Perlmonks has polls, switching mostly one a month. Wasting time, i posted to the currently current poll thread (and many others as well, which strangely enough became a live poll.

On good old greenie, i trolled not too successfully, but realized people seem only read the first line of the post, or gave up when trying to make sense of the second.

It's like Slashdot is more of a playground. I'm trying to enjoy it before the beta destroys the last vestige of normalcy here.

Edit: Changed title from "Silliness" to "Chronicle". I should have followed my own advice and written the title after the entry.

Just now came across an informative article from over a decade ago. My favorite part is the URL. :)

Comcast is my ISP (again), and i have been receiving copyright violation notices.

Evidence:
Case ID: (removed)
Work Title: Maid to Obey
Copyright Owner: Froytal Services Limited DBA Brazzers
Unauthorized File Name: Jessie Andrews And Joslyn James - Maid to Obey
Unauthorized Hash: d48d521f033c2fb816c7dbf13753f5dcbe9dab0e
Unauthorized File Size: 497576269 bytes
Unauthorized Protocol: BitTorrent
Timestamp: 2014-03-27 06:12:08 North American Eastern Time
Unauthorized IP Address: (removed)
Unauthorized Port: 20036
The following files were included in the unauthorized copying and/or distribution:
File 1: Jessie Andrews And Joslyn James - Maid to Obey/ham_jessie_joslyn_jd020713_480p_2000.mp4

I use qbittorrent on my mac, but never downloaded that. And this isn't the first infringement notice for similar movies (guessing by the names).

Maybe it is from one of the people using my connection, as a couple neighbors and a few friends have the password. I just want to get rid of the problem , i don't really want to know who it is.

I mentioned to my neighbors and one friend that i have been getting the violations, yet they still come. I may have to block access, but i want to let these people use it, if possible.

Any ideas on resolving this?

In the elevator today, on my way to the sixth floor, a man and woman were talking. She told him that she had a new phone, and after he asked, she explained (iirc), "It's a 5s....my old phone was a 'droid", putting on a more serious face, "it was three years old".

Luckily the doors opened an i got off. I might just have burst out laughing...youngsters.

With a 20 to 30 minute drive to and fro the office when traffic is light, i might as well listen to something. Being too lazy to read LoTR, maybe i can listen to it.

The 98 Honda Civic has a radio, though not much else in the way of audio. A friend lent me an FM transmitter, and then we realized it only transmits but does not play mp3s. An external device is required for that. And they seem expensive, until i found this item, which a number of sellers have for varying prices, but seemingly is the same product. There are many negative reviews on it, though one review which appears on top, really does set the record straight. So, for under five bucks, which includes (free) shipping, i gave it a shot.

I ordered it on 2/20 and got it last week, probably about 3/20. The plastic container was crushed, i didn't see any instructions, i set it to 87.7, and it works nicely. A day or two later i remembered to get the correct USB stick into the car, and started listening to LoTR.

LoTR, the book, is quite enjoyable (who woulda thought?) And the reader is pretty good too, changing his voice for the different characters which makes me giggle as i listen. Usually i change the speed to get the information faster. For example, i'm watching in anime at 2.55x (VLC is really strange sometimes). It's an anime aimed at teens so they speeeak veeerrrrrry sloooooooooooowly and........................pause..............a....lot.................in.................between.................words. I watched DBZ, iirc, at 1.7x, It's all a matter of how long the subtitles stay for, or in English, how long the pause in between words is. It can be sped up until just before the point where there is no pause. Regardless, i am enjoying this audiobook too well to want to speed it up.

But there is one issue. While the MP3 player does remember the track it is up to (by ordinal, that is, change the thumb drive or the tracks and it'll pick up a different track at that ordinal). So, i heard a lot of repeats for things before chapter 1. But chapter 1 itself is over an hour long. What to do, what to do...

Duh! Split it at every five minutes, or maybe just every one minute. Okay, but that sounds tedious, and what about splitting on silence. Enter MP3Split. On the "Batch & automatic split" it has an option "Silence - split with silence detection." "Threshold level (dB)" is set to -48.00, so i set "Minimum track length (seconds)" to 60 and gave it a shot. There were very few splits. Guessing, i set threshold to 0, but that resulted in no splits.

Giving up on the silent treatment, i set to split every 60 seconds, and got 3209 files (starting with Book 1). That is hard to manage and the player only has three digits for the ordinal. So, i set it to 200 seconds, resulting in 988 files. It splits words, but that seems ok, there's just a small click or something as it switches tracks. I wonder how it will sound in the car.

Why do i see people using Header & Trailer records? It is Header & Footer! Get it, the head is opposite the foot. If it is a Trailer record, the former is a Leader record. Head is the top of the body, foot is the bottom; lead comes before, trail comes after. Sheesh, some people just don't think! When should one be used over the other? It is a matter of paradigm. Are the records "part of" the body or not?

It's not limited to that. I see people using Start & End. It is Start & Finish or Begin & End. Like Lead & Trail, Start & Finish are outside the process, Begin & End are of the process. I get frustrated because i am starting to think in their stupid terminology! (The antidote to that sickness is to rant about it. :) )

When naming a COLUMN storing a process's start & finish times, Start & Finish are when they are set to start and finish. If it record the actual times of when it started and when it finished, the names should be Started and Finished.

Are these idiots turning their brains off before they name things or have they just not have brains to begin^H^H^H^H^Hstart with?

Still moving slowly along in trying to read Galen's De Temperamentis in English, Distributed Proofreaders started a project for it. Those Type-in Addicts are awesome.

The project state currently is Proofreading Round 3: Waiting for Release. Although Round 2 finished on December 12th, 2013, The Project Manager put a Hold on it which prevents it from proceeding through any further rounds.

On January 11th, 2014 i sent the PM a message

What is the status of the project De Temperamentis?

It seems it has been waiting for the proofread level 3 for a month now. I'm asking because i do not know how the process works here.

Is there anything i need to do to help move the project along?

Can i see the entire text as it is right now? The project page lets me download "Concatenated Text Files" but it does not seem complete to me.

I hope i am not bothering you with these questions. I really don't know the process.

but have not received a response. So yesterday (3/18/14) , i posted to the project's thread asking "What is the status of this project?" Perhaps someone will respond in the next week or so.

A few hours after i posted that message to the forum, someone emailed me

Hey!

          I saw your post on Slashdot looking for an English translation of Galen's De Temperamentis. I wish I had one for you, I'm actually looking for the same thing and curious to know if you found anything in the six months since you posted your question, or if a kickstarter ever got started, or anything else.

Cheers!
(name removed)

http://beta.slashdot.org/journal/505829/looking-for-galens-de-temperamentis-in-english

After wondering how he found the JE and where he got my email address, i saw that googling for "de temperamentis english" has the JE high (third, to me, right now) on the list. Link is to the ugly beta though. Well, i responded with information about the project and

the entire Latin text can be downloaded from the project page, but will have page lines in between.
Google translate will translate most of it. Some words it won't translate can be split into to.

(Last word should be "two".) That seems good enough for him.

As it so happens, he is working on "the history of the four humours for a personality documentary", which is somewhat related to what i am working on.

I am amused.

Well, it's Friday, Pi day, as i'm sure you know.
But next year will be even so much more so
And a year after that, you can feel rounded
Anyone else wish to hear this expounded?

I was sneaking around slashdot before, and now the front-page and journals all sow up in the beta. Removing "beta." from the URL is of no help. It reminds me of Windows 8, which made me switch away from Windows and to the Mac. Perhaps, we are now entering the Third Age of slashdot.

I have 5 moderator points, and prefer to spend them in JEs. But, i can't seem to find the moderate button in the old interface. Wondering if it was the date of the JE, i started listing JEs, but most seem like advertisements and there do not seem to be too many with comments.

The more i use Slashdot, the more i dislike it.

A friend asked me how to change top-post/bottom-post in Thunderbird. He intentionally uses a strict white-listing ISP, so searching is difficult (and that is pretty much how he wants it). That ISP offers excellent service and support to those who want exactly that type of service. Nonetheless, the time comes when you have to ask someone else to find something out for you. A simple search finds the answer. Easy enough.

He responded:

Thank you! Whats the best email program to install? Nothing against Thunderbird but I heard that its not so popular. I once went to a Microcenter to transfer my emails to a different comp. They said that they have no experirence with it!

Popularity (and possibly good sense) aside, he simply wants a popular email program, one that he can go into a place like Microcenter and get support.

Personally, i use GMail. I would recommend that to him, but, it can be hard to allow only one of Google's services.

Any recommendation?

Tried last night to pay my phone bill again and succeeded. MetroPCS under manage and Pay has a big Make a Payment button. That page includes a dual-purpose form. It allows you to pay the bill or sign in to your account. All you have to do is choose the appropriate radio button (with javascript on, otherwise you can choose both) and then enter either you password or your phone number a second time. I guess having the pay without logging in option which previously was big and on the side was too easy for people to use. Between this confusing screen and disabling your account (not just your phone number) when services lapses, i no longer wish to stay with MetroPCS. They're great until a problem happens, and then they're just plain stupid.

I created a ticket to report a bug in Spreadsheet::ParseExcel on 8/23/11. Just got the reply today, 3/11/14. Is 2.5 years good turnaround?

Of course, the response was to reject the report and blame it on someone else. :) He did say he would file a bug report with WriteExcel though. Progress. I don't care anymore, but its progress. That's always a good thing, right?

What was actually in the requirements and what the business customer thought was in the requirements were at odds. Apparently, a change was discussed, something was put in the requirements, and the business user signed off thinking her changes were implemented in it.

We're implementing a SOx related change, when the question of history comes up. History is part of the SOx requirement, the business user thinks it's in the requirements, and the developers know it isn't and that there is not enough time to put in history properly before the next release.

I mentioned in passing to one of the BAs that i sit next to, that it could be done with a TRIGGER shudder, but it would be a really Bad Idea. The hack is quick and dirty, TRIGGERs are evil, and this is a change log, not a history, which will be treated as a history at some point.

At the next meeting, the BA brought up the idea and it is decided to implement it. I fight with them over pulling in data from other TABLEs too, telling them that the FK should be enough, and duplicating data is bad. Someone gives me a TABLE structure, which adds new SOx COLUMNs, that is, not only do we capture what the change was, we capture who made the change, which, by definition, is the same as the master record's last updated or the next record in the change log. I register my comments, they are all ignored. The TABLE has the words "audit log" in it, and everyone refers to it as a history.

Now i have been asked to write a SQL statement to help the support team pull up the history. I mention that the original idea, seemingly agreed to, was that this hack would allow us to provide the change log on request, but it would not be automated. Further, this is a bug waiting to happen (especially if anything changes) and i strongly recommend against it. I am assured this will only be used by the production support team for now until a history is properly implemented.

I sent off the SQL to whomever. I remind myself (unsuccessfully, i'm sure) to keep my mouth shut.

I've been using MetroPCS for some time now, due to their $25/mo no contract, unlimited calling plan. It used to be $40, and that was good too, but at $25 it's hard to beat.

I like simple phones that are actually phones. Maybe i'm old-fashioned, but these semi-trucks that people whip out of their pockets with menus that look like they're from outer space don't seem to me to be an ideal phone. I also have a computer that is a phone, but i leave my mac at home.

MetroPCS is really annoying though. First it was the text spam. When i finally got bothered enough, i googled and found that it was the metro apps. Disabling some option took care of that. The second issue, which gets me every month, is automatic payment. I almost always forget to pay bills. I sit down once a month to pay my credit cards (which requires a bit of planning), but almost everything else is automatic. Two things are not, my water bill and my phone bill.

I live in an apartment building managed by Hartman and Tyner. I pay for electric bills to Detroit Edison through the local utilities comp. Heating and water is grouped together, and they split the bills in between the tenants. (They used to do that, i believe, they might have individual metering now.) It used to be that water was free, but they decided to have us pay 1/3 of the bill. That is handled by Yes Energy Management which adds a customer fee or two. Bills can be paid via the mail. or together with the rent at Rent Payment.

Rent Payment works if everything is in order. If anything is not, such as a credit card expiry made a card unusable, they won't tell you about it, and you find out when you get charged a $25 late fee (which increases every few days) and warning from the local office. Payment can be set to automatic, and they have gotten a little better about knowing when your lease starts and ends and required amount to pay.

The water bill is different. The amount shows up if i log in, but there is no way to pay it automatically. When i asked the local office why it wasn't, the response was that since the amount changes per month, it isn't possible. That seems bogus to me, as my electric bill changes every month and DTE has no such issues. So, i usually forget to pay it until i get a warning from the local office.

MetroPCS is the other problem. They text me when it is time to pay. At that point, by the time i get home and remember to do it, my phone has been suspended. Because it is suspended, i couldn't login to my account on their website, meaning i had to make a payment by typing in all the information. Only after the account was active could i get back into the account.

One month i actually setup everything, or so i thought. Apparently, the payments are still not automatic, but at least i can login to my account now. I went through the motions to make a payment, though i completed it (maybe even twice), but my phone is still not working.

I am sick of MetroPCS. I realized that i don't actually want the cheapest service. I want the cheapest convenient service. I'm ready to switch, anyone got any ideas?

A team member from Chenai asked me why a script which EXECUTEd a PACKAGE i wrote wasn't working. First thing i did was run it myself via SQL*Plus, which is did splendidly, i might add. :) First thing accomplished, it's not a problem in QA, it's the script.

Logged onto the app server and sure enough received the same error. Copied the file and started to change things. Having seen this file before, i was able to skip all the variables and right to the code. The code looked okay..maybe it should be tested on the db server itself to mimic what that script was doing.

Logging on to the server reminded me that the password had changed. No idea what it was changed to, but it wasn't required anymore, so i didn't care. That was a problem here. Luckily, there are those variables.

The variable and variable handling take up probably most of the script. The variables themselves are loaded from files, which may include other files. Ultimately, usernames and passwords are in a script under ~/etc...easy enough.

Trying the first set, then realized that was the db login itself. I made sure the db user could indeed EXEC that PACKAGE via SQL*Plus, and it could. But that wasn't the server login. Looking again, there was a server login, which failed. I checked and double-checked. Something was wrong.

That was it, no more assumptions, just check which server it was connecting to straight. Sure enough, it was set to the server we were migrating to, but is not for general use yet. The TNS name pointed to it as well. Duh! Is your computer plugged in?

--

When writing this, i hit [ctrl]-[e] 2 or 3 times to go to the end of the line. Between my mac at home and just being on a Linux box, switching back to windows shortcuts takes a second. After switch back from Google, i found my window empty, luckily, i had Lazarus installed.