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Arrested Development Is Getting Noticed
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10/19/05 02:53 PM EST
posted by JER email web |
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Everyone but Bull should agree that Arrested Development is far and away the best show on network television today, and arguably the best since Seinfeld. And now, after 2 years of meager ratings, it looks like people are finally taking notice.
The Parents Television Council has ranked Arrested Development #9 in their list of the The Ten Worst Shows For Family Viewing On Prime Time Broadcast Television.
Hooray!
Oddly enough, the show is all about family, just not the prototypical '50s family I'm assuming the PTC is looking for. I guess awkward cousin romance jokes and open marriage jokes don't jibe with parents. I can't imagine why...
On a similar note, did anyone else notice that Arrested Development was nominated for 3 of the 5 Best Writing emmies? Isn't that insane??! Unfortunately that's the only category they won in this year, but the odds were certainly in their favor... |
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I bought a KVM on eBay with ps/2 inputs & USB outputs. Unfortunately, the "hot key" to switch between PCs is CTRL, so if I type CTRL-C, CTRL-V too quickly, the KVM assumes I'm trying to switch PCs. As if that weren't annoying enough, when I switch back to the first computer, the CTRL key seems to be in some kind of sticky mode & I have to hit the left & right CTRL keys to disable it. And, of course, I have to hit those CTRL keys slowly, otherwise the KVM will switch again and the cycle restarts.
Has anyone used a reliable KVM with ps/2 inputs & USB output? Or maybe there's a way I can disable the sticky CTRL feature? I never, ever, ever use it and really consider it a nuisance option.
At this point, it would almost be easier to crawl under the desk and move the devices manually.
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Apparently my "reply" functionality has been busted for some time, or at least the code that auto-generates dynamic aspx pages for people to use as permalinks (which the "reply" link links to). Frickin' A.... More news on this when I've fix the issue... |
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I was writing some SQL for my football pool site the other day and wanted to retrieve a list of "Recent Mass Mailings" and who they were sent to. I have an EmailLog table that is keyed on DateTimeSent & ToAddress. Some might consider this a weak key since two separate mass e-mails could theoretically be generated at the same time, but let's ignore that for now. So if a mass mail is sent to 50 people, there would be 50 records in the log table. To display the last 5 mailings, though, I group by Subject & DateTimeSent. I want a list of "ToAddress" values to show up in my output, though, so that my final result would look something like this:
| Message | Time Sent | Sent to | | Washington Job Listings | 10/12/2005 3:00 pm | elliotF@myplace.com
johnF@tcby.com | | Hot New Clubs | 10/11/2005 2:10 pm | bull@krosschell.com
natesmith@biggay.com |
This could be done fairly easily in the code behind or using a fancy Repeater control, but I wanted to do it all in one SQL query. After all these years, I'm still obsessed with writing the ONE QUERY solution to solve everything.
Anyway, I did it by adding a UDF to get a list of addresses that have the same timestamp. I used a cursor to loop over records and appended them to a big string. Note that I replace the commas with BR tags in my aspx page. As much as I advocate the ONE QUERY solution, I cringe when I see HTML in SQL code.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udf_GetEmailLogRecipients (@DateTimeStamp datetime)
RETURNS varchar(8000) AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @results varchar(8000), @emailAddress varchar(200)
SET @results = ''
DECLARE log_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT ToAddress
FROM EmailLog
WHERE DateTimeSent = @DateTimeStamp
ORDER BY ToAddress ASC
OPEN log_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM log_cursor INTO @emailAddress
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
IF @results = ''
SET @results = @emailAddress
ELSE
SET @results = @results + ',' + @emailAddress
FETCH NEXT FROM log_cursor INTO @emailAddress
END
CLOSE log_cursor
DEALLOCATE log_cursor
RETURN @results
END
So I wrote that code yesterday & it worked out well. The cursor approach seemed extravagant, but it worked and I was satisfied that I'd gotten everything into 1 query. Lo and behold, 4 Guys from Rolla had an article today discussing this exact same issue and pointed out that the COALESCE statement is meant to be used for exactly this purpose!
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.udf_GetEmailLogRecipients (@DateTimeStamp datetime)
RETURNS varchar(8000) AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @results varchar(8000)
SELECT @results = COALESCE(@results + ', ', '') + ToAddress
FROM EmailLog
WHERE DateTimeSent = @DateTimeStamp
RETURN @results
END
This new UDF is much cleaner & I'm confident that just about ANY command is faster than using a cursor, so I'd guess performance will be better, too. |
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We all agree that George Bush doesn't care about black people...
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10/07/05 04:43 PM EST
posted by JER email web |
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...but it turns out Lauryn Hill doesn't hate white people! I heard a Wyclef Jean song recently and thought to myself, "Ugh, I'm glad I haven't heard from [Jean's former Fugees bandmate] Lauryn Hill in a while -- that racist b****."
Why was I so nasty, you ask? I've heard multiple times over the years that Lauryn Hill once said, "I'd rather see my children starve than have white people buy my music." At first I thought it couldn't possibly be true, but as I heard it repeated, I was apalled at both her comment and the fact that the national media wasn't making a big deal of it. I felt that if anyone else, especially a white male, were to make a similar statement, his career would be over.
It turns out that I was bamboozled. Hill never said any such thing, but apparently this is an urban legend than has gained quite some steam... Thanks to Snopes for correcting this outrageous allegation.
Funny sidenote: This is an actual Eminem lyric that surely perpetuates this myth:
"Bought Lauryn Hill's tape so her kids could starve." |
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I'm sure that Bushy just doesn't want to assist with the restriction of political or religious freedom:
The existence of such a domain facilitates Internet filtering by moralistic governments with the aim of affecting the ideas and concepts their residents may see and the alternative moral schemes to which they are exposed. The segregation of thought, entertainment, and ideas because of content and appeal is a dangerous first step towards local and parochial control over the global Internet. It paves the way for TLDs aimed at religious and political content.
- xbiz |
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ANY ONE THAT SPEAKS ILL OF MY GRANDSON IS AN ASHOLE
ANYNONE THAT WRITES **** YOU TO A COMPLETE STRANGER IS MENTALLY RETARDED AMD HAS DIFFICULTY IN COMMUNICATING WITH HUMANS..........YOU ARE PROBABLY UGLY AND STUPID ACTUALLY
YOU ARE AN ....................IGNORAMIS...............NOT ONLY ARE YOU DUMB BUT AN **** HOLE AS WELL
NICK |
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