Tavern on the Meta - 2010-12-23 (page 4 of 5)

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7:00 PM

Being on the phone this long really makes me tired, heh.

Theorem: It's possible to write a universal regex to match any natural multiple of a number n in base b iff n is a prime multiple of a power of b...

Rebecca Chernoff

I still wonder when I became the SO punching bag. (;

Surely someone else is better suited.

@RebeccaChernoff You are? I thought you and Michael Mrozek just had a long-standing feud for no apparent reason :p

In true SO fashion, there should really be nominations and voting for the punching bag.

Rebecca Chernoff

He just wrongly thinks unix.se > wa.se

7:04 PM

Ah.

Rebecca Chernoff

(:

Hi

@RebeccaChernoff Well, since I'm a member of WA.se and not one of Unix.se, I guess the only logical conclusion is that you're right anyway. ;)

'Ello @Fosco

Does anyone know why Scrum is called Scrum?

To anger me. Silly terminologies that are supposed to be taken seriously are dumb. :P I think it had something to do with rugby somehow though, I looked it up once to try and lessen my annoyance, but it didn't help much.

7:08 PM

Because in a real scrum, you link arms, butt heads with the opposing team, and try to kick the rugby ball backwards. I'm just having a hard time applying the analogy to software development.

Yeah, I didn't get it either :P

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scrum.svg

Hahahah

Aww, no SVG love.

user image

this is such a weird Christmas for me.. freedom is so close at hand, but there's still quite a bit of awkwardness to deal with yet.

7:12 PM

Ah, yeah :/

I need a nap

Me too.

I need an island in the Caribbean.

I hope we all get our wishes.

@MichaelMyers bleh i burn too easily

but you know being given ownership of canada wouldn't be so bad

i could have all the maple syrup i want

Fresh maple syrup is pretty delicious, yes.

7:24 PM

would take Canada if offered to me...

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@TylerChacha Nice answer!

hmm maybe england though ... wouldn't have to invest in camera's to watching the plebs

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Bah, just as I was about to say hello to @Fosco, he leaves! LOL

@The: wb

how was the meeting?

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Good. Pre-vacation wrapup

Going to roll out the new version of our product to a customer, and then slack off the rest of the day ;-)

I get 4 days off and I am psyched :-)

7:29 PM

nice

has 2:30 left this year (off from tomorrow through Jan)

@TheUnhandledException Thanks

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@TylerChacha I wish I had an answer with >100 upvotes!!

@The: most of us do (My highest is 25)...

So how many people are off today?

my next highest is like 30 or so

<--

7:31 PM

So how many people that have jobs are off today?

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@MichaelMyers Last day for me, until Tuesday

@MichaelMyers Curse You!!!

@TheUnhandledException Huh. Several people I know have today off, but you're the first I've heard with Monday off.

oy

@MichaelMyers LOL

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7:34 PM

@MichaelMyers It's been a hell of a month for us, Monday was a bonus from our CEO

very nice...

Our office always closes the week between Christmas and New Years... It's an awesome perk that we're not willing to give up...

My brother's place had today off, plus yesterday was their holiday party so he only had to show up from 10 to noon or so.

I get tomorrow and the 31st off.

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@ircmaxell We did last year. We're not this year which is why in part we got Monday off

Ahhh, that sucks @the...

then again, at least you have a job...

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This is true!

7:39 PM

Soo close, yet so far (only 4 more upvotes needed for my gold in PHP)...

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@ircmaxell What's an answer you're particularly proud of?

Hrm... let's see

In terms of pure dirty abuse of the language:

@TheUnhandledException Don't do anything you'll regret. :P

10

A: Cast the current object ($this) to a descendent class

Casting to change the object's type is not possible in PHP (without using a nasty extension). Once you instantiate a object, you can't change the class (or other implementation details) anymore... You can simulate it with a method like so: public function castAs($newClass) { $obj = new $ne...

Holy s**t, it even works on chat. Trying to get Comcast to send me an HD box so I can use an HDMI cable (need it for my Google TV, has no other inputs)... they won't do it unless I pay more for HD TV service (which I don't need, I'm happy with my channel lineup)...

I tell the chat person "I guess I'll have to return my TV or switch to Verizon."

boom, they are shipping me an HD box for free :x

7:42 PM

Hahah

Nice @DanGrossman

In terms of good info:

7

A: PHP Framework Benefits / Downfalls

Copying part of my answer from another question on the same topic: What you need to look at is the tradeoff. Frameworks sacrifice a little performance for the ability to reduce development time significantly. What's more important to you, raw unadulterated performance or reasonably rapid develop...

user image

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@ircmaxell +1 for black magic :-)

@Dan: Nice, one line. Not even skipping a heartbeat...

@The: the sad part about that one, is that it actually works pretty dam well (I compiled in runkit just to try it)...

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@ircmaxell LOL, I had already read and upvoted that :-)

7:45 PM

@DanGrossman The chat on their end probably starts flashing red and sounding sirens whenever Verizon is mentioned, as a clear sign they should immediately bend over backward for you. :P

2

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@ircmaxell I have a similar trick which I think I needed to use once

It serializes and does a str_replace, very very ugly

@the: yeah, I've seen things like that before...

Unlike my "not resolved, not helpful" rating last week, this chat gets a "resolved, very helpful" rating

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@DanGrossman That is awesome

she really couldn't have upgraded me to HD even if she wanted to, commercial accounts arent mutable by normal reps... but she CAN send me free hardware ;)

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7:46 PM

@MichaelMyers Never. I only upvote answers based on the merit of the answer

Unless it's on Meta -- in which case FHC rules ;-)

@DanGrossman Yey for free hardware! \o/

lol

That reminds me, I need to call optimum and swap out one of my cable boxes (to get an HDMI as well, but it's free for us)...

That's weird... It says 1k upvotes now, but I only got 3 more (so I should be at 999 ). But I'll take what I can get. Thanks!

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Rounding error probably :-)

Perhaps it thinks that since 0.99999 === 1 (assuming infinite 9's), 999 === 1000...?

Rebecca Chernoff

I'm off today! (;

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He said, "how many people that have jobs are off today" ;-)

7:57 PM

I'm...on a 4+ hour phone call...again. :p

Hahah ;)

@RebeccaChernoff What happened to your job? I think I missed something.

She decided to upgrade, apparently.

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23 hours ago, by Rebecca Chernoff

It feels weird to be excited about being unemployed.

@TimStone Ouch... That sucks (and here I was thinking a 1 hour business call was painful)...

Well, depending on how the unemployment came about, I think I might be excited too.

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8:00 PM

I was on a conference call Tuesday that had no purpose whatsoever that I could tell

@ircmaxell Unfortunately this is a fairly typical experience, heh

That sucks...

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It was set up by a client of ours, between us and a vendor we already had spoken to and worked with, so the client could tell the vendor all about us... but the vendor and us already had a relationship, LOL

@MichaelMyers Yeah from what I hear she's moving up in the world! And as an added bouns has some time off between the two jobs

I hate when they make me sit in on an entire call because I need to answer 1 question at the beginning...

@TheUnhandledException I got on a conference call with the vendor that this organization is using to implement our software the other week, and the organization didn't show up, so we talked to the vendor for 15 minutes and then it was done.

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8:02 PM

@ircmaxell Likewise. I hang out in this chat when on calls like that

"Just come get me if you need me"...

Rebecca Chernoff

LOL at that tiny detail about having a job.

@The: they make me sit in the conference room with everyone else... So I can't even pretend to do something useful...

Hm, everyone else on the phone is taking note. Maybe I should consider that sometime. :P

Rebecca Chernoff

Perhaps.

8:04 PM

....Nah.

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@ircmaxell I have the advantage of normally working from home :-D

I never take notes. Never have (not even in school). If I pay attention, I'll know the material without notes. If I don't pay attention, notes will never help me. So I just take the easy road and don't take them...

@TheUnhandledException cue theme from The Jeffersons

@ircmaxell Me too, heheh

@TheUnhandledException Well, I could if I wanted to, but since I'm the only IT person in this office, if something breaks people would need to call me and i'd need to drive in. So I just stay home when I really want to...

Is it just me, or is the Col getting a bit touchy here (I don't care about the -1 at all, just seems a bit pendantic to me):

4

A: Quickest Way to Read First Line from File

Well, you could do: $f = fopen($file); $line = fgets($f); fclose($f); (It's not one line, but if you made it one line you'd either be screwed for error checking, or be leaving resources open longer than you need them, so I'd say keep the multiple lines)... Edit: For a one liner (I know it's s...

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8:10 PM

@ircmaxell What an asshole comment:

> @Jonah it's for the lame one-liner. This site being exceptional source of bloated code, and both this this lame question and answer are perfect example of it – Col. Shrapnel 3 mins ago

He's normally pretty good, but seems a bit on edge... Is it hard to see that the one-liner I posted was in jest?

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I know. I clearly could.

How can you improve on that? "One liner", whatever, sometimes it takes three good lines

I mean aside from this one:

3

A: Quickest Way to Read First Line from File

$firstline=`head -n1 filename.txt`;

Which is cute, but not really a better method

Well, I liked it. Obviously there are limitations with it. (Agree it's not a "best" method)

hi

I think he was referring to taking the "one liner" from me serious which obviously is not a good idea (error reporting, maintainability, etc)

8:14 PM

Anyone know what my "SSH key" for GitHub should be? I'm setting it up now.

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@Moshe ssh-keygen in terminal

It should be your username @Moshe

:-P

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then cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub

Huh?

I'm not sure what an SSH key is, honestly.

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ok nevermind maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about :-)

@Moshe Do you know what SSH is?

8:16 PM

pkeck.myweb.uga.edu/ssh

Secure Shell or SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices. Network Working Group of the IETF, January 2006, RFC 4252, The Secure Shell (SSH) Authentication Protocol The two major versions of the protocol are referred to as SSH1 or SSH-1 and SSH2 or SSH-2. Used primarily on Linux and Unix based systems to access shell accounts, SSH was designed as a replacement for Telnet and other insecure remote shells, which send information, notably passwords, in plaintext, rendering them susceptible to packet analysis. Th...

Public-key cryptography

Public-key cryptography is a cryptographic approach which involves the use of asymmetric key algorithms instead of or in addition to symmetric key algorithms. Unlike symmetric key algorithms, it does not require a secure initial exchange of one or more secret keys to both sender and receiver. The asymmetric key algorithms are used to create a mathematically related key pair: a secret private key and a published public key. Use of these keys allows protection of the authenticity of a message by creating a digital signature of a message using the private key, which can be verified ...

I got that much - barely

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@Moshe Do you know what SSH is? Have you used it before?

So, when you create a key, you're creating 2, one public (to give out) and one private (to keep to yourself). Anywhere you give your public key you should be able to login to securely

But never under any circumstances let your private key out of your sight

So I'm trying to set up GitHub.

GitHub: You must have at least one SSH public key to push your git repo to GitHub.

Me: ??? Oy.

0

Q: What should my GitHub SSH key be?

I'm gettings started with GitHub and I have no clue what I'm doing. What is an SSH key? What should I be setting as my key?

version-control github ssh svn

Ok, this is starting to get out of hand now

8:20 PM

@ircmaxell Eh, he's like that frequently

> @Josh don't try to look more stupid than you are. try to read comments before writing it – Col. Shrapnel 3 mins ago

@ircmaxell - what?

@TimStone - You know about SSH Keys?

I started writing a Festivus 'Airing of Greivances' post earlier.

Uhh depends on what you want to know about them.

@Moshe: What are your questions specifically?

8:20 PM

What does GitHub want in that box?

Where do I get the key from?

But now it would just look like I was trying to be funny :P

Do I make it up?

Ok.

Are you using Linux? or Windows? or OSX? (for you computer)

I'm on OSX now

@mootinator We like funny. :P

8:21 PM

You don't make it up, you generate it

My primary machines are Snow Leopard

Okay, how so?

help.github.com/mac-key-setup

Follow that.

@TimStone Right, I was just trying to be funny. There's another word I was looking for.

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@ircmaxell I was going to make some smart-alek reply but it's not worth it

@the: Nope, that's why I just said it was meant to be in jest, and left it at that....

8:23 PM

@ircmaxell - Thanks. I already have a question though. I'm an Apple Developer, so there's bound to be a key pair already, from my developer account

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@Moshe No, not unless you created one

I'll ask again, have you ever used SSH @Moshe?

Well, do you have one (check your ~/.ssh/ folder for something that looks like id_rsa.pub)

No

ok

hang on

@mootinator Ah, gotcha...I think.

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OK. Then you'll need to create one with the ssh-keygen terminal command

8:24 PM

I'm amused by this username:

Java_for_the_university's_sake, Norway

11 3

java ssl https web-applications language python point

Erm, no .ssh folder, apparently

I guess not.

@Moshe: Think of it this way: When you generate keys, you're generating two of them. The private one has the ability to unlock, and the public one to lock. So when you give out the public key to someone else (github in this case), you're telling them how to lock (encrypt) your data. Unless someone else has your private key, nobody else can unlock it...

So, if you don't have them already, you need to generate one. Hence the steps on that page...

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@Moshe won't show up in FInder, in terminal type: ls -l .ssh

or: cat .ssh/*pub

@TheUnhandledException - I looked in terminal @ircmaxell - Ah, I'm following those instructions

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ok, sorry :-) I'll leave you in @ircmaxell 's capable hands, too many cooks and all that

8:28 PM

@ircmaxell What file should my key be stored in?

@The: I'm unfamiliar with OSX, so your comments are quite appropriate (and useful)

@TheUnhandledException - No, don't go, glad to have you here.

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Ok Cool :-)

@Moshe: it's a flat file. It just has a bunch of binary data in it...

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Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere

8:29 PM

@ircm So I name it whatever I want?

accept the defaults

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it will be called "id_rsa.pub" or "id_dsa.pub" by default

and will be located in ~/.ssh/

passphrase?

also blank?

when you run ssh-keygen, just accpet all the defaults (with the exception of passphrase, add one)

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@Moshe this you'll type every time you use your key

8:29 PM

it's a password to unlock the private key

erm, too late, empty

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OS X will offer to add it to your Keychain

@Moshe you can change it later using ssh-keygen

ok, cool

Well, you can re-generate a new key after this...

I don't care for the security right now, i am not working on anything important.

I just wanted to try SVN for some web development.

8:31 PM

@Moshe: Do worry about it now, since you're not depending on it now. That way you don't even need to think about it later...

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To change it I think it's: ssh-keygen -p

I actually just overwrote it with a passphrase.

Ok, so you've generated the key?

yea

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now you can see the public key with: cat ~/.ssh/*.pub

8:33 PM

according to the dircetions, I need to copy it to the clipboard (done) and then add it to GitHub

or copy it to the clipboard directly with $ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy

@ircmaxell - did that

Now I paste it in to the GitHub box, yes?

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@ircmaxell +1 for pbcopy

sweet

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I love pbcopy

8:33 PM

@The: it was on the tutorial link I posted, I have no idea what it is

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copies stdin to the clipboard

$ pbcopy
-bash: pbcopy: command not found

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Paste Board COPY

OS X command :-)

:-P

ok, whatever, it seems to have gone through

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8:35 PM

       pbcopy, pbpaste - provide copying and pasting to the pasteboard (the Clipboard) from command line

SYNOPSIS
       pbcopy [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}]

       pbpaste [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}] [-Prefer {ascii | rtf | ps}]

DESCRIPTION
       pbcopy  takes  the  standard  input  and  places  it in the specified pasteboard. If no pasteboard is specified, the general pasteboard will be used by
       default.  The input is placed in the pasteboard as ASCII data unless it begins with the Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file header or the Rich Te…

okay cool.

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@Moshe Welcome to passwordless SSH, one of my favorite features of *nix :-D

Now i need to create s repo

@TheUnhandledException - i added a pwd already, lol

has been debating trying out smart-card authentication in the office...

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@Moshe Ah, but that password is only ever used by your local computer

8:36 PM

Oh, okay

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See, you may have 100 servers you connect to with 100 different passwords. Using the key you just created, you can connect to any of those servers using no password at all, just the key

cool

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And you can store the password you did create in your OS X keychain, so when you authenitcate to OS X< you essentially can then authenticate passwordless to any SSH site

Which is why it's so important to protect your private key as much as possible

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Great for a sysadmin like me

8:37 PM

Now how do I make my website into a "repo"?

$ yum search pbcopy
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
No Matches found

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@ircmaxell It's OS X specific :-D

@The: I wish Windows had some kind of key based authentication. It sucks having to memorize 20+ character passwords that change every few months...

$ apt-cache search pbcopy
-bash: apt-cache: command not found

I just thought of a gotcha!

Using Github for a website is a bad idea because I have passwords stored in the source files - db and stuff

Uh oh?

Yes @Moshe?

Yes, you don't want to store that in a public repository

8:40 PM

Yeah, hard-coding passwords and then committing them in public is probably a bad thing.

So either ignore those config files, make them environmental variables, move them out of the version root, or something, but don't check them in...

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@Moshe Just omit the config file from the repo. You do have a separate config.php file right?

@TheUnhandledException - Yea, I was thinking of that

181

A: Confessions of your worst WTF moment

I shipped my administrator password for an FTP site inside an open source project I was working on. ;)

$ man pbcopy
No manual entry for pbcopy

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8:41 PM

@MichaelMyers I committed half my laptop's password to subversion because I typed it into a source code file by mistake last week...

> "Have you changed your password after the incident" --- No, but I have :D – Jonas Kölker Jun 7 '09 at 3:57

I commit passwords all the time. To my private SVN repo...

@TheUnhandledException I believe that qualifies you to be a program manager at Microsoft.

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@ircmaxell This was my company's repo and it was my laptop's login password =o

That's not good

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@MichaelMyers I then came and bragged about my stupidity to this very room

to the amusement of @TimStone and @RebeccaChernoff

8:44 PM

I posted my skype password into the gaming.SE chatroom

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@balpha insert coin ?

I've done that with chat prompts that steal focus... I'd be typing the admin password into RDC, and our internal chat would open and steal focus and type into there instead....

I don't remember pointing and laughing....

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@TimStone No. Just laughing ;-)

:P

@balpha The game was "Impersonate balpha"?

8:46 PM

Is a private repo worth it?

@TimStone was a pretty hard game, though, because a) I deleted it pretty quick, b) changed my Skype password, and then c) told people it was my Skype password

@balpha - THAT explains why Skype went dow yesterday!

@Moshe no, that was for lack of giga-mega-super-duper-nodes

/ Right

@balpha Well, everyone likes a challenge. I probably would have been thrown off course though, assuming naturally that it was the secret password @RebeccaChernoff is given to access locked SO features.

8:50 PM

Actually, I've got a neat system setup on my servers. The web roots for each site is a simple svn checkout. Then I have a cron running hourly doing an svn st to see if anything change (and if so it sends me an email alert). That way if anyone makes a change to production I know (or if there was a compromised)...

Anyone know how to exclude a file from a git commit?

(the initial one)

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Sorry, I'm a subversion guy

@TheUnhandledException - Any public SVN sites? I just need version control of sorts and I can't set it up on an internal server.

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who just rolled out a software update to a customer and it broke the site horribly

8:55 PM

ouch

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@Moshe Not that I know of, but I will reserach and get back to you

ok thanks

reserach? ;-)

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sorry site problems mean more typos on chat ;-)

ok np, gl ;)

@ircmaxell of course if someone makes a change to the working directory, they probably won't have a problem to make SVN ignore the changes one way or the other

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8:58 PM

oh. it wasn't finding the fonts directory because I moved it in this release, HA!

@balpha: Except that the svn branch is set to reject any commit not from a merge from the beta branch for that site (via pre-commit hooks)...

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ok well the upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1a of my software is certainly not very smooth, LOL

clearly I have found an area that needs some work :-)

@ircmaxell then I'll just delete the full contents of the directory and do a svn co svn://evil.com/screw_ircmaxell/trunk .

2

Well, sure, now that you know about it...

runs to change the implementation details

maybe you even do me the favor and automatically pull the updates :)

9:03 PM

(and that also implies that you gain high enough permissions to do that. Trust me, the user the web server runs as doesn't have it)...

I believe you. Just saying that your svn status email isn't really a security feature :)

Well, it's protection against script kiddies...

Ugh

If someone who knows what they are doing comes, all bets are off (then again, they would be anyway, so it's just one more hurdle to step over)...

@balpha: I can't stop laughing over that svn repo. Nice one there...

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OK. Whew, aside from failing to convert fonts to the new format, upgrade was smooth. Yey!

I like it when issues are minimal

9:10 PM

125

A: Confessions of your worst WTF moment

I worked for a large bank and added an error message to a piece of code that the application should never have been able to reach (theoretically)... One Monday morning the unthinkable happened. The error message was proudly displayed on over 10,000 monitors across 1800 branches, and would return...

Anyone know how to copy my directory into a a git repo?

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I think you want to check in?

That's what you'd do in subversion, either add and commit, or import

I thin k i got it, lemme see

9:27 PM

"Tea, Earl Grey, Hot." says Dan before pressing the "brew" button on his Kureg single cup coffee machine.

My biggest WTF moment was while debugging a power supply on a old disk array.

It was a dual 600 watt PS designed for SCSI arrays.

Continue!

I had the protective cover off, and was hitting different points with a volt meter and an oscilloscope trying to figure out why it wasn't staying stable. While holding the chassis with one hand, I probed a connection next to an unshielded high voltage rectifier (400v DC)

sure enough, I brushed my palm against the rectifier, and got 400v DC across the arms

:x

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OUCH

9:30 PM

Next thing I know, someone is shaking me awake

aparantly I had screamed at the top of my lungs and fell onto the floor (thank god I was standing)

I remember the tightness in my chest from when I first hit it, but nothing else

(Oh, and after I got up, my chest felt like it was on fire for the next few hours)

I got lucky. Both that it didn't kill me, and that someone was reasonably close by...

Lesson: Always wear rubber gloves when testing live equipment...

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You are very lucky dude

Something wrong with me that I started thinking about who you could sue as soon as you started telling the story

lol... Myself for being an idiot. There was a protective cover over the PS. I took it off...

Oh, and once I got hit, it fixed the PS somehow (It worked perfect from then on)... Fate does have a weird sense of irony/justice...

Wow... 400V is pretty substantial.

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@DanGrossman He should sue them for not having a warning label telling him not to take the protective cover off!

9:38 PM

Well, the voltage isn't the bad part. It's DC. When you touch AC, your muscles spasm, increasing your chances of letting go. When you touch DC, your muscles contract, increasing your chances of holding on (of course depending on the exact circumstances)...

(I've had enough electricity through me to actually understand the nuances, it's sad really)...

@The: Of course it had a warning label. It just didn't have an idiot detector built into the locking mechanism for the cover...

I was more thinking of the employer or something

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Then you should sue them for not having a warning label that said, "WARNING: Read the warning label. We put it there for a reason!" ;-)

for not having some checklist that would force you to turn off the power and use protective gear

I've only had a telephone ring surge through my body.

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Like the buckets that have labels that say, "Don't place your baby in these"

9:40 PM

Fortunately, the voltage on those is periodic, rather than continuous.

Cause there's no way I was going to be able to let go otherwise.

really?

i wouldnt think there is much going on in a phone line

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me neiher

just enough power to light up the buttons on an analog phone

The ring on old telephones had to be powered by the line.

So, it's still quite strong to this day.

About 75V/25Hz AC

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Ouch

9:44 PM

Yeah, but do you know why it's so high?

(hint: it has nothing to do with the ringer)

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As a deterrent to people who would mess with the lines? ;-)

@ircmaxell Then I don't know.

Well, in the old days of mechanical switches the contacts would carbon up after a while operating at low voltage (the nominal voltage required to run the phones). So they made the ringer high enough to burn off any bad connections. By doing this every ring, the switches never really required maintenance

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that's fascinating

obviously it's not really an issue in today's age of digital circuits, but they kept the voltage for backwards compatibility and the few pieces of legacy hardware that still require it

(My father was an engineer for AT&T between the 60's and 80's, so he has a lot of insight into why things are the way they are today. You'd be surprised how much is a hold-over from the things they learned operating telegraph lines)...

9:49 PM

Some day we'll be able to tear down all the phone systems since it'll all be going over IP. Then I worry about how much we're running on the internet -- how much we'd lose if it was attacked/broken! Then I think about how the phone system is still here and running after all this time...

Yeah, it's amazing... How they multi-plex and did inteligent routing in the days of mechanical switching...

Some of those bell-labs engineers were way ahead of their time...

The Unhandled Exception

OK final meeting of the day, then I am FREEEEEE!!!!
BBS

Oh, and as far as the power supply was concerned, I was quite curious as to why a 120v appliance would have 400v DC inside it. I reverse-engineered the circuit afterwards, and what they did was quite odd

120v AC was up transformed to ~~ 400v AC. That 400v AC was rectified to DC, and passed across a large bank of capacitors. Then it was inverted to 400v AC at around 10khz as a square wave. Then it was transformed down to 12v AC which was rectified and passed across a smaller set of capacitors... The resulting 12v DC had almost no discernible ripple at all. Extremely clean (less than +- 0.001 v as best I could tell all the way up to the full 600 watt load), especially built in the 80's...

The Unhandled Exception

Well client wasn't available... I guess they left early. I was working all day to release this new version for them and they left. LOL

I guess that means my Christmas vacation has officially begun!

lol, that's always how it works, isn't it!?

The Unhandled Exception

9:56 PM

True that

has been powering down all the portable equipment prior to locking it up

not happy about coming in next week to change the tapes... But it has to be done...

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