majestic

Currently burning the midnight oil trying to reproduce one of the weirdest Heisenbugs I've ever come across. No luck reproducing it so far but perhaps I fixed it anyway (seems like it was trying to update a record which was never selected under certain circumstances), with a nice little mostly untested patch that I just issued in the middle of the night. Fixed another minor issue and a colleague's bug with phone numbers too while I was at it. The patch was supposed to go live five hours ago with the tested portion of it. To patch the system we need to stop the batch processing but that wasn't possibe unti now because a job that usually takes ~6 hours ran for over 20 today. Yeah, fun. Moved that one to a different server and shuffled things around, let's see if that helps. On the bright side the system is rock solid and considering the 200% increase of the work load compared to usual (lockdown + christmas = lots of orders from online shops) there was barely any performance hit for the users. Batch servers are really close to maximum capacity though. Time to get some sleep.

Indeed, it was liberally seasoned with a mediterranean salt and spice mixture, and generally you're right, pumpkin skins are too tough to eat but that's the nice part about Hokkaido pumpkins. The skin is really soft and edible, making it ideal to take the pumpkins, cut the top off, hollow them out and stuff them to your liking. Or use them for whatever else you want. No need to peel. Every now and then we just cut them into slices, salt them, add some olive oil and roast them until they're soft (you can add other herbs if you want: thyme, rosemary, oregano, majoram... whatever floats your fancy, really).

Should probably repost the pumpkin lest it doesn't get the attention it deserves. @Amentep let me know if that's too spammy then I'll add some other picture I haven't posted yet.

Well that was a shock, for a moment there I thought Lucifer has died.

I don't, really. If I cooked for myself I'd probably set the kitchen on fire. Most of the time I'm eating at the cantina at work (which is really good, for a cantina at any rate) and since I don't eat breakfast and have only a really small dinner that's not much of an issue. My wife cooks food for herself, but it's mostly snacks outside of the weekends. Mom never really stopped cooking for the entire family when she's at home though, and since I no longer get food from the company's cantina when I'm at the office (because of the pandemic we're on mandatory home office) and I'm literally a stone's throw away from my parent's place she insists that we come over to eat. Guess my parents are also a bit bothered by the constant lockdown(s) and not really being able to do much all day long. They're usually really active, always visiting this museum, or that festival, or go sightseeing... yeah, none of which happens right now. Not that I'm complaining. My mother is a gourmet level cook, and I don't say that lightly, i.e. that has nothing to do with nostalgia, childhood memories or not knowing any better, like it does with a lot of other people. Speaking of food, look at some stuffed pumpkin here:

I once heard that supreme commie Milton Friedman was also in favor of UBI, although he liked to call it negative income tax for some reason. Probably because negative tax sounds less commie, but free money from the state is free money from the state, right? Heh.

https://www.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-aliens-exist-humanity-not-ready-651405 Well that at least explains why all of ESA's Mars landing missions keep failing. They're shot down by a Galactic Federation/United States joint military venture.

I figured out that Baby Jesus doesn't bring us presents quite early and immediately told my brother because I wanted to make him miserable. He flat out refused to believe me. I guess that means I learned really early in life that you can't convince conspiracy nuts of the truth. Our Christmas routine helped a lot in figuring it out. We were always visiting our grandparents on Christmas, and when we came home my father would go and check if the presents arrived while we waited with mom at the door. Curious, yes? Because all the presents everywhere else were already there when we arrived. Just ours were always late and my father always needed a couple of minutes. From there on it was easy to guess that he didn't just look if the presents were already under the tree but that he was, in fact, putting them there, because there was no time to put them under the tree before we went to visit our grandparents. Guess that's one thing that is made easier by you heathens getting the presents on the 25th from a Finnish fat guy in a red suit. Plenty of time to put them under the tree while the kids are in bed instead of up and about.

Not everything in 2020 was bad. A local behemoth of an investigation and trial finally came to a very satisfying conclusion (assuming for a moment that the verdict holds, which it pretty much will). 11 years worth of investigation and a three year trial. That might look really inefficient but the defendant's council fought tooth and nail to delay wherever they could (here I would postulate that they always expected the verdict to be guilty and they dragged out the trial at every potential turn to be able to appeal to the ECHR later). Getting the necessary documents from the banks in Liechtenstein alone took three years. https://www.politico.eu/article/karl-heinz-grasser-austria-finance-minister-corruption/ Have fun in jail, pretty boy. I'm sure you're going to be really popular there. Take care to not drop the soap too much. The article's slightly wrong though, he didn't pocket the 9.6 million alone, that was for him and his accomplices, all of which were sentenced to 6 or 7 years). Anyway, what I do find funny is that his lawyer immediately stated that they're going to appeal the verdict. In Austrian law the verdict of a trial by jury is not appealable, only the sentence. Of course the outcome of the trial can potentially be nullified if grave procedural errors were to be discovered, significant new evidence brought forth or the judge and jury to be deemed not having weighed evidence with the necessary care, all of which would lead to a re-trail. Given how immensely high profile this case was here procedural errors are unlikely to show up, and if there were any significant new evidence it would have been entered by now. However, anything's possible (just unlikely). The appeal might even backfire. The jury saw the long duration of the trial as extenuating circumstances and reduced the maximum penalty from fifteen to ten years (of which he has gotten eight). The supreme court might just as well inrease the sentence if they decide to apply the full range of penalty as per the legal framework. Also not very likely, but one can hope, yes?

Can't wait to not play it and complain about it five years down the line. Like with TheWitcher 3.

Isn't that what Bioware did with the cupcakes? Donate them to charity. Granted there's better food than cupcakes for that, but still...

Someone's in love with their doctor. Or the other way around. Well this day's getting worse all the time. One of the dogs of my sister-in-law also died. Looks like 2020 is gearing up to be really annoying on a personal level on its way out. FU 2020. FU. On a more bright side I've decided on a Christmas present for my wife:

Oh, great. This morning I learned that my best friend's cat died yesterday evening and I noticed that my toilet was full of peeled off plaster. Looks like the neighbor's drain pipe is leaky. Well, time to call the landlord before anything more serious happens and I get a load of literal crap dumped in my flat. What a monday...

Indeed, speedy recovery GD. Still trying to determine if I should take up the invitation for a free COVID-19 test next Saturday. On the one hand, it would be nice to know. On the other hand the actual chance that I'm sick is very close to zero and going outside just increases it. I'm pretty good as self-isolation. I mean, going outside to the testing facility will put me into contact with at least ten times more people than I've actually interacted with in the past month (and that is counting the optician I went to to order new glasses). On the other hand that would mean seeing the sun again after so long... hmm.

The "haha stormtroopers" parts of The Mandalorian continue to be bad, and the prospect of getting another episode with Bill Burr doesn't exactly make me happy. That prison break episode was easily last season's worst.

Hahahahaha. Star Dreck Discovery time! This time we deal with some of Booker's family issues, his home planet and Prissy McMoustache Osyraa who does her best to be all threatening and grrrrrrrrrrr and brrrrrrrrrr and terrifying. So boss lady is seen executing her incompetent nephew in the most hilarious moustache twirling manner possible (she feeds him to her pet) then she comes up with a plan to get her hands on Booker by withholding pest repellent from Booker's home planet. Apparently the Emerald Chain is the only source of VANDAL in the galaxy. Anyway, Discovery jumps Book and Burnham to <insert planet name I don't want to look up here, something like Keijwisjousn> (neither of which ever even think for a moment that this could be a trap laid by Osyraa, which anyone with half a brain could see coming) and stays around to be a neutral Federation observer, hoping to make McMoustache be a little more open to diplomatic solutions. You know, show the flag and all that. Of course she shows up in heavy cruiser and is suitably unimpressed with Discovery. Hilarity ensures and McMoustache begins bombing the planet where the impact of the bombardement randomly does nothing even if it's right behind you or causes a shockwave that causes everyone to fly from their feet whenever it is convenient to do so, i.e. everyone tumbles and falls the moment Michael and Book are surrounded by the baddies. Saru is itching to intercede but has clear orders to not engage the Emerald Chain because the Federtion really can't deal with a direct conflict at the time. Luckily First Officer Ensign Tilly comes up with the perfect plan: Have a pilot of Discovery go rogue and attack the cruiser with Book's ship to give Michael more time to do something or other down on the planet (they conveniently lost track of them due to the planetary defense fields and don't even know what - if anything - she's up to, but they need to give her more time to do whatever it is). Detmer goes to fly Booker's ship against a heavy cruiser. The Andorian who lost his both his "antenna" knows a weak spot, so he joins her. Yes it was hilarious when Michael said millennia to a single millennium but this isn't funny any more. It's either antennas, or less pedestrian, antennae. In fact I'd say that antennas is out for Star Trek as antennae is the accepted plural form referring to feelers. Well anyway, in a scene that may as well be reused footage from Poe's attack on the dreadnought in The Last Jedi, we get a flashback to Star Trek: Insurrection where Riker flew the Enterprise with a joystick. Detmer goes manual control and takes out the cruisers weapon system and causes some hull damage. The cruiser hails Discovery and Saru offers her assistance because, hey, her ship is damaged. Green Osyraa McMoustache states in no uncertain terms that the Federation just declared war on the Emerald Chain. How shocking, she saw right through Tilly's ploy there. How... unexpected. Instead of trying to salvage the situation by intercepting the Emerald Chain flagship (which is now completely hapless) they just let her fly way. Then Burnham comes up with a way to save the planet they've been fighting over in a minute and a half, Booker and his estranged brother (but not really biological brother) hold hands and sing Kumbaya to make strange blue flying locsts from leftover Avatar CGI shots go back to Pandora where they came from. Oh, and yeah, there's this minor C-ish sideplot where Culbert is trying to figure out what is wrong with Georgiou, and Adira tells Stamets that she wants to be called they. They (well Stamets and Adira) also analyse the SB-19 data to find out that the Burn originated from a weird nebula that is singing the same melody that played on the Seed Vault ship - the same melody Adira is playing on her, errr, sorry, their cello. There's also a coded message coming from the nebula that is apparently from a Federation starship. Okay. Stamets works Adira so hard she falls asleep on the job, then Culbert and Stamets have a little discussion about Adira while she's sleeping in front of them (but of course she's awake). The two of them have some dialogue that is choke full of pronouns. The writers apparently tried very, very hard to come up with as much theys and thems as possible in four lines of dialogue and it really shows. It's wooden, forced and terribly acted. Stamets and Culbert look as if they're close to resounding laughter with how bad the dialogue is, smirking like idiots and putting an emphasis on every they and them they say to a point where it sounds utterly unnatural. No, not unnatural in the way orthodox fundamentalists think LGBTQ people are but unnatural as in severly breaking the conversational flow. If the intention was to show how picking pronouns for yourself makes talking harder then congratulations Discovery writing crew, you have succeeded. If the intention was to get more understanding for trans people then... please stop. If you can't direct the actors you have that are playing a gay couple to not make a mockery of it just leave it alone. Sheesh.

I liked exploring Elven ruins in DA:I and figuring out what happened. It's what I liked most about the Dragon Age games, exploring Thedas. I don't care for the combat of any of the three installments. They're all various degrees of serviceable, sometimes okay, sometimes annoying, and in the case of Inquisition occasionally hilarious like when you one-shot a dragon, but were, for me, never the reason to play them.

That I don't know, but Casey Hudson vocally defended it as the artists' intended vision for the ending, so he can at least join in being frozen from the neck down in Cocytus.

Fails junior high science, should be ample qualification to become a writer on Star Trek Discovery.

I'm pretty sure once the people who came up with the Starchild in Mass Effect 3 shed this mortal coil they'll be replacing Judas Iscariot, Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Iunius Brutus as the people Lucifer gnaws on in the ninth circle of Hell.

There's this really nice video that can tell you why DA2 wasn't as bad as it was made out to be: And yeah, I, *cough* borrowed *cough* the save simulation joke from MRBTongue.

My insurance covered, let me check, 17.54 €. To be fair, with a basic (acrylic) glass package and a regular no-name frame they would be pretty much free, but also super uncomfortable, heavy and ugly. I'm blind enough to need super high refractive lenses and a small frame if I don't want to wear ashtray-style glasses on my nose. It certainly doesn't help that large 70ies style frames seem to be all the rage these days, it's apparently cool to look like a creepy stalker or pervert. You know, like Rich Evans:

I'm surprised that DA2 gets so much hate here. With how contratian this board usually is I'd expect people defending it a bit more. It was fairly okay for an interactive cave simulator.

Had my yearly checkup at my ophthalmologist. Eyes got a bit worse, and I figured it's been a while since I got new glasses, so why not. So my wife and I go shopping, and she's like: "Hey, is this going to be expensive?" and I go "Nah, not really", so she immediately starts picking out frames and we finally find one she likes (that I can live with). A couple of measurements and a bill from the shop later she looks at me and says: "Wait, you said this isn't going to be expensive!" and I'm like... "Yeah that was before you picked the Emporio Armani frame and the diamond glass package, dear."

As ridiculous as that may sound, season one has the longest run of decent episodes of the series. Overall it was still terrible, but it's the clearly the season with the best value so far. Season two makes Battlestar Galactica's final half of season three and season four look positively glorious and the current one is... uhm... yeah. It's occasionally okay. Somewhere between the first and second, but incredibly uneven.