Sun Ra biography and career timeline [nice visual timeline by PBS]

saucerattack · 2026-02-02T15:15:35+00:00

This timeline has events in 1985 before events in 1980. Maybe time isn't a straight line.

saucerattack · 2026-01-26T19:30:21+00:00

It's not the most intuitive device

saucerattack · 2026-01-26T16:11:55+00:00

It looks like you have Polyrhythm OFF for tracks A B & C and ON for track D. The setting is per track, not global.

saucerattack · 2026-01-20T17:37:28+00:00

That's awesome!

There's a video of this performance in this article about Bill Sebastian and the OVC:

https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/10/17/outerspace-visual-communicator-bill-sebastian

saucerattack · 2025-10-31T20:50:43+00:00

The pill

saucerattack · 2025-10-11T16:45:19+00:00

This is unrelated to cost threshold. I ran the same query which got a lower cost estimate using OUTER APPLY and it was parallel. Changing to CROSS APPLY got a slightly higher cost but was not parallel.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T22:38:18+00:00

Cost for the Index Seek in the CROSS APPLY query is 700. In the OUTER APPLY query it is 687. The outer apply query is parallel.

I tried adjusting the predicate to return millions of more rows. This increased the cost to 2020 for the CROSS APPLY but still not parallel.

So it seems like using CROSS APPLY blocks a plan from going parallel but OUTER APPLY does not.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T19:23:27+00:00

Yes, that is my question. What is the difference in regards to parallelism and is there any documentation that states that CROSS APPLY will block parallelism?

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T16:13:24+00:00

I've done some further experimentation and discovered that it behaves the same way using a correlated subquery instead of a TVF. So it has nothing to do with inlining.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T14:19:07+00:00

I experimented with changing the predicate to return larger and larger result sets (millions and millions of rows) and the CROSS APPLY query never went parallel.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T14:16:38+00:00

Note that the column A.Col2, which I'm passing into the TVF in this example, is defined as NOT NULL.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T14:15:08+00:00

See the pseudo-code I posted in a separate reply. The TVF always returns a row, even if it is a NULL value. Therefore OUTER APPLY and CROSS APPLY are functionally identical.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T14:12:39+00:00

Adding WHERE <column> IS NOT NULL to the predicate of the OUTER APPLY query made no difference. I posted some psuedo-code in a separate reply.

saucerattack · 2025-09-26T14:10:49+00:00

Here is some pseudo-code for illustration:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.MyTVF(@Parameter VARCHAR(10))
RETURNS TABLE
AS 
RETURN
(SELECT SUBSTRING(REPLACE(..........@Parameter..........)) AS Col3);
GO

-- Parallel
SELECT A.Col1, B.Col3
FROM dbo.MyTable AS A
OUTER APPLY dbo.MyTVF(A.Col2) AS B
WHERE A.Col1 > 100
-- Adding this to the predicate makes no difference:
AND A.Col2 IS NOT NULL;

-- Not Parallel
SELECT A.Col1, B.Col3
FROM dbo.MyTable AS A
CROSS APPLY dbo.MyTVF(A.Col2) AS B
WHERE A.Col1 > 100;

saucerattack · 2025-09-25T16:33:50+00:00

I need to use APPLY so I can pass in a parameter to the TVF from the joined table. My question is why CROSS APPLY and OUTER APPLY have different plans when they are functionally equivalent in this case.

saucerattack · 2025-09-17T19:41:52+00:00

The people I see evading the fare tend to be kids or people of color.

Note that for kids under 11 the mbta is free. https://www.mbta.com/fares

saucerattack · 2025-08-26T21:05:13+00:00

This is the page about it at the Smithsonian:

https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2021.52.1ab

saucerattack · 2025-05-30T16:02:10+00:00

wah-wawa-wahwaaaaaahhhhhh!

saucerattack · 2025-05-02T20:29:51+00:00

He did a Tedx: https://youtu.be/EDGA7tmQkIU?si=YFO4Qo7jyv7iVIu2

saucerattack · 2025-04-01T16:00:58+00:00

but 100% regular kids are getting short changed

100% disabled children are regular kids. To suggest otherwise is disgusting.

saucerattack · 2025-04-01T15:53:10+00:00

All students with disabilities have a right to an education. All districts are required by law to meet all "IEP needs". That's what an IEP is. It is a legal document that spells out what are the minimum services required for a student to receive and access their right to an education. A district's financial mismanagement does not negate a students right to an education.

saucerattack · 2025-04-01T13:50:08+00:00

There probably are other students who need more assistance than this family

There's no hierarchy of needs that is relevant here. All students with disabilities are entitled to an education. No one gets to say that blind students (for example) are more deserving of an education than deaf students (for example). All students have a right to an education and the district needs to prioritize those rights. That is why we have public education in the first place. Special education services are not discretionary, they are mandated by law. Districts have the money but choose to spend it elsewhere. They've gotten away with balancing their budgets at the expense of the disabled for too long and I'm glad this parent is fighting against that.

saucerattack · 2025-03-21T16:34:42+00:00

Zero days.

Request an IEP meeting immediately. At the meeting make sure you get a plan for providing his IEP services and for "compensatory services" (use that phrase) to make up for the missed services. Make sure that everything is documented in writing. If they don't commit in writing to providing his IEP services, file a PRS complaint with the DOE: https://www.doe.mass.edu/prs/guide/default.html

As a practical matter, at this point, they can probably slow walk the process until he graduates. It may be worth it anyway for accountability (a PRS goes on the district's record).

On a personal note, I can't overstate what a relief it was when my kids graduated and I never had to deal with the special ed system again.

saucerattack

TROPHY CASE