majestic

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.

Finished the first season of Sailor Moon. Hm. Way, way back when I first started watching this anime I thought it was the beginning of the second season that I watched. I knew I missed some episodes, and I do have very vivid recollections of the Tree Aliens that were filler content for the first part of the second season. Ah, the old wonders and joys of regular TV. After rewatching the first season I'm not that sure any more. I think I might have actually started with the end of the first season. By end I mean roughly around the time Sailor Venus showed up. I don't think it matters all too much. I am perfectly certain that I missed the episodes from before Rei joined the team. Funny that, because before Sailor Moon I used to watch Attack No. 1, which I'm not sure ever got a US release. There I also missed the first few episodes, which kind of went into a rerun at the same time, with me noting the similarities between Rei and Midori's initial disposition towards Usagi and Kozue (or Bunny and Mila, in our dubs). I only found out later that Attack No. 1 was actually from the late sixties. *shrug* As I've said in an earlier post already, the show has lost nothing of its appeal for me, which I am really happy to be able to write, and now that I'm a good deal older there's no one waiting back at school to tease me for liking shōjo anime (Attack No. 1 was like the original non-magical girl shōjo anime, even if her specialty attacks toe that line at some point, in the end she's just a volleyball player. And I don't even like volleyball. Hated having to play it in PE). Although there wasn't much teasing for Sailor Moon anyway. By the time it aired I was well into vocational training (specialized senior high school if you will, sort of, talked about this prior in one of the poltical threads) and it was a nerd point of pride to not only watch anime but Sailor Moon in particular. Which is kind of hilarious in hindsight because Sailor Moon turned out to be a show that gained mainstream popularity somewhere down the line. At least we get to say that we watched it before it was cool. If... I would still care about silliness like that. The one thing that is still weird after all that time is how almost everyone has latin names, with the exception of Artemis (who later has a daughter called Diana, to make it more weird) and the in-universe origin of Serenity (because that's Selene and the confusion probably comes from the lack of L and R sounds in Japanese). Because serenitas is also latin, but Selene's latin counterpart is Luna, which already is one of the cats, so yeah... Uhm, where was I? Oh, yeah. Looking forward to starting season 2 soonish.

Isn't he head over heels in debt that he's trying to get out of?

One would think that Riot Games has more money to throw at an offshoot than to hire Airship Syndicate to make a reskin of Battle Chasers: Nightwar. Not that I'm complaining, Battle Chasers was awesome. It's just weird.

This epsiode of Discovery was glorious. I mean if you ignore the B-plot with the distress signal from the Federation starship out and the reason why Georgiou is "sick" - because she doesn't belong in this time. Yeah, sure, whatever. Other Trek shows toyed with the idea as well but usually came up with some quantum signature or other thingy instead of... stuff that doesn't fit inside the Trek canon. Anyway... uhm. The Kelvin Timeline has now been official moved to "parallel universe" territory. Not sure since when timelines spawn parellel universes in 'Trek, but who gives a damn. All hail Her Most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius! Also maybe turn down the lens flares? Geez film crew, geez. Just like in season 1, everything set in the mirror universe is great. The writers are having much more fun than coming up with "Star Trek" and the actors positively revel in the glory of Shatnarian overacting. The transition scene was fun too, but set in the regular 'Trek verse so it was pretty awful from an in-universe standpoint. It reminded me of Anubis talking to Daniel Jackson in Limbo at the end of Stargate SG-1 season eight. Fitting in the Stargate setting, less so in Star Trek. It just shows that Discovery is dragged down by being attached to Star Trek. And unlike with Star Trek: Picard, the show could probably stand on its own without the name. Maybe... just maybe stop spending money on trying to make this Star Trek and contact GW, make a TV show about the Imperium of Man, yes? Please?

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. 😄