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Post by Phalon on May 22, 2013 19:04:54 GMT -6
Hey, Stepper. A quick hello - the season finale of Criminal Minds just started, and it's one of the only shows I watch.
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Post by Phalon on May 22, 2013 19:05:42 GMT -6
Oops - you left before I even finished the post.
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Post by stepper on May 22, 2013 19:10:10 GMT -6
No, still here, but go enjoy the show while you can.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 22, 2013 19:39:24 GMT -6
I'm watching Criminal Minds and typing up posts. I'll probably have to rewatch it again later. I learned a long time ago to tape what I'm watching, because I never know when something will happen to get my attention. Someone will call and talk for an hour. My a/c conks out and I have to stay alert should by b-i-l need a tool or something. After a couple of times of this type of thing happening, I started recording everything I watched.
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Post by stepper on May 22, 2013 19:43:15 GMT -6
For me it is The Natural. I have seen it before, but I do not watch TV all that much any more. Nothing catches my interest.
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Post by stepper on Jun 11, 2013 22:32:41 GMT -6
Hi Siren!
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Post by stepper on Oct 27, 2013 21:35:10 GMT -6
Hi Angel!
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 31, 2013 0:20:26 GMT -6
Okay. I just noticed this thread has 666 posts, so I had to add one more:
Catch Stepper!
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Post by stepper on Oct 31, 2013 20:41:06 GMT -6
Okay. I just noticed this thread has 666 posts, so I had to add one more:
Catch Stepper!
Oh no you don't! You stuck me last year, and just to be safe I made sure I came back. But, I haven't seen a certain someone yet this evening so it's moving right along.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 1, 2013 1:19:26 GMT -6
Did I? I too try to stay on top of the pumpkin on Halloween Night. It's midnight in California, so I guess the game is over? Or is Hawaii at the end of the day? Or the beginning?
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Post by stepper on Nov 1, 2013 17:26:55 GMT -6
I had a great time giving out goodies last evening. All little kids with parents except for one group of young teens - too old to allow mom and dad to go with them but young enough that they still wanted to Trick-or-Treat. I was surprised by the presence of mosquitoes but then it's still warm enough, so several of them died last evening. Alas, a couple of bugs made a minor mess in the book I was studying. And we had only about half the normal number of kids - I have too many Three Musketeers left over for my own good.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 1, 2013 17:41:06 GMT -6
I only had two, and they came Wednesday night. My great-niece and great-nephew. They would be with their dad on Halloween night, so their mom brought them the night before. The joy of living out in the boonies is that only family will bring their little ones to my door for treats.
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Post by stepper on Nov 1, 2013 18:10:03 GMT -6
LOL! A lady at work said much the same thing. She lives just a bit too far into the country so the kids don't trick or treat - and she likes it that way.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 1, 2013 21:45:53 GMT -6
That was the downside when I was a kid. I never got to run all over town with the 'townies.' It's an upside now.
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Post by stepper on Nov 2, 2013 11:20:00 GMT -6
It doesn't seem to matter around here. The churches are a focal point for gathering up the kids in vans and they spread out to various neighborhoods. No one is over whelmed by van loads because they go to different areas, but you can expect at least one van full of young kids to come by on Halloween. I had two this time but since I had a smaller turn out it didn't matter at all.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 2, 2013 18:06:24 GMT -6
If it were safe for kids to run around on their own, I'm sure the churches wouldn't feel the need to have to round them up to keep a close eye on them. Probably keeps them out of mischief too though, so maybe they'd do that to keep them out of trouble as well.
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Post by stepper on Nov 2, 2013 20:57:49 GMT -6
I'm pretty sure it was mostly to keep them safe and still let them have a good time. Had they been older I would have thought of this as a distraction from trouble but the van's had younger kids.
I didn't mean to imply there was a predatory process happening here. I've seen that too - they were literally bussed in. That was no fun for anyone – including them.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 2, 2013 23:00:00 GMT -6
No. But one can never be too careful. When you think it safe is sometimes when you find out it isn't. And it is better to be safe than sorry. I didn't mean to imply there was any real threat. Just the worry of a possible one.
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Post by Phalon on Dec 5, 2013 19:55:16 GMT -6
Hey, Stepper! Just a quick minute for a fly-by "hi". Nice to see you "on-board".
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Post by stepper on Dec 5, 2013 20:10:52 GMT -6
Hey there Phalon. Taking time to actually enjoy the holidays? (I'm playing hooky and setting up the outside lights before the cold front gets here. )
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Post by Phalon on Oct 16, 2016 11:46:27 GMT -6
Hey, Stepper. OMG, it took me forever to find this thread, and you're probably gone by now.
Just taking a break from unpacking, moving furniture, doing craft stuff, and laundry - all at the same time; in other words, a typical day off work. HA!
Hope you're enjoying your weekend.
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Post by stepper on Oct 16, 2016 12:26:51 GMT -6
Wow - I haven't been here for a long time. Still here - I was double checking info on the German installations. Unpacking - and tossing things - find any surprises? Weekend - like you I'm afraid - doing too much to call it a day off, but not today. Today I'm specializing in stupidity.
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Post by Spock on Oct 19, 2016 9:00:36 GMT -6
Stupidity is a specialty!? I always thought it was the standard fare.
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Post by stepper on Oct 19, 2016 18:49:55 GMT -6
Fer sure! There are levels of stupidity - tired stupidity where you are driving to work half asleep and as you are approaching the main gate you realize that you forgot your access badge; every day elevated tired stupidity where after turning round and heading home you find that the badge is in fact on a lanyard hanging around your neck but you didn't notice it because the seatbelt was hiding it under the belt strap; and like today's great adventure, blind stupidity.
I have to explain first that because the hardware life cycle maintenance contract is expiring, a system I have been using for years will be shut down and turned in soon. Thus, I have to adjust some processes to access a different server. Soon. The problem is the different server also has a different operating system - and a slightly different version of HP-UX (Hewlett Packard Unix). Some of the commands are modified - and I don't have a manual.
Spock will probably see the problem right away, but if you've never written in UNIX, here's the explanation.
I got most of it figured out (the shell problems) except for one thing - and somehow that one thing was making the job do really strange stuff - starting other unreferenced shells - removed files that the instructions said to copy - and it was doing things to files when I was referencing a single file. (Hopefully that's clear enough.)
In an effort to make my life easier, one of the experts made an attempt at converting my code to work on the newer system, except we think differently and therefore code differently. This guy prefers to construct subroutines at the top end of the shell, and then executes the subroutine at the appropriate spot. In the process of converting my code, he had this line near the bottom of the script.
FI="ls inputG* | tail -1 "
What it does is create a variable (variable = a storage location joined to an associated symbolic name - or ID - which contains an unpredicted quantity of information) & the variable here is called FI. What is supposed to happen is that the server executes the commands between the quotes and stores the result in FI. I spent half of the afternoon trying to analyze the subroutines, tracing the notation, testing, and then the light finally went on.
ls basically means list inputG is part of a file name the splat (*) is a wildcard meaning in this case, the rest of the file name doesn't matter. the | is called a pipe and means pass the results on to the next command.
(so far: the name of all the files in the directory that begin with inputG are being passed on - on the server I'll be using the name will come across in oldest to newest sequence as a default)
tail -1 says go to the end of the list of files (the tail) and capture "-1" which is the last one.
The end result would be that variable FI would contain the name of the newest file of those whose names start with inputG.
If you know anything about UNIX I'm sure you've already seen the error and why this was blind stupidity. I was blind to the obvious error. You see, he had FI="...". That's a double quote. By putting this into a double quote he told the program the FI equals, literally, ls inputG* | tail -1 , and not the result I should have received from the above expected process.
I needed a grave accent. It should have read: FI=`ls inputG* | tail -1 `
The grave accent is on your keyboard to the left of the number 1 & above the Tab. The ~ is a tilde, and the thing that looks a lot like a single quote is the character I'm talking about. (On some keyboards it’s a separate key.) It tells the system to execute all the above commands and store the result of those steps in FI.
It took me most of an afternoon to figure it out. Blind to what was right in front of me.
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Post by Spock on Oct 20, 2016 10:54:15 GMT -6
My very first troubleshooting step would have been to output the value of FI in a human readable form (teletype, screen, printer, etc) and stop execution ...
When going to UNM, the first thing we were told was that you could not mix languages in a single program. In our later semesters, we used to routinely prove that wrong. We were working on a program we called SHP-45 which started life as a simple 4 function algebraic calculator and ended up as a super, multi-function RPN calculator that was not only programmable but had many "program packs".
It was written in modular form using every language available on the mainframe.
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Post by stepper on Oct 20, 2016 20:33:32 GMT -6
LOL! I had a UNIX routine that was running on average, about 30 minutes. One day I got in an unexpectedly large number of changes and the routine was running several hours - way too long. I substituted a perl routine which was only a couple lines compared to the block of code UNIX was taking, and it ran in seconds compared to the hours the UNIX statements took. I've never been afraid of mixing code since I made that change.
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Post by moonglum on Jan 2, 2017 8:10:41 GMT -6
good morning your wordliness.
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Post by Phalon on Jan 2, 2017 8:11:54 GMT -6
And a good morning to you too, Your Bardliness!
Oh, wait....it's not morning there, is it. A fine day to you then!
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Post by moonglum on Jan 2, 2017 8:14:16 GMT -6
ha ha, for a minute I thought it read your baldliness.
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Post by Phalon on Jan 2, 2017 8:19:15 GMT -6
HA! It was kinda hard to type...it came out as badliness at first.
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