Tavern on the Meta

Shog9

7:00 PM

@bluefeet I meant the fibrous pulp left over from juicing the carrots

bluefeet

@Shog9 ah that makes much more sense

Shog9

(also: picturing y'all with a big ol' roll of duct tape and a bunch of pieces of SEDE laying around)

bluefeet

@Shog9 nope just me pushing update, restart, update, restart, update, restart

tons 'o fun

Jon Ericson

@Shog9 I don't think that's how joins work.

Shog9

if joins don't involve duct tape and superglue, I don't want to know

Adam Lear

7:01 PM

@JonEricson actually, that would explain a lot

Jon Ericson

Outer joins require double-sided duct tape.

bluefeet

As long as they aren't RIGHT that's perfect

Shog9

Full outer join

Jon Ericson

Oh, my outer joins are never right. At least not the first X times I try them.

Tim Stone

@Shog9 That is technically how the magic column lookups work, I suppose

Shog9

7:06 PM

subqueries all the way down

Ano

7:16 PM

@Catija Okay, how many times did I repeat that assertion after you said that? No times; that time was the first. I was just talking about our juicer, not yours.

@Catija For that we have a Vita-Mix, which we do use quite regularly (though not for the purpose heavily advertised at, say, Costco)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer: Could a magic world break the social stagnation of the Early Middle Ages? (Not a technology question) by Coburn Ingram on worldbuilding.SE

Catija

@SmokeDetector why

SmokeDetector

@Catija Body - Position 1315-1320: penis

Travis J

I wish there was a linq based interface for the sede queries

Honestly, who writes plain sql anymore? :P

Catija

A bunch of those people up there, I'd think :P ^^^

Shog9

7:27 PM

@SmokeDetector Position 1315-1320, eh? Never heard it called that before.

@TravisJ github.com/StackExchange/Dapper

Catija

@Shog9 This is the tech Kama Sutra... you haven't read it?

Travis J

@Shog9 Yeah, I am familiar with Dapper and the plain sql nature it uses.

Shog9

So be a Dapper Dan, not a LINQ Louis

Also, Matt Paste is a great name for a noir detective

Travis J

lol

I would rather write a linq library that maps to sede than go through the process of making my self familiar with all of the sql stuff again. But that is just me. Mostly my original comment was a joke, I know that you guys authored Dapper and only use plain sql.

Shog9

Oh, there's still some LINQ lurking

Travis J

7:33 PM

If I wasn't so busy I would have written the library already as freeware.

I guess I should say mostly, I haven't really seen much of the code base.

Only the parts that were made public a long time ago.

bluefeet

@TravisJ what's wrong with plain sql?

Shog9

You can recognize the LINQ bits by the loud cursing when it breaks

Travis J

Nothing is wrong with plain sql

It is just I am a normal sql user verus an epic linq user.

lol

Shog9

See, I always had to write the SQL first and then translate it to LINQ anyway

And I'm terrible at SQL, so that should tell you how irritating I found LINQ

bluefeet

@TravisJ maybe become an epic sql user

Travis J

7:35 PM

Yeah, I am inverse to that. I would just write the linq and tostring the query :P

bluefeet

@Shog9 no, you're not

Shog9

you haven't seen the worst of it then ;-)

Travis J

@bluefeet If I had the time I would love to invest in learning more plain sql. At one point I was at least above average, but that time is long gone.

Catija

People who aren't bad at stuff claiming that they are makes people who are really bad at stuff feel even worse about how bad they are at that stuff :(

bluefeet

@Shog9 I've seen some interesting things though

Shog9

7:37 PM

yes... interesting... I like that euphemism

Currently working on eliminating roughly 100 lines of recursive CTEs that I use for identifying series of votes

...by replacing it with JavaScript

if that doesn't chill the blood

Travis J

Oooh, I like JavaScript :)

I don't understand why everyone got mad about the Pluralsight thing, it gave me a 292 in JS

@Shog9 wait, what?

SEE!

ha

That is one problem with relational designs, building a path from the records is a huge pain. That is why I tried to guid paths before hand in order to prequery them so the build is faster.

bluefeet

7:41 PM

At least I won't yell like Nick

Travis J

Sort of like if you were to give everyone in your family tree a GUID for lineage, and then pulling all those records from every person in the world wouldn't require constant querying, you can build it in memory once it is all pulled at once.

Shog9

@bluefeet silently judging is much nicer ;-P

bluefeet

lol

@SNAFU all done with SEDE

Shog9

@TravisJ In a previous life, I put together a system for aggregating crash reports. I'd analyze the dumps as they came in and store the callstacks in a SQLite DB. Not having the faintest inkling of how to match up callstacks that were partially similar but diverged at some point, I ended up doing partial string matches...

rene

@bluefeet what has changed?

Shog9

7:46 PM

Like, there'd be a column that would represent each function name separated by | or some such, and I'd just lop off the beginning and end of the stack to match and do a LIKE query

bluefeet

@rene windows updates and sql server 2017 was installed

rene

ah, OK

bluefeet

compatibility level hasn't changed on the DBs yet, that will come eventually

Shog9

@bluefeet wait - that mean we get STRING_AGG()?

Travis J

@Shog9 Nice, I mean as long as you have some signal then it works, right? I bet it was a lot nicer to do that than deal with a new round trip for each report.

Shog9

7:47 PM

@TravisJ yeah - as horrible as it was, it saved a ton of time. I built a little dashboard that would tell me which code paths were consistently "crashy" for each release at a glance.

Killed a lot of bugs that way. Even identified some unexpected stuff, like buggy drivers on a subset of the salesforce's PCs that would continually break stuff in unpronounceable ways.

bluefeet

@Shog9 maybe, it might have to wait until we upgrade the comp level

Travis J

That's neat. I am a much bigger fan of path analysis than on instance analysis. It paints a much cleaner picture.

Shog9

(nothin' like emailing a bunch of folks out of the blue with "Hey! If you want this app to stop crashing, disable your soundcard drivers. No, I'm not kidding.")

Travis J

lol

That's awesome! What a find

John Dvorak

Nothing like a bug that only manifests on the boss's machine and defies a couple of laws of logic in the process

Shog9

7:51 PM

Good ol' SoundBlaster... "Hey, let's build a sound card that causes random memory errors whenever DMA is in use"

Everything works fine until you hit the wrong key while a message box is displayed...

Travis J

That brings back memories

Fry's/NewEgg, black friday sales, plug n play PCI :P

Shog9

@bluefeet I am on the edge of my seat. So many stupid hacks just to get a damn CSV in a column right now.

Travis J

@Shog9 Are you trying to build a csv in javascript?

bluefeet

@Shog9 we'll get it soon everywhere once I work thru a ton of issues upgrading SO/SE

Shog9

@TravisJ no, that's easy

I mean, if you ignore all the ugly edge cases

which I do

Travis J

7:53 PM

Edge cases are the pits.

Shog9

What's annoying is, oh, "give me a list of meta posts matching this criteria... And in the last column of each row, a list of all employee names that've touched it"

Catija

@TravisJ Pits generally do have edges... just be careful not to fall in. :P

Travis J

@Shog9 That's as easy as 811, 1438, 164200

;)

@Catija I have heard that falling in can be survived with Mandalorian armor.

Catija

@TravisJ Or by being a Bumble... because Bumbles bounce.

rene

@Shog9 string_agg works data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/803382

Shog9

7:59 PM

HELLS YEAH!

Now just need our internal instance of SEDE upgraded. Eh, @bluefeet?

(guessing that is gonna require the sites to fall in line first)

bluefeet

@Shog9 yeah, that was in the plan this week but many many issues popped up

John Dvorak

Does it still choke if you use magic links on SO?

Shog9

"Many many issues: The Stack Overflow story"

bluefeet

@Shog9 if it was that, it's the availability groups we have the servers in that is the problem

Catija

Magic links... like in comments? I'd really like one of those that goes to MSO.

Shog9

8:02 PM

All this fancy DBA jargon has left me discombobulated

bluefeet

@Shog9 lol, Nick tweeted about it trying to get a resolution that was workable

TIL a SQL 2017 replica won't read a SQL 2016 (852) database. So your upgrade strategy involves ditching all the HA and going to a single point of failure with no fallback. Not awesome.

Tweeted by Nick_Craver on February 13, 2018 at 4:03 PM

Shog9

d'oh!

bluefeet

yeah, I've got a bit of a mess to figure out before upgrading. To the lab I go

Shog9

Speaking of labs, here's a fun rabbit hole:

Piranha solution

Piranha solution, also known as piranha etch, is a mixture of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), used to clean organic residues off substrates. Because the mixture is a strong oxidizing agent, it will remove most organic matter, and it will also hydroxylate most surfaces (add OH groups), making them highly hydrophilic (water-compatible). == Preparation and use == Many different mixture ratios are commonly used, and all are called piranha. A typical mixture is 3 parts of concentrated sulfuric acid and 1 part of 30% hydrogen peroxide solution; other protocols may use a 4:1 or even...

Some other recipes next time you're staring morosely at a pile of washing-up:

5

Q: How to achieve clean dishes and glasses?

I heard that there is a standard about cleaned glass, namely Chemically clean glass supports a uniform film of water, with no hanging droplets visible. I tried to clean my dishes at home using detergent. After several efforts, the ceramic-made dish looks like a uniform film of water just af...

> After all the work you put into cleaning a glass surface, it will immediately start adsorbing impurities if outside a vacuum, and it may take as little as a few minutes before it is too dirty to use in very sensitive and specialized applications. I have found that water already beads significantly again less than 10 minutes after the final treatment.

This is going to be my excuse the next time the wife complains about the pile of dirty dishes next to my laptop.

Catija

Oh, that reminds me... Andy tried out the OxiClean powder last weekend instead of the brewery cleaner stuff and he thought it worked pretty well on coffee stains.

Shog9

8:13 PM

Yeah, I tried that the other day; it does work, but it's almost as pricey as PBW.

Catija

But it may be easier for people to find? If they're not interested in shopping online.

Shog9

True

I did see a pretty good deal on a big ol' box at Costco last time I was there

That'd be the way to go

Seems to work best if you can keep it hot. A soak in a sink produced disappointing results (and chewed up a lot of oxi powder); a couple tbls in the insulated press w/ hot water left to soak for a couple of hours did just fine.

Catija

Yep. Not sure how it'd work on other stuff, though.

rene

@JohnDvorak yes, that needs a SEDE fix, not bigger/better software/hardware

Catija

We used it on our Chemex (not insulated) and on a Klean Kanteen (insulated)... both seemed to work fine... got blue specks on the surface of the bubbles, which was interesting.

Shog9

8:17 PM

I tried it on a filthy hot tub filter with very disappointing results. Switched to a soak in a sink of water and a cup of 30% hydrogen peroxide and it came out clean and fresh

(each soak was about 30 minutes; oxy powder may've done better with a longer soak)

Catija

Yeah, we left ours most of the day.

SmokeDetector

8:36 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Email in answer, username similar to website in answer: Creating address from private key (bitcoin puzzle) by ehsan on bitcoin.SE

canon

@Shog9 has SE stabilized since the culling?

Catija

"Culling"?

canon

A few months back they had to let some people go...

wasn't pretty

Catija

Yeah... I'm not sure that "culling" is a very kind way to refer to it...

canon

8:52 PM

certainly not if you pick the more brutal of the definitions, sure

Travis J

That is the general association with the word, culling isn't exactly a gentle term.

Catija

Show a little respect, at least? You're asking about people who were part of this family... and whose loss was felt by many.

Travis J

It is kind of like using the word segregation when talking about separating groups... sometimes it is best to pick a more neutral word.

Shog9

9:35 PM

@canon not entirely sure how to answer that

canon

@Shog9 just hoping that things have evened out for you guys.

Shog9

eh... We'll get there

I've been through plenty of layoffs in other jobs. Anyone who expects things to return to normalcy soon is delusional.

canon

On top of the social upheaval, the layoffs I've seen generally involve a whole lot of, "wow, we had no idea this guy did so much..." Thankfully, it's been a while.

Shog9

oh yeah

Travis J

you don't know what you've got, til it's gone

Shadow Wizard

9:43 PM

whoa.... what's going on? Why so much activity?

Catija

There's always a lot of activity when it comes to talking about food :P

Shadow Wizard

@Catija so how will you call it? :)

@Catija but Shog is here, he's not one to waste time...

Travis J

What, so the rest of us are wasting time then?

Shog9

food is never a waste of time

it's sorta essential

Catija

@ShadowWizard "Downsizing", "Layoffs"... "Culling" implies that you're killing the people.

Shadow Wizard

9:46 PM

@OptimusPrime how is that related? You don't watch movies anymore?? Even with three kids, I still have spare time during late night. ;)

@Catija oh

Shog9

they're all euphemisms

Even "layoff"

I believe that came from manufacturing, when workers might not be needed during retooling, off-seasons, etc.

The notion was, they'd have to fend for themselves for a while but would likely be rehired when whatever situation necessitated the layoffs passed

That's still the case in some mfg orgs, but... unlikely for programmers

Shadow Wizard

@Ano indeed, we have no choice. Small population, lots of enemies. The mandatory service starts at 18, for 3 full years, which is hard to get out of. Then the army might call us for up to 30 days every year, until we're 40. That's easier to get out from, but I chose to do it willingly because I live here and want to give back. So this service tomorrow should be the last, I turn 40 in July. :)

@TravisJ of course! ;)

@Shog9 the essential amount of food is minor, one can live on water and bread.

Shog9

I feel like you're minimizing bread here for some reason

Shadow Wizard

On the contrary, putting it as "essential" is a compliment. :)

I love bread.

Shog9

the essential variety of food is small then, but not minor

canon

9:56 PM

Earlier this year, I visited my wife's hometown, San Paul de Vence. The baked goods will change your life...

Shog9

gnarly parasites, eh?

or did you mean "for the better"

canon

hah

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 my point is that discussing only water and bread is boring... usually you discuss other food which isn't essential. ;)

Shog9

bread is fascinating stuff, man

it's a little bit farming, a little bit gardening, a little bit fabrication and a little bit baking

Shadow Wizard

@canon like this?

Shog9

10:00 PM

my grandmother used to make these great little rolls... Nothing to the recipe, but so delicious - all technique.

Catija

For as much as I bake, I've never done much bread. It's challenging.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 good for you.... so it went away with her, or did your mother (or you? ;)) learned to bake as well?

Dom

Hi folks, I'm trying to figure out where to ask a question about refactoring a fairly common/generic function that includes both mathematics and logic. I've been recommended to ask here, or post a meta question with a site-recommendation tag. Any ideas or should I post a meta Q? Happy to share as much or as little detail as requested.

Shog9

@ShadowWizard everyone in the family bakes. But bread is hard. I've been trying to replicate her technique for over a decade, and... The results are at best a poor imitation.

Catija

@Dom I recommend asking an MSE question with the site recommendation tag. Include some of the details about your question, what you want to ask, why you think it might not be appropriate for the Mathematics site (if that's the case)... any other sites you think it might work on... that sort of thing.

Shadow Wizard

10:03 PM

@Shog9 ouch. My previous boss also had such grandmother, but he succeeded to replicate her success, in the last years he post bread pictures everywhere. :D

Dom

@Catija ok, will do, thanks.

rene

@Dom do as @Catija suggests and include which sites you considered and why.

Shadow Wizard

Latest bread he posted:

rene

@Dom also the MSE tag-wiki has asking guidance: meta.stackexchange.com/tags/site-recommendation/info

Hmm, not in the top answerers there. Once more I have the posts, not the score ...

Catija

That's my next bronze badge, actually...

Shog9

10:10 PM

Humph. All this cooking talk and yet no one has yet nominated in The Seasoned Advice 2018 Election

Slackers.

And yes, I'm talking about you, @ShadowWizard

you're still almost 200 points short, at this rate you'll never make the ticket

Catija

@Shog9 Technically, Stephie has.

... but hasn't.

Shog9

...

Catija

She's posted her answers to the mod questionnaire but hasn't nominated... not sure why.

Travis J

posted 32 secs ago

Pretty sure she heard you.

Catija

HAHAHAHA She did tell me that she was baking a cake and would be doing it afterwards when she wasn't on mobile.

> I need to write my nomination post (too cumbersome on mobile) and finish/edit the last part of the questionnaire, then it’s official.

Travis J

10:13 PM

ugh, 42 rep short of nominating :(

The universe is telling me something...

Catija

Get more rep on cooking?

I'm 139 shy of another thousand. :/

rene

@TravisJ yeah, you'll probably burn things ...

Travis J

The problem is that the Universe never explains what it is saying

And for the record, I am a fab cook, I would never burn anything.

Catija

Not judging by your rep :P

Travis J

No time for answering questions on cooking, I barely have time to even cook! I get Blue Apron delivered and sometimes I don't even have time to make all of them.

Catija

10:19 PM

@Shog9 You should run... then you could finally get one of their aprons.

Catija

10:29 PM

@Shog9 I'm not currently seeing any featured questions on MSE, despite there being two.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 me? Cooking? hahaha.. lol... cough.

:)

@Catija probably one cancels the other.

Catija

@ShadowWizard Shouldn't... based on the post he linked me to yesterday, there's room for two MSE posts... and it's not just on MSE... it's network wide.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija actually four.

Catija

@ShadowWizard It only displays them in the sidebar if they're under two weeks old.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija oh

But yeah none now.

Bugs, bugs everywhere. And with this, I'm leaving... :)

Catija

10:41 PM

42

A: What criteria is used to select the links that appear in the "Hot Meta Posts" block?

The rules are as follows: If there is a community moderator election, a link to it appears in the bulletin. Events can be created with a start date and time, an end date and time, a simple title, and a link to something somewhere on the network. Current or upcoming events are listed, with those...