Couch 237: Social Rules

Aww this was the cutest thing I've read all day.

I'm exhausted today. A friend passed over the weekend. It wasn't unexpected as she was on hospice. It's just a lot to take in.

I think all the emotions I am having are going somatic because I feel exhausted, fatigued, and flu like. I cried a little but haven't really cried yet. Maybe at the memorial service.

My muscles feel like they are on fire. I'm sure that is all the emotions making them feel yucky. I'm trying to just deal with it. I really want to go home early from work and take a nap but I probably won't.

I'm sorry for your loss, Kit. I hope you are able to find ways to be kind to yourself today, even if you can't leave work.

Hugs, Kit. I'm so sorry for your loss.


Stress can definitely make me feel achy and run-down. I can feel like I've run a marathon, even if it was just emotional running. So please try to take care of yourself and get some rest. Is it possible to take tomorrow off, even a half-day, something like that?

I had other topics I wanted to talk about today (H's upcoming surgery and some stuff with D's diagnosis). So I avoided saying anything about last week's birthday wishes to Dr. T until the very end, lest we potentially end up in a long conversation about them. (Though I did have a related insight I'd like to share with him at some point.)

I said: "I'd intended to avoid this, but I just wanted to make sure you were OK about the thing from last session."
Dr. T: "Unless you hear otherwise from me, assume I'm remaining in-person."
Me: "Oh, I mean, I'm glad to hear that, but actually I was referring to the world's most awkward birthday wishes."
Dr. T: "Oh, I'd forgotten about that until you mentioned it just now."
Me: "Great, so now you're remembering it!"
Dr. T: "Yes, I cursed your name for 3 hours that afternoon! Not really."
Me: "Two hours?"
Dr. T: "One and a half."
Me: "OK!"

Part of me wanted more clear reassurance, but I know his joking about it was his way of showing that it was OK and not a big deal. I know him well enough to know that if it was a THING, he'd have said so (and probably not waited until I brought it up).

Thanks, Lost.

Thanks, LT.

I don't know if I will take a half day tomorrow. I have to onboard a new employee so we'll see how that goes and then the outside accountants need some work done on the accounts and I'm not sure how long that is going to take. I'm just going to try to get to sleep earlier tonight and sit with a heating pad tonight to try to take away some of the muscle pain.

Found this in some code at work today:

In all fairness, programmers do abbreviate stuff all the time, like desc for description and this code has likely been there for years. However, I'm not sure if this was someone too lazy to type out "Count" or someone thinking they were being funny.

I have a troubled history with the word that first came to mind when I saw this. I'm trying to not be all overly-offended feminist about this, but it is a little triggering seeing this. I'm not the only one who saw that word first, right? I mean, I actually had to read the code to figure out what it was supposed to be.

You're not the only one, NP. I get that programming is hard, and there is a lot of text involved, but some things should not be abbreviated. Especially for the sake of two letters.

I was a programmer for 30 years and sorry but i never interpreted cnt as anything else but short for count. I would however object to the lack of parallelism in the naming of the two variables. As they stand, to me they have absolutely no relationship to each other. Maybe thats my COBOL background showing itself, but this just looks like a built in error to me.

How long ago did the box of (open) corn starch I just found down the cellar expire?

Let's just say, una was still young then...

My dad programed in COBOL for many years.

Wow, that's kind of impressive!

corn starch doesn't expire as far as I know. I think I bought a box in the 90s and still have it. I have some tapioca and a can of chestnut puree from 1993 also. I don't think it will hurt anyone. So far it hasn't

Hey im still young now!!

Not until you throw it at someone!

This is the kind of attitude that leads to 36-year-old boxes of corn starch sitting around cellars.

The box was open and a little disgusting inside. Besides we are selling the house and I don’t need corn starch at home. Out it went.

If it weren't for a major power outage, I know I would have ketchup and capers from the 80s. I get rid of anything that is furry.

Does the corn starch pre-date when you moved into the house.

I saw it immediately too, but that might be because I was expecting something or else you wouldn't post it. At the same time, I was aware it's shorthand for count immediately, too.

Probably fair to wonder if this was someone's idea of a joke since tech industries are such sausage fests.

I'm probably more bothered because totalCnt seems like a repetitive name than anything, but I've also not had any experience of the c word in real life.

ETA - abbreviating count seems a bit much. I mean, they didn't abbreviate total and that has the same number of letters.

Oh gosh dont come to my part of Australia if you dont liek the c word. Mostly its used as a matey greeting between males and as a sentence filler in another population.

In the US it's a pretty hateful word. My ex used it a lot in my direction so I'm extra sensitive to it. That being said, I've heard Australians use it and the tone is different so it doesn't seem as troublesome.

I've been programming professionally for 15 years and I've never used cnt for count and I don't recall ever seeing it abbreviated as such anywhere either. If I want to count something, I'll generally use something like numItems. I now know who wrote the code and I'm certain he wasn't trying to be funny with it, so it's all good now.

I come from competitive programming, so people always make things as short as possible, I have seen variables named that many times, it always meant count and I don't think anyone tried to be funny with that. Also, at my job we used to work with SQL and there you'd name functions that, mainly due to the fact that SQL has a limit of I think 30 bytes to name variables and functions, if you have a function that counts the animals in a specific farm, it's usually more understandable to abbreviate count over farm or animal.

Usually you just get used to some abbreviations and use them even if you don't need to. I for example would always abbreviate total as tot, even if there was no limit on name lengths. Tot actually means dead in German now that I think of it, and I only just realized this and don't think anyone thought of death ever when reading my variable names. It certainly was never intended as a joke.

This reminds me of the time the German magazine Der Spiegel ran a cover story on the Queen.

The cover headline? Die Queen.

Obviously to Germans die is the feminine article, but to English speakers it was quite a different message.

Work has put me in a bad mood.

Context is key.
The shorthand cnt would not bother me because of the context and I would not have gone elsewhere with what it could mean because of context. I do have some words that can catch my attention -but I usually just laugh because it is my thing -not the innocent word or abbreviation's problem