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< rant>
me: "Mr. Customer, please understand that I really don't want to do your project, but I know you are in a bind. I will give it a shot as time permits. Your code is old, it is not documented, and I am the only one that has a clue how it works. There is RISK involved."
customer: "Wonderful, whoot! I'm so happy!" <--- likely never saw the last part of my reply.
time passes...
customer: "Why aren't you done yet? I hate you!"
me: "Sigh"
< /rant>
To quote my predecessor, "I can sleep when I'm dead."
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
modified 10-Jan-14 14:49pm.
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I worked for a company that I wrote a large portion of software that controlled a water plant and told the manages all the time I was doing it that the hardware would not be adequate for the job they were supposed to do. So when I got done and the machine was running the customer asked that I write some journaling software to run in the "Computers Idle" time and again I resisted but in the end wrote an journal system in PDP assembler.
Well I left the company and one day about 2 months later my old manager called and asked if I would go down on the weekend and take a look at the system and see what I could do.
When we met I reminded him of all the resistance I had given during development and he explained that it was a moot point that the water company was going to sue them if they didn't do something and wanted me to go down with a contractor from DEC and look at the system.
Well I had done a little work for them after I left and the contract stated that I should receive $45/hr, this was 1987 or so but the contract had expired and they had written an updated contract with the same conditions and wanted me to sign. Well I didn't want to go because I knew and told them that the system couldn't be fixed and if they wanted me to go, and I just picked what I thought was an outrageous figure of $125/hr. Well they didn't even bat an eye the manager changed the figure and I went down for the weekend and made a butt load of money.
Now the kicker, when I got home on Sunday evening I was tired and stressed and wanted a beer and there wasn't on in the house so I asked my ex for enough to buy a 12-pack and she said that she had spent the ~$3000 I made that weekend before I even got home.
Soon after she became my ex.
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Mike Hankey wrote: she had spent the ~$3000 I made that weekend before I even got home.
I don't blame you for making her your ex!
OT: How's the WinHeist thing coming along?
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
- Mitchell Kapor
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And that was just the last straw!
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I mean - wow.
Yes, we're about at the point of rewriting the entire system. I have 100K lines of FORTRAN that could be culled to 15K lines of C# and a sql server. But I digress. Right now, my other customer is going like gangbusters.
Then again, I do have that mountain land that needs a cabin on it....
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: Then again, I do have that mountain land that needs a cabin on it....
And in about a year I will need a project. 
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charlieg wrote: Your code is old, it is not documented, and I am the only one that has a clue
how it works.
So you wrote the code in the first place? 
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No, no, a thousand times no. I comment my code, the original developers were not anything close to software developers. They were engineers that had had a FORTRAN class in college.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I stated that I would like to travel more!
Well someone must have heard me because the hiking club I belong to is planning a backpacking trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico in April.
Woot I'm lining up travel plans this week.
I'm stoked!
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Is your doctor trying to break some bad news gently? 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I haven't heard from my doctor and I'm hoping that if he does contact me it's not like this[^].
Knock on wood.
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Ahhh, so you are looking to cut that 5 years down to 4 months  Clickety[^]
I went to San Juan, Puerto Rico a couple of years ago on a training course for work. It was nice, but windy. I am sure you are going to have a great time. 
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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That certainly doesn't look good!
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You'll be fine. Just don't watch any of the Hostel films)[^] 
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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Quote: a backpacking trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico
Better wear your swimsuit. Puerto Rico is an island.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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I thought about that after posting, sure would get tired it's a long swim. 
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OK, so every backpack trip seems to have a Kurmudgen ~ One who constantly complains, whines, and is never satisfied about everything, anything, and, often, most everyone, when, truly, there is nothing to complain about.
We, 8 of us, had one such person on a backpack trip once, a 5.6 mile, 2300 vert feet, 6.5+ hour hike in the Sierra Mountains in California.
For the 2 months prior to the trip, every time we would meet up and go over logistics, Tom (fictional names to protect the guilty...) just complained about this, or that, or even about another in the group in a side-comment sort-of-way.
So, I called a special "logistics" meeting. 6 others arrived.
- Where's Tom? others asked.
- He couldn't make it.
- Why not?
- I didn't invite him, because this meeting is *about* him.
- Look, Tom has been complaining these last 6 weeks on every damned thing and nearly every person about the trip. At our next (and last) Logistics Mtg, if he complains more than 3 times about *anything*, trip-related or not, he's asked for what we'll be doing to him.
- Thing is, since he's complaining so much about *nothing*, we're gonna give him something *REAL* to complain about.
- Everyone will go after the meeting to REI and buy a 1 lb deep-sea fishing weight / ball. As we traverse into the climb and rest, you give me the weight, John will "distract" Tom away from his pack, and I'll add the weight to his pack.
Everyone agreed after 30+ minutes of discussing details and the "moral" justification of doing this to Tom. Our code phrase "No Weight," meaning that we would not hike all the way with the weight (no weight), yet we'd note to Tom it was about no "waiting" for anyone at the trailhead; we'll march on without 'em (several car-pools).
Sure enough, Tom complained about 7 different things and 1 person, again side-comment-wise. It was about me.
- OK, everyone, see you at the trailhead. And, remember, "No Weight!"
Everyone nodded in agreement, Tom thinking it was one thing it wasn't. Since he complained about me for no good reason, I bought three 1 lb weights.
Everything worked as planned. On the trip, we stopped 7 times on the hike to "enjoy" scenery and/or rest. Sure enough, Tom complained about this, that and the other, again, all for no reason.
When we stopped, John distracted Tom and I put a new weight deep into his pack, with my 3 lbs of weights the first go in.
About the 4th stop, one "additional" thing Tom stared complaining on was how he seemed to be "not as prepared physically" for the weight of his pack.
We arrived at camp. Tom was the most "wore-out" of all of us. Truth be noted, he was the the most heavy-set of us all. Everyone found a piece of ground to set up camp.
About 35 minutes into setup, Tom yells "WHAT THE HELL?!? Where'd the Hell did these come from?!"
I calmly walked over, several others joining me, and stated:
- None of us know where they came from, Tom.
- But, what we do know is that for the last 8 weeks of planning, you've been complaining about everything, anything, and most everyone, including about me at the last meeting we had.
(The others were nodding in agreement.)
- Well, now you have something *real* to complain about, that being the weight of your back being 'heavier' than you thought.
- If you complain about *anything* or *anyone* these next 3 days, we have far more in store for you (but, really, we didn't). Period. We love ya, Tom, but not the complaining you do. We're here to enjoy the mountains, and enjoy them *with* you and each other.
- Oh, and, by the way, just like we kept reasserting at the meetings, U.S. Forest rules state
"You pack it in, You pack it out!"
===========
Tom was reservedly humble the rest of the trip. Even going out of his way to be helpful and appreciative to others in the group and hikers passing through.
And, yes, we were well-prepared to "assist" Tom, monitoring him the entire hike in, and ready to relieve him of some weight or other help.
On the hike out, Tom concurred he *deserved* to carry the 9 lbs of weight out.
His comment: Well, y'all had the balls to deal with me when I complained. I need to man-up and have the balls to hike out!
===========
What does this hafta do with Five Years to live?
Simple. We helped someone to see and appreciate life and, to this day, some 20 years later, Tom still says "Thank You" [in that quirky ways we friends share such between one-another] for helping him appreciate the life we all have and enjoy together.
modified 14-Jan-14 12:26pm.
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Good story and great lesson.
My son and I recently did a grueling 14mi. hike with 2700 ft. grade in all took 7-1/2 hours and I really had to watch myself because I was really out of shape and my son was "purposely carrying a 40lb pack, he's 23 in the USMC and was training for a triathlon so I felt like I shouldn't say a word.
The only time I really really put up a fuss was when we were about 1-1/2 miles from the trail head and we had to do the last 600ft steep incline and I was really wore out I asked him how he was holding up with the weight he was carrying and he looked fresh as a daisy and I didn't know if I could make the haul but I went ahead and did it and made it OK but I was wore slap out...I'm 64 so I felt like I done pretty good!
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For the life of me, I can't explain this. This isn't intended to be a programming question, more a "nope, don't believe it, even if I'm seeing it" thing.
We host our main app's data in SQL Azure, and we have information in a given table w/ part of the primary key as a datetime (has month-end mutual fund data). One particular function seemed to be taking too long, so we started investigating this afternoon.
If I run a given statement w/ asofdate = '11/30/2013, query takes 20 seconds. Seems slow.
If I run the same statement, changing only asofdate = '10/31/2013', query takes 0.1 seconds. Odd. No significant # of diff recs between those two dates (26,488 for Nov vs. 26,382 for Oct).
So now I'm thinking it's either the way those 11/30 recs were physically stored, or something special about that particular date, until...
If I run the same statement w/ asofdate >= '11/30/2013' (most recent date in db right now), it again takes 0.1 seconds.
Cannot replicate anything close to this in our on-site SQL Server dev dbs.
How the elephant can asofdate >= '11/30/2013' ever be faster than = '11/30/2013'?
modified 10-Jan-14 16:07pm.
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I don't know anything about Azure however if there is some sort of partitioning of data based on dates then this could be quite possible.
Alternatively the database statistics may need refreshing - that can have a big impact if you are talking about tens of millions or hundreds of millions of rows.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Yeah, I definitely thought about partitioning as the cause, but wouldn't I see the same results for equal/greater-than-or-equal to the same date?
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I could make lots of guesses all of which would probably be wrong, one of which might go something like this - what if the database engine prioritises queries that return a higher volume of data(see what I mean?)
First thing I would do is rebuild the indexes and re-run database statistics.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Is asofdate the only parameter in the query? SQL my be picking different execution plans, which result in the different times.
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It's not, and it's also joining another table (the table in question is the child, and it's being linked to the parent), but I've even tried eliminating different parameters, and that didn't make a difference.
However, removing the join, i.e. making the query as simple as possible, did result in a positive difference. So, that does lead me to think about the execution plan, but the data is nearly the same in our dev dbs as production, so that would seem strange that a different execution plan would be generated, though that may be the case.
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