Tavern on the Meta

Shog9

00:00

I try to limit myself to reading no more than 11 bugs per day

forest

Yeah but lack of code review means bugs keep coming. :P

<- proudly fixes as many bugs in FOSS as possible, never in closed source software

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 (with regard to the question you just closed as a dupe) What do you think of my recent addition to the suggested edit FAQ regarding the 6-character error and why it exists? (the section "is there a minimum change threshold")

Shog9

there's code review

but, there's no silver bullet

forest

Yeah by a couple of incompetent devs.

Shog9

hey

be nice

also some incompetent CMs

forest

00:01

Incompetent isn't an insult, just a qualifier.

Shog9

code review is effectively an editorial task - you see what you read, but not necessarily the effects of what you read

forest

Sure, but it'd go a lot easier if SE had a huge community of expert programmers. If only such a thing existed... Where would SE ever fine one?

Shog9

would still need code reviews

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

stroopwafels

forest

I've found several bugs that I've ignored. If it was FOSS, I'd have the bugs fixed by the end of the week (or at least a patch ready to be included). For free, too.

Shog9

00:03

open source isn't magic pixie dust you can sprinkle on a project to make it less buggy and more developed

forest

Because you need a lot of eyes on it, yeah.

But we have a lot of eyes. And I don't know about anyone else, but I contribute to FOSS projects that I benefit from. At the very least, that would mean a few more bugs would be fixed that wouldn't have been fixed otherwise.

Shog9

you gotta commit to it. You gotta manage it, guide it, promote it, moderate it... You're essentially building a community around your code, with all the benefits and headaches that entails.

forest

Oh there's no need for it to be a community-developed software stack. All it would need to be is open source, allowing people to give better bug reports + patches.

Shog9

still gotta manage those

who remembers when, briefly, we open sourced our blog?

forest

How hard is it to manage a single tarball of source?

(Obviously git is better than an archive, but still)

Shog9

00:05

depends. Do you care, even a little bit, if anything comes of releasing it?

forest

Well I'd surely find the fixes for bugs I came across.

Shog9

Because if you don't, then it's not hard at all: publish it to the 'Net and then kill all of your email accounts and forget about it forever.

AFAIK there are still pending PRs for that blog. The one we shut down a few years back. After mostly not merging PRs.

forest

Who cares about the blog? That's not where most people spend their time.

Shog9

If you're gonna be a bad parent to your public code, you're better off not having public code.

forest

That doesn't make any sense.

Shog9

00:07

@forest several people who submitted fixes

forest

If you're a pad parent to your public code, it's no better than if it were closed.

It's not better closed, just not any better or worse.

Shog9

why bother then?

why bother doing something that you have no intention of benefiting from, or from allowing to benefit anyone else?

forest

Because 1) it would benefit others, and 2) at the very least, the most severe bugs could be found and fixed, even if a bunch of nonsense PRs are ignored.

Shog9

it'd be one thing if SO was shutting down, and this was one of those, "it doesn't even run, and half the dependencies are missing, but here it is if anyone wants to put 18 months into getting it to work"

forest

I imagine there's a private repo that SE uses, yes?

Just make it public and read-only.

Shog9

00:09

presumably after removing things like private keys, salts, etc.

forest

...you don't have private stuff hardcoded in the source, do you?

If so, that's the stupidest programming practice possible.

Shog9

Lists of customers, salty commit messages, IDs of past employees

forest

Hardcoded in the source code itself??

Not in the database?

Shog9

oh, so you mean just the bits of source that don't build or populate any of those databases then.

forest

The databases should be the only place anything sensitive is kept.

Shog9

00:11

Ok, so now you have source that doesn't run and also no database for it to run against. Who is this benefiting again?

forest

The code that populates the database should never contain secrets.

Shog9

In theory, nothing should ever contain secrets. They should be kept secret.

forest

Well obviously the purpose isn't for others to run SE on their own computers. :P

But passwords, keys, sensitive data should never be in executable source code.

It should always be kept in a database or at the least configuration file.

Shog9

Which also aren't part of the repository, right?

forest

Of course not. Why would they be?

Anyone who puts a populated database in their repo is insane.

Shog9

00:13

so... New repository that doesn't contain anything sensitive, or references to anything sensitive, or any of the last 11 years of history that may've once contained sensitive stuff that was later moved elsewhere...

But yeah, sure, apart from creating that it's pretty much just flipping a switch

forest

So you're saying SE code is that badly contaminated with secrets?

That's a huge problem to potential customers.

Shog9

I'm saying the SE codebase literally dates back to the spring of 2008, with nearly-complete revision history for significant portions of that.

forest

I think they should know that their personal information is kept in a repo instead of in a protected database. Because that's a pretty big deal. The smallest breach would result in a total loss of confidentiality and severe problems for them.

Shog9

We don't ship that revision history to customers...

...but flipping the repo to public wouldn't be so discrete

forest

@Shog9 Are these just possible roadblocks to open sourcing the codebase, or do you actually have knowledge that credentials and the like are hardcoded in source?

Shog9

00:16

@forest I have certainly not read 11 years of history for every past version of the site

I have no idea what it may have once contained

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

dev.stackoverflow.com/content/js/full.js

forest

ah

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Well naturally client-side JS is open. :P

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

The functionality of SE is contained in that file

forest

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Eh, only client-side.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

User-facing functionality, that is.

Shog9

00:18

I'm saying it would be extremely irresponsible to just flip the repo to public without a thorough review, which would likely take a significant amount of effort all by itself - at which point, there's likely still no runnable app, just a sanitized, possibly history-free dump of code.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@forest Users are normally served a minified version

forest

@Shog9 Yeah that's true. If devs didn't want to commit to it, they could easily release just the current revision and not the entire git history.

Shog9

And even after all that, you haven't actually accomplished anything - just laid the foundation on which you could possibly accomplish something.

forest

But generally, a well-run company will have measures put in place to minimize the risk of a source code breach. If loss of the code causes more damage than simply releasing "trade secrets", then there is a big problem with how the company is run.

Shog9

Don't get me wrong: I'd absolutely love it if the bulk of the code for these sites - heck, even chat - were open-sourced. But I don't believe for a second that this would be easy, or quick, or not require ongoing effort.

forest

00:20

SE should have ensured that their code is clean enough that a repo breach would cause no more damage than if they manually open sourced it all.

@Shog9 Chat is so bad that it would be a disservice to open it. :P

Shog9

I rather like chat

forest

It's useful, but it's implemented horribly.

Shog9

but, I also use Slack now, so I have an extremely low bar

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

78

Q: Make the mobile apps open source!

Since the apps aren't maintained any more, and probably won't in the near future, many users are waiting for bug fixes or new form factors to be supported. If the SE development team is too busy with other projects, why not outsource the development to the community? Why not make the apps open s...

forest

I hate Slack. I prefer IRC (and XMPP in a pinch).

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

00:22

brb, checking how SE app is like on my new Pixel 3a XL

forest

It would be so nice if chat were simply replaced with a web IRC frontend.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Yay, it looks good

Shog9

I don't care much for IRC. It's nearly as bad as Slack.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

The SE app is one of the reasons I specifically looked for a phone without a notch

forest

It'd be trivial to expand links and images via the web chat too, even if native IRC itself doesn't support it (since it's obviously text-only).

Plus, it'd make bans and suspensions more logical to enforce.

Chat avatars implemented via custom CTCP, etc.

Shog9

00:23

the big problem with native IRC is that it tends to work like crap on intermittent connections

Slack, in its wisdom, slavishly copied this particular behavior

forest

That's an easy problem to solve.

Shog9

and yet, here we are in 2019

forest

The biggest issue is when the ping timeout value is like... 30 seconds.

XMPP is more extensible though.

The chat could be moved to XMPP with less hassle than to IRC.

Even if I personally prefer IRC because I use irssi.

Shog9

I blame all of you for not adopting Wave

forest

I don't even know what that is.

Can I connect to it with telnet? :P

Shog9

00:26

SEE?

You admit to your faults at least

forest

PRIVMSG #tavern-on-the-meta :and send messages directly over the network?

Journeyman Geek

@Shog9 hah

Catija

Google Wave?

Journeyman Geek

@forest funny thing is someone tried to write an irc bridge almost immediately

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Welbog was a big fan of that

forest

00:28

I thought that was an XMPP bridge.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@JourneymanGeek This? github.com/ghewgill/soirc

forest

Oh huh.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

With regard to XMPP: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57316/…

forest

> everything is undoubtedly fragile

lol

If chat had a stable API, I'd probably write an irssi plugin for SE.

Journeyman Geek

As far as chat goes I like SE chat (it does replies better and we miss the starwall) more than matrix (which replaces irc when I need self hosted chat) which I like more than IRC.

Not a fan of slack

forest

00:31

Matrix is just a bridge to IRC and others right?

Journeyman Geek

@forest nothing's changed much in a while

forest

I hate Matrix, but only because I see people on IRC with [m] appended to their name and they're always idiots who don't know how anything works.

Journeyman Geek

Nope

Shog9

Slack is good for those days when you feel good about yourself and want to get rid of that feeling.

forest

lol

Journeyman Geek

00:31

Matrix actually works pretty well standalone

forest

I think we should drop chat and instead just share each other's IP addresses and communicate with everyone individually using netcat.

Journeyman Geek

You do realize people are behind cgn right?

forest

Yeah screw those people. CGN violates IANA standards.

(RFC 6598, I think)

Shog9

Miss being around a bunch of passive-aggressive relatives who never say anything interesting but still somehow manage to make you feel like they're criticizing you? Yearn for the feeling of showing up in class late and having to furiously scribble down notes without understanding anything that's being said? Been too long since you went 48 hours without sleep and could enjoy the music of the walls whispering to you? Want to see 3000x THE USDA RECOMMENDED DAILY ALLOWANCE OF ANIMATED PARROT EMOJI??

...Slack.

Journeyman Geek

Funny thing is out of the local isps - the one I would go with does cgn by default

forest

00:36

That sounds worse than IRC lmao

At least you can hard chat in IRC.

Journeyman Geek

@Shog9 heh

Shog9

yes, but the saving grace is that they do have persistent transcripts. Albeit slow, almost unreadable ones.

Journeyman Geek

Both the slacks I am on are places that dramaragequit from SE

@Shog9 if you pay

forest

XMPP does too. And there are some IRC servers which actually have that functionality, although it's not standard and confuses some clients.

I saw one server that did that and also gave everyone the name "anonymous".

Which really confused color-coded nickname plugins.

Journeyman Geek

Back when I irced, I ran a bouncer

forest

00:39

A lot of people still do.

Random question: Is there a plan in place in the case that a spammer joins a channel with a dozen or so bots and uses the names and profile images of existing users? Like is there a way mods can mute a room temporarily or kick everyone who joined in the last n minutes? Or a similar protective measure.

Because being able to spoof existing users is silly.

Catija

01:32

@forest spammers need 20 rep for chat, so it's pretty darn unlikely that'd ever happen. Spoofing profile image/avatar doesn't replace the network reputation. Mods can put a room in timeout for n minutes.

forest

Get 5 bots and they'll be able to vote each other up enough to get 20 rep. I'm sure it'd get noticed eventually but the time between registering and joining chat could be a matter of seconds if it's automated.

No Distraction Wizard

01:49

@forest we have user ID. In fact, on the internet, we are just user IDs.

forest

true

Journeyman Geek

@forest actual spammers we'd nuke. If it was a troll and more than an annoyance... mods would likely get help

forest

ah

Journeyman Geek

02:07

hm

I need to find the text of the old "be nice" and the bits about "don't expect someone to know everything you know"

user302202

02:29

The Movies site still refuses to title all GoT questions "Why did this character did this thing to that other character?"

user302202

@Shog9 The first sentence rather sounds like the Tavern.

Shog9

possibly just a description of chat in general

user302202

FB tracking post is over 15k views, which was not achieved on metaSO for two years, except by employees and an April 1 post.

user302202

Sharepoint Online notifying me that a shared document was opened by a new person: good for security. Gmail sending suspicious email to Spam: good for security. Both of them happening together: not as good.

Rob

@JourneymanGeek This answer says that the FAQ (actually the Tour, used to) say this: "Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know." --- That's pretty close to your quote. I'll leave it to you to visit archive.org but I don't see the quote there; and it isn't archived any earlier. Perhaps you can 'Mod Power' older copies of

the Tour.

Shog9

02:39

wasn't in the tour, was in the FAQ

(other gems from that FAQ: a long-missing privilege... 2000 Delete comments)

Rob

Good catch, the URL to the FAQ redirected to the Tour.

user302202

> Using this website may cause irreversible damage to the kidneys and liver.

user302202

Links to a YT video that is no longer available. What was the joke?

user302202

0

A: Mixed tenses (present & past)

What do you usually do on the weekend? On most weekends,I_______ with my friends

Rob

This website: homebrew.stackexchange.com

user302202

02:46

A little Mad Libs diversion

user302202

Yeah, except SE did not exist back then.

Shog9

Weight Gain 4000

"Weight Gain 4000" is the second episode of the first season of the American animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on August 20, 1997. In the episode, the residents of South Park excitedly prepare for a visit by celebrity Kathie Lee Gifford, whom the boys' third-grade teacher Mr. Garrison plans to assassinate because of a childhood grudge. In the meantime, Cartman becomes extremely obese after constantly eating a bodybuilding supplement called Weight Gain 4000. The episode was written and directed by series co-founders Trey Parker and Matt...

forest

I love how every single South Park episode has a huge Wikipedia article.

forest

03:09

-2

Q: Kubota D-1005 diesel engine

Kubota diesel D-1005 engine not starting. Dynamo is rotating but no initial turning from engine.

discussion support

wow

Journeyman Geek

04:53

@Rob ah yes

that's what I needed

Journeyman Geek

05:54

.... that ended up longer than expected....

forest

What's wrong with Meta? It seems fine to me.

I mean some idiots post random questions begging to get paid for their answers, but it's not like all of Meta is people piling on someone else for doing something dumb.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@forest Try explaining the pile-on here

forest

Oh it's -9, should I downvote as well to make it -10? :^)

(Still reading it)

huh

weird

+3/-12 that's pretty extreme

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@forest If after you've fully read it and you still believe that it shows no research effort or is unclear, go right ahead

forest

Nah it looks fine to me.

Rob

06:04

Not sure I agree with the downvotes there, but I also dislike the term 'pile on' to negate the views of the voters. Perhaps none of them thought the investigation was worth the time?

'not useful' is listed in the tooltip for downvotes

forest

Maybe some people don't like you or something.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

But that doesn't mean that it's an invalid question.

forest

Well yeah but I've downvoted valid questions before.

Rob

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful"

forest

Like meta.stackexchange.com/q/320144/384528 (the pension one) is technically a valid, if silly, question, but it got like, 30 something downvotes because it sucks.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

06:07

@Rob Since it's gone below -8 it's not going to be noticed by anyone else.

Rob

Okay.. so isn't that working as intended, and not a pile on?

forest

Well I'd suggest that behavior be lifted for Meta then, but I'm sure staff will come up with some reason why it's impossible for technical reasons.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

In my opinion, valid, on-topic questions shouldn't be deprived of answers just because some people believe that it won't serve a purpose. Especially on Meta.

Rob

Then you're discarding the opinion of those 9

forest

12

Rob

06:08

Would I rather have SE spend time investigating this extreme edge case, or work on fixing broken features? Probably the latter

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

For other topics, I can try posting on other forums, Reddit, etc. but SE has a monopoly on questions about SE.

forest

Yeah but... who cares about that? Meta doesn't really do that much.

Per-site metas, sure, but the main Meta here is no substitute for the official feedback medium used by Stack Exchange Inc: Twitter.

This is just the company's /dev/null, but with more drama.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

If you're not an active Twitter user it doesn't work.

forest

true

Journeyman Geek

@forest see - that's the exact attitude I'd like to work around

forest

06:21

Not gonna happen without Stack Exchange, Inc getting on board.

Journeyman Geek

eh, if you're not famous it dosen't work ;)

Magisch

The more handwringing and accusing of bad faith we do to employees on meta, the more meta will become the /dev/null of the company

Journeyman Geek

or you know a board member or someone who can retweet so someone famous can see it.

And well

forest

It's already pure /dev/null. Nothing will change that.

Journeyman Geek

we can't directly fix how employees act

Magisch

06:21

It's not surprising that constant negativity breeds contempt. As tink said yesterday, it's a self reinforcing negative spiral, and someone has to break it.

Journeyman Geek

@forest then there's no point

or we can work at fixing the stuff we see, and try to turn it into something that really shouldn't/can't be ignored

forest

@Magisch Well get someone who actually works in their office to come here.

Someone who actually has power.

Magisch

now you're going into personal attacks

don't

Journeyman Geek

@forest I think we've spoken about personal attacks before

forest

I didn't mean to attack anyone personally. I apologize if anyone took it that way.

Journeyman Geek

06:23

@forest It keeps happening

You might actually want to consider the impact, and meaning of what you say.

Magisch

This here tavern is not a place to viciously slag off anyone. If this is truly unintended, consider reflecting on how what you say keeps coming across. Calling someone a liar and dishonest is a direct accusation of bad faith, which runs counter to the fact that we're supposed to assume good faith and be kind in our interpretations here. It's the minimum standard for respectful discourse

2

Journeyman Geek

06:35

Be nice is true for anyone, staff or user. Or folks who're both.

If folks who work at SE find Meta or chat scary, we're ... doing things badly wrong.

Tinkeringbell

@Shog9 Nothing wrong with animated parrot emoji. You can't overdose on those.

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell the big joke is...

IIRC its not included by default yet everyone installs it.

everyone

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek It's parrots. That's enough explanation :P

And there's t-shirts: cultofthepartyparrot.com :P

Magisch

i see that thing everywhere

That and toucan ascii art

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch To be honest, I only know about that because a tweet was recently posted in here with something about parrot emoji's ;)

Journeyman Geek

06:44

@Tinkeringbell Slack's convinced they'll replace email... so....

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek Their parrot emoji's need to be redder before I'll switch ;)

There's too much green there now.

Journeyman Geek

Its red... some of the time?

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek It needs moar red ;)

No Distraction Wizard

Parrots? That reminds me of... llamas on DeviantArt...

forest

Who should I contact if I wish to appeal a suspension on another SE site?

Tinkeringbell

06:53

@NoDistractionWizard That reminds me I saw the cutest alpaca crochet pattern recently, that I still need to make :)

forest

I tried PM but that didn't work out.

Tinkeringbell

@forest Use contact-us at the bottom of the page, it'll go the right person :)

forest

@Tinkeringbell Do they also deal with chat suspensions?

Tinkeringbell

@forest Sure, why not?

@forest I will here, and since I suspect you're still trying to get around a suspension on main and are now trying to discuss whatever people didn't want to discuss in a PM in here, I'm going to delete the above, ask you to use contact-us and leave it at that.

forest

ok, I've sent an email. Thanks again.

Tinkeringbell

06:57

@forest Good. Then leave it at that. Sorry I can't be of more help.

forest

It's fine. Things happen. :P

On an unrelated note, how is the ask a question wizard for Meta going? Is that going to be a thing? Asking because I see someone else is lost: meta.stackexchange.com/q/328170/384528

Tinkeringbell

@forest The feature request was received quite well, IIRC. So hopefully?

Someday? :P

forest

6 to 8 weeks :P

Tinkeringbell

@forest I'd give them months, not weeks, but I don't think they will never make question wizards for any other sites.

Mithrandir

Designing a wizard is difficult. Especially for Meta, which covers so many things - bugs, feature requests, discussion, support, fun, announcements, that's going to take some effort.

Also, when designing a wizard, it's very hard to escape tropes. It's very hard to come up with fresh wizard ideas.

forest

07:07

Tropes? Why does that matter?

I mean if it works for other sites...

Mithrandir

@forest You know, like pointy hats and wands.

forest

Didn't clippy have a wizard option?

Tinkeringbell

Good old clippy. I miss that thing.

forest

"It looks like you're writing a letter!"

Wow, thanks Clippy!

Tinkeringbell

@forest I remember opening word just to play with Clippy :P

And wordart.

Rainbow wordart

forest

07:10

heh

Shadow Wizard

forest

Yeah that was it!

Shadow Wizard

:D

Think I had that as avatar at some point.

forest

lmao

Shadow Wizard

07:37

Anyone here happen to have Hatchimal? :)

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard I just babysat one last week

I need to inform the pets chatroom of my results :P

Shadow Wizard

lol

We bought one for our daughter (well, wife parents bought to be accurate) and it fell few days ago, and now it's borked. Any idea what can be done, if anything?

It turns on, but without sound or movement, just fixed green light from eyes.

I do have some people at work who can fix electric stuff and wiring, but they didn't find a way to open it up and reach the inside. :/

Maybe I can ask in Pets.SE? :P

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard I was politely told electronic pets don't really count :P

Mithrandir

@ShadowWizard It is possessed

Tinkeringbell

I'm not sure about opening one up either. I just turned it off after receiving it (as recommended by Pets chat ;) ) and miraculously remembered to turn it back on before it was picked up :P

Shadow Wizard

07:47

@Tinkeringbell rofl

@Mithrandir :(

@Tinkeringbell didn't you teach it your name?! :D

Magisch

I would get an actual parrot but they get really old

like 60 years or something

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch My youngest brother got an electronic one when young. It was amazingly annoying (it could record and repeat voice snippets)... and the batteries were always mysteriously dead :P

Magisch

I know someone who has a gray parrot

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch long life is not a bad thing

Magisch

very talkative and social bird. Often around in the apartment, not often in her cage

Tinkeringbell

07:53

@ShadowWizard Nah. I just pretended the thing had an amazing time staying over at my place :P

Magisch

another friend has a turtle

not sure why you'd get a big turtle, these outlive you, but he got one

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch I once spent an whole hour watching 3 juvanile blue macaws

and the adults try to pick locks...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

08:22

Is chat down?

Nope

MEE the sneaky user

08:34

Chat is down?

status-norepro

Journeyman Geek

08:57

Seems back up for me

Tinkeringbell

I'm back too!

No Distraction Wizard

Is my office's internet down?

Journeyman Geek

Yes

Tinkeringbell

Builds and tests are very boring if chat is down...

Journeyman Geek

heh,that's why I have backup chats

and one of them is rediculously resiliant to servers going down

No Distraction Wizard

09:03

Yes - retry / cancel

Mithrandir

09:18

Oh. I thought it was my wifi.

Tinkeringbell

I was blaming the company, thought they blocked the chat part :P Luckily not!

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

The recent bug reports regarding this chat outage have been marked status-completed

Rob

@Tinkeringbell Heh, every time I have an issue with chat... I think the time's finally come that the IT department has seen how much time I spend on this site at work and blocked it :P

Tinkeringbell

@Rob Yeah, that's what I feared as well ;)

Magisch

@Rob Thankfully I never have such issues, because I'd be the one blocking it in my company

Or the other sysadmin but he'd tell me first

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

09:35

delv-pls 2k+ meta.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/64734

Journeyman Geek

10:11

→ 37 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard

10:33

Huh? Yay! Chat is back!

John Dvorak

Chat is back, back again.

Shadow Wizard

Back, no ache.

John Dvorak

I'm back!
OW!
My back!

Shadow Wizard

I'm all back

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

►

Mithrandir

@ShadowWizard lucky

I'm 16 and I have back pains...

Shadow Wizard

10:41

I had a back problem when at your age (עקשת) so the doctor said to swim 2km every day for... many days. I did, and it actually helped! No more problems. :P

Mithrandir

I've been meaning to swim more...

Shadow Wizard

I swam every day during the Big Holiday (~60 days straight), and whenever I could during school days. It was crazy, boring, and fun all together.

Mithrandir

So now do you know how to swim really well? :P

Shadow Wizard

And no, I'm really not into sports of any kind, so it was totally out of my normal zone.

@Mithrandir actually.... no! lol

I learned to swim on my own as a kid (no lessons) and all that swimming didn't improve my swimming technique, lol.

Mithrandir

I got some lessons a few years ago, but I'm fairly out of practice by now...

Shadow Wizard

10:45

It should be like bicycle: once you really know it, you can't forget it.

That's how it is for me, at least.

Mithrandir

I mean, I know how to swim. I was talking about proper technique.

Shadow Wizard

oh lol

Well, what we need proper technique for, anyway?

Speed is not relevant, I assume.

Mithrandir

well, when I was taking lessons, my instructor thought I was great and wanted me to join the swim team... I declined. Now, it'd be nice to like take a lifeguarding course, but I need to get back in practice

Shadow Wizard

Oh, yeah for that you do need the good practice route.

Mithrandir

so instead of heading to the pool, maybe I'll just head down to a spring... :P

Shadow Wizard

10:50

You really plan to become lifeguard in some swimming pool? That's lot of responsibility, and boring as 100 hells from what I can tell.

Mithrandir

@ShadowWizard Not necessarily to become an active lifeguard, but to get a lifeguarding license and get all the skills, since knowing that stuff is helpful regardless of your actual profession

Shadow Wizard

hmm.... yup.

And something to brag about in some places. :D

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