What the Daily WTF?

So rather than rebooting unexpectedly while I'm working OR overnight and lose all my work and my open programs-- it will only reboot overnight unexpectedly and lose all my work and open programs.
As long as I correctly guess when I'm using the "device" (fuck you it's a computer). If I don't guess right BAM auto-reboot in the middle of work. Because its absolutely inconceivable that I might be using the computer a different times. Nope I Must. Mechanically. Use. The. Computer. On. Schedule. Beep.

This. And I consider myself more robotic than most, even I find this getting out of hand...

@blakeyrat said in The Official Status Thread:

Why are you walking away from your computer with unsaved documents? Are you using like a 6 RPM HD and it takes like 54 minutes to write that Word file?

Why should I worry that I am or not? Deja vu conversation here, but do you religiously save everything you're working on every time you glance away from your computer?

Lets try an allegory:
I have a house. It's a nice house, and when I bought it it came with a whole set of nifty little features, one of the being an automatic lifetime subscription to Windows Update, a company meant to keep my house basically secure and fix issues in appliances that came with the house (such as the washing machine and dryer, and locks).

Now, by default, Windows Update has said they will come in unobtrusively and keep things updated without me even knowing it, and let me know if I need to do anything extra or if they need to anything extra that might interrupt my life or otherwise disrupt my workflow. Sounds good! So of course I leave it signed up.

Except.... It's not so unobtrusive after all.

After a few days, I notice strange things happening. Once in awhile, I notice a Windows Update representative drive by at all times of the day. Weird, but sure.
Then, while I'm working on assembling some paperwork, Windows Update comes trundling in with a big black box, with smaller black boxes with some labels. Most of the labels say the same thing, but they have a big Exclamation Mark on them, so they must be important for something, right? Eventually, it's stacked up a bunch of these boxes and starts knocking them around. It's kind of annoying, most of them seem to get shoved into the floor or walls though, so it's fine.

Then one day, Windows Update comes by and says, "Hey! We have a bunch of new features, we're going to install them whenever you're not here. It looks like you leave for work around 6 each morning, so 7 tomorrow looks good!". So we're getting new stuff? For free? Sounds great! Yeah, lets do it, whatever

Except, I come home the next evening to find some of my stuff missing. "? Where did my stuff go?" I ask myself. Oh, it's all inside this box off to the side, kinda weird, I swear I left it on the... oh whatever, at least I have it still.

Life continues for a while, until I come home one day to find the set of blueprints I was drafting missing from my workbench. Weird, but no biggie, I have a saved copy in the drawers. Odd, but I can handle this.

After a week I come home and find that the disappearing act happen again, except this time it was stuff I didn't have a recent copy of my work because I was rapidly prototyping and it was still mostly broken when I went to bed last night. Well, no biggie, I have everything I need up in my noggin, I can just redo the last days' worth of ideas, right? Who knows, I might even make it better this time, since I remember my mistakes (and the mistakes are gone anyways), right?

Time passes, and the mystery disappearing act doesn't happen again for a while.

A month later, I've gotten comfortable with my house and left a bunch of stuff out when it happens again! I mean, come on Windows Update, is it not obvious I had stuff left open? Normally I get little warnings that come up when I shut down the house or reboot it (sorry, analogy falls apart a bit here), so the house knows when it probably shouldn't clear away all the crap I've been working on (and in fact, nicely allows my to stop the process and ensure I didn't forget anything, how nice!).
Except this time, noooo, Updating is more important than anything I could be doing, and since I'm not home, I'm obviously not using my house, despite the fact my desktop has projects strewn all over it.

After calling up Windows Update to wonder what's up, I find that there's apparently no way to prevent this from happening. I must either expect my house to semi-randomly reset, or suffer the consequences. And, oh look! I can't cancel the subscription. Ever.

Kinda irked, I take some measures to bring Windows Update to my preferences. Using some hidden control panel settings, I tell my house to only let Windows Update tell me which black boxes are available and let me choose when I want them to install them. It doesn't work. Apparently that's too "old school" for Windows Update. Whatever, I'll just close the door Windows Update comes in through. This almost works, except the house notices the door is closed, and opens it up again (eventually). I suppose it's for my own good.
Well, what if I just lock the door? Nope, the house automatically unlocks it too! House knows best, perhaps I'm being a dummy luddite or something? Whatever, I have work to do.

Forward to today. My house is rebooting by itself every day now. It looks nice and clean every time I come home, but I always have to start from scratch or whatever I remembered to save from the last night. Which (like many a house owner, I would suspect) isn't often everything.

Now I live in fear that I might come home to an empty house, all day at work I'm stressed worrying about whether I saved that tax form or if that debugging session I had running will still be there when I get back. It's stressful, man!

Moral of the story: I treat my Windows 10 computer like an unassigned cuble: Don't expect your stuff to be here when you get back, though it's probable that nobody will be sitting in your seat (probably)....

Luhmann

@Maciejasjmj said in The Official Status Thread:

I think that's how RDP works

RDP also first connects, then shows a local logon screen and only after that opens up the GUI.
Before W7/2008 it was:

So rather than the credentials entered/saved into RDP, you enter them again into the remote Windows login screen.

dkf

@FrostCat said in The Official Status Thread:

The EU had a series of books about an X-Wing squadron named Rogue Squadron. This may or may not be related.

It's Disney, so no, it won't be related at all.

cartman82

@FrostCat said in The Official Status Thread:

There's also a "choose a time for automatic restarts" now. And a bunch of new stuff that used to be only in Control Panel.

Where is the option for "I just want to work for weeks without reboot, and then execute all the updates once I decide to reboot"? You know, the way I did updates since W7?

cartman82

Lets try an allegory:

I have a house. It's a nice house, and when I bought it it came with a whole set of nifty little features, one of the being an automatic lifetime subscription to Windows Update, a company meant to keep my house basically secure and fix issues in appliances that came with the house (such as the washing machine and dryer, and locks).

This metaphor:

loopback0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Conker_the_squirrel.png

If I don't guess right BAM auto-reboot in the middle of work.

It gives you a warning and a chance to delay it. It's not like "FUCK YOU, GIVE ME RESTART NOW" before instantly restarting.

anonymous234

Tonight I dreamed I had a programmable dishwasher, you could write scripts and it would run them. But I was angry because it lacked any useful input or output devices, the only useful function was "wash_dishes()", which you had to call in a loop and didn't return anything so it was useless.

There was also another language called Microsoft Squirrel. It ran in the cloud, but you had to use a special device to program and you needed "credits". As you ran out of credits the screen got darker and darker making it harder to see until it was black and you had to wait for more credits to continue working. Also I was in a mountain trying to run away from my school trip.

Luhmann

@anonymous234 said in The Official Status Thread:

Microsoft Squirrel

Conker?

Rhywden

@FrostCat oh goodie. So rather than rebooting unexpectedly while I'm working OR overnight and lose all my work and my open programs-- it will only reboot overnight unexpectedly and lose all my work and open programs.

As long as I correctly guess when I'm using the "device" (fuck you it's a computer). If I don't guess right BAM auto-reboot in the middle of work. Because its absolutely inconceivable that I might be using the computer a different times. Nope I Must. Mechanically. Use. The. Computer. On. Schedule. Beep.

If you lose all your work due to a simple reboot then I dare say that you're the real

dkf

If you lose all your work due to a simple reboot then I dare say that you're the real

Sometimes that's what it takes to get people to learn the value of backups properly.

RaceProUK

@dkf Also the value of regularly hitting Ctrl+S

RaceProUK

Status: Just accidentally figured out I can reorder the icons in Windows 10's ~~System Tray~~Notification Area

asdf

Status: Got dragged into a meeting late at night, across different time zones. Had a detailed discussion about another team's tool and how we might collaborate with them and use it as well. They gave us a 60-minute demo, which I had to sit through, only to find out afterwards that we don't want to collaborate with that team anyway because company politics.

Why the fuck did we have a meeting in the middle of the night, then???

anonymous234

Status: gotta love the Ubuntu (LTS) repositories

Eclipse version: 3.8.1, release date June 2012
NetBeans version: 7.0.1, release date August 2011

And that's for an OS released in 2014!

blakeyrat

Deja vu conversation here, but do you religiously save everything you're working on every time you glance away from your computer?

Yes.

izzion

@asdf I always find late night discussions about someone else's tool to be oddly sensual and yet extremely awkward.

Mikael_Svahnberg

@dkf Also the value of regularly hitting Ctrl+S

What!? Doesn't your editor auto-save like the open sores one that's been doing it for 40 years?

Lorne Kates

If you lose all your work due to a simple reboot then I dare say that you're the real

It's less about the work, and more about the machine state.

Some work might get lost, for sure. If I have multiple SQL Management Studio instances open, and I'm working on a scratchpad of queries, that'll get lost unless I save a whole bunch of useless random files all over the place. The query results I have on screen will be gone. So will any SQL traces I have running.

Any debugger I have running will be gone, as will any data it has collected. Especially if that data is time sensitive-- like, how long does this overnight process actually take to run at 3am?

Any emails I have open in outlook will be closed. Did I open that email at the end of the day, so it'll be the first thing I see when I come in in the morning? Oh well, gone.

And the state of my workspace will be gone. At any given time, I usually have open:

Outlook (with some emails)
Two or more instances of Visual Studio (for debugging, development, change request scoping)
A Word document or two
MSSQL Management Studio
Internet Explorer with our internal CRM and timesheet software
Firefox with my personal browsing
Chrome with some google-doc related items
Winamp (for teh tunez)
Probably VLC, paused, listening to some podcast
An RDP or two
Other random crap like Notepad windows, Explorer windows, etc.

And of course each of THOSE has an internal state that may or may not survive a reboot. That whole workspace, on a reboot, is fucking gone and impossible to recover exactly as it was. Yes, I will eventually be able to re-open all those programs and restore the state, but that takes time. Logging in after a fresh reboot takes time. Opening programs takes time. Connecting to servers takes time. Trying to restore state takes time. I really don't need to spend 30 minutes at the start of each of my days restoring my workspace because Windows thought I needed the latest Windows updates.

Fuck automatic rebooting. Always and forever.

dcon

@Weng said in The Official Status Thread:

It MAY have moved it to later, but I've got some hard exceptions right on the heels of it (hence why I'm fucking with it) so if it does, it doesn't live that long.

Anytime I've tried to debug (breakpoints/etc) optimized code, it's fucked. Sometimes you luck out. But not usually.

dcon

@blakeyrat said in The Official Status Thread:

"all hands" meeting scheduled for a FRIDAY AFTERNOON for some goddamned reason.

That never bodes well...

RaceProUK

Any debugger I have running will be gone, as will any data it has collected. Especially if that data is time sensitive-- like, how long does this overnight process actually take to run at 3am?

I'd ask why you didn't turn off automatic reboots before starting that debug session :p

I really don't need to spend 30 minutes at the start of each of my days restoring my workspace because Windows thought I needed the latest Windows updates.

Sounds like you need a faster computer ;)

dcon

@HardwareGeek said in The Official Status Thread:

I have an office

Once upon a time at a previous company I had one. Now we have open space.

(cool, get the emoji picker open and scroll with the mouse wheel - the picker scrolls too!)

dcon

@RaceProUK Also, when you open the flyout, you can drag those back to the main bar so they're always visible. (Discovered that when I got frustrated with where-the-hell-did-the-customize-dialog-go.)

Rhywden

@RaceProUK Plus: How often does that actually happen? People here make it sound like they're getting reboots each and every day.

RaceProUK

@Rhywden In my experience, maybe three times a month, if that? Then again, I do like to keep on top of updates.

Speaking of which…

*goes to run Windows Update on her Surface tablet*

Edit: Ah, no updates required :)

Rhywden

Just stumbled upon this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/25/researchers-have-discovered-a-major-problem-with-the-little-mermaid-and-other-disney-movies/

Seriously? A movie about the Little Mermaid contains too few speeches by said mermaid? Did those morons even read the story?

She's mute for a considerable part of the movie, for chrissakes! It's a major plot device!

Geeze.

loopback0

People here make it sound like they're getting reboots each and every day.

Without warning too, which Windows 10 gives you plenty of.

RaceProUK

@Rhywden Some of the comments are quite funny though e.g.

Has to be official research if it has bar charts.

cartman82

STATUS:

I can't believe there's no better way to create "x days ago" style strings in C# than this:

Calculate relative time in C#

Given a specific DateTime value, how do I display relative time, like: 2 hours ago 3 days ago a month ago

Just a bunch of silly code snippets I'm supposed to copy-paste into my code, I guess. No libraries, no i18n, no unit tests.

What an amateur hour.

RaceProUK

@cartman82 I spy an Atwood answer, and the code he posts looks good at first glance. Then you look at it more closely and… yeah…

Given a timestamp of, say Tuesday 18:00, and you're rendering on Thursday 11:00, what does his code convert that to? Yesterday.

Proof that doesn't believe in Wednesdays. Oh, and based on the number of rewrites that don't correct this obvious bug, neither do a lot of devs.

Edit: Found a NuGet package that supports 70 languages: https://github.com/NickStrupat/TimeAgo

loopback0

@RaceProUK One of the higher answers defines a constant for 1 second

const int SECOND = 1;
const int MINUTE = 60 * SECOND;

Rhywden

@loopback0 Especially when TimeSpan has perfectly good seconds, minutes, hours and days attributes.

I don't really get why they insist on getting the delta. Or why they use ticks?

cartman82

Edit: Found a NuGet package that supports 70 languages:

I went with this: http://humanizr.net/

TRWTF is why any of these packages isn't the top answer or mentioned in the accepted community wiki posts on that page. Instead, coders are urged to write their own crappy little implementation. Always a bad idea when dealing with date/time.

RaceProUK

@cartman82 That looks like a pretty sweet library; I'll have to remember it :)

Lorne Kates

I'd ask why you didn't turn off automatic reboots before starting that debug session

I did. It's called "don't upgrade past Windows 7".

Lorne Kates

@RaceProUK Plus: How often does that actually happen? People here make it sound like they're getting reboots each and every day.

It happens anytime the machine automatically reboots.

Which happens at least once a week at minimum (patch Tuesday), and far more often for "cumulative raisin update" reasons that serve no purpose other than to, say, install a "patch" that installs nagware to tell you to upgrade to Windows 10.

Lorne Kates

@cartman82 said in The Official Status Thread:

I can't believe there's no better way to create "x days ago" style strings in C#

That's a feature.

"x days ago" is an anti-feature that needs to die. The harder it is to do, the better.

Tsaukpaetra

It gives you a warning and a chance to delay it. It's not like "FUCK YOU, GIVE ME RESTART NOW" before instantly restarting.

I have seen such a warning once in the months I've been using W10. ONCE. I'm assuming every other time the warning pops up half an hour before it wants to reboot (a.k.a. at 2:30a when I'm asleep). Since obviously I need to wait up for it so I can delay it, otherwise non-response is acceptance, right?
What was the phrase... "Lack of denial implies acceptance"?

If you lose all your work due to a simple reboot then I dare say that you're the real

Embellishment FFS. No, I'm not losing everything, just my open programs and their states, which may be anything from just my web browser and a word document or two, or web browser, sixteen Excel docs, two IDEs, remote desktop sessions with three hosts, an instance of Microsoft Management Console, two Notepad instances, IRC chat, four File Explorer windows, and a logging stopwatch.

@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:

Sometimes that's what it takes to get people to learn the value of backups properly.

Backups don't affect unsaved files.

Also the value of regularly hitting Ctrl+S

I can reorder the icons in Windows 10's System TrayNotification Area

Now that's a feature I can get behind! Too bad it was probably only a small footnote in the release notes...

@blakeyrat said in The Official Status Thread:

Yes.

Of course you would, because why wouldn't you?

I usually have open:

Hey! I don't have Winamp. Maybe I should see if it's changed much since 2003?

Sounds like you need a faster computer

Nah, just need to have an IDE that doesn't consume 30 GB of disk space and take 30 seconds to load a simple "Welcome now here's some ads and maybe a few links to open a project".

How often does that actually happen? People here make it sound like they're getting reboots each and every day.

Until recently? Not often at all but lately...
0_1460232354026_upload-f3131304-18c5-48b6-8b8c-ec809eccca84

Of those listed, three of those reboots was intentional (probably the start menu borked or something) one was a crash, and the most recent was me screwing with my Bluetooth adapter. Everything else wasn't me.

Without warning too, which Windows 10 gives you plenty of.

Yeah! When I'm supposedly not using it! Which, admittedly I am, but how the flip am I supposed to respond to something that intentionally displays only when I'm not using my computer?

Rhywden

@Rhywden said in The Official Status Thread:

@RaceProUK Plus: How often does that actually happen? People here make it sound like they're getting reboots each and every day.

It happens anytime the machine automatically reboots.

Which happens at least once a week at minimum (patch Tuesday), and far more often for "cumulative raisin update" reasons that serve no purpose other than to, say, install a "patch" that installs nagware to tell you to upgrade to Windows 10.

Yes. Windows 10 installs nagware which nags you to update to Windows 10.

Tsaukpaetra

Yes. Windows 10 installs nagware which nags you to update to Windows 10.

Nah, it's actually nagware that checks if Your System Administrator has disabled automatic upgrades and shame on them for doing so!

RaceProUK

I did. It's called "don't upgrade past Windows 7".

I call it "set the obvious option which is obvious":
0_1460233028781_upload-b7f09bbe-4b1e-44db-b88e-599f8617df66

Tsaukpaetra

I call it "set the obvious option which is obvious":

I call it "Lets ignore the setting that says Meh, you can check for updates if you want. No, don't download unless I ask. No, don't automatically install sh*t, NO, DON'T DO ANYTHING UNLESS I TELL YOU TO"
0_1460233195376_upload-de8fc097-c873-441f-8bf3-3108855d0d3f

loopback0

I have seen such a warning once in the months I've been using W10. ONCE. I'm assuming every other time the warning pops up half an hour before it wants to reboot (a.k.a. at 2:30a when I'm asleep). Since obviously I need to wait up for it so I can delay it, otherwise non-response is acceptance, right?
What was the phrase... "Lack of denial implies acceptance"?

Unless Win 10 LTSB works differently from Win 10 Pro (which I have) - it gives you additional notice before the 30 minutes. Like days.

Which, admittedly I am, but how the flip am I supposed to respond to something that intentionally displays only when I'm not using my computer?

Earlier warnings display when you're using it.

RaceProUK

@Tsaukpaetra Based on that screenshot, you need to talk to your organisation, since they're the ones managing that setting

Rhywden

@Tsaukpaetra And WSUS is too expensive, I guess?

cartman82

That's a feature.
"x days ago" is an anti-feature that needs to die. The harder it is to do, the better.

But it makes it easier to figure out when will I next be forced to reboot for W10 updates.

Get with the times man.

Tsaukpaetra

Unless Win 10 LTSB, or Win 10 Pro (which I have) works differently - it gives you additional notice before the 30 minutes. Like days.

Not my experience.
0_1460233265801_upload-34f6fb28-75e8-4e56-b678-fed7f15fd966

Earlier warnings display when you're using it.

Again, I saw such a notice once (and luckily enough I caught it while it was still a popup, things that get sucked up into the New Notifications slideout tend to break if they get there).

Based on that screenshot, you need to talk to your organisation, since they're the ones managing that setting

I AM the organization. And I expect to be in full control of my domain, which clearly isn't the case.

And WSUS is too expensive, I guess?

And simply blocking Windows Update via DNS is too simple, I guess?
Why should I have to install extra things to prevent things from happening? What backwards world do we live in?

This is equivalent to saying

Yeah, to stop the File Explorer from showing thumbnails, install this program which redirects thumbnail image requests from Explorer through a dummy DLL. Don't use the checkbox in the settings that says Always show icons, never thumbnails, that's !

RaceProUK

I AM the organization. And I expect to be in full control of my domain, which clearly isn't the case.

Is that your personal machine? Why does it look like it's on a domain? And if it is really on a domain, why have you not configured it properly via the domain controller?

Rhywden

@Tsaukpaetra So, you never want to receive patches and updates?

That's a disingenuous argument from you. Your gripe is that you're not able to control the updates. Hence WSUS or SCCM.

If even our school IT can solve that one...

loopback0