@gnat Ron moderating Moderators? That's a FANTASTIC idea!

For those unfamiliar with Ron, see: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/152811/…

user55340

10:11 PM

Whee! Trick or treating... well, I'm sitting on the couch waiting for the kids.

user55340

Got my santa hat on, found candy canes at a local store out already. Ho ho ho, merry halloween.

user55340

> The professional aspect of the site is heavily suppressed, and the site is now converting to a homework-answering site.

user55340

This is what we actively fight on P.SE

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT And winning because industry programmers delight in few things more than telling fresh grads and their ilk to stuff it and get off our lawn

user55340

> You want to know what the problem with Physics.SE is? Most of you don't want to be involved in the dirty, boring parts of running a site, but you'll cheerfully spend all damn day criticizing anyone who is willing to step up and do it.

user55340

10:16 PM

> Tired of lazy homework questions? Then close them. Tired of crackpots arguing endlessly? Down-vote them, and create some guidelines that let you delete such posts / conversations in good conscience. Tired of intelligent, knowledgeable folk leaving? Stop kissing the feet of every loud-mouth who wants a soapbox.

user55340

10:42 PM

Heh, digging in MSO on the inception of TW.SE (@enderland you might like this one)...

user55340

@phwd The Workplace isn't so much a bend of P.SE as it is a recognition of the fact that programmers aren't special and that general workplace/office issues can make for good Q&A on their own. It's not all "let's move our crap to a new site" (that'd be mighty ironic :)); Programmers gets office-related questions that are good questions but have little-to-nothing to do with software development. There's little reason to shoehorn general office questions into Programmers when there's a possibility that more professions can contribute to/benefit from a site of their own. — Anna Lear Mar 7 '12 at 20:00

user55340

A little girl dressed up as Santa Clause just trick-or-treated and was moderately amused/surprised to see another santa.

enderland

hah. I'm still trying to break the collider. but I posted a question which is hard to drop spammy answers into :(

user55340

@RobertHarvey on document import - note that sometimes there may be a patent hidden in the file format (encoding / decoding) that can make it problematic too.

user55340

The .gif is the classic example for this ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_format#Patents )

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