|
|
|
resistant to search engine indexing
Monday, September 24 2018
The P0420 light came on during the drive to the workplace today, less than 70 miles since the last one. Clearly my 330 kilohm hack wasn't sufficient. Maybe the capacitors had been too small. So later, soon after getting home from work, I attached two 100 microfarad capacitors to the hack, one each between ground and either side of the 330 kilohm resistor, thereby hoping to even-out variance on which ever side mattered most.
Today at work, I dedicated myself to diagnosing and fixing my first assigned task in the company's Jira task-management system. I quickly found the place in the C# code where the problem manifested. Some raw SQL had a condition where a value had to be IN ('All', @type), but @type wasn't getting set. I waded into the weeds of a sprawling, very important class, but the peculiar C# syntax soon had me flummoxed and discouraged. The problem with the syntax (as with much of what Microsoft has produced) is how resistant it is to search engine indexing, which makes it hard to search for answers in online fora. When one encounters a phrase like Stack<int> stack = new Stack<int>();, how would you go about figuring out what the <int> syntax means? I tried things like "what do the greater and less than brackets in a method declaration mean?" but that got me nowhere. There is no one term to describe those typographic symbols, and yet they have some sort of syntactic meaning in C# that is unrelated to what those same symbols mean in XML, HTML, PHP associative arrays, object operators, and arrow functions. After considerable searching, I eventually discovered they were related to a concept called C# generics. I didn't spend the time necessary to learn more about them; all I wanted was something I could drop into Google on some future day when I really need to know. There were plenty of other mysteries and details of syntax that struck me as unnecessarily ugly (almost as ugly as regular expressions), things such as a construct that looks like ".?"
I should mention that the people who contribute to online fora about Windows and even Windows-OS programming are noticeably less knowledgeable and helpful than people working in open source environments. I suspect that this is partly due to the fact that when one works in a closed-source proprietary universe, the culture of not sharing and actively keeping secrets is internalized, making the people there somewhat more dickish. The amount difference of "not being helpful" wouldn't even have to be very much for the effect to be greatly amplified by network effects.
By the end of the workday, I was mentally exhausted and a little depressed, because I hadn't actually achieved any concrete goal after a day of struggle. Software work can be discouraging sometimes, but it's rarely that discouraging.
This evening, Nancy met us at our house and we carpooled in our Prius to Woodstock to dine at the Garden Caf´ with Ray, who was driving separately. This was a thankyou dinner for Nancy, who had recently designed the cover for Gretchen's new poetry collection, Visiting Days. When we met Ray in front of the Garden, he'd just dropped his unprotected Android phone on the ground and now it no longer worked. He'd had it for two years, which is normal lifespan for a phone these days, so it was less of a disaster than it might've otherwise been. Also, it was covered by insurance, though he'd probably paid more for that than its replacement value. (It's never a good bet to buy insurance for anything you can afford to replace out of pocket.)
The night was cool, too cool for the Garden to be seating people outside. So we sat indoors. I was going to be adventurous and get the mango tofu sandwich, but it had just been discontinued for the season. So I feel back to my default: the portobello panini sandwich with tempeh. (I would've gotten the burrito, but I'd brought a burrito made from my chili to work today, and I was in no mood for a mediocre instance of that important food.) Owing to the cold weather, I drank red wine with my food. When I ordered my second glass of that, Nancy canceled her coffee order and got a second glass of white wine. Topics of conversation ranged from "why do we never see two straight men dining together?" to the miraculous recovery of both of Ray's brothers after each being diagnosed with cancer and given only months to live.
The party was to continue in Uptown Kingston at the Stockade Saloon, where we would be celebrating Alana's birthday. But we caught the Stockade on one of the three days in late September when it would be closed, so we had to find another place. Fortunately, in today's Uptown, there were other choices. We ended up at the Two Ravens Tavern, a big gorgeous space nearby bathed in soft warm light. We (and now there were seven of us) in a sort of a booth in the back. Chrissy had joined us, along with Jeff and Alana. We soon showered Alana with the gifts we'd brought. Gretchen had made cupcakes, I'd made that painting of a snail. Ray gave her one of the many studded wristbands he'd gotten from China and a small abstract painting resembling a Jesus fish. Nancy had bought a succulent plant with leaves arranged in a gorgeous fibonnaci spiral. And Chrissy had brought a frozen explosion of sparklingly clear quartz crystals about the size of bicycle reflector. We didn't stay for more than one drink, as I had to get up and go to work early tomorrow.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180924 feedback
previous | next |
