> "How is MSSQL so popular?"

#1, its from Microsoft (nobody ever gets fired when choosing a product from Microsoft)

#2, its not Oracle

#3, Bill's nearsighted grandma with dementia can create a table with as much skill as MS Certified DBA.

I've been using MSSQL since 6.5 and like any legacy 'enterprise' product, its become so bloated with nonsense nobody but niche edge cases every use its 'enterprise' features.

@jestdotty > "she builds a universe of stringent details."

That is brilliantly accurate.

@PaperTrail > "when she essentially said 'OK, I'll call our insurance rep"

She did contact our insurance rep and he was dumbfounded that she knew how to find the discrepancies ("How did you even know where to look?").

Her response to me afterwards: "How did *he* not know? That's is his job! No wonder these insurance companies are going bankrupt. Idiots."

@retoor > "Yeah, weird how people lose their way when it looks like a bit different huh"

This is the same woman who reads our insurance's benefit details (the ones that are hundreds of pages) and comprehends it enough to find the loopholes.

We had a contract with a roofing company for a new roof, siding, gutters etc (hail storm damage), and she found several duplicate entries, just worded slightly different, that they were trying to double-bill the insurance. She 'called them out', which the company rep tried to make sound like she didn't understand construction contracts.

TL;DR, when she essentially said 'OK, I'll call our insurance rep and a lawyer to help me understand your contract', the rep (within an hour) had an adjusted contract. My wife fired them anyway, demanding our non-refundable deposit back (which we got back), saying the contract still was misleading.

*I* would have never caught the details she caught. Its a superpower I don't have.

@Grumm > "So we cannot use 'this task is killing me' ? or 'my back is killing me'"

Posts are flagged and removed for offensive language like 'killed', 'shot'. Not all, but enough to where you'll hear folks say "Pew Pew" instead of 'shot'

"Other day my buddy was pew pew'ed next the liquor store..."

I hear that and I'm reminded, again, our society is getting dumber and dumber. Not the folks that do it, but a system that makes people change words so they won't offend and their social media banned/canceled.

Language is a social construct. Words in themselves have no value, no action, it's our stupid monkey brain that reacts to hearing/reading 'Kill' that causes folks to lose that mind.

George Carlin has old comedy bit about curse words that is still relevant today.

@tosensei > "it's about 'The Algorithm' suppressing everything that might possibly be in any way whatsoever controversial"

Then it's 100% about the "hypersensitive woke snowflakes".

Cancel culture is still alive and well.

@rootshell > I've never been at a place where management actually took responsibility"

Its not perfect and a lot of pressure mgmt puts on themselves to push each other.

It it a little uneasy when we get an alert and 5 upper managers all want to help "fix" the problem and the VP badgering the mgrs. I just want to scream sometimes "STOP!! Go back to your office and let me fix this!"

The other day, 'Mgr-Mark' interrupted me 3~4 times (kinda lost count) throughout the day about a problem in HR that had nothing to do with him or his area (he's responsible for the logistics systems). The mgr who is actually responsible was busy and he took it upon himself to step up.

Kept stopping by "Is it fixed yet?...What do you need? I'll get networking involved. Do we need to have a meeting with XYZ? I'll schedule it."

I really wanted to say: Dude, stop...I appreciate it...but stop. If I need your jedi powers to blow up the death star, I'll ask.

@rootshell > "The real ones get blunted into "cover you ass" mode where they just make sure shit don't slide on them."

Since those 'dark days', new mgrs have embraced leadership principles from the book 'Extreme Ownership'.

Now it comes down to ownership and if you care enough about the project/process/whatever to get the job done. As of now, if something is screwed up, nearly all the mgt team takes responsibility for the issue, then work backwards to find out what they didn't know/could have done better, then set a plan to improve and make sure the problem isn't repeated or make sure we have a process in place to resolve future problems.

Its not about blame, it's about responsibility. They take being responsible very seriously. If anyone tries the "its not my fault, Greg screwed up!". OK, Greg screwed up, but you're Greg's boss, *you're* responsible. Greg obliviously didn't have has the tools or leadership to succeed. What can *you* do in the future so Greg can succeed?

> "im gonna start documenting all decisions of this retarded manager"

And keep the documentation in a safe location, away from the ability for any of the 'powers that be' to see and delete.

Previous department mgr would routinely scan our hard drives looking for evidence of 'something' that folks could embarrass him (pictures, message threads, etc).

I had a directory of Dilbert cartoons that I saved locally (C:\Dilberts) whenever the daily strip hit a little close to home. One in particular was an almost a word-for-word exchange (one where the pointy-hair wanted a pre, pre-meeting), so I printed it out and hung it on my wall.

Knowing me very well (one mgr called me "King CYA"), the dept mgr found and deleted the directory.

He knew I couldn't complain to anyone. It's a company computer and he had full admin discretion to do anything he wanted.

Little did this guy know was C:\Dilberts was just the download directory. I backed up everything to my personal google drive.

> "Code coverage now has to be 80% or higher across the board"

I'm so sorry.

If it helps (and you're using C#), you can set a directive on/in a file/class that tells the compiler to ignore that metric.

We are cataloging # lines of code just for own morbid curiosity (only the C# cs files in the project directory). Kind of a "wow, that's a big project", but nothing we're measuring or anything like that. Nobody cares.

When our VP (who does not write code) saw the value in our dashboard (just the project, # lines, and total at the end), he was excited and wanted my boss to create departmental measures.

He said "Sure we'll do that". Later he said to me (when I asked the obvious) "No, we're not doing that. Joe will forget about lines-of-code measure by the next quarterly meeting."

That was over a year ago, guess what? Subject never came back up.

Opinion: I have a general "rule of 3". If I'm abstracting more than 3 layers, I'm probably making it too complicated.

And my own personal rule of "If I'm writing a lot of code to do something, I'm probably doing it wrong" always comes into play in encapsulation and separation of concerns.

@Root > "Oh well. I'll be here 'til the end."

Ditto

I felt your sadness when I read you actually have a 'Change Management' department. Yikes.

We had something similar called the "Integration Department" and it was more about saying 'No' to ideas they (and their friends) didn't come up with.

Ex. After successfully implementing a Service Bus event processing for orders, I could easily listen for various events throughout the order process (taking the order, processing payment, shipping, etc) and send the customer notifications (text/email, etc). My mistake (according to their review) was I compared it to how you can track your Domino's pizza order

The Integration Department summarized we're not a pizza restaurant but a professional enterprise system and we would not lower ourselves to pizza delivery (and it wasn't a feature our customers asked for)

About 6 months later the head of our eCommerce department implemented the customer order notification system using my Service Bus framework.

Not our HR. They are likely the most important department in the company. Since they've been given full discretion in hiring the best people (no DEI, no quotas, affirmative action, etc), we have and retain the best folks.

You have no idea how boring it is around here. No drama, pissing contests, no alpha-male chest pounding. Folks who want to write some code, talk about <random movie/tv-show/sports>, and at 5 o'clock go home. Wash-rinse-repeat.

My son is a nurse at a VA hospital and some of those complaints make it to Congress.

He's undergoing an 'investigation' right now for one of our countries finest 'heroes' complaint about not bathing him 'correctly'.

The guy has a fetish about men washing him like a baby and complains to his congressional representative if he doesn't get...um....satisfaction, if you know what I mean.

Son answered this guy's call light, walks in, he's spread eagle on the bed, crapped himself, and said smiling "I pooped myself, I need you to clean me up"

My son did the absolute minimal with the guy complaining/cussing my son wouldn't 'go up inside' to do a thorough cleaning.

Of course, none of that is on the official complaint. Something about my son refused to honor the dignity of our countries finest heroes with basic sanitary needs...blah blah blah.

Luckily, this guy is a 'frequent flyer' with complaints and, so far, nothing is ever done to a nurse 'caring' for him.

> "How the **** do you even measure that empirically?"

This steps into 'stay out of my backyard'. Mgrs are supposed to define the parameters, block obstacles, and *stay out of my way*.

If I'm asked, I would say 0%. Its not like mgrs would know either way.

@cafecortado > "Mediocre apps is all we can expect from them"

And 'retiring' apps people love and used on a daily basis like Google Reader and Picasa.

UPDATE

Senior leaders decided to do nothing.

I suggested to my boss (which he was already contemplating) that we allow a 'cooling off' period and then suggest a somewhat rube-goldberg solution (outside ping). When they had time to actually think, it was a one time fluke that didn't warrant the complexity, time, and the most important piece, money.

#winning

@antigermanist > "liberal fault if your wife's cousin is a stupid bitch?"

It's liberal/socialists policies that coddle and attract these types of people. I've had 'conversations' with individual (I listen and don't engage) and she is 100% on the democrat "kill the rich", "I want my free stuff" bandwagons.

The extreme left-wing nutjobs know they can pander to these type of people and get their vote, knowing they are simply 'useful idiots' and have zero intention on doing anything to better their lives.

The extreme right-wing nutjobs don't get a pass with me either.

The whole "vote for me, or those evil democrats will take your guns...then your FREEDOM!!"

and

"Vote for me because Jesus says so"

Makes me sick.

@lorentz > "universal consensus that black boxes should be legal"

This little black box records me swerving to miss a skunk and I get a $300 ticket for 'reckless driving' and because I'm part of the 'evil rich', nothing I can do because Liberal/socialist bureaucrats love it.

Meanwhile, my wife's cousin drives her *brand new truck* down the median and runs over the little wire barricades (not sure what they are called), over-corrects, runs into another car (luckily no one was hurt). She was texting, but because she claimed to be indigent (which she is) and without means, the other driver's insurance had to pay (for his car, not hers).

Nobody...NOBODY asked "Where did you get the money for this new truck?" *We* know (her boyfriend is a drug dealer), and in this liberal/socialist utopia where black boxes are legal, the criminals are rewarded and the 'evil rich' are punished.

@PaperTrail > "This week we are having a department wide BBQ at a local park. There will be food, games, 'engaging conversations', etc."

Update: Let it slip that we had this BBQ-thing to my wife (I was trying to be nice and offer to run errands over my lunch for her, and she got suspicious) and she flipped her lid (I've got to stop being so anti-social..blah blah..etc...etc)

Attended...it was fine..did end up having some engaging conversations, learned some stuff.

*sigh* ...stupid social anxiety.

Side note, there was a *ton* of left over burgers & brats, buns, cheese, brownies/cookies

Mgr1: "Anybody want this stuff"

Crowd: "No....not me...no....No, I'm full"

Mgr2: "Throw it away, I'm not dealing with it"

Mgr1: "Yea, me neither."

Me: "NOOO!!!...I'll take it! All!"

Mgr1: "You want the chips too? Soda? I don't want to haul it back"

Me: "YES!"

I'm sure I seemed like a homeless man in the back of Dairy Queen, but there was probably $100+ of food they were throwing away.

@kiki > "A pistol won't stop it"

My boss has a 454 Casull that might.

He calls it his "stupid" gun because when he shoots it, he says "I'm stupid for buying this stupid thing". Its a replica of a gun he saw in a western and thought he could use it as his fun conceal-n-carry (to show off at the range)

The shot volume, the recoil, he said is "just stupid". After about 3 shots he said his hand hurts and had to upgrade his hearing protection. I can imagine impact of hitting a boar at 50 yards with that thing.

@CaptainRant > "Well, you can always say no, right?"

I don't say 'no', there is always some emergency that pops up. Darn.

Example: This week we are having a department wide BBQ at a local park. There will be food, games, 'engaging conversations', etc.

I'm very, very seriously thinking about saying at the last minute (as everyone is getting up to leave), "I'll be there, I've got to stop by the DMV and renew my driver's license. Save me a burger, or five..ha ha ha." Drive in the general direction and come back to work. Everybody will gone for at least two+ hours.

#bliss

Then when they come back:

S: "PaperTrail, where were you? Did you get your license renewed?"

Me: "No, I waited in line for almost 2 hours, I knew I wouldn't make it to the BBQ. Sorry."

S: "No worries. Saved a couple of burgers in the break-room fridge."

If you're wondering, 'Has PaperTrail done this before?'. Yes ... yes I have.

@int32 > "it doesn't bother me too much"

Don't know if it's sad or just how things are and will always be.

Debugging a state issue in Blazor (whether or not a POCO is 'Dirty'). Step thru the code...true...true..<doing/changing nothing>....click a button ...check the state....false.....WTF! Nothing changed...the UI still shows as TRUE!!

Lots of console outputs of 'here' I stumbled on a user control I wrote that was holding a stale state (TL;DR). Never ever would have figured it out my 'stupid' without console.log.

@int32 > "do they log out highly sensitive data"

No, a lot of "Here" and "This value should not be null, but here we are."

@antigermanist > "who cares?"

I don't. I have them in my production (Blazor) code right now.

@Demolishun > "Why is it stupid?"

I'm told it's not sterile and not the same medical grade they use in the hospital. I'm putting some dangerous chemical directly into my blood stream.

So what I got an infection *once* from where I used superglue. I say the cut would have gotten infected anyway. "You should have gotten stitches!....You should have kept the wound clean!" blah ...blah...blah.

I'm a senior software developer darn it! I know what I'm doing! :)

@Demolishun > "oh my, bless her heart..."

She's a nurse, like a one of those superhero nurses you see on TV (170 IQ, smarter than the doctors, etc). She watches those dramatic medical shows like they are comedies (points out all the things they do wrong).

Last week her mom fell (she's almost 80) and hit her head on concrete, my wife was there and figured out/diagnosed/controlled the issue immediately. Had to call 911 (it was bad) and when the paramedics eventually got there they were like "Good job in keeping her still and not moving until we got here. At her age and this kind of fall, a neck injury could have paralyzed her if she tried to get up." and they jibber-jabbed a bunch of other medical words I didn't understand. They were quite impressed with her ability to asses and take control of the situation.

I pretty sure we complement each other since I still use super glue to cover up cuts on my fingers. Apparently that is is a "stupid user" thing medical people make fun of.

Yea, it's kinda scary. I enabled Copilot in VS about a month ago and it is like its reading my mind.

I've been finding myself relying on Copilot more and more for the POCO type plumbing code.

Right now I am moving code from the depreciated Microsoft Teams Webhook to PowerAutomate/Workflow. I started to type some of the AdativeCard plumbing and *BAM!*, it somehow knew the exact fields and how I was going to use it.

I almost said out loud "Get behind me satan!"