majestic

This isn't as funny in a laugh out loud way as Valhalleluja or And Then I Noticed That She Was A Gargoyle but it's the most spot on (power/true) metal parody of them so far. Fire in the sky!

Cthulu runs a telecom business:

Okay, you convinced me. Downloading the game at the moment.

No it doesn't, I'm hoping someone will convince me to not do that. 60€ I could also invest into a decent steak or two.

I've tried everything, including caching a copy of each used record in memory instead of using pointers just to make sure I'm not running into some weird compiler bug like the one I mentioned a while back where arrays on the client application and on the server behave radically different (same code, different results, I hope someone rots in hell for this one). Nothing seemed to help. Today I finally found out what is going on. The error message I introduced showed up in the log (actually I added three checks, and it was the last one that was triggered). I re-tried the import and noticed that it failed again. And again. And again. It also failed on the client. Meaning no code issue, no weird compiler error like last time, and all of a sudden it was reproducible. I mean, except for the fact that retrying the steps in our test enrivonment worked perfectly. So I did what every sensible developer in this situation does, screw best practices, time to debug in production. Turns out it was a Layer 8 issue. The automated update messages we're getting take up to 10 minutes to arrive (they're batched to go out every 10 minutes on our customer's end). That's plenty of time for someone to see that there's an order that's been picked and packed by the warehouse, sit down and update manually... in a way that doesn't add the necessary reference numbers. Oh boy. So glad this year is over soon.

So guys, if I set my details to low, can this run somewhat smoothely on my setup? I really feel like buying the game just to spite the peasants and whiny investors right now. Never thought I'd see that in my old age. I'm going contrarian again. xD

I sat there, thinking for a while what cameo you meant, but then it hit me. You mean Carl, right?

I find myself agreeing, but that doesn't mean much. It's easy to pass a bar when someone put the bar six feet under.

Sad little console peasants. Cry your tears, I feast on them. Almost makes me want to buy the game right away even though I probably can't run it properly with my second generation i5 and the GTX 970, never mind having enough free space on the hard disk (and no SSD to reduce loading times).

That would be something. I mean, I'm generally not one for conspiracy theories (I love them and enjoy reading and hearing about them though), but our dear chancellor, the Glorious Messiah, Sebastian I, went to Switzerland, met with some people from Roche and then suddenly decides that we should do mass Corona testing where, curiously enough, Roche test kits are being used, even though mass testing turned out to be completely ineffective right next door in Slovakia. Then the people had the bad sense to reject his idea - mass testing had a really bad turnout and found barely any new infections. The obvious solution? Third lockdown starting from after Christmas until January 18th, with a week's quarantine afterwards for people who do not attend the mass testing on January 16th and 17th. The reaction of a petulant man-child who can't deal with rejection and criticism.

You guys, as if having thousands of saves isn't normal. On an average Half-Life playthrough I save roughly three thousand times. Serious Sam had 5000+ saves. I overwrite most, but compulsive saving is the way to go for me.

Looking for a bug in our data import module that turns out to be pervasive and unreproducible. It happens a handful of times a day and causes a customer of ours to get status messages without reference code. Everything works fine, only in something like one out of a hundred cases the reference number is not assigned to the order for some reason. I have no idea what to do short of adding a check at the very end of the import that looks for open lines in the order without reference numbers and then throws an error. Because simply running the import again fixes the issue. Throwing the same data at the import either through client or batch processing "fixes" the issue insofar as it never happens. It's a one-time every now and then issue that doesn't even show up on the batch history log. Might get a clue as to what the hell is happening that way, I'd get a proper error entry in the batch log too. Hm, that's actually a good idea. I'll add that tomorrow.

Don't move the goalpost here. 213374U came up with a decent reply, although that's also a technicality more than anything. The Council comes up with the nominations in backroom dealings, that's true, but that is also true for my current government. We voted for parties, and they then dealt in back rooms to nominate ministers a chancellor and a vice chancellor, who had then to be approved by the president (that I actually did vote for, mostly for a lack of alternatives). Generally at least the chancellor is the lead candidate of the strongest party, but not even that is guaranteed. I don't like any of them, but that still makes it my elected government. It's not what I wanted or voted for, but in the end, what is democracy if not the will of the majority (of the people who can be bothered to cast a vote or are allowed to, at any rate)? The commission is similar insofar as that it was made up by political decisions in every member state. It needs approval by the Parliament we've voted for, which last year has shown for the first time that can remember that they can really give the Council a sweat or two if they want to - and it really is sadly what left us saddled with Uschi, the quintessential out of sight and out of mind politician that Gorth was referring to, someone Merkel was looking to get rid off because she made her government look bad. I agree with your points though, mostly. The Commission should be nominated by the Parliament. That would also indireclty give the Parliament the right to propose laws. Perhaps the Council should be knocked down to an actual council, or at least made up differently. Going with the member states head of governments isn't the best approach. It feels impossible to make significant changes, because it's not just the voting habits and politicians of your own country that come into play, but everyone else's. And when you a case like Merkel, well... 15 years and counting. Geez. Just end it already, Germany. I also agree with Sharp_One and Gorth insofar as that we don't need a beaurocratic behemoth in Brussels that deals with issues best left to the individual member states, but we'd probably disagree heavily on which areas that should be. So what was my point again? I kind of lost track and have vectored away a good deal. Oh, right. I'm with you guys in terms of the EU needing reforms and shouldn't move for even more centralization indeed. I'm against picking up Nazi and alt-right diction on the way there. Hell, maybe in your political landscape it's not the Nazis that always come up with the argument that person X or Y has not been elected by the people. Last time when a chancellor resigned, for instance, the Nazis immediately started claiming the the new one was never voted for. We don't vote for our chancellors anway, parties are always free to nominate whoever they want. Even a replacement if one resigns. Weird concept for people who would rather ask the Führer who should be the next in line, but eh. I'm not, silly. I just said Skarpen is trying really hard to change my mind about it.

If only the CE had come with a white/black crystal. It was yellow/black and really useless with it's +4 endurance... edit: Crystal so bad it not even listed in the list of CE goodies. Heh.

How's the Commission not an - indirectly indeed! - elected body then, outside of (populist) Anti-EU rhetoric? I don't disagree. The Commission should have less power and the EU Parliament more, but that's something else than not being an elected body and all that. We're all at fault for the Moloch in Brussels. The EU could try to not vote for the parties of the EPP for instance. That would be a change. It's also really funny when you think that Orbán is one of the biggest critics of the EU and its drive for a more centralized supranational governing body but all the Hungarian votes for Fidesz go directly into the EPP's power pool... the same faction that wants the centralization in the first place. It's downright schizophrenic, and they're not going to change it. The EPP needs Fidesz for the seats and Orbán can do with the EPP's goodwill. Although I heard he wants to leave. Good for him. Actually... good for everyone. Down with the EPP.

I was sitting here for a while and typing up a post, but let's try something different. Let me ask you a question. Is Donald Trump not an elected president of the United States? Is his government not an elected body of the United States?

I'm pretty sure that's just religious BS. The Darksaber is just a lightsaber that looks a bit weird.

That's certainly more fun than guessing what the CPU does based on the noise it makes. Easier to pull off too by the looks of it.

I didn't, but you're trying really hard to change my mind, aren't you? Bye.

Bye. A democratically elected governing body passing a law you don't like is a dictatorship. Any election where the outcome isn't what you wanted is rigged. But everyone else wants the Fourth Reich, right?

Ah, so that's why link aggregator sites have been weird showing PH results recently. I mean... I, uhm, heard from a friend.

My upstairs neighbor, who is a bit of a weirdo, has been, well, for the lack of a better word, moaning for like twenty minutes now and there's a plopping noise every now and then.

Chris Pine is trying to pull off a Jeremy Irons? Uh-oh...

We boardies here argued about the ending before (I think it is fine given the subject matter and not entirely unexpected) but the one thing that was so disappointing about the last few seasons of Lost was that instead of wrapping up plotlines they kept introducing new ones, and none of them were properly answered. Like with everything else people on the internet made a list of open questions and someone tried to defend Lost and answered them all. It had like a thousand items on them, and from what I remember half of them were answered with The island is magic. Now I don't mind magic as an answer per se. Magic is a sufficient explanation when dealing with the supernatural after all, but not if it's painfully obvious that they just got Lost (killer "pun" huh?) in their own kudzuesque plot and simply failed to come up with a decent idea of why things were happening or what they meant. Chris Carter was jealous, I bet. To be fair to him though, Two Fathers / One Son would have been a really nice ending for the X-Files' myth arc, but from what I've read Fox wasn't entirely interested in quitting their cash cow while it was still going strong.

Time to rewatch Game of Thrones then.