TR Forums

I agree, that's really dumb. Should be in the database. What if he needs to add a field? He's gonna have to go and modify every single damn case instead of just adding a column to the table. If he's really worried about the network overhead of doing the DB lookup every time, he could cache the last few values looked up on the assumption that most orders will originate from a small subset of the possible countries.

Even if there's some actual justification for hard-coding it into the app, an initialized array of structs would be preferable to that crap.

Glad I'm not losing my mind, at least.

He's just one of those guys you can't tell anything to. It's not limited to just software. Nice guy. Means well. Just stubborn as a bull.

I've gotten in a really bad habit of posting my swipe autocorrect posts and then editing them like 5 times afterwards to fix mistakes. Seems like I always miss a bunch even if I do proof read. I don't think my eyes agree with this phone screen as much as they used to.

Random thought: Are people more willing to stand in long lines these days, since we all have our smartphones to play with while we wait? Maybe the smartphone revolution is having an unintended side effect of lengthening wait times and degrading customer service in the physical world.

On a semi-related note, perhaps it also makes people more willing to take public transit. My ability to get online makes my current commute (more than an hour each way via bus & train) a lot more tolerable.

I could see that, there was a time when I would include travel time in my work hours when doing various math, but if you can use your phone its not really lost free time anymore. I've noticed something interesting too. People using their phone while driving seem to have no road rage reaction to traffic or even near accidents.

Back in the day, you would have listened to your Walkman and read a paperback book or worked crossword puzzles while you waited.

Heiwashin wrote:

I could see that, there was a time when I would include travel time in my work hours when doing various math, but if you can use your phone its not really lost free time anymore.

Yup. I can surf, do my morning forum spammer patrol, sleep, or tether my phone and work (if we've got a deadline coming up and I'm feeling pressured to put in some extra hours). The year or so I had a similar length commute where I was driving instead of taking public transit was way more stressful, since it all felt like wasted time.

Heiwashin wrote:

I've noticed something interesting too. People using their phone while driving seem to have no road rage reaction to traffic or even near accidents.

Well, if you're the cause of some of the near-accidents, you're probably more likely to cut other people some slack...

Yeah, I guess it's hard to build up a good case of road rage when you're not really paying attention to the road.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Back in the day, you would have listened to your Walkman and read a paperback book or worked crossword puzzles while you waited.

Been there done that. And would be doing it now if we didn't have all this new tech. At least I could have my music collection with me on those long drives... my Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox and a 64GB micro-SD card was the only thing that kept me sane!

I just got junk spam so bad that i thought it was a joke and kept reading it. The title says, captain whatever informing you of your account being hacked or the really bad off english equivalent anyway. The actual message text is a past lover telling me that i got her pregnant and she demands exactly 601 dollars or else she'll tell everyone i got her pregnant and ruin my life. Kindly enough, she also accepts bitcoins. She even included mangled instructions on how to send bitcoins. Guess i better get right on that.

Heiwashin wrote:

The title says, captain whatever

Hey, leave me out of this. I never saw her.

Captain Ned wrote:

Heiwashin wrote:

The title says, captain whatever

Hey, leave me out of this. I never saw her.

Maybe they'd have a better chance if they sent it to you instead.

Heiwashin wrote:

Maybe they'd have a better chance if they sent it to you instead.

That's the really weird part. Maybe it's the actual endemic corruption in African governments that causes 419 scammers to create their SPAM and send it to gov't employees here in the US thinking we'll bite. Over the past 20 years in the day job I have accumulated some serious 419 spam sent straight to my gov't address, a few of which have been printed to save for posterity (and rousing good humour). When it hits seven zeros, you know the scammer hasn't even caught a nibble so far.

I'm waiting for the one (and it will come someday) that promises a payout greater than the annual GDP of the purported country.

I realized today my google maps forms a map based on how frequently I go places. Every star is somewhere that I stop for the weekend.

I'm a serious home-body. I like being home. But if you love to go places, I imagine that driving is a great way to do it.

derFunkenstein wrote:

I'm a serious home-body. I like being home. But if you love to go places, I imagine that driving is a great way to do it.

Yes, yes it is, although the soybean fields along the Ohio Turnpike do get just a little boring (much like the vineyards west of Rochester on the NY Thruway).

I have seen untold amounts of corn. I see it in my dreams. Last night a few stalks of corn picked me up and we flew around together.

But really, a lot of people that come out here are disappointed by how little you get to stop where you want. The weekends I stop at places dictated by my route, with a degree of flexibility afforded by my schedule. I still manage to find cool things to do and sometimes you land somewhere you want to visit.

I really meant driving a truck, but driving in general is true I suppose.

It's been close to a decade since I've had to do it, but i used to go to visit schools in the middle of nowhere to provide training. Places you'd never want to go like Kokomo, IN; Shullsburg, WI; Mount Vernon, IL; or Salina, KS. Maybe I don't like travel because I never went anywhere fun.

I still make a once-a-year pilgrimage to Columbia, MO in early April, but I'm cooped up in a hotel for a conference the whole time so those trips are dull, too.

My wife and I have drawn up a list of overnight trips for long weekends we plan to try to hit in the next few years; up to Trinidad to the north (Pueblo would be in range but ew, Pueblo) out to Albuquerque and OKC . Making a list of neat cities within those boundaries to take our kids to

So far:
Tucumcari NM
Raton NM
Trinidad CO
Elk City OK
OKC
Albuquerque
Mills Canyon NM
Black Mesa in the Oklahoma Panhandle (No relation to Half Life)
Roswell NM
Lubbock TX

Plus day trips within 1-1.5 hours of us; looking for events in all the small towns to try to catch.

I don't understand not liking travel

derFunkenstein wrote:

Places you'd never want to go like Kokomo, IN...

That's rude!

Okay, I'm not actually from Kokomo, but being from Indiana, I can point to many places that are "really" in the middle of nowhere and make Kokomo look like a big city.

superjawes wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Places you'd never want to go like Kokomo, IN...

That's rude!

Okay, I'm not actually from Kokomo, but being from Indiana, I can point to many places that are "really" in the middle of nowhere and make Kokomo look like a big city.

It's not necessarily the middle of nowhere, but it's certainly a place I'd never choose to go for leisure.

Kokomo is where the hotel is. The customers were 5-10 miles away in places like Greentown. Cassville had a haunted asylum/house thing called Edge of Insanity or something like that. It was amusing. But that's about it.

edit: I was doing an end-of-term grading training and it had just opened like a month before halloween. Stayed Friday night to check it out on Saturday.

On the house hunt hard. I've seen 5 properties so far. Have two lined up for this afternoon and three for tomorrow. I'm exhausted already. Maybe I'm being just too damned picky! I keep telling myself I wont get roped into something I wont like in 15 years.

Captain Ned wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

I'm a serious home-body. I like being home. But if you love to go places, I imagine that driving is a great way to do it.

Yes, yes it is, although the soybean fields along the Ohio Turnpike do get just a little boring (much like the vineyards west of Rochester on the NY Thruway).

Try heading west of here sometime. Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas will make the Ohio Turnpike look exciting.

Captain Ned wrote:

the soybean fields along the Ohio Turnpike do get just a little boring (much like the vineyards west of Rochester on the NY Thruway).

I drove south through Illinois one time, and ended up channeling my inner Clark Griswold:

"Look, Honey: soybeans! <two minutes later> Look, Honey: a train on fire!" (that really did happen)

tanker27 wrote:

On the house hunt hard. I've seen 5 properties so far. Have two lined up for this afternoon and three for tomorrow. I'm exhausted already. Maybe I'm being just too damned picky! I keep telling myself I wont get roped into something I wont like in 15 years.

Don't buy anything that you don't at least like. And I feel that good location is more important than a great house - you can improve the house, but you can't move it. Buy a decent or good house in a great area.

derFunkenstein wrote:

It's not necessarily the middle of nowhere, but it's certainly a place I'd never choose to go for leisure.

!...Neither would I (Nashville/Brown County, IN is much better, and my family is in the southern part of the state.)

Anyway...referencing Kokomo, IN made me think that Bob & Tom had parodied the song by The Beach Boys, but changed the lyrics for Indiana. I may have been incorrect, because what I found is a semi-NSFW song. I did also find a non-parody song from a 1947 musical. That was surprising, especially when I found a Bing Crosby version.

Tanker, no one likes their house 15 years on (says the one who still lives in the house he bought in 1994).

just brew it! wrote:

Try heading west of here sometime. Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas will make the Ohio Turnpike look exciting.

I can get all the corn I want right here at home in VT, thank you just the same.

Corn or wheat, it's all just genetically-engineered grass.

Damn birds, spent last night clearing out the grass from the dryer vent where they were trying to nest. All the louvres are closing properly but they still want in there. Ended up with the dryer disconnected and an old T-shirt stuffed in there to block them from coming in.

Captain Ned wrote:

Tanker, no one likes their house 15 years on (says the one who still lives in the house he bought in 1994).

HEH! I guess you are right.