Tonight's task is to manually categorize a rather flat tree structure in SQL (currently two levels only) by reading the top level entry and assigning it and its children to a category. On a lark I gave this a shot:

update tree set category=1 where 5 in (id,parent);

and it worked in PostgreSQL.

Why? Because I'm sitting here reading the list of top-level entries in one window while using psql in the other and pressing up to edit the previous query. Before I tried that I had

update tree set category=1 where id=4 or parent=4

so I'd have to retype TWO numbers instead of just one.

Today's rage divides evenly between:

1. people who type site addresses into the search box instead of the address bar
2. gotomeeting.com for not putting "join a meeting" link on their search engine landing pages

That's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Windows Media Player is a flaming pile of shit.

Trying to copy notes from a webinar, and every time I press the pause button in WMP the video keeps playing for another couple of seconds. When you add to this the fact that it takes WMP a couple of seconds before it will start the video again when I'm trying to click on the bar to seek, the tooltip on the bar is "Seek" rather than the time it's going to jump to when I click it, and the fact that there's no x0.5 or x2 or any other speed control but a jerky skiptastic fast forward button, it all adds up to an enormous hassle.

This is turning a task that SHOULD have taken a bit more than 30 minutes (the length of the video) into something I've spent the whole morning on. Good going folks!

After failing to get it to work in MPC or VLC, I managed to get it working in mplayer, but apparently it's only seekable to the nearest 5 minutes or so in there, which probably means that the g2m4 codec put next to no keyframes in the video. But at least mplayer has speed control so I can cover the ground I've already covered quickly, and when I press the space bar it stops immediately.

UI Elements that only operate when the stars are properly aligned annoy the hell out of me. Especially when they do something I want to do on a regular basis. All those grayed out menu items with no hints as to how to activate them are one thing, at least you know there's something there you can use, but sometimes there's things that make absolutely no sense at all...

If you're using the current Chrome, right click the reload button. OK, now open the developer console (Ctrl+Shift+J). Right click the reload button again. An option to dump cache and reload! Pretty cool, eh?

I don't even know what the fuck inspired me to try right clicking the reload button in the first place...

On the Democrat side, I expect to see more "adjustments" in the jobless rate. On November 7th, we'll be back to 9%.

On the Republican side, I expect to see more refineries have mysterious fires, power outages, and pipeline closures. On November 7th, they'll all suddenly be fixed.

A story shows up about "underappreciated scifi writers" and I have mod points.

So I'm restricting myself to using overrated and underrated, because for once they are on topic :-D

Only the Slashdot frontpage will be accessible tonight between 23:00 and 23:15 EDT while maintenance is occurring.

"... Once maintenance is complete, the Slashdot frontpage will no longer be accessible."

(Interesting. When I preview this, the blockquote tags are ignored. Oh well, I'll add an i tag so it blockquotes anyway)

Print document, spooler crashes. Document cannot be removed from queue because spooler is not running.

Reboot computer. Document in queue immediately tries to print, spooler crashes.

Solution: Turn off printer, reboot computer. Delete document from queue. Turn on printer.

You'd think that critical infrastructure like the print spooler would be a bit more robust. Or at least be able to detect that it is repeatedly crashing on a single document and ask the user if they'd like to cancel the offending print job. Or make cancelling print jobs not dependent on the spooler service. Also, apparently user permission to manage print queues does not extend to restarting the print service itself.

Aside: You know how when you say a word over and over it starts to sound funny? Apparently Chrome gets the same way too... it didn't start highlighting "spooler" as a misspelled word until I wrote it about 5 times.

I noticed there's now a flag icon on everyone's posts, clicking on it gives me an input box and a "Report" button. I didn't try pushing the button, I figure there's enough of that going on already.

Looking forward to a report on how often this gets abused, and possibly an explanation of what the hell it's intended to be used for in the first place (this isn't 4chan, nobody's posting kiddy porn).

I've been working on cleaning out all the old useless crap that I hoard (I'm not quite TV show fodder, yet) and ran across an ancient textbook on "Systems Analysis for Business Data Processing". Copyright 1969 I thumbed through it on a lark, and happened to see a chapter on "Network Diagrams". I stopped to see what kind of networks they had back then, I was disappointed to find out it was some sort of installation planning thing, laying out all the steps (38 of them) with their dependencies and timelines (it takes 4 weeks to order furniture and 2 weeks to decorate the computer room, but only one week to install the computer) so that you can get it all done in parallel and have your computer installed, tested, and running master programs 1A and 1B in only 59 weeks.

A few pages later and I spotted this gem:

Other significant factors relating to maintenance are ... If two or more manufacturers are involved in supplying connected equipment, the maintenance interface should, as far as is possible, be established from the start. This applies particularly to data transmission equipment, for which the responsibility for faults can so easily be tossed back and forth between the suppliers.

The more things change...

Well, the binding on this book is shot and half of it is covered with mold, so into the trash it goes.

I wonder if wikipedia would put my ugly mug up there with "A personal appeal from wikipedia reader": "Please, pay them so they'll stop posting all these ugly mugs on the top of every page!"

Just got some lame phishing email with an .html attachment telling me I needed to urgently update my bank information or my account would be terminated.

Please tell me that this phisher is just a complete idiot who was too lazy to copy the bank's website onto his bpasfpapfefeepfkfme23.com domain, and there are no banks (or other institutions) that actually email users their login page...

Wasn't the UI research project that became D2 bad enough?

Do we REALLY need to have a sidebar of snide comments by trolls next to every comment?

The very first comment I see with this new system, we have roman_mir "distilling" the text "It requires fraud, misrepresentation. US Govt is not lying about where the money goes." to "I don't know what a ponzi scam is, but I will pretend I do. I also don't understand lies, when I hear them"

He's absolutely right (with regards to ponzi scheme not requiring fraud, he's welcome to prove that he's heard the government lie about what it's spending the money on), but that doesn't make him come off as any less of a complete asshole by using this distillery bullshit rather than a reply-able comment.

who needs to fix bugs when we can add new ones!

just to be sure...

Some time this morning, clicking ceased to open collapsed parent posts (in Chrome). And this time they managed to fix it without making it impossible to click on links.

.

Who knows, maybe some of you can even read this line.

Thanks to the AAA toxic mortgage bullshit, we already know the credit rating agencies give out whatever ratings they are paid to give, so all three of you who are left can place your bets here on who is paying S&P for an AA+ rating.

So I herd u liek extra lines

So I herd u liek extra lines

So I herd u liek extra lines