You never realize quite how many devices you have in your house that connect to WiFi until you set up a new network and have to reconnect all of them 😂

Does anyone else find it super-confusing how Microsoft refers to SQL Server versions by both product year and version number?

For instance, we primarily use SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2017, which are versions 11, 12, and 14 respectively.

The slight mismatch between the product year and the version number creates a lot of ambiguity. If someone refers to SQL Server "14," we always have to double-check: do you mean 14 as in version 14 as in 2017, or 14 as in 2014 as in version 12? Does SQL Server "12" mean 12 as in version 12 as in 2014, or 12 as in 2012 as in version 11? It's ridiculous!

Great mixed metaphor heard in a conference call with a client recently:

“That’s a can of worms I’m not willing to jump down into”

Windows Update prompted me to install the 1809 update for Windows 10 recently.

I left the machine for a while and came back to find it frozen at a completely blank screen.

It eventually restarted...and got stuck in a continual loop where the Windows logo would flash for a second and then instantly restart again.

The restart occurred so early in the boot process that I couldn’t even get it into recovery mode or do anything with it to fix it.

So I had no choice but to reinstall Windows from scratch and reinstall and restore all my software and files. Took about 7 hours.

Not happy!

1. Open project
2. Project builds successfully
3. Make a bunch of changes
4. Build fails
5. Undo changes
6. Build succeeds again
7. Reapply changes from #3
8. Build succeeds

Someone explain this to me!

Spent some extra time adding a parallax effect to an image on the client’s homepage. Client reported it as a bug 😂🤦‍♂️

Currently working on two site builds in two different CMSes, one using Bootstrap 3 (LESS) and the other Bootstrap 4 (SASS). Great way to confuse yourself 😂

Had a client ask if we could make their site responsive by upgrading the CMS...

Pretty annoyed with Siri...

The other day I was mowing the lawn with my headphones on, and I asked her what time it was. It took her about 10 seconds to respond, and then finally she says “at the tone, the time will be 12:59 PM. Beep!” Like, she literally said the word “beep” in the response.

Ugh...so many things that annoy me about this.

One, it would have been faster to just take my phone out and look at the time.

Two, the cutesy response is annoying and takes too long for her to say.

Three, unless the time actually was approaching 12:59:00 and her response took the exact number of seconds remaining before then, the stupid “beep” isn’t even accurate!

If I ask what time it is, I just want the phone to say “12:59,” immediately. Anything longer or more convoluted than that, and it’s pointless – I could just take out the phone and look at the screen instead.

So I found a bug in Bootstrap 4 today that was causing responsive tables to break. I looked at it for a while and threw a bunch of potential fixes at it, to no avail.

I was about to open a bug report when I stumbled upon the cause...

I spelled “table-responsive” wrong 🤦‍♂️

You know what’s more annoying than someone downvoting your answer on Stack Overflow without leaving a comment explaining why?

When it’s your own answer to your own question...

Saw this at the liquor store today. Totally thought it said Bitbucket

This one is more...puzzling than anything else.

We had a consultant come in, a young guy recently out of school. He completed his basic onboarding stuff, got along okay with everyone, etc., but was quiet and kept to himself.

At the end of his first week, we were heading out the door on Friday afternoon, and someone offhandedly said to him “see you next week” or something benign like that. He responded with “yeah we’ll see,” which was...odd.

And then he completely disappeared – we never saw him again.

Okay, so he just decided the job wasn’t for him and quit, right? What’s so strange about that?

Well, for one, the company technically owed him a paycheck for the week, but they couldn’t reach him despite multiple attempts. They eventually left a message and said if you want to get paid, come in and pick up your check. He never did.

But not only that, he *abandoned his car* at the office! On the Friday that he left, he apparently got a ride or a taxi home, and then he just never came back in to get his car. The company eventually had to tow it.

I just would love to know the backstory here. Why would someone go through the trouble to apply for a job, interview, accept the position, work for a week – and then quit without getting paid and leave their car behind??

Switching ISPs is like breaking up with somebody. You have to break the bad news to them, they ask where things went wrong and if they could’ve done anything different, and then it’s all awkward when you go return their stuff...

Any other front-end developers check out Visual Studio Code? It’s got a lot of really nice features, including the absolute best implementation of Emmet I’ve ever seen. My new favorite editor on both Windows and Mac!

At one of my first jobs, we were tasked with building a new website for the company. Since we were the first in-house web development team (everything done prior to us had been contracted out), we had NO relevant software or tools available to use because the company had never needed them before.

On top of that, our computers were on complete lockdown: we had no permissions to install anything ourselves, and any software installation requests had to go through a formal review process that took a minimum of a few months for approval.

So: for the first couple of months, we coded everything in Notepad (!) on Windows (so no autocomplete, no syntax highlighting, etc.)...and tested only in IE6, the sole browser we had at our disposal 😮

What’s the most nonsensical habit that your non-tech-savvy friends or family have with computers or electronic devices?

Here’s mine: when my parents first got iPhones, they were deathly afraid of going over their data plan limit, so they would go into Settings and turn cellular data off whenever they weren’t actively using the phone...

Client: “I’ve attached a screenshot of the issue.”

The “screenshot” is a printout of the website, with no annotations detailing what the issue is, scanned back in at a 90° rotation and saved as a PDF 😄

I use a MacBook Pro at home and a Windows laptop at work. The trackpad on the Windows laptop is flaky, so I prefer to use it with an external mouse.

However, my desk at home is kind of glossy/reflective, so if I’m working at home on the Windows laptop and trying to use the mouse, it doesn’t work well at all.

Since I don’t actually have a mousepad (I only ever use the trackpad on the MacBook Pro), I started looking around the house for something I could use instead that would make the mouse work better. I needed something large, rectangular, non-reflective, heavy enough that it wouldn’t slide around the desk as I moved the mouse...

At my first job, our employee email addresses followed a somewhat unusual naming convention: last name plus first initial, e.g. smithj@company.com for John Smith.

They were ultimately forced to change it, though, when they received a complaint from a new employee. His name? Tommy Shi...

Made bacon this morning. Misread “uncured” on the package as “unsecured” 😄

I got in bed early last night with a bad stomachache.

While I was lying there half asleep, it occurred to me that I could just set a breakpoint, and then the next time my stomach growled, I could inspect it to see what food had been passed in that was upsetting it...

😄

My elderly neighbor rang my doorbell the other day to ask what my wifi password was – his tablet was trying to auto-connect to my wifi network rather than his, and he didn't understand why he couldn't use the same password on both 😄🤦‍♂️

Any other fans of Espresso for macOS? Love the app, hate how the developer abandons and then rewrites it on a 3-year cycle 😄

Ever have a bug that *only* occurs in your production environment? How do you test potential fixes? 😜