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This happens to me frequently, but most often with small home repairs.
Go to change a washer, find the whole faucet needs replacing. Go to replace that and find another hidden problem ...
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I work on an ETL process taking data from a source database into a reporting database. We offer a custom column table where the client can specify that certain data from the source be placed in certain columns in the reporting table. The ETL process USED to create a temporary table to collect the source data and then run a SQL statement with a PIVOT clause to put the data into the custom columns. A certain client claimed they hadn't been getting any new custom records for a while. It took several attempts by a couple of devs to figure out what was happening. It finally fell to me to take a turn.
Since we couldn't see what the SQL with the PIVOT was doing because we didn't have access to the temp table as they vanish after the session, I pushed to change the temp table to become a regular persistent table. Once that was approved and pushed out, I was able to run the SQL statement and the statement DIDN'T produce any records to be inserted into the custom table. Poking around and trying different things figured out that it was failing because the list of custom columns stored for the client was like "Custom_1, Custom_2, Custom_3' but the actual columns were names custom_1, custom_2, custom_3.
Something changed in an update to SQL Server such that the PIVOT statement had become case sensitive so Custom_1 no longer matched custom_1. Adding a tolower() in the SQL statement solved the problem.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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In 1983 I wrote a program for a local weekly magazine that tracked the number of issue sales by each sales location. It would calculate how many of that week's issue each store would get based on recent returns and other history.
The computer was a Canon AS-100 an 8088 that ran CP/M-86. No hard drive, just two 8" floppies. This was either before I knew of dBase II or it wasn't available on this non IBM compatible PC. I wrote the program in a decent dialect of BASIC.
My first issue was that the file copy program (PIP) had a problem copying a large files. It would corrupt the destination file by recopying an earlier section of the file instead of getting fresh data.
The working data file got damaged and it turned out that all their backups were corrupted by PIP.
The work around was to use CopyDisk for a full disk copy until it was patched.
I spent an entire weekend reentering their data so we didn't loose the customer.
The other problem was my own. I wrote database routines, without formal training, in BASIC, that had an obscure error. The customer index would get corrupted, but it took awhile for the corruption to become evident. Eventually a customer entry would not be found.
The fix was to re-index the file. But being a dumb rookie, it took about 12 hours each time. I wrote it with individual floppy disk accesses for each record. Probably using sieve sort. Still didn't find the corruption bug.
To shorten the time, I later split the job so I read from one disk and wrote to a second. This took the time down to about 10 hours. The index corruption bug was still hiding.
In our office we got a machine with a 10 MB hard drive. By this time the PIP issue was fixed and I would take a copy of the corrupted data, copy it to the hard disk and run the disk intensive re-index. Now it only took 2 hours. But I still hadn't found the bug.
Then I got the bright idea of loading all of the key index related fields into a large array in memory.
I rewrote the utility to reindex against every thing in RAM. So much faster, it only took about 20 minutes I think. Had I been more experienced, I would have done this method first rather than beating on the disk IO.
The magazine was sold to a larger publisher and eventually they were going to put the data onto their IBM S/36 or some such. I had to travel farther and no longer had an office key. I still remember sitting in their office on a Saturday morning going over my code one more time and finding the errant comparison that was rarely called. The index never crashed again, and they retired the system about 6 months later.
It was painful, but I learned an awful lot over those 2 years.
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You mean every can of worms has a bigger can of worms inside it? WOW!
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Not a programming issue, but years ago while I ran the helpdesk for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisitions and Technology (OUSDAT) and I received a call from an Army LtCol. His complaint was that the Solitaire card bounce (Windows 3.11 for Workgroups) wasn't working. Sure enough, the cards would randomly teleport around the screen. After three weeks of troubleshooting I discovered that we needed to block the top 16 bytes of real mode memory in himem.sys.
Doesn't sound like much, but we had over 1,000 of these machines, all identical. So I instructed my staff that on any call, for any reason, they were to make this change. Inside a month the number of reported system crashes and mysterious BSODs dropped from several a week to nearly zero.
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That's as good as the story a Russian coworker had.
In Russia he was working in a computer room with many machines. The high muckety-muck wanted to see the facility but every time he would come to inspect the machines would suddenly shut down. Imagine Soviet Russia and that happening every time the boss came to look in. They finally figured out what was happening. The muckety-muck was a larger man, overweight, and he would just stand in the doorway of the room. They finally figured out that the wiring for the power to the room ran under the doorway so when he stood there it caused a fault in the wiring.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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It's not a Kraken, its a Hydra.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
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Is a Top Secret bakery on a knead-to-dough basis?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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That one's only half baked.
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At least it was spelt correctly!
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You have a Rye sense of humor.
The less you need, the more you have.
Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.
JaxCoder.com
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I think his humor is more crusty!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Wheat makes you think so?
The less you need, the more you have.
Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.
JaxCoder.com
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Cp-Coder wrote: I think his humor is more crusty!
We soda already knew.
| 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 seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Well, I think that old fa.. crusts like him and I should stick together! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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At yeast that comment is proof you can rise to any occasion. In fact, I'd say you're on a roll.
| 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 seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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You've invented the best puns I've heard since sliced bread.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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You can baguette your azz it is.
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This one is only half-baked.
Zaphod
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By replacing your morning coffee with green tea you can lose up to 87% of what little joy you still have left in your life?
The less you need, the more you have.
Even a blind squirrel gets a nut...occasionally.
JaxCoder.com
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Replace with black tea and lose only 86%.
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I drink black tea in the afternoons. So, I lose 0% there, since I enjoy it.
1 cup of coffee has approx. 97 mg of caffeine.
1 cup of black tea has approx. 47mg of caffeine.
1 cup of green tea has approx. 28mg of caffeine.
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look it up on Google if it means that much to you (I'm sure it doesn't). That is where I got the info.
I assume they mean the standard unit of measurement for a "cup".
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