I say that's just fine! It reflects the exasperation and defeated feeling in the face of deadlines and "just get it done!" pressure. Personally I might have written more concisely something like "I had to put *SOMETHING* here so I pulled this number 48 out of thin air. Gotta move on from this!". :-D

About five years ago my wife was driving home from work at about 9:30 at night. At a short but very dark stretch of highway a black bear ran out (and they can run *FAST*) and wasn't visible until it got in front of headlights. My wife had no time to react and hit it. The bear was killed by the impact and my wife's car was stopped and stuck dead in the middle of a dark highway road.
She was unable to get out of the car due to airbags deployed all over. And she thought she had survived that crash but was likely to get hit by cars behind her.
But right away the car behind her pulled over, three guys got out. Checked on her, called for help, and pushed her car off to the side of the road to safety. When she was apparently alright they stayed until regular emergency help arrived (tow/cops/etc). Then went on their way. In the hub-bub of answering questions she never got a chance to find out who they were.
I wish I could say thank you to them. (And to the people that thought of airbags -she was hardly hurt by an impact that practically stopped the car at highway speed).

I learned a lot of useful stuff from that many years back, from a library copy. My wife got me a copy last year for a gift. It's not just informative re how to tie the knots, but the stories and explanations of what each is used for. A bit of science in it too. Totally worth it (though I think you can get a good condition copy of it for a better price) Best!

Colander

Happy Birthday! from a 63-year-old youngster!

Say no more!

This is a good question! It happens in real life and doesn't get discussed much though! I recommend that you do *not* put in the extra test, because... > If there is any future maintenance involving a change to the condition the future programmer will need to review both conditions. Extra comprehension, extra code - more likely an error or misunderstanding. > a comment would serve the same purpose - and even can be removed safely > ? If you have both tests, then ask what's the "else" for? My experience - I've seen this done in the past, and it just trips up future programmer and confuses the human reader. [my edit: - Absolutely agree with Iacopo Vettori's comment - use 'Assert' for such cases]

May I submit another: "No one else has complained about that" (Often it's because they have experience reporting complaints and know better not to bother)

Humans that obey the automated any system even when it is clearly wrong, broken, unusable. At a new doctor's office, speaking face-to-face with admin assistant: Asst: "I can't set up a personalized account for you. You need to call our help desk" Me: "for some reason your office phone system has my number listed as an advertising site and won't allow it to continue." Asst: "Oh then just go call on your home phone and you can set it up from there." Me: "Are they in the same building? Can I just go see them in person?" Asst: "They're on the next floor. But they go home at 3:00 so they're not there." Me: [ looking dumbfounded at the sincerely eager-to-help person in front of me who hadn't connected the dots, and realizing that she only had the job because there were no better applicants. ]       Um, I'll try tomorrow.

I'm always bothered by phrases like "I'm sorry you feel that way" from a machine. They actually bothered to choose to program a machine to feign remorse. "I'm sorry..." I'ts more troubling that there are proabably people, real humans that somehow feel that they' might have hurt the machines feelings wehn they see such a response from a machine.

Just an option to consider - Framework. Framework Laptops I got a powerful system for about 2.2k last year and I've been happy with it. I mess with virtualization a bit so I wanted the 64G mem. 6 cores (I think, might be 8). I know at least one other person who's quite happy with their older Framework. Their vision is to have components that are easily user-upgradable, so hopefully it will have a longer overall lifetime. Cheers!

When it's "fully automated" it's the worst. When trying to get my cable set up with Verizon I was caught in an endless loop of reporting that my cable wasn't working. after waiting for hours on hold, someone would transfer me to "someone that could help". Instead I'd get a recording that says it would check my line. ...Followed by the recording saying "Your device is now working! Please call back if you have any other [needs/etc]" [ back to a new call... try to convince them to re-open the original case number ] That went on for days, I'd have to shout "wait don't transfer me yet!" if I got a human on the line. Finally a service call. A guy in a fancy truck who arrived and spent nine hours at my house - and he had to go through the SAME SYSTEM!

When that happens to me, I borrow from the "Pomodoro Timer" method. You need to get some(any) kind of timer, set it for some small time like 25 minutes where you promise yourself you'll try to focus on an important step. I think 25 mins is suggested 'cause it doesn't sound too long, it's doable. When the timer goes off - you permit yourself to stray ( go for a walk, practice music and juggling etc. ) for about 5-10 minutes. Your mind deserves some fun off the leash. Repeat the cycle. I find it gets me back into the mode where I can get in the zone again where the "work" is actually "fun". Totally stray out of the "Pomodoro" rules when I am out of the funk.

Of course, the the fourth is *already* a holiday.

Just haveta check - you typed "desert", didn't mean to type "dessert"??

Lettuce all on left side to allow selectivity...ketchup on the outside of the bun for visibility. Onions still in there, but in plastic packets...

We try to attract most birds to our yard, but we also have families of hawks nearby every year for some time now (and for a while a bald eagle). While the hawks are impressive, I wouldn't mind if they moved away. They gotta eat and all - I understand that's their nature. It definitely means we cannot attract crows - they're in all the neighborhoods around, but they clearly have the sense to stay away from the "hawk" neighborhood. It's amazing how you can hear them send different messages. "food here!" and - also warnings, and set up their mobbing behavior when a hawk or two are moving into their territory. They protect their own. If you hear a mobbing going on you can take a walk and find disgruntled hawks trying to set up home.

Such a funny coincidence! Today is my son's 30th birthday, and I'll be giving him a copy later today when I see him. It's in a box upstairs and I only just looked at the jacket about 30 minutes ago. We're both fans. I had his Applied Cryptography book way back when. I'm looking forward to reading A Hacker's Mind.

I'm sorry to hear of her injuries! I'm hoping she'll recover nicely. I also hope you won't be too hard on yourself. Animals sometimes do silly things and can trick you. Independent little cusses sometimes.

Pardon me, but although I'll refrain from using the info-mining stuff, I'll add a comment: I love the analogy of witchcraft to coding! We all cast our incantations, and hope that we invoke the right behavior in our metaphorical little golems and magical imps to do our bidding! How they must quietly scorn and laugh at us when they in fact do EXACTLY what we TELL them to do, instead of what we WANT them to do!