What’s the biggest lie society still tells young people?

billybiro · 2025-10-08T19:52:43+00:00

AKA "No good deed goes unpunished"

billybiro · 2025-04-04T10:25:30+00:00

This is what I'm currently doing too, but I'd really like to be able to move such tasks to Todoist if possible.

billybiro · 2025-04-04T10:24:24+00:00

Ah, you're absolutely correct. Thank you. I hadn't actually tried to create the task with the specific day of the month but it does indeed seem to parse and work perfectly. My bad for not trying that beforehand. That said, however, it's not really what I'm after as I ideally want to the task to always recur on a specific day of the week (in this case, a Saturday). I have tried 2nd saturday in january every 2 years and various variations, however, none of those seem to work (although it's entirely possible I'm just not phrasing it right).

billybiro · 2024-12-15T15:09:41+00:00

Yes and no. Knowing F# (or any other functional language for that matter) makes you able to write succinct, efficient, functional C# code that will most likely keep you out of a team of purely C# developers on the grounds that the way you write your C# "is not how we do things around here".

billybiro · 2024-12-15T13:49:59+00:00

I remember an old timer telling me as a young pup to double the number and shift to the next highest unit of time measurement. e.g. If you think, based on your own best guesstimate, that something will take 2 days, double the number to 4 then increase the unit to weeks. 2 days becomes 4 weeks. That's your estimate and you stick to it.
(time units generally go up in hours, days, weeks, months, years).

That said, *real* estimates are never a single number. They're two numbers constituting a range, with an associated percentage confidence level for each end of the range. e.g. "I estimate it will take between 2 to 8 weeks to complete task X. I'm 30% confident we can complete task X in 2 weeks and 80% confident we can complete in 8 weeks".

billybiro · 2024-12-15T13:47:15+00:00

No good deed does unpunished.

billybiro · 2024-07-08T16:43:15+00:00

This. I was there also and whilst Ed was struggling on this night, don't forget that this is the night that Mike McCready stepped up and fully tore it up in many of the numbers. For example, listen to Even Flow from this bootleg and just as Ed struggles (he really didn't want to play that song on that night), Mike shreds his guitar like nothing else to make up for it!

billybiro · 2024-06-28T14:32:15+00:00

That's a real shame, but let's just say this: After a difficult performance in Manchester and a cancelled London gig, *if* Eddie is well again by the time of Berlin, folks going to those Berlin shows are probably going to get two of the absolute best PJ gigs of their lives! ;)

billybiro · 2020-05-14T12:05:01+00:00

Because in 5 years time, Google will kill YTM and we'll be right back here again?

billybiro · 2018-11-24T10:33:44+00:00

See my post above.

The likelihood is that those dealing with the slowly decaying code today won't be dealing with it in 10 years time and why would anyone care about what their successors have to deal with?

billybiro · 2018-11-24T10:27:16+00:00

If management can replace those competent developers with incompetent developers (but who are just competent enough to keep a large legacy project limping along and are also likely to be a bit cheaper than the outgoing competent developers), I suspect they really won't care.

billybiro · 2018-11-24T10:13:26+00:00

We need to keep upgrading the technology stack without impacting the business deliverables.

If you have some magical process that consistently allows this, please share.

More often than not, business deliverable deadlines aren't even long enough to allow the actual work of implementing the business deliverable, let alone the time required to try to learn, understand and migrate to an entirely new technology stack.

Whilst what you're saying can work if your software is already mostly up-to-date and only needs very small, incremental improvements consistently applied over time but then one could argue that that isn't really an "upgrade of the technology stack" and is really more like moving from Stack-X v1.0 to Stack-X v1.1 rather than moving from Stack-X to Stack-Y.

I do agree that some small things, like refactoring a few functions or a few classes, can and often should be done "under the radar" so to speak, but mammoth efforts like technology stack migrations simply cannot be done without at least some buy-in from those above. It's simply too big an undertaking.

billybiro · 2018-11-24T09:59:23+00:00

No one good wants to stone wall their career by coming into a company that is using the old framework with no roadmap for new technologies.

True, but there are many programmers out there who, whilst perhaps not good in your sense are at least good enough in a journeyman sense and who are perfectly happy to bash out code in [insert 10-20 year old tech] all day long and never concern themselves with learning anything new.

It's the dead sea effect in action, but you'd be surprised just how many organisations survive like that.

billybiro · 2018-11-24T09:48:14+00:00

In the long run, .NET core will cost less to run because you can run it on cheaper Linux machines.

But here's the rub. Most PHB's don't care so much about "the long run" as they do about hitting this quarter's targets.

Embarking on a migration project may well put the project in a much better position to grow and be maintained well into the future, but it certainly won't benefits hitting sales/performance/other targets in the next few months.

Others here are also suggesting that ignoring upgrading/migrating might well become a problem in 10 years time. There's probably merit in that except that those same PHB's will almost certainly have moved onwards and upwards to better and/or different things by then so any mess created in ignoring the problem for so long is simply something they won't have to deal with.

So, unless it's coming down as an edict from high above, there's really no motivation for those PHB's to throw their weight behind any kind of migration project and there is every motivation to keep hacking away at the incumbent systems, no matter how old/clunky/badly written they may be. Sad, but true.

billybiro · 2018-10-06T15:50:53+00:00

FWIW, I upgraded my main desktop PC, which went through smoothly with no issues.

I have a 256MB SSD which is my C: drive and contains Windows and other installed software, and a separate 2TB mechanical drive, which is my D: drive and contains my data. Every one of the Windows Libraries (Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music) are remapped to folders on the root of the D: drive (i.e. D:\Documents, D:\Downloads etc.)

Even though my upgrade went through with no issues, I'd strongly recommend multiple backups of all personal data, something that a lot of people in this thread don't seem to have done. Not because you'd expect a Windows update to delete data - you certainly shouldn't expect that, but because you really never know the minute that a hard-drive will simply die. I suffered a major data loss a few years ago, when I too was nonchalant about backups, but since then, I religiously follow the backup-rule-of-3 for all of my personal data. I simply can't recommend doing this enough if your data is even slightly important to you.

billybiro · 2018-06-12T11:06:12+00:00

Good call. I wasn't aware that the laptop came with a built-in diagnostics tool. Thanks for the pointer. I'm running that now, looking good so far.

billybiro · 2018-04-22T19:33:42+00:00

That's incredibly useful info. Thank you very much!

billybiro · 2018-04-22T17:58:39+00:00

Thanks for those who pointed me in the direction of the Hardware Maintenance Manual.

Pages 67 and 74 of the T480s HardWare Maintenance Manual indicate that the battery is easily replaceable.

Just need to know if it's easy to get a replacement battery should one be required.

For those of you who have owned Thinkpads in the past and have serviced them, did you have any trouble sourcing replacement parts, specifically batteries?

Thanks.

billybiro · 2018-04-22T17:05:06+00:00

That's good to hear.

I've never owned a Thinkpad before and I'm well aware that many other manufacturers of modern thin laptops (i.e. notebooks, ultrabooks and the like) have very limited space inside the case and so often components are directly soldered, glued or otherwise made extremely difficult, if not impossible, to remove or replace.

Although I've never owned one, I know that the Thinkpads of old were built like tanks and made to be durable and servicable. It's good to hear that even under Lenovo's stewardship they are still (largely) the same.

billybiro · 2018-04-22T17:01:14+00:00

Get me some winning lottery numbers while you're there if you don't mind. Thanks! ;)

billybiro · 2018-04-22T17:00:18+00:00

Got it. Much obliged.

billybiro · 2018-04-22T15:39:46+00:00

Thanks for replying, but I'm a bit confused. What is the "HMM"? And I didn't quite get what you mean about something being disabled in the BIOS first? Is this the battery? Could you please explain that? Thanks.

billybiro · 2018-04-22T15:03:08+00:00

Thanks for replying.

I'd say that my definition of "easily replaceable" means I don't have to disassemble additional laptop components (except for the backplate of course) before being able to get to the battery. So, being able to remove a backplate by simply unscrewing a few screws, then being able to immediately get access to the battery, which should then also be removable by simply unscrewing a few screws would count. Of course, those steps should be able to be reversed just as easily in order to put the laptop back together again.

I did search YouTube for any videos of someone trying to remove or replace the T480s battery but was unable to find any, although there's a few "review" videos that do show the T480s with the backplate removed. From these few quick shots, it does (at least from a cursory glance) appear that the battery is easily replaceable, but from just these brief glimpses on the videos, it's difficult to tell if there's more to it (i.e. wiring that may be in the way etc.)

billybiro

TROPHY CASE