24-VI-2009.
At Firriver, in the communal chat... George reports that in Kinston, where his server is, there's no power, and that's where his wiki is, and so is ours. I can't log in into Richard's server, because some Jeannie holds the connection. Since who knows when, at that, perhaps she just shut down her machine and went home, and Richard's server still doesn't get it that it should unhook that connection. The m$ fixed that later (actually did by this day) by having a timeout period, set to 30 minutes initially but still adjustable, but this guy stuck to old versions of everything, so I asked aloud whether I should kick her out, but still didn't know whether it is as I supposed, or she may be doing something important. Laura said she shouldn't be there at all, the time was agreed upon, but I should still wait a bit. Them being on west coast and three hours behind, I wondered if it's possible that someone comes so early to work. Eh, she thinks working at seven is normal. Well it was for me too, but that was twenty years ago.. I eventually checked the time of last writing into tables, 16:52 yesterday, ergo kick[-in-the-ass] ticket. Too bad Richard doesn't have terminal servers set up on all boxes, I could have visited hers and close the Feds regularly, that would have been cleaner.
So I did a backup, put up the new version, rebuilt the newer version of the database (all in fox's tables, as he was among the last to switch to escuelle, some five years later). Which Jan commented immediately (from Belgium) on how much time we waste on the few who still didn't switch to escuelle. Those where he is today have 15 licences and 16 regular users in a day, luckily never all of them at the same time, but his routine to decide how many are present at any present time is not quite perfect. If the app bursts (power out, network break, app crash) it doesn't get a chance to log out, the record with it login stays, counts as still present. There was trouble at times, with a clinic with 20 licences but capricious network, twelfth user would get an „all seats taken“ message. It took quite a while to untangle, perhaps the last of the issues dragged until 2015, when it was finally fixed for good. His today's customer won't have that problem, those sixteen are never all there.
Oliver logged out for a couple of hours, visits his doctor to get an injection.
Norman used this occasion to remark again that some lists, e.g. of medications, should be welded, because they can't contain anything that isn't in production anyway, and the list being open as it is allows them to enter „magic elixir XY“, and creates problems with CAAR, as we have to match our lists with theirs. On the other side, I said, if we had welded lists, then we'd have to keep them up-to-date by ourselves, distributing news often, like when a new product appears on the makret, and eventually the cost would strangle the benefit.
This kind of cuntery was the reason I had to write some patch for CAAR today and get hooked in a few places in Canada to distribute it. And there, incredible, one clinic never had any trouble at all, while their neighbors two streets away never had it right, they'd always invent some novel piece of shit.
On the other side, several hours later (maybe next morning), Laura said that „Surprise, surprise - the SHET button is active on Feds_demo SQL and it works!! All this time I've used the database and never noticed it was there... I've found the SHET documentation from them for programmers. I'll need you to give me a lesson on how this works in Feds though then i'll check that it's returning the correct info from the database“
Next day, my comment on SHET was „ This thing is a recurring wakeup - it gets forgotten for months, then resurfaces briefly, then gets forgotten again.“ David had trouble with m$ shit: „[Hey folks -- my computer woes are ongoing -- they applied a Vista upgrade on a formatted highdrive-- and should have installed XP (Base system) first... I'm running to the Geek Squad at Best Buy in a few minutes -- they are responsbile]“.
Jan replies to Norman's issue with flexible lists:
The problem is not that lists are expandable and user defined. The problem is how to tell the system of what it means
IOW, going fixed list is just one solution of the problem. Another solution is to type it.
And this is IMO is the way to go. None of the reports should be based on the PK value of a certain record. It should be based upon tickboxes or a fixed type
And this is what we are heading for in version 5.3 (a la version 6). character types that do have a meaning to humans. For example FET, OPU, ET, PGD, OBSERVE, LYSED, DEGEN, etc. If we type that, we can use those types in code, which will make our code much more readable than it is now... I mean all those places where we have 'magic numbers' , should dissapear. It obfuscation we should get rid off.
Now these „magical numbers“ is something we all hated, specially George and I, and while I just complained and spoke unprintable serbian at times, he bitched loud and clear about it, and was right. And Jan is not stupid, and is old enough as a programmer to recognize a proof when he sees it. This didn't, however, lead to much of a cleanup, there were magic numbers everywhere, but at least they stopped multiplying. New lists had short names for things, or had logical fields in them, so all of the items in a list which had some property, would have a 1 in that column, while others would have a zero. That was progress.
The dealers from #2 moved out. More precisely, they were kicked out, probably being several months behind with the rent, the cash flow from small time dope dealing didn't suffice. At least I got to hear rap firsthand, they'd get out the amplifier behind the house and hit it. There I somehow got to the bottom of it, that the rap is just like our deseterac* - there's not much music in there, it's just a way to tell one's own story through a common rite, with some rhythm. Them needing a ton of electronic to perform the same thing we did with a bow and a single string, well, such are the times.
Of course they didn't pick up all of their stuff behind themselves. What things remained, on the line to which we drag out the garbage cans on a trashday, it only a half of the left. There was twice as much, but, according to aborigines' customs, whoever wanted something he already took it.
And, of course, the thing with „I could have your bicycles returned“ I did not forget.
They didn't take all of their vehicles either, just his jeep and her coupe. The black elephant of an automobile stayed three for many a month more. Whever payed any attention could have got it that this is a dealer's dead drop. One of them would appear and check for something under the shotgun seat. Then, twentysome minutes later, someone completely else would come by to check for something under that same seat. Then, an hour or two later, one of them would come by again and check for something under the seat. I'm not completely excluding the theoretical possibility that the first check was to leave a package, second to replace the package with money and the third one to retrieve the money. But what do I know, it's these american customs, it's them cultural difference, it's beyond our ken to understand.
The smoke breaks were indeed sightseeings. One day, we stood so behind the house, in the back alley, watching our hot peppers grow (it'll be plentiful!), and there on the right we heard a loud thud somewhere from the sidestreet. Looked that way, and saw a female mounted cop, and along hers another horse, sans rider. Empty saddle. Understood what happened - there's one tree with a long low branch stretching across and above the curb. Aha, a cop banged his head and fell off the horse.
Within minutes there were three police cars, cordoned off the access to the place, whole crime scene investigation fuckit. We stood and enjoyed the show for some twenty minutes, don't want to miss the spectacle, and then some Bob Marley comes from left in his red pickup, and seeing the barrier, stops and asks us what the fuck is going on. „Cop fell from his horse“. The hearty laugh he let out was contagious, made my day.
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* deset=ten, deseterac is a dekametric verse of our epic poetry
Mentions: CAAR, David Berton, Feds, Firriver Fertility (Firriver), fox, George Whiteley, Jan Brenkelen, Laura O'Hare, Majkrosoft (m$), Norman Shen, Oliver Byford, Richard Fauntlerault, SHET, in serbian