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I will politely agree if you spare us the emulgator, vindigator, astrogator, delegator, arrogator, obligator, mitigator, fumigator, negator....
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Was shopping and noticed some "New" dry cat food on the "reduced" shelf.
Now, fur face is a picky little monster, he goes off cat food brands roughly monthly so anything new is worth a try - particularly at half price!
So I get this big bag home, and notice a little sticker on it: "First Bag Free!"
Carefully peel off the sticker, and all you have to do is go to the website, upload a pic of your receipt and they will pay you the full amount via paypal. Bonus!
Kinda wish I'd paid full price now, but ...
Why don't car manufacturers do that? 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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The key thing there (you would think) is removing the offer label before Kitty gets to see it.
After all, no self-respecting feline will eat something that came at a discount.
More psychically developed creatures, though, will actually see through such things - you get them on a too-fer, carefully remove the labels, shred the receipts and still, somehow they just KNOW it was cheap.
YOU: "Yo! Mogger! Have some delicious and highly expensive kitty-chow!"
KITTY: "You're not fooling me, matey! That was on offer, wasn't it? Why do I even let you live here?"
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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That's the weird bit - he'll eat Sheba. For a month.
He'll eat Whiskas. For a month.
He'll eat ASDA Tiger. For a month.
He'll eat chicken breast (poached, with rice). For a week*. Little sod.
And he hates change in all its forms. 
* When he gets the D&Vs it's the most "neutral" thing to give him to gently restart his digestive system after a 24 hour fast.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: Kinda wish I'd paid full price now, but ...
Assuming your kitty doesn't share your paypal account, what difference does it make how much you paid if your get a full refund: Net $Zero, no?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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The net is equal, yes - but if I'd known I could have got it free, I might well have tried it at full price, and then the store might have picked it up as a product. Assuming the cat eats the stuff that could have been handy. No idea if he will, as it's 60% real fish and no grain, flavourings, or artificial additives. He probably won't recognise it as "food" and will try to fight it or something.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wait and see if your cat likes it. If so, claim bag #2 for free at a non-sale price. 
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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No, not education / skills.
We have this large code base of Javascript (with ExtJS  ) on the front-end and a lot of C# stuff on the back-end. Daily, there are bugs to fix and new features to add.
I find myself having to take notes constantly, as from one day to the next, I can hardly remember from the previous day what I did -- the constant task switching (granted, finishing a task before starting the next one) and that every task is different, is mind numbing.
So my notes include:
* The JIRA ticket # and description (JIRA sucks for preserving notes, as completed tasks disappear from any ability to search for them, as far as I can tell.)
* What the issue is:
** The steps taken to recreate it (including data setup prerequisites)
** The steps taken to verify the fix
* Code is commented with the JIRA ticket # and description.
* Other useful stuff:
** Endpoints and test parameters to directly test the problem rather than go through the website
** Useful SQL to help test/verify the problem
I've only been here for 5 months, but this has been a life saver for when I've had to go back and tweak something I might have worked on last week or last month.
Do you experience this "I can't retain this stuff because there's so much / different things to work on every day" problem?
Granted, I do retain the C# stuff much much more so than the Javascript, which the brain just refuses to retain any knowledge of. I find this true even with my own Javascript code. I suppose my brain is trying to protect me, 
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Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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JIRA the bane of my life! at the moment. Upside better than a Excel doc on a shared drive, downside management who see a ticket has been raised the minute after are hounding as to why it's not been fixed!
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glennPattonWork wrote: JIRA POOR MANAGEMENT the bane of my life! at the moment
FTFY!
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Ditto!
Every defect or user story I work on I create a folder with the number of the defect/story.
Each folder contains a notes.txt file that has what I discovered and is a general notes area for that work. The folder also contains anything else that may be of use to me.
This way I don't pollute the Rally story or defect with my musings and information that is useful to me.
I also have a massive sql.txt file that contains every useful query I have written(15k+ lines) - a lifesaver.
I would not be able to work any other way.
Also the commit log on the repository comes in handy for seeing the details of what I did.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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GuyThiebaut wrote: I also have a massive sql.txt file that contains every useful query I have written(15k+ lines) - a lifesaver.
An Article!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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unfortunately that would probably get me sacked as it probably contains proprietary business information.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Whitout pasting the code directly, maybe just share some neat trick you found allong the way.
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Unfortunately there are no neat tricks.
It's just that when I am dealing with a massive code base, saving my previous queries makes life a lot easier.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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My daily work workflow is centered around my assigned JIRA issues.
Everything goes in there; notes, repro-steps, support files, scripts ...
Committed code is tagged with the JIRA issue (we have commit hooks to enforce that).
I'd rather be phishing!
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Marc Clifton wrote: Do you experience this "I can't retain this stuff because there's so much / different things to work on every day" problem?
Yes, yes I do.
That's why I keep an Excel sheet as a "to do" list. Each task I have is a series of setups and single line notes, kind of where I left off and what I'm waiting for.
The sheet was started in January and it's approaching 800 lines long. I add about 10 lines a day and I'm usually working on 20 items at a time.
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And I thought you were like a magician and you could just fix everything by just moving your hands across the keyboard. 
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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We use TFS for version control, so I've started using the agile planning features that are built in to track planned work and bugs. It's been working well for me, as long as I remember to tie my source updates to work items. Which I don't always...
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
- Hanlon's Razor
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Yep I used to use TFS for version control too - when we figured out it could be linked to tasks 
What I didn't like though - when checking in via visual studio and assigning to task(s) it would always default to resolved.
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I can live with remembering the extra dropdown. Just that capability has reduced the number of post-its on my desk by more than half.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
- Hanlon's Razor
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Maybe a good bad code type of analogy may work here.
The good code behaves nicely - so when asked about it, it is like an unknown.
But the bad code - is known intimately, as its nasty habits are familiar and it is revisited often.
Or maybe, more mature = more notes
I find I'm affected with both
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Marc Clifton wrote: Do you experience this "I can't retain this stuff because there's so much / different things to work on every day" problem?
Great Ghu, yes!
Over the last five years my company has whittled my group from 17 people down to 5, one of whom does not write code. My group has also acquired responsibility for several products that used to be outside our purview. The final result is that each of us has numerous areas of concern, all active and wanting attention. I spend less than 25% of my time maintaining code that I wrote. Most of my time is on other products and code bases. A lot of that time is spent organizing, learning, and trying not to feel contempt for those code bases.
Keeping notes for context is critical for me. Partially this is because of the rant in the previous paragraph, and part of it is due to my *cough* advancing *cough* middle age.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Well, yes and no. As a freelancer, normally the lead (or only) tech person on a project and working remotely, I not only frequently had multiple clients in parallel, but multiple issues for each client. (I say "had" as I'm semi-retired now and can pretty much complete one task before starting the next one).
In that environment I had no "management tool" imposed upon me, but it was necessary to accurately account for time spent and the tasks worked on, so I could bill clients and justify those bills. After lots of different online tools, I eventually settled on a very basic Excel solution, with a sheet per client and a row per discrete "task" or "issue". Initially I heaped loads of detail into this, and added SQL Queries, notes, replication instructions etc into separate notepad documents with names related to the client / issue.
This made me feel comfortable, as everything was meticulously documented, but took ages. For some clients the overhead was such that I had to add items to the invoice relating to keeping these records. After a few years it dawned on me, however, that my reference rate back to these copious notes was very low. Things changed so that eventually I kept just a very simple approximation of time spent, was more "generous" with in-code documentation, and particularly in notes when committing changes to source control. On those few occasions when I do now need to refer back to previous tasks, I can quickly check the issue description in Excel to get the date, then use source control searches to find code changed on that date, and do code Diffs and review comments to refresh my memory of what was going on.
For some projects, I can still relate the module, method names and bits of code for certain projects. For others, I can barely remember (or in some cases not at all) who the client was, or even the task. I've found that with experience, I've learnt to identify the things I need to remember in "working memory" and the things I need invest no long-term memory to.
In summary I find the trick is not so much finding the ideal tool, but learning the difference between those things that need remembering and those that don't, and being a bit ruthless about not over-documenting stuff that in all likelihood I will never need to recall - but keeping some clues - a cookie trail of sorts - that would allow me to piece together steps taken should I ever really need to.
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