qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1,596,704 | I am programming a DLL. I have to return an instance of TBitmap to the host application.
The DLL has another UNIT, wich is a Form, that it has a TImageList for storing images. I wrote a function that I want to return an Image from the TImageList (from the DLL to the host application. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Yulién. | 2009/10/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1596704",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/188513/"
] | Objects are combinations of code and data. A normal DLL does not support that, because it only supports the C Application Binary Interface (C ABI) but there is a kind of DLLs that does: BPL files. In other words, you need to create a .bpl file and not a .dll file. This requires both that file and the user to be Delphi, of course. | You can't return an object per se, but you can return a pointer to an object. Refer to [Mastering Delphi 6](http://books.google.com/books?id=YbS3dPcobl8C&pg=PA836&lpg=PA836&dq=delphi+vmt+dll&source=bl&ots=wmWQbhn8p7&sig=bfSB6Y22UrUyw4ZtcG3S9r4sQrg&hl=en&ei=oizeSrGUDYTQtgPZuLyIDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=delphi%20vmt%20dll&f=false) and this [description of Vtables in delphi](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rkennedy/vmt). |
1,596,704 | I am programming a DLL. I have to return an instance of TBitmap to the host application.
The DLL has another UNIT, wich is a Form, that it has a TImageList for storing images. I wrote a function that I want to return an Image from the TImageList (from the DLL to the host application. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Yulién. | 2009/10/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1596704",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/188513/"
] | Read this old thread on borland.public.delphi.nativeapi: [Delphi Object in DLL - does this work?](http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delphi.nativeapi/browse_frm/thread/9dd5708d25ac5544/).
The link to a .pdf in the last message is gone, but thanks to Internet Archive Wayback Machine one can [download it](http://web.archive.org/web/%2A/safariexamples.informit.com/0672321157/Ebooks/D5DG/chapter9.pdf) (look at *Exporting Objects from DLLs* at page 412).
**Edit:** it turns out that book's interesting part, for our purpose, is also available @ Google Books, so [one can read it on-line](http://books.google.com/books?id=HWo0H6GYuqYC&pg=PT316). | You can't return an object per se, but you can return a pointer to an object. Refer to [Mastering Delphi 6](http://books.google.com/books?id=YbS3dPcobl8C&pg=PA836&lpg=PA836&dq=delphi+vmt+dll&source=bl&ots=wmWQbhn8p7&sig=bfSB6Y22UrUyw4ZtcG3S9r4sQrg&hl=en&ei=oizeSrGUDYTQtgPZuLyIDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=delphi%20vmt%20dll&f=false) and this [description of Vtables in delphi](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rkennedy/vmt). |
1,596,704 | I am programming a DLL. I have to return an instance of TBitmap to the host application.
The DLL has another UNIT, wich is a Form, that it has a TImageList for storing images. I wrote a function that I want to return an Image from the TImageList (from the DLL to the host application. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Yulién. | 2009/10/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1596704",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/188513/"
] | Basically what you need to do is not return an object. In this case you want to return bitmap, why not just return HBitmap handle? | You can't return an object per se, but you can return a pointer to an object. Refer to [Mastering Delphi 6](http://books.google.com/books?id=YbS3dPcobl8C&pg=PA836&lpg=PA836&dq=delphi+vmt+dll&source=bl&ots=wmWQbhn8p7&sig=bfSB6Y22UrUyw4ZtcG3S9r4sQrg&hl=en&ei=oizeSrGUDYTQtgPZuLyIDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=delphi%20vmt%20dll&f=false) and this [description of Vtables in delphi](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rkennedy/vmt). |
1,596,704 | I am programming a DLL. I have to return an instance of TBitmap to the host application.
The DLL has another UNIT, wich is a Form, that it has a TImageList for storing images. I wrote a function that I want to return an Image from the TImageList (from the DLL to the host application. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Yulién. | 2009/10/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1596704",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/188513/"
] | Read this old thread on borland.public.delphi.nativeapi: [Delphi Object in DLL - does this work?](http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delphi.nativeapi/browse_frm/thread/9dd5708d25ac5544/).
The link to a .pdf in the last message is gone, but thanks to Internet Archive Wayback Machine one can [download it](http://web.archive.org/web/%2A/safariexamples.informit.com/0672321157/Ebooks/D5DG/chapter9.pdf) (look at *Exporting Objects from DLLs* at page 412).
**Edit:** it turns out that book's interesting part, for our purpose, is also available @ Google Books, so [one can read it on-line](http://books.google.com/books?id=HWo0H6GYuqYC&pg=PT316). | Objects are combinations of code and data. A normal DLL does not support that, because it only supports the C Application Binary Interface (C ABI) but there is a kind of DLLs that does: BPL files. In other words, you need to create a .bpl file and not a .dll file. This requires both that file and the user to be Delphi, of course. |
1,596,704 | I am programming a DLL. I have to return an instance of TBitmap to the host application.
The DLL has another UNIT, wich is a Form, that it has a TImageList for storing images. I wrote a function that I want to return an Image from the TImageList (from the DLL to the host application. How can I do this?
Thanks,
Yulién. | 2009/10/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1596704",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/188513/"
] | Basically what you need to do is not return an object. In this case you want to return bitmap, why not just return HBitmap handle? | Objects are combinations of code and data. A normal DLL does not support that, because it only supports the C Application Binary Interface (C ABI) but there is a kind of DLLs that does: BPL files. In other words, you need to create a .bpl file and not a .dll file. This requires both that file and the user to be Delphi, of course. |
325,363 | I have been a member of many SE sites for years now, as a result, I am quite familiar with the guidelines and expectations on the platform. However, even after reviewing the help section I can't seem to find much info on this topic.
I saw the topic on jokes (which was answered with ambiguity) but nothing on comments like "thanks for the informative answer" or the like.
I would assume these are likely not a problem but can also see how they might just clutter topics and become excessive.
Is this one of those things where we are supposed to use "common sense"? I hope not, whenever I diverge from a rule-based system I end up in Vegas with 2 $50 hookers. | 2019/03/18 | [
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/325363",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/496342/"
] | This is covered in the [Help Center](https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment):
>
> ### When shouldn't I comment?
>
>
> Comments are not recommended for any of the following: [...]
>
>
> * Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, up-vote it and [pay it forward](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-answer)
>
>
>
Comments like these are liable to be flagged and deleted (usually as "no longer needed"), but the extent to which this happens varies site to site. | There seem to be two different situations you're talking about: jokes in comments and "thank you" comments.
"Thank you" comments or other useless comments that add up to nothing but thanking the poster of a question or answer should be flagged as "no longer needed". These should be expressed in the form of an upvote and/or accept rather than a comment.
Joke comments are a little different depending on the site. Here on MSE, it's okay to have jokes in comments, as long as they don't completely clutter up the comment thread. On Stack Overflow, we don't usually allow a lot of joke comments. Some of them are kept, but many of them are deleted.
So before you go flagging joke comments, learn your site's policy on what to do with these comments. Don't flag if the consensus is that they're okay. |
382,619 | I would like to add some RAM to my laptop but I have one small problem: I would like to know what is the fastest speed I can put inside it.
I know from CPU-Z that I use DDR3 RAM:
One piece of RAM is PC3-10700 (667 Mhz) and the other is PC3-8500F (533 Mhz)
I use Acer Travel Mate 5742G if that's relevant. My Chipset is Intel Havendale/Clarkdale Host Bridge. | 2012/01/26 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/382619",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/73377/"
] | You laptop will take up to 8GB and the fastest speed it will take is DDR3 PC3-10600 .
You can buy it here >> <http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=E5A23A8EA5CA7304> | You can put a faster ram, it will just run at a slower speed. I’ve had once some 133MHz SDR sticks running at 100MHz. |
13,978,873 | As I more heavily use JavaScript like a high-level object-oriented language, I find myself thinking like the C/C++ programmer that I am when I'm finished with objects. I know the GC is going to run eventually and clean up my mess, but are there things I can do to actually help it along?
For example, I have an array of large/complex primary objects... each primary object might have arrays and other subsidiary object references inside. If I'm done with a primary object and just remove it from the array, the GC will presumably eventually figure out everything else that object pointed to all by itself, circular internal references and all. But does it make sense when removing the primary object from the storage array to go through it and array.length=0 any arrays and reference=null any objects to basically make the GC job easier (e.g. explicitly removing references means less for the GC to track)? Kind of a manual destructor if you will. Is it worth it to do that or am I wasting time/effort for little/no gain?
I suppose this is more of a general theory of GC question (Java etc. too) but I'm primarily interested in JavaScript for the purposes of this question.
Thanks! | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/13978873",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/479574/"
] | Rarely.
Which is different from never.
Generally, if you develop in a reasonable manner, unused objects will be falling out of scope appropriately and the Garbage Collector will simply work as expected. And unless you really understand what you're doing, efforts to help the Garbage Collector do its job often don't work as intended. Garbage Collection is an area that has undergone significant optimization by the creators of the various Javascript engines. Generally, you shouldn't mess with it unless:
* You have **proven** to yourself with hard numbers from analysis tools that there is a
real need, and
* You can demonstrate real understanding of **what actually needs to be change** in order
to help the Garbage Collector.
Neither of these is easy to achieve.
So maybe the best answer is that unless you're already advanced enough to understand the exceptions, you probably shouldn't be worrying about this. | Very smart people have worked very hard on those garbage collection models. The odds that anything you do is going to massively improve performance over what they implemented is relatively low.
If garbage collection is becoming a major cost for you, you're likely better off focusing on reducing the number of objects that have to be garbage collected (consider [Object Pool Pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_pool_pattern)) |
13,978,873 | As I more heavily use JavaScript like a high-level object-oriented language, I find myself thinking like the C/C++ programmer that I am when I'm finished with objects. I know the GC is going to run eventually and clean up my mess, but are there things I can do to actually help it along?
For example, I have an array of large/complex primary objects... each primary object might have arrays and other subsidiary object references inside. If I'm done with a primary object and just remove it from the array, the GC will presumably eventually figure out everything else that object pointed to all by itself, circular internal references and all. But does it make sense when removing the primary object from the storage array to go through it and array.length=0 any arrays and reference=null any objects to basically make the GC job easier (e.g. explicitly removing references means less for the GC to track)? Kind of a manual destructor if you will. Is it worth it to do that or am I wasting time/effort for little/no gain?
I suppose this is more of a general theory of GC question (Java etc. too) but I'm primarily interested in JavaScript for the purposes of this question.
Thanks! | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/13978873",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/479574/"
] | This may depend on the specific garbage collector, so an answer would depend on which JavaScript engine you're using.
First, I'll note that the best application code does two things. It achieves its technical goals of functionality and performance, and it is resilient to change. Additional code should serve enough of a purpose to justify the added complexity.
With that said, according to the [Google's notes on V8](https://developers.google.com/v8/design#garb_coll), which is the JavaScript engine used by Chrome,
>
> V8 reclaims memory used by objects that are no longer required in a
> process known as garbage collection. To ensure fast object allocation,
> short garbage collection pauses, and no memory fragmentation V8
> employs a stop-the-world, generational, accurate, garbage collector.
> This means that V8:
>
>
> * stops program execution when performing a garbage collection cycle.
> * processes only part of the object heap in most garbage collection cycles. This minimizes the impact of stopping the application.
> * always knows exactly where all objects and pointers are in memory. This avoids falsely identifying objects as pointers which can result
> in memory leaks.
>
>
> In V8, the object heap is segmented into two parts: new space where
> objects are created, and old space to which objects surviving a
> garbage collection cycle are promoted. If an object is moved in a
> garbage collection cycle, V8 updates all pointers to the object.
>
>
>
Generational garbage collectors tend to move objects between heaps, where all live objects are moved into a destination heap. Anything not moved to the destination is considered to be garbage. It's not clear how the V8 garbage collector identifies live objects, but we can look at some other GC implementations for clues.
As an example of the behavior of a well-documented GC implementation, Java's Concurrent Mark-Sweep collector:
1. Stops the application.
2. Builds a list of objects reachable from the application code.
3. Resumes the application. In parallel, the CMS collector runs a "mark" phase, in which it marks transitively reachable objects as "not garbage". Since this is in parallel with program execution, it also tracks reference changes made by the application.
4. Stops the application.
5. Runs a second ("remark") phase to mark newly reachable objects.
6. Resumes the application. In parallel, it "sweeps" all objects identified as garbage and reclaim the heap blocks.
It's basically a graph traversal, starting at a set specific nodes. Since disconnected objects aren't accessible, their connectedness to other disconnected objects shouldn't come into play.
There's a good, if somewhat dated, white paper on the way Java garbage collection works at <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/memorymanagement-whitepaper-150215.pdf>. Garbage collection isn't unique to Java, so I'd suspect some similarity between the various approaches taken by Java virtual machines and other runtimes such as JavaScript engines.
Raymond Chen wrote a [blog post](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/05/10253268.aspx) that pointed out that walking memory that you're about to free can have a negative impact on performance. The context was around freeing memory manually on application shutdown. Since blocks could have been swapped to disk, the act of traversing references can cause those blocks to be swapped in. In this case, the program is doing a traversal of blocks that would have just been marked as available and left untouched.
So in a situation where the OS may have swapped out some of the blocks, the act of "assisting" the garbage collector, especially on longer-lived objects, may end up slowing things down.
And if you're not generating enough data to be concerned about swapping out, then a reasonable garbage collector wouldn't take long enough to notice.
So chances are it's not worth the effort, and could be counterproductive. Although it probably makes sense to drop the references to the heap "dominators". These are the objects that, if collected, would allow the collection of many other objects. So drop the reference to the collection itself, but not to each item within the collection. | Very smart people have worked very hard on those garbage collection models. The odds that anything you do is going to massively improve performance over what they implemented is relatively low.
If garbage collection is becoming a major cost for you, you're likely better off focusing on reducing the number of objects that have to be garbage collected (consider [Object Pool Pattern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_pool_pattern)) |
13,978,873 | As I more heavily use JavaScript like a high-level object-oriented language, I find myself thinking like the C/C++ programmer that I am when I'm finished with objects. I know the GC is going to run eventually and clean up my mess, but are there things I can do to actually help it along?
For example, I have an array of large/complex primary objects... each primary object might have arrays and other subsidiary object references inside. If I'm done with a primary object and just remove it from the array, the GC will presumably eventually figure out everything else that object pointed to all by itself, circular internal references and all. But does it make sense when removing the primary object from the storage array to go through it and array.length=0 any arrays and reference=null any objects to basically make the GC job easier (e.g. explicitly removing references means less for the GC to track)? Kind of a manual destructor if you will. Is it worth it to do that or am I wasting time/effort for little/no gain?
I suppose this is more of a general theory of GC question (Java etc. too) but I'm primarily interested in JavaScript for the purposes of this question.
Thanks! | 2012/12/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/13978873",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/479574/"
] | This may depend on the specific garbage collector, so an answer would depend on which JavaScript engine you're using.
First, I'll note that the best application code does two things. It achieves its technical goals of functionality and performance, and it is resilient to change. Additional code should serve enough of a purpose to justify the added complexity.
With that said, according to the [Google's notes on V8](https://developers.google.com/v8/design#garb_coll), which is the JavaScript engine used by Chrome,
>
> V8 reclaims memory used by objects that are no longer required in a
> process known as garbage collection. To ensure fast object allocation,
> short garbage collection pauses, and no memory fragmentation V8
> employs a stop-the-world, generational, accurate, garbage collector.
> This means that V8:
>
>
> * stops program execution when performing a garbage collection cycle.
> * processes only part of the object heap in most garbage collection cycles. This minimizes the impact of stopping the application.
> * always knows exactly where all objects and pointers are in memory. This avoids falsely identifying objects as pointers which can result
> in memory leaks.
>
>
> In V8, the object heap is segmented into two parts: new space where
> objects are created, and old space to which objects surviving a
> garbage collection cycle are promoted. If an object is moved in a
> garbage collection cycle, V8 updates all pointers to the object.
>
>
>
Generational garbage collectors tend to move objects between heaps, where all live objects are moved into a destination heap. Anything not moved to the destination is considered to be garbage. It's not clear how the V8 garbage collector identifies live objects, but we can look at some other GC implementations for clues.
As an example of the behavior of a well-documented GC implementation, Java's Concurrent Mark-Sweep collector:
1. Stops the application.
2. Builds a list of objects reachable from the application code.
3. Resumes the application. In parallel, the CMS collector runs a "mark" phase, in which it marks transitively reachable objects as "not garbage". Since this is in parallel with program execution, it also tracks reference changes made by the application.
4. Stops the application.
5. Runs a second ("remark") phase to mark newly reachable objects.
6. Resumes the application. In parallel, it "sweeps" all objects identified as garbage and reclaim the heap blocks.
It's basically a graph traversal, starting at a set specific nodes. Since disconnected objects aren't accessible, their connectedness to other disconnected objects shouldn't come into play.
There's a good, if somewhat dated, white paper on the way Java garbage collection works at <http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/memorymanagement-whitepaper-150215.pdf>. Garbage collection isn't unique to Java, so I'd suspect some similarity between the various approaches taken by Java virtual machines and other runtimes such as JavaScript engines.
Raymond Chen wrote a [blog post](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/05/10253268.aspx) that pointed out that walking memory that you're about to free can have a negative impact on performance. The context was around freeing memory manually on application shutdown. Since blocks could have been swapped to disk, the act of traversing references can cause those blocks to be swapped in. In this case, the program is doing a traversal of blocks that would have just been marked as available and left untouched.
So in a situation where the OS may have swapped out some of the blocks, the act of "assisting" the garbage collector, especially on longer-lived objects, may end up slowing things down.
And if you're not generating enough data to be concerned about swapping out, then a reasonable garbage collector wouldn't take long enough to notice.
So chances are it's not worth the effort, and could be counterproductive. Although it probably makes sense to drop the references to the heap "dominators". These are the objects that, if collected, would allow the collection of many other objects. So drop the reference to the collection itself, but not to each item within the collection. | Rarely.
Which is different from never.
Generally, if you develop in a reasonable manner, unused objects will be falling out of scope appropriately and the Garbage Collector will simply work as expected. And unless you really understand what you're doing, efforts to help the Garbage Collector do its job often don't work as intended. Garbage Collection is an area that has undergone significant optimization by the creators of the various Javascript engines. Generally, you shouldn't mess with it unless:
* You have **proven** to yourself with hard numbers from analysis tools that there is a
real need, and
* You can demonstrate real understanding of **what actually needs to be change** in order
to help the Garbage Collector.
Neither of these is easy to achieve.
So maybe the best answer is that unless you're already advanced enough to understand the exceptions, you probably shouldn't be worrying about this. |
30,777 | I purchased a Chlorophytum Comosum in October 2016. It's 3 or 4 separate plants. I moved it from its 10cm diameter plastic pot into one that's roughly 15 cm and about 20 cm deep, without drainage. When moving it, I just took all of the soil and the plant from the original pot and placed it into a hole that I dug in the new one.
I usually water this plant once every 10 days. The dirt is usually dry on the surface but still damp underneath. At the bottom of the pot I used 3 small plastic pots to act as a platform for the plant and let water fall through to the bottom, so that it wouldn't gather around the roots.
The healthiest of the plants has started putting out spiderettes that are growing fairly large, and it has increased in size since I purchased it.
All of the plants are growing fast, and recently some of the leaves have grown thin and droopy, and I just noticed that they're very discolored, and pale. A few of the leaves have become unable to support themselves and are bending.
The same issue is affecting a small spiderette that I just repotted from a completely different plant, and I have been watering a few times a week to keep the soil damp.
What's wrong with this plant? How can I help the plant recover its original robustness and grow thicker, non-pale leaves?
This is how the plant looks today. It was watered about 5 days ago. It looks very droopy and out of shape:
Detail on the discoloration I mentioned:
This is what the plant looked like about a month ago. The plant had grown noticeably during this time.
Here's another picture showing what the plant looks like when it's in best shape:
Here is a picture of the other spiderette taken from a separate plant, right after it was potted:
This is how it looked today (visibly more pale than before):
 | 2017/02/12 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/30777",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/16516/"
] | Sorry, I am not seeing a plant with problems. Perhaps a little stress from transplanting and/or being moved from a source of higher light to lower light. You are using potting soil and your watering sounds and looks just fine. Beautiful spider plant! The leaves as they age will bend more than new growth. The color is rich and healthy. You do not need to MIST. That does nothing to raise the humidity. The spots on the leaves are the dried remains of your tap water, the salts they add to city tap water (chlorine and fluorine primarily) or if you are using well water your water must be very mineral laden/hard. Looks like salts from city tap water though. Also to be seen on the rim of your clay pot. Eventually you'll see this white residue on the sides of your pot and on the surface of your soil. I'd buy bottled water, distilled water and not use tap water for your plants (nor to drink for yourself). Your transplant is a bit paler but you haven't said what you are using for fertilizer. I'd get OSMOCOTE 14-14-14 that you would use twice PER YEAR or even just once. I think that would perk and color your new transplants just fine. Truly, only in the stores these plants look this good as they enjoyed the warmth, light and ventilated air...and were fertilized. Now they are in less of a desired environment and possibly no fertilizer. They've been running on the fertilizer in the soil they came with. Let me know if I've assumed incorrectly. Great pics, beautiful plants. Wait a minute, did you say those beautiful pots have no drainage holes? I know the clay does...explain about the pot thing again. In no universe will plants survive without drain holes. Spider plants are tough and tougher and toughest but you have to have drain holes. Explain more clearly. Your question is one of the best I've seen to include your pictures. But...maybe I need more help!! | Spider plants have very fleshy roots. They are greedy feeders and will transfer nutrients into their root system as though preparing for a long, long drought and so look great for the longest time. Then all of a sudden things look not quite so rosy. I have knocked them out of their pots to find that the root ball of soil had been replaced by a mass of thick roots, with almost no soil left. I guess whatever soil there was, in watering, was gradually flushed out. The plant was fine since it had so much nutrient in the root, but finally reaches the limit. It was starting to live on fresh air.
Moral 1: check the root. You can transplant into a bigger pot, that's one solution, not my favourite. Moral 2: replacements. With spider plants keep new little ones coming along and watch them puff up with energy. Compost the mother plant, with respect and thanks. |
30,777 | I purchased a Chlorophytum Comosum in October 2016. It's 3 or 4 separate plants. I moved it from its 10cm diameter plastic pot into one that's roughly 15 cm and about 20 cm deep, without drainage. When moving it, I just took all of the soil and the plant from the original pot and placed it into a hole that I dug in the new one.
I usually water this plant once every 10 days. The dirt is usually dry on the surface but still damp underneath. At the bottom of the pot I used 3 small plastic pots to act as a platform for the plant and let water fall through to the bottom, so that it wouldn't gather around the roots.
The healthiest of the plants has started putting out spiderettes that are growing fairly large, and it has increased in size since I purchased it.
All of the plants are growing fast, and recently some of the leaves have grown thin and droopy, and I just noticed that they're very discolored, and pale. A few of the leaves have become unable to support themselves and are bending.
The same issue is affecting a small spiderette that I just repotted from a completely different plant, and I have been watering a few times a week to keep the soil damp.
What's wrong with this plant? How can I help the plant recover its original robustness and grow thicker, non-pale leaves?
This is how the plant looks today. It was watered about 5 days ago. It looks very droopy and out of shape:
Detail on the discoloration I mentioned:
This is what the plant looked like about a month ago. The plant had grown noticeably during this time.
Here's another picture showing what the plant looks like when it's in best shape:
Here is a picture of the other spiderette taken from a separate plant, right after it was potted:
This is how it looked today (visibly more pale than before):
 | 2017/02/12 | [
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/30777",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com",
"https://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/16516/"
] | (Sorry, not enough reputation here to comment)
As Colin Beckingham mentions, my experience is that these plants create many roots, eventually replacing all soil. If you wait too long with repotting them into a bigger pot (or dealing with all these roots some other way?), it may be very hard to remove the plant from its current pot (without breaking the pot - or the plant) | Spider plants have very fleshy roots. They are greedy feeders and will transfer nutrients into their root system as though preparing for a long, long drought and so look great for the longest time. Then all of a sudden things look not quite so rosy. I have knocked them out of their pots to find that the root ball of soil had been replaced by a mass of thick roots, with almost no soil left. I guess whatever soil there was, in watering, was gradually flushed out. The plant was fine since it had so much nutrient in the root, but finally reaches the limit. It was starting to live on fresh air.
Moral 1: check the root. You can transplant into a bigger pot, that's one solution, not my favourite. Moral 2: replacements. With spider plants keep new little ones coming along and watch them puff up with energy. Compost the mother plant, with respect and thanks. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The link you included in your question contains really all the information and references you need. Especially the Evan Robinson's well-known paper [Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304165322/http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons), together with the supporting material and references, should provide you with ample arguments.
Basically, in pushing for sustained 60-85 hour work-weeks, your CEO is flying in the face of a majority of research done in the previous 100 years on worker productivity and risks.
This seems to be the norm in the games industry since the last 10-15 years though, so he's not alone in this apparent irrational behavior.
I would also add these hypothetical questions to your CEO:
* In the last 10-15 years, has the number of zero-day bugs and defects in shipped games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average schedule overdraft on deliveries of games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average budget overdraft on games projects increased or decreased?
And finally:
* In the last 10-15 years, have the number of working hours per week for each person in games projects increased or decreased? | To change from a culture of overtime to efficiency you will have to stop the death marches. Each person has a limit, after that they can actually produce negative work. The density and severity of their errors will mean that that last few hours they worked, the project went backwards. Their mistakes may be obvious , they broke the build. Or it may be subtle, they picked the wrong choice of the size of a field in the database so that next week the tables will have to be rebuilt.
If you try to tell them that they are inefficient but you still expect 60-90 hours a week they will not have a reason to change. If they can produce more quality code in less hours, but you don't reduce the expected number of hours, they can't help but be demotivated and inefficient.
One way to address the issue runs counter to the arguments in the mythical man month. You need more developers. Yes increasing the number of the people on a project does greatly increase communication issues. But expecting too many hours also is inefficient. Unless you are paying them for every hour of overtime, your costs will rise by adding members to the team. But you have already had 3 incidents of massive numbers of employees quitting.
I know nothing of your company, but a great way to demotivate people is to have management be able to flaunt their free time, hobbies and wealth. Management that leaves every day at 5, and has time for fun filled weekends, without a way to compensate the developers, designers, and artists is doomed to be facing mass exodus #4. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The simple answer is to simply begin working 40 hour work weeks and make sure YOU are efficient for those 40 hours. If you aren't already burned out then the results will become apparent fairly quickly. If you are already burned out then 40 hour weeks probably won't make a difference, so keep working your 60-90 hour work weeks. Keep in mind that if you choose to continue with the long work weeks you'll be looking for a new line of work in the near future and that won't include any careers requiring thinking skills because your body is going to shut down all on its own because you chose not to listen to it.
I really don't understand how people can let themselves be so taken advantage of like your company does to you. | To change from a culture of overtime to efficiency you will have to stop the death marches. Each person has a limit, after that they can actually produce negative work. The density and severity of their errors will mean that that last few hours they worked, the project went backwards. Their mistakes may be obvious , they broke the build. Or it may be subtle, they picked the wrong choice of the size of a field in the database so that next week the tables will have to be rebuilt.
If you try to tell them that they are inefficient but you still expect 60-90 hours a week they will not have a reason to change. If they can produce more quality code in less hours, but you don't reduce the expected number of hours, they can't help but be demotivated and inefficient.
One way to address the issue runs counter to the arguments in the mythical man month. You need more developers. Yes increasing the number of the people on a project does greatly increase communication issues. But expecting too many hours also is inefficient. Unless you are paying them for every hour of overtime, your costs will rise by adding members to the team. But you have already had 3 incidents of massive numbers of employees quitting.
I know nothing of your company, but a great way to demotivate people is to have management be able to flaunt their free time, hobbies and wealth. Management that leaves every day at 5, and has time for fun filled weekends, without a way to compensate the developers, designers, and artists is doomed to be facing mass exodus #4. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | To change from a culture of overtime to efficiency you will have to stop the death marches. Each person has a limit, after that they can actually produce negative work. The density and severity of their errors will mean that that last few hours they worked, the project went backwards. Their mistakes may be obvious , they broke the build. Or it may be subtle, they picked the wrong choice of the size of a field in the database so that next week the tables will have to be rebuilt.
If you try to tell them that they are inefficient but you still expect 60-90 hours a week they will not have a reason to change. If they can produce more quality code in less hours, but you don't reduce the expected number of hours, they can't help but be demotivated and inefficient.
One way to address the issue runs counter to the arguments in the mythical man month. You need more developers. Yes increasing the number of the people on a project does greatly increase communication issues. But expecting too many hours also is inefficient. Unless you are paying them for every hour of overtime, your costs will rise by adding members to the team. But you have already had 3 incidents of massive numbers of employees quitting.
I know nothing of your company, but a great way to demotivate people is to have management be able to flaunt their free time, hobbies and wealth. Management that leaves every day at 5, and has time for fun filled weekends, without a way to compensate the developers, designers, and artists is doomed to be facing mass exodus #4. | **Seems to be working** If you're meeting the deadlines, I don't see how you can justify calling them impossible. Your boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs. Just push for more-it's really that simple.
**Negative Consequences**
I haven't found any mention of what happens when deadlines aren't met. Has anyone been fired? If management is correct, and you aren't competitive in your market, everyone suffers the natural consequences of a weakened company. Does it affect your bonus?
**Rewards** If this company makes it 'big', are you all going to be millionaires? I'd expect more turnover unless they pay better than average salaries.
Like too many programmers/engineers, you've developed an "all or nothing" mentality about your job. The boss set this impossible deadline, oh my! So what? The programmer is afraid they will release more bugs, but the management would rather meet the deadline because the level of bugs is acceptable in their mind AND THEIR USERS. We'll have to spend even more time fixing things. So what? They know this will happen. Everyone expects a quick patch after a major release.
**It's all in your head** I'm willing to bet as the deadline nears, features get removed. Cut back on your hours. Get some sleep. Do something fun. You'll be more productive. You can only suggest others take this advice. When everyone realizes the sky isn't falling, your management may figure out you've learned to play the game. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | To change from a culture of overtime to efficiency you will have to stop the death marches. Each person has a limit, after that they can actually produce negative work. The density and severity of their errors will mean that that last few hours they worked, the project went backwards. Their mistakes may be obvious , they broke the build. Or it may be subtle, they picked the wrong choice of the size of a field in the database so that next week the tables will have to be rebuilt.
If you try to tell them that they are inefficient but you still expect 60-90 hours a week they will not have a reason to change. If they can produce more quality code in less hours, but you don't reduce the expected number of hours, they can't help but be demotivated and inefficient.
One way to address the issue runs counter to the arguments in the mythical man month. You need more developers. Yes increasing the number of the people on a project does greatly increase communication issues. But expecting too many hours also is inefficient. Unless you are paying them for every hour of overtime, your costs will rise by adding members to the team. But you have already had 3 incidents of massive numbers of employees quitting.
I know nothing of your company, but a great way to demotivate people is to have management be able to flaunt their free time, hobbies and wealth. Management that leaves every day at 5, and has time for fun filled weekends, without a way to compensate the developers, designers, and artists is doomed to be facing mass exodus #4. | Other replies list why it's a bad idea to work extreme hours. Let me focus on a different aspect instead.
What you're attempting to do is basically a culture transformation.
This is impossible to do without a heavy management sponsorship. You don't just need to *convince* the management. You need to transform them into advocates of this change.
And that won't be easy to do given that they probably believe they are profiting from the current situation.
If you have management sponsorship, the way to go is:
* informing about the new expectations: the management should be involved
* training for the expected behaviors
* controlling the adoption
A culture transformation is difficult enough to do with management sponsorship. Without the sponsorship it's impossible. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The link you included in your question contains really all the information and references you need. Especially the Evan Robinson's well-known paper [Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304165322/http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons), together with the supporting material and references, should provide you with ample arguments.
Basically, in pushing for sustained 60-85 hour work-weeks, your CEO is flying in the face of a majority of research done in the previous 100 years on worker productivity and risks.
This seems to be the norm in the games industry since the last 10-15 years though, so he's not alone in this apparent irrational behavior.
I would also add these hypothetical questions to your CEO:
* In the last 10-15 years, has the number of zero-day bugs and defects in shipped games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average schedule overdraft on deliveries of games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average budget overdraft on games projects increased or decreased?
And finally:
* In the last 10-15 years, have the number of working hours per week for each person in games projects increased or decreased? | The simple answer is to simply begin working 40 hour work weeks and make sure YOU are efficient for those 40 hours. If you aren't already burned out then the results will become apparent fairly quickly. If you are already burned out then 40 hour weeks probably won't make a difference, so keep working your 60-90 hour work weeks. Keep in mind that if you choose to continue with the long work weeks you'll be looking for a new line of work in the near future and that won't include any careers requiring thinking skills because your body is going to shut down all on its own because you chose not to listen to it.
I really don't understand how people can let themselves be so taken advantage of like your company does to you. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The link you included in your question contains really all the information and references you need. Especially the Evan Robinson's well-known paper [Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304165322/http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons), together with the supporting material and references, should provide you with ample arguments.
Basically, in pushing for sustained 60-85 hour work-weeks, your CEO is flying in the face of a majority of research done in the previous 100 years on worker productivity and risks.
This seems to be the norm in the games industry since the last 10-15 years though, so he's not alone in this apparent irrational behavior.
I would also add these hypothetical questions to your CEO:
* In the last 10-15 years, has the number of zero-day bugs and defects in shipped games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average schedule overdraft on deliveries of games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average budget overdraft on games projects increased or decreased?
And finally:
* In the last 10-15 years, have the number of working hours per week for each person in games projects increased or decreased? | **Seems to be working** If you're meeting the deadlines, I don't see how you can justify calling them impossible. Your boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs. Just push for more-it's really that simple.
**Negative Consequences**
I haven't found any mention of what happens when deadlines aren't met. Has anyone been fired? If management is correct, and you aren't competitive in your market, everyone suffers the natural consequences of a weakened company. Does it affect your bonus?
**Rewards** If this company makes it 'big', are you all going to be millionaires? I'd expect more turnover unless they pay better than average salaries.
Like too many programmers/engineers, you've developed an "all or nothing" mentality about your job. The boss set this impossible deadline, oh my! So what? The programmer is afraid they will release more bugs, but the management would rather meet the deadline because the level of bugs is acceptable in their mind AND THEIR USERS. We'll have to spend even more time fixing things. So what? They know this will happen. Everyone expects a quick patch after a major release.
**It's all in your head** I'm willing to bet as the deadline nears, features get removed. Cut back on your hours. Get some sleep. Do something fun. You'll be more productive. You can only suggest others take this advice. When everyone realizes the sky isn't falling, your management may figure out you've learned to play the game. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The link you included in your question contains really all the information and references you need. Especially the Evan Robinson's well-known paper [Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304165322/http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons), together with the supporting material and references, should provide you with ample arguments.
Basically, in pushing for sustained 60-85 hour work-weeks, your CEO is flying in the face of a majority of research done in the previous 100 years on worker productivity and risks.
This seems to be the norm in the games industry since the last 10-15 years though, so he's not alone in this apparent irrational behavior.
I would also add these hypothetical questions to your CEO:
* In the last 10-15 years, has the number of zero-day bugs and defects in shipped games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average schedule overdraft on deliveries of games products increased or decreased?
* In the last 10-15 years, has the average budget overdraft on games projects increased or decreased?
And finally:
* In the last 10-15 years, have the number of working hours per week for each person in games projects increased or decreased? | Other replies list why it's a bad idea to work extreme hours. Let me focus on a different aspect instead.
What you're attempting to do is basically a culture transformation.
This is impossible to do without a heavy management sponsorship. You don't just need to *convince* the management. You need to transform them into advocates of this change.
And that won't be easy to do given that they probably believe they are profiting from the current situation.
If you have management sponsorship, the way to go is:
* informing about the new expectations: the management should be involved
* training for the expected behaviors
* controlling the adoption
A culture transformation is difficult enough to do with management sponsorship. Without the sponsorship it's impossible. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The simple answer is to simply begin working 40 hour work weeks and make sure YOU are efficient for those 40 hours. If you aren't already burned out then the results will become apparent fairly quickly. If you are already burned out then 40 hour weeks probably won't make a difference, so keep working your 60-90 hour work weeks. Keep in mind that if you choose to continue with the long work weeks you'll be looking for a new line of work in the near future and that won't include any careers requiring thinking skills because your body is going to shut down all on its own because you chose not to listen to it.
I really don't understand how people can let themselves be so taken advantage of like your company does to you. | **Seems to be working** If you're meeting the deadlines, I don't see how you can justify calling them impossible. Your boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs. Just push for more-it's really that simple.
**Negative Consequences**
I haven't found any mention of what happens when deadlines aren't met. Has anyone been fired? If management is correct, and you aren't competitive in your market, everyone suffers the natural consequences of a weakened company. Does it affect your bonus?
**Rewards** If this company makes it 'big', are you all going to be millionaires? I'd expect more turnover unless they pay better than average salaries.
Like too many programmers/engineers, you've developed an "all or nothing" mentality about your job. The boss set this impossible deadline, oh my! So what? The programmer is afraid they will release more bugs, but the management would rather meet the deadline because the level of bugs is acceptable in their mind AND THEIR USERS. We'll have to spend even more time fixing things. So what? They know this will happen. Everyone expects a quick patch after a major release.
**It's all in your head** I'm willing to bet as the deadline nears, features get removed. Cut back on your hours. Get some sleep. Do something fun. You'll be more productive. You can only suggest others take this advice. When everyone realizes the sky isn't falling, your management may figure out you've learned to play the game. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | The simple answer is to simply begin working 40 hour work weeks and make sure YOU are efficient for those 40 hours. If you aren't already burned out then the results will become apparent fairly quickly. If you are already burned out then 40 hour weeks probably won't make a difference, so keep working your 60-90 hour work weeks. Keep in mind that if you choose to continue with the long work weeks you'll be looking for a new line of work in the near future and that won't include any careers requiring thinking skills because your body is going to shut down all on its own because you chose not to listen to it.
I really don't understand how people can let themselves be so taken advantage of like your company does to you. | Other replies list why it's a bad idea to work extreme hours. Let me focus on a different aspect instead.
What you're attempting to do is basically a culture transformation.
This is impossible to do without a heavy management sponsorship. You don't just need to *convince* the management. You need to transform them into advocates of this change.
And that won't be easy to do given that they probably believe they are profiting from the current situation.
If you have management sponsorship, the way to go is:
* informing about the new expectations: the management should be involved
* training for the expected behaviors
* controlling the adoption
A culture transformation is difficult enough to do with management sponsorship. Without the sponsorship it's impossible. |
9,740 | I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.
My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).
Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"
I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.
I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).
I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.
How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company? | 2013/02/18 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/9740",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/7817/"
] | **Seems to be working** If you're meeting the deadlines, I don't see how you can justify calling them impossible. Your boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs. Just push for more-it's really that simple.
**Negative Consequences**
I haven't found any mention of what happens when deadlines aren't met. Has anyone been fired? If management is correct, and you aren't competitive in your market, everyone suffers the natural consequences of a weakened company. Does it affect your bonus?
**Rewards** If this company makes it 'big', are you all going to be millionaires? I'd expect more turnover unless they pay better than average salaries.
Like too many programmers/engineers, you've developed an "all or nothing" mentality about your job. The boss set this impossible deadline, oh my! So what? The programmer is afraid they will release more bugs, but the management would rather meet the deadline because the level of bugs is acceptable in their mind AND THEIR USERS. We'll have to spend even more time fixing things. So what? They know this will happen. Everyone expects a quick patch after a major release.
**It's all in your head** I'm willing to bet as the deadline nears, features get removed. Cut back on your hours. Get some sleep. Do something fun. You'll be more productive. You can only suggest others take this advice. When everyone realizes the sky isn't falling, your management may figure out you've learned to play the game. | Other replies list why it's a bad idea to work extreme hours. Let me focus on a different aspect instead.
What you're attempting to do is basically a culture transformation.
This is impossible to do without a heavy management sponsorship. You don't just need to *convince* the management. You need to transform them into advocates of this change.
And that won't be easy to do given that they probably believe they are profiting from the current situation.
If you have management sponsorship, the way to go is:
* informing about the new expectations: the management should be involved
* training for the expected behaviors
* controlling the adoption
A culture transformation is difficult enough to do with management sponsorship. Without the sponsorship it's impossible. |
100,473 | I have a first (and only) and self occupied home. Mortgage is fully paid. Home is with four rooms.
Considering expenses I done on home so far including my share in mortgage, taxes so far, total interest paid etc. I will be in profit by 1000000.
Prices of property are not growing considerably anymore; growth rate is minimized.
1. I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
2. By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
3. New home will be self-occupied as well; it will not be rented.
I can clearly see the benefit, but I am not sure about other financial aspects involved here.
1. New home will start new mortgage.
2. Taxes will not be much different.
3. As new home will be self occupied as well, there is no benefit other than the one gained while selling current home.
Is it advised to sell current self occupied home and buy the other new one to book the profit? If yes, what are the financial loop-holes to be considered while doing this?
I am not doing this for cash as asked [here](https://money.stackexchange.com/q/79211/73868). I am doing this for booking the profit. | 2018/09/27 | [
"https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100473",
"https://money.stackexchange.com",
"https://money.stackexchange.com/users/73868/"
] | No one can answer this but yourself....
1) Have you considered closing cost (you'll pay the closing cost for at least 1 property if you sell yours and buy another.
2) Assuming you didn't spend a bunch of money on renovations it would seem that your profit comes mostly from the average home price rising. As such a 3 Bedroom house will also be far more expensive now than when you bought your house.
3) The cost of moving is not insignificant. You may also end up wanting to replace furniture. Some stuff always breaks during a move.
4) There are some other costs associated with moving that you may not have considered.
5) You may not end up getting as much money for your current house as you think you should. It also may not sell quickly.
For me personally all that would be too much hassle for what it's worth. But you may see things differently. | If i understand you correctly you are thinkinh to move from a big home to a small one, this usually reducing your living cost (less things which could broke, less cleaning and less air to cool down/heat etc.)
Also you gain profit (or luxory) from the free and possible working money, from the price difference from the houses/appartments.
So if you don't need a big house, such a shift makes sense. Especially when you don't think that you miss the space of your current house much.
You want the mortage only, because you can think that you can outperform your credit rates with your investment? You could do this usually too, when you get a new mortage for your current house. |
100,473 | I have a first (and only) and self occupied home. Mortgage is fully paid. Home is with four rooms.
Considering expenses I done on home so far including my share in mortgage, taxes so far, total interest paid etc. I will be in profit by 1000000.
Prices of property are not growing considerably anymore; growth rate is minimized.
1. I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
2. By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
3. New home will be self-occupied as well; it will not be rented.
I can clearly see the benefit, but I am not sure about other financial aspects involved here.
1. New home will start new mortgage.
2. Taxes will not be much different.
3. As new home will be self occupied as well, there is no benefit other than the one gained while selling current home.
Is it advised to sell current self occupied home and buy the other new one to book the profit? If yes, what are the financial loop-holes to be considered while doing this?
I am not doing this for cash as asked [here](https://money.stackexchange.com/q/79211/73868). I am doing this for booking the profit. | 2018/09/27 | [
"https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100473",
"https://money.stackexchange.com",
"https://money.stackexchange.com/users/73868/"
] | No one can answer this but yourself....
1) Have you considered closing cost (you'll pay the closing cost for at least 1 property if you sell yours and buy another.
2) Assuming you didn't spend a bunch of money on renovations it would seem that your profit comes mostly from the average home price rising. As such a 3 Bedroom house will also be far more expensive now than when you bought your house.
3) The cost of moving is not insignificant. You may also end up wanting to replace furniture. Some stuff always breaks during a move.
4) There are some other costs associated with moving that you may not have considered.
5) You may not end up getting as much money for your current house as you think you should. It also may not sell quickly.
For me personally all that would be too much hassle for what it's worth. But you may see things differently. | >
> I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
>
>
>
This is the only real tick mark in favor of selling your current home.
>
> By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
>
>
>
Any profit you make from the sell will either be taxed, or invested in the next home. Is there a reason you wouldn't roll that over to the next house which would be tax advantaged?
Unless you have another reason like being closer to family, shorter commute, or always wanting to live in the city/on the coast/etc, I'd stay put.
**Moving always has one very big potential downside, neighbors for hell.** |
100,473 | I have a first (and only) and self occupied home. Mortgage is fully paid. Home is with four rooms.
Considering expenses I done on home so far including my share in mortgage, taxes so far, total interest paid etc. I will be in profit by 1000000.
Prices of property are not growing considerably anymore; growth rate is minimized.
1. I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
2. By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
3. New home will be self-occupied as well; it will not be rented.
I can clearly see the benefit, but I am not sure about other financial aspects involved here.
1. New home will start new mortgage.
2. Taxes will not be much different.
3. As new home will be self occupied as well, there is no benefit other than the one gained while selling current home.
Is it advised to sell current self occupied home and buy the other new one to book the profit? If yes, what are the financial loop-holes to be considered while doing this?
I am not doing this for cash as asked [here](https://money.stackexchange.com/q/79211/73868). I am doing this for booking the profit. | 2018/09/27 | [
"https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100473",
"https://money.stackexchange.com",
"https://money.stackexchange.com/users/73868/"
] | No one can answer this but yourself....
1) Have you considered closing cost (you'll pay the closing cost for at least 1 property if you sell yours and buy another.
2) Assuming you didn't spend a bunch of money on renovations it would seem that your profit comes mostly from the average home price rising. As such a 3 Bedroom house will also be far more expensive now than when you bought your house.
3) The cost of moving is not insignificant. You may also end up wanting to replace furniture. Some stuff always breaks during a move.
4) There are some other costs associated with moving that you may not have considered.
5) You may not end up getting as much money for your current house as you think you should. It also may not sell quickly.
For me personally all that would be too much hassle for what it's worth. But you may see things differently. | There is no *profit* here, and there is no *investment*. It is your home and since everybody pays for the bed they sleep in, it is a cost, not an investment. If the house you are in has gone up in value, then so has the identical house next door and by the same amount, so moving from one to the other would not realize a return on an investment regardless of the change in the book value.
What you are proposing is a simple downsizing. This will release capital and (probably) reduce your operating costs, but the transaction has some predictable costs involved which will need to be deducted from the capital released. It may seem obvious, but if you can not finance the change without taking on debt, then the change is not worth it. |
100,473 | I have a first (and only) and self occupied home. Mortgage is fully paid. Home is with four rooms.
Considering expenses I done on home so far including my share in mortgage, taxes so far, total interest paid etc. I will be in profit by 1000000.
Prices of property are not growing considerably anymore; growth rate is minimized.
1. I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
2. By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
3. New home will be self-occupied as well; it will not be rented.
I can clearly see the benefit, but I am not sure about other financial aspects involved here.
1. New home will start new mortgage.
2. Taxes will not be much different.
3. As new home will be self occupied as well, there is no benefit other than the one gained while selling current home.
Is it advised to sell current self occupied home and buy the other new one to book the profit? If yes, what are the financial loop-holes to be considered while doing this?
I am not doing this for cash as asked [here](https://money.stackexchange.com/q/79211/73868). I am doing this for booking the profit. | 2018/09/27 | [
"https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100473",
"https://money.stackexchange.com",
"https://money.stackexchange.com/users/73868/"
] | >
> I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
>
>
>
This is the only real tick mark in favor of selling your current home.
>
> By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
>
>
>
Any profit you make from the sell will either be taxed, or invested in the next home. Is there a reason you wouldn't roll that over to the next house which would be tax advantaged?
Unless you have another reason like being closer to family, shorter commute, or always wanting to live in the city/on the coast/etc, I'd stay put.
**Moving always has one very big potential downside, neighbors for hell.** | If i understand you correctly you are thinkinh to move from a big home to a small one, this usually reducing your living cost (less things which could broke, less cleaning and less air to cool down/heat etc.)
Also you gain profit (or luxory) from the free and possible working money, from the price difference from the houses/appartments.
So if you don't need a big house, such a shift makes sense. Especially when you don't think that you miss the space of your current house much.
You want the mortage only, because you can think that you can outperform your credit rates with your investment? You could do this usually too, when you get a new mortage for your current house. |
100,473 | I have a first (and only) and self occupied home. Mortgage is fully paid. Home is with four rooms.
Considering expenses I done on home so far including my share in mortgage, taxes so far, total interest paid etc. I will be in profit by 1000000.
Prices of property are not growing considerably anymore; growth rate is minimized.
1. I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
2. By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
3. New home will be self-occupied as well; it will not be rented.
I can clearly see the benefit, but I am not sure about other financial aspects involved here.
1. New home will start new mortgage.
2. Taxes will not be much different.
3. As new home will be self occupied as well, there is no benefit other than the one gained while selling current home.
Is it advised to sell current self occupied home and buy the other new one to book the profit? If yes, what are the financial loop-holes to be considered while doing this?
I am not doing this for cash as asked [here](https://money.stackexchange.com/q/79211/73868). I am doing this for booking the profit. | 2018/09/27 | [
"https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100473",
"https://money.stackexchange.com",
"https://money.stackexchange.com/users/73868/"
] | >
> I do not need this much big home. Three rooms should be enough for me.
>
>
>
This is the only real tick mark in favor of selling your current home.
>
> By booking the profit, I can invest the amount (other than my share in new home) in some good investments.
>
>
>
Any profit you make from the sell will either be taxed, or invested in the next home. Is there a reason you wouldn't roll that over to the next house which would be tax advantaged?
Unless you have another reason like being closer to family, shorter commute, or always wanting to live in the city/on the coast/etc, I'd stay put.
**Moving always has one very big potential downside, neighbors for hell.** | There is no *profit* here, and there is no *investment*. It is your home and since everybody pays for the bed they sleep in, it is a cost, not an investment. If the house you are in has gone up in value, then so has the identical house next door and by the same amount, so moving from one to the other would not realize a return on an investment regardless of the change in the book value.
What you are proposing is a simple downsizing. This will release capital and (probably) reduce your operating costs, but the transaction has some predictable costs involved which will need to be deducted from the capital released. It may seem obvious, but if you can not finance the change without taking on debt, then the change is not worth it. |
148,175 | I have a turret, displayed below, which I would like to duplicate and mirror across the global Y axis.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jLpcv.png)
I can do this in Edit Mode, using Shift D, Enter, Ctrl M, X, which shows what I'm looking for:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0heEm.png)
However, this object is using a mesh shared by several other objects. Mirroring the mesh affects the other objects, naturally. What I'd really like is to mirror the object across the y-axis. But the result is not what I would expect:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Y0Ej.png)
That was done with Alt D, Enter, Ctrl M, X. The new position of the duplicate is right, but the angle is not.
I feel like I've missed something obvious.
What is going on here?
(In both cases, the pivot point is the 3D cursor, which is set at the world origin.The transformation orientation is set to global.)
**Edit** (About context)
The turrets involved are on a larger craft that will be mirrored in it's entirety. I'd rather keep the turrets as separate objects than join them, since I may replace the mesh they use with another, or edit the existing mesh.
There is an easy workaround, and that is to adjust the angle of each mirrored item manually. But I'm still interested as to how to perform a mirror with both the origin and angle transformed globally, as opposed to the origin transformed globally and the angle transformed locally as seems to be the case above. | 2019/08/10 | [
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/148175",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com",
"https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/78174/"
] | If you are doing this so that they could be animated I would add a Copy Rotation Constraint and then invert the Y axis.
Or if you are modelling, Create a new collection with the left side (M) and then place a Collection Instance (Shift-A) of that and mirror the Instance. The collection instance has it's origin in the centre but it can be moved in the Context menu for the object -> Collections.
If you later on want to commit this to be real object you, just Make Instances Real (search for it with F3). They will still be linked copies. | You have rotated your object in *Object* mode. If you mirror, it will mirror on the object own local axis, not the global, that's what happened. So if you want to have an object that looks mirrored on the global axis you first need to apply the rotation with `ctrl``A`, so that its current local axis aligns to the global, but I'm not sure that's what you want. Maybe simply rotate it the opposite way with a Z rotation value that you enter in the N panel. |
196,244 | A week ago, 2 of the most gigantic cruise ships in the world docked near my city. If you have seen one, or been on one, you will know how large they are.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFRPU.jpg)
They look extremely unsafe to me, although obviously safety features must be built into them to stop them listing so far over that they seem to me to be in danger of toppling completely in rough seas or strong sidewinds.
I want to avoid the engineering side and to stick to the physics, which is simply based around the control of the angular momentum of the large vessels.
So my assumptions first, then my question.
I have searched Google for schematics of the design, but nothing jumped out at me, except a greater than expected list of people asking much the same question as this one. [Are Cruise Ships Too Top Heavy?](http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2012/03/articles/sinking/are-cruise-ships-dangerously-top-heavy/) and [Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe](http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-mega-cruise-ships-are-unsafe.html)
They have shallow, but wide, bottom surfaces. Either they have small keel surfaces, or they are able to pull the keel inside the ship, because the draught in my city port is fairly shallow and yet they were able to get well inside the harbor.
I guess they carry a large amount of ballast, they certainly have the room for it.
I also guess that the top floors are made of light material, so as to lower the centre of gravity as much as possible.
They almost certainly have stabilisers, that act to reduce listing and basically do the job that a keel does for sailboats.
My question is, does anybody with experience in fluid dynamics or related areas know
what keeps these giant ships stable in roll and reduces their potential to list to large angles in bad weather?
EDIT I am hoping for a physics based answer, but I realise it may be a question for another site, I will migrate no problem if need be END EDIT | 2015/07/27 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/196244",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Some dimensions I was able to dig up (mostly from Wikipedia).
Draft of the Allure of the Seas: 31 ft (10 m)
Length: 1181 ft (360 m)
Beam at waterline: 47 m
Height: 72 m above waterline
Let's just draw the section based on these simple numbers:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mxR9d.png)
Now if the center of gravity were in the middle of the ship (31 m above the water line), it would indeed not be very stable - any tilt beyond 25° would cause it to tip over:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cinl2.png)
However, there are several important factors:
1. The part of the hull below the surface is made of much thicker, stronger, heavier material than the superstructure
2. The engines etc. are all in the lowest levels
3. There is an active ballast system that allows pumping fuel and sea water from side to side to help maintain balance
I found one online test of the stability of the hull of this ship in a test facility, where they made a big hole in the side of an accurate model to see how it would fare: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra4TkHOs4RE> . While there are commercial interests at stake, nobody wants a marine disaster on their hands. | As I understand it many seagoing vessels also use gyroscopes spinning on a vertical axis attached to the main components of the vessel's structure to null out much of the motion on the vessel's roll axis. Gyroscopes are also popular among motor yachts. I'm not Shure if they're used on giant cruise ships or not but, gyros are one way of providing stability, and safety. |
196,244 | A week ago, 2 of the most gigantic cruise ships in the world docked near my city. If you have seen one, or been on one, you will know how large they are.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFRPU.jpg)
They look extremely unsafe to me, although obviously safety features must be built into them to stop them listing so far over that they seem to me to be in danger of toppling completely in rough seas or strong sidewinds.
I want to avoid the engineering side and to stick to the physics, which is simply based around the control of the angular momentum of the large vessels.
So my assumptions first, then my question.
I have searched Google for schematics of the design, but nothing jumped out at me, except a greater than expected list of people asking much the same question as this one. [Are Cruise Ships Too Top Heavy?](http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2012/03/articles/sinking/are-cruise-ships-dangerously-top-heavy/) and [Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe](http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-mega-cruise-ships-are-unsafe.html)
They have shallow, but wide, bottom surfaces. Either they have small keel surfaces, or they are able to pull the keel inside the ship, because the draught in my city port is fairly shallow and yet they were able to get well inside the harbor.
I guess they carry a large amount of ballast, they certainly have the room for it.
I also guess that the top floors are made of light material, so as to lower the centre of gravity as much as possible.
They almost certainly have stabilisers, that act to reduce listing and basically do the job that a keel does for sailboats.
My question is, does anybody with experience in fluid dynamics or related areas know
what keeps these giant ships stable in roll and reduces their potential to list to large angles in bad weather?
EDIT I am hoping for a physics based answer, but I realise it may be a question for another site, I will migrate no problem if need be END EDIT | 2015/07/27 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/196244",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | Some dimensions I was able to dig up (mostly from Wikipedia).
Draft of the Allure of the Seas: 31 ft (10 m)
Length: 1181 ft (360 m)
Beam at waterline: 47 m
Height: 72 m above waterline
Let's just draw the section based on these simple numbers:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mxR9d.png)
Now if the center of gravity were in the middle of the ship (31 m above the water line), it would indeed not be very stable - any tilt beyond 25° would cause it to tip over:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cinl2.png)
However, there are several important factors:
1. The part of the hull below the surface is made of much thicker, stronger, heavier material than the superstructure
2. The engines etc. are all in the lowest levels
3. There is an active ballast system that allows pumping fuel and sea water from side to side to help maintain balance
I found one online test of the stability of the hull of this ship in a test facility, where they made a big hole in the side of an accurate model to see how it would fare: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra4TkHOs4RE> . While there are commercial interests at stake, nobody wants a marine disaster on their hands. | a large lever attached with a ship will give a huge effort on other side that it can heat the water by driving an engine made of dc motor and emf give to heating element which operate on dc voltage so it may work on either side to produce steam engine can produce electricity at a constant speed to provide for grid operation. |
196,244 | A week ago, 2 of the most gigantic cruise ships in the world docked near my city. If you have seen one, or been on one, you will know how large they are.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFRPU.jpg)
They look extremely unsafe to me, although obviously safety features must be built into them to stop them listing so far over that they seem to me to be in danger of toppling completely in rough seas or strong sidewinds.
I want to avoid the engineering side and to stick to the physics, which is simply based around the control of the angular momentum of the large vessels.
So my assumptions first, then my question.
I have searched Google for schematics of the design, but nothing jumped out at me, except a greater than expected list of people asking much the same question as this one. [Are Cruise Ships Too Top Heavy?](http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2012/03/articles/sinking/are-cruise-ships-dangerously-top-heavy/) and [Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe](http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-mega-cruise-ships-are-unsafe.html)
They have shallow, but wide, bottom surfaces. Either they have small keel surfaces, or they are able to pull the keel inside the ship, because the draught in my city port is fairly shallow and yet they were able to get well inside the harbor.
I guess they carry a large amount of ballast, they certainly have the room for it.
I also guess that the top floors are made of light material, so as to lower the centre of gravity as much as possible.
They almost certainly have stabilisers, that act to reduce listing and basically do the job that a keel does for sailboats.
My question is, does anybody with experience in fluid dynamics or related areas know
what keeps these giant ships stable in roll and reduces their potential to list to large angles in bad weather?
EDIT I am hoping for a physics based answer, but I realise it may be a question for another site, I will migrate no problem if need be END EDIT | 2015/07/27 | [
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/196244",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com",
"https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | As I understand it many seagoing vessels also use gyroscopes spinning on a vertical axis attached to the main components of the vessel's structure to null out much of the motion on the vessel's roll axis. Gyroscopes are also popular among motor yachts. I'm not Shure if they're used on giant cruise ships or not but, gyros are one way of providing stability, and safety. | a large lever attached with a ship will give a huge effort on other side that it can heat the water by driving an engine made of dc motor and emf give to heating element which operate on dc voltage so it may work on either side to produce steam engine can produce electricity at a constant speed to provide for grid operation. |
12,948 | We watched Beautiful Creatures last night, I've read the book and even I was confused at points. Extra ideas were added, large amounts were cut.
From memory
* Marilyn and Ama's characters were merged
* Macon was made a caster instead of an incubus
* Boo Radley didn't appear at all
* Ethan found the necklace at a different time
* Ethan played football instead of basketball
* Larkin didn't surprise us at the end
* Ethan's father didn't appear at all (this again led to a changed ending)
* The scene where Macon read Ethan's future didn't occur in the book
* The entire idea of Ethan losing his memory didn't happen in the book
* Emily and Ethan didn't date in the book
Compared with book adaptations such as Harry Potter and Twilight it seemed to change a massive amount from the book. Why is this? | 2013/08/05 | [
"https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/12948",
"https://movies.stackexchange.com",
"https://movies.stackexchange.com/users/574/"
] | I think it could boil down to any of several different reasons:
1. Writer of the original book was not involved in the making of the movie, and therefor the movie script takes different directions than the book.
2. Producer thinks they know better and forces divergent changes in the script. (Same could be said for the director, or as in #1, where the script writer diverges from the book.)
3. Time limitations. There is usually way too much in a book to portray on the screen (which is usually the reason for sequenced movie production ... besides the desire to make more money).
4. Sometimes there is no easy way to translate a book from page to screen. Production costs could figure in here somewhere.
5. Sometimes what someone understands while reading a book is not exactly what is happening. Two people could read a portion of the book and come up with two completely thoughts as to what is happening. When this gets up on the screen, it could be shown as a completely different third thing. I'm not saying this happened here, but interpretation plays a role in any production.
I'm sure there are a plethora of other reasons scripts could diverge from their book counterparts. Why exactly Beautiful Creatures diverged will probably remain a mystery along with all of the other movies out there which have taken the divergent plunge. Sometimes the changes make sense ... other times it leaves you scratching your head like you have done here. | This response is more then probably late, but majority of the big chunks that were cut would have EASILY pushed the movies rating over PG-13 standing the creators wanted. Though this isn't a big enough excuse for all the cuts I feel this PG-13 desire held back a fair bit of the book. |
1,636,765 | I use netbeans 6.8 beta and when i load .sh (bash) file it's not colored at all. i can add a new file association for the .sh extension but it doesn't seem that there is a known associated mime type. | 2009/10/28 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1636765",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/80932/"
] | I have not tried this myself but you can get shell script support in Netbeans if you install the **C/C++ plugin**. | This is very odd. I have NB6.8beta installed with the C/C++ plugin. When I open a .sh file I *do* see syntax high lighting. Quotes strings show up in orange, commands are in blue. |
1,636,765 | I use netbeans 6.8 beta and when i load .sh (bash) file it's not colored at all. i can add a new file association for the .sh extension but it doesn't seem that there is a known associated mime type. | 2009/10/28 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1636765",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/80932/"
] | I have not tried this myself but you can get shell script support in Netbeans if you install the **C/C++ plugin**. | old question, time for an update **(tested for 8.0.2,8.1,8.2)**.
Here's what worked for me
1. **Install C/C++** plugin.
This will recognize .sh extensions as bash files
2. **Install nb-noext-mime-resolver** (for 8.2 you'll find it as [No Extension MIME Resolver](http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/55076/no-extension-mime-resolver)) . This will add support for files with no extension by recognizing the shebang line
3. **Go to tools/options/editor/spellchecker and uncheck 'Script and make comments'.**(not available after 8.2) This will get rid of the red squiggly lines that appear under 'usr' and other legitimate notations in the shebang line and elsewhere.
You'll get full syntax highlighting as well as the ability to right click and select 'run' which will launch your script in the built in terminal. very nice.
*To get the context menu 'run' to work with your shell*
1. Select 'Run'/'Set Project Configuration'/'Customize'
2. Click 'New' and add a name for your shell like 'bash' or 'cygwin'
3. Select 'Run As' 'Script (run in command line'
4. Where it says 'Php Interpreter' (or equivilent) add the path to your bash shell. e.g: C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe
5. Click 'ok'.
Also, check out the properties of the bash files and you'll find some helpful ones. |
1,636,765 | I use netbeans 6.8 beta and when i load .sh (bash) file it's not colored at all. i can add a new file association for the .sh extension but it doesn't seem that there is a known associated mime type. | 2009/10/28 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1636765",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/80932/"
] | old question, time for an update **(tested for 8.0.2,8.1,8.2)**.
Here's what worked for me
1. **Install C/C++** plugin.
This will recognize .sh extensions as bash files
2. **Install nb-noext-mime-resolver** (for 8.2 you'll find it as [No Extension MIME Resolver](http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/55076/no-extension-mime-resolver)) . This will add support for files with no extension by recognizing the shebang line
3. **Go to tools/options/editor/spellchecker and uncheck 'Script and make comments'.**(not available after 8.2) This will get rid of the red squiggly lines that appear under 'usr' and other legitimate notations in the shebang line and elsewhere.
You'll get full syntax highlighting as well as the ability to right click and select 'run' which will launch your script in the built in terminal. very nice.
*To get the context menu 'run' to work with your shell*
1. Select 'Run'/'Set Project Configuration'/'Customize'
2. Click 'New' and add a name for your shell like 'bash' or 'cygwin'
3. Select 'Run As' 'Script (run in command line'
4. Where it says 'Php Interpreter' (or equivilent) add the path to your bash shell. e.g: C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe
5. Click 'ok'.
Also, check out the properties of the bash files and you'll find some helpful ones. | This is very odd. I have NB6.8beta installed with the C/C++ plugin. When I open a .sh file I *do* see syntax high lighting. Quotes strings show up in orange, commands are in blue. |
965,215 | I've searched all over, and I'm unable to find anything regarding copying multiple cells from different rows & columns to a single row in another sheet.
Eg, Copy Cells, A10, F2, F3 & F34 from Sheet 1, to A2 in Sheet 2 and start a new row.
The purpose is to copy certain information from an Invoice (Sheet 1)
* A10 - Customer
* F2 - Date
* F3 - Invoice No
* F34 - Total Cost
to a single row in another sheet for reporting (Sheet 2)
When I complete a new invoice, I'm hoping to run the same macro to copy these cells onto the next empty row in Sheet 2. | 2015/08/31 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/965215",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/490503/"
] | I'm the Newrez author.
Being that this is just a script, there are lots of options. One is just to execute it during login as a startup app. As long as X is up, you are all set. There is no dependency on Gnome or Nautilus. It should run on anything. | The solution is just plain simple, but it's not that perfect:
* First just download newrez's here (yes, you've heard it)
<http://gtk-apps.org/content/show.php/newrez+-+Increase+Screen+Rez+For+Netbook?content=134686>
* Then, put it somewhere and make it executable from GUI
* Just simply double-click on it and put your resolution
Now why it's not perfect:
* If you don't have a DPI scaler in your Desktop Environment, you'll go blind since views are so damn small
* I didn't find a way yet to prevent the stretching from 16/9 to 16/10
* The project's page mentions that it doesn't work for AMD/ATI and nVidia GPUs, but just give it a try. Maybe their own proprietary drivers can downsample too.
* When you want to come back to your default resolution, just put "default", since putting the pixels count in will make it back but it'll be blurry (dpi/"streching problems)
It's a script, so there must be a way to glue it into KDE, more infos here:
<http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/increase-resolution-monitors-limit-newrez-linux/> |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | The best [hash keys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function) are those that
1. Have good (as in low [collisions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_(computer_science))) hashes (see [Object.GetHashCode](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.gethashcode.aspx) for .NET, [Object.hashcode](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/Object.html) for Java)
2. Have quick comparisons (for when there are hash collisions).
All that said, I think Strings are good hash keys in most cases, since there are many excellent hash implementations for Strings. | If you were to use a complex type as a key then:
* It would be hard for the hash table implementation to group items into buckets for fast retrieval; how would it decide how to group a range of hashes into a bucket?
* The hash table may need to have intimate knowledge of the type in order to pick a bucket.
* There is the risk of the properties of the object changing, resulting in items ending up in the wrong buckets. The hashes must be immutable.
Integers commonly used because they are easy to split into ranges that correspond to the buckets, they are value types and therefore immutable, and they are fairly easy to generate. |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | It's not a matter of *strings* versus *integers*, or value versus reference, but of **mutable keys versus immutable keys.** As long as the keys are immutable (and thus their hashing value never change) they are OK to index a hash table. For instance, strings in Java are immutable and thus perfectly suited as hashtable keys.
By the way, if a data type is simpe enough to be always passed by value (like scalars), then it will of course be OK.
But now imagine that you use a mutable type ; if you give me a reference to one of these objects as a key, I will compute its hash value and then put it in one of my hashtable buckets. But when you later modify the object, I will have no way to be notified ; and the object may now reside in the wrong bucket (if its hash value is different).
Hope this helps. | The best [hash keys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function) are those that
1. Have good (as in low [collisions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_(computer_science))) hashes (see [Object.GetHashCode](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.object.gethashcode.aspx) for .NET, [Object.hashcode](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/Object.html) for Java)
2. Have quick comparisons (for when there are hash collisions).
All that said, I think Strings are good hash keys in most cases, since there are many excellent hash implementations for Strings. |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | As long as a suitable hash function is provided all types will do as keys. Remember after all a hash table is just a linear array. The hash function takes a key of a certain type and computes an index in the hash table array (called bucket) where the value gets stored (there are some issues with collisions though).
So the real tricky part is finding a hash function. Of course it should have certain properties, like being simple to compute, chaotic (nearly identical keys should be mapped to completly different hash table buckets), deterministic (same keys means same hash table bucket), uniformity (all possible keys are mapped evenly to the buckets), or surjectivity (all buckets of the hash table should be used).
It seems it is easier to define such a function for simple types like integers. | If you were to use a complex type as a key then:
* It would be hard for the hash table implementation to group items into buckets for fast retrieval; how would it decide how to group a range of hashes into a bucket?
* The hash table may need to have intimate knowledge of the type in order to pick a bucket.
* There is the risk of the properties of the object changing, resulting in items ending up in the wrong buckets. The hashes must be immutable.
Integers commonly used because they are easy to split into ranges that correspond to the buckets, they are value types and therefore immutable, and they are fairly easy to generate. |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | It's not a matter of *strings* versus *integers*, or value versus reference, but of **mutable keys versus immutable keys.** As long as the keys are immutable (and thus their hashing value never change) they are OK to index a hash table. For instance, strings in Java are immutable and thus perfectly suited as hashtable keys.
By the way, if a data type is simpe enough to be always passed by value (like scalars), then it will of course be OK.
But now imagine that you use a mutable type ; if you give me a reference to one of these objects as a key, I will compute its hash value and then put it in one of my hashtable buckets. But when you later modify the object, I will have no way to be notified ; and the object may now reside in the wrong bucket (if its hash value is different).
Hope this helps. | As long as a suitable hash function is provided all types will do as keys. Remember after all a hash table is just a linear array. The hash function takes a key of a certain type and computes an index in the hash table array (called bucket) where the value gets stored (there are some issues with collisions though).
So the real tricky part is finding a hash function. Of course it should have certain properties, like being simple to compute, chaotic (nearly identical keys should be mapped to completly different hash table buckets), deterministic (same keys means same hash table bucket), uniformity (all possible keys are mapped evenly to the buckets), or surjectivity (all buckets of the hash table should be used).
It seems it is easier to define such a function for simple types like integers. |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | Most string implementations, while they might appear as references types in managed environments their implementation is typically an immutable type.
What the hash function does is that it maps a very large number of states onto a smaller number of states.
That is why string hashing is good for testing string equality. You can map the value to an index of an array, and look up some information about that value very quickly. You don't need to compare every character with every other character in every other string. And you can say just about the same thing about anything. It's all about reducing, or fingerprinting an arbitrary number of bytes in some manner which is useful.
This is where the discussion about the type of key you use in a hash table becomes invalid, because it's the mapping of that value into a smaller state space and how that's utilized internally which makes it useful. An integer is typically hardware friendly, but 32-bits isn't really a large space and collisions are likely within that space for arbitrary inputs.
In the end, when you do use a hash table, the cost of calculating the hash value is irrelevant compared to the time it would take to compare every value with every other value in every other possible position (assuming that your hash table contains hundreds of items). | If you were to use a complex type as a key then:
* It would be hard for the hash table implementation to group items into buckets for fast retrieval; how would it decide how to group a range of hashes into a bucket?
* The hash table may need to have intimate knowledge of the type in order to pick a bucket.
* There is the risk of the properties of the object changing, resulting in items ending up in the wrong buckets. The hashes must be immutable.
Integers commonly used because they are easy to split into ranges that correspond to the buckets, they are value types and therefore immutable, and they are fairly easy to generate. |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | It's not a matter of *strings* versus *integers*, or value versus reference, but of **mutable keys versus immutable keys.** As long as the keys are immutable (and thus their hashing value never change) they are OK to index a hash table. For instance, strings in Java are immutable and thus perfectly suited as hashtable keys.
By the way, if a data type is simpe enough to be always passed by value (like scalars), then it will of course be OK.
But now imagine that you use a mutable type ; if you give me a reference to one of these objects as a key, I will compute its hash value and then put it in one of my hashtable buckets. But when you later modify the object, I will have no way to be notified ; and the object may now reside in the wrong bucket (if its hash value is different).
Hope this helps. | Most string implementations, while they might appear as references types in managed environments their implementation is typically an immutable type.
What the hash function does is that it maps a very large number of states onto a smaller number of states.
That is why string hashing is good for testing string equality. You can map the value to an index of an array, and look up some information about that value very quickly. You don't need to compare every character with every other character in every other string. And you can say just about the same thing about anything. It's all about reducing, or fingerprinting an arbitrary number of bytes in some manner which is useful.
This is where the discussion about the type of key you use in a hash table becomes invalid, because it's the mapping of that value into a smaller state space and how that's utilized internally which makes it useful. An integer is typically hardware friendly, but 32-bits isn't really a large space and collisions are likely within that space for arbitrary inputs.
In the end, when you do use a hash table, the cost of calculating the hash value is irrelevant compared to the time it would take to compare every value with every other value in every other possible position (assuming that your hash table contains hundreds of items). |
1,670,006 | I must admit to having only a rudimentary understanding of how HashTables work, although from what little I do know it seems fairly straightforward. My question is just this: it seems that the conventional wisdom is to use simple, basic value types such as integers for the keys in a HashTable. However, strings are also often used, even though in many languages they are implemented as reference types. What I feel is generally *not* encouraged is using complex reference types; I'm guessing this is because doing so would necessitate a slower hash function? But then why are strings so commonly used? After all, isn't a string internally a char[] array (again, in most languages)?
In the end, what value types are generally regarded as the "best" (or even simply "acceptable") choices to use as keys in a HashTable? And are there any commonly used choices that are actually regarded as "bad" (like strings, possibly)? | 2009/11/03 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1670006",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/105570/"
] | It's not a matter of *strings* versus *integers*, or value versus reference, but of **mutable keys versus immutable keys.** As long as the keys are immutable (and thus their hashing value never change) they are OK to index a hash table. For instance, strings in Java are immutable and thus perfectly suited as hashtable keys.
By the way, if a data type is simpe enough to be always passed by value (like scalars), then it will of course be OK.
But now imagine that you use a mutable type ; if you give me a reference to one of these objects as a key, I will compute its hash value and then put it in one of my hashtable buckets. But when you later modify the object, I will have no way to be notified ; and the object may now reside in the wrong bucket (if its hash value is different).
Hope this helps. | If you were to use a complex type as a key then:
* It would be hard for the hash table implementation to group items into buckets for fast retrieval; how would it decide how to group a range of hashes into a bucket?
* The hash table may need to have intimate knowledge of the type in order to pick a bucket.
* There is the risk of the properties of the object changing, resulting in items ending up in the wrong buckets. The hashes must be immutable.
Integers commonly used because they are easy to split into ranges that correspond to the buckets, they are value types and therefore immutable, and they are fairly easy to generate. |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | The hanging at the Windows splash screen makes me pretty suspicious of your RAID controller firmware or drivers. Is it a Dell PERC? Are you current on firmware and drivers?
Is there anything special about the last few files and directories that are being successfully backed-up (i.e. something uncharacteristic of the files up to that point in the backup)?
You could turn on debug logging in the Backup Exec remote agent on the file server, though if the filesystem or disk driver is falling down and crashing you probably won't get a debug log written. Stop the remote agent service and start it with the "-debug" parameter specified in the "Start parameters" text-box on the service properties (assuming you're using the "Services" MMC snap-in to do this starting / stopping). If you're prefer the "-debug" setting to be permanent, add it to the ImagePath value in "HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BackupExecAgentAccelerator". | The only things that jump to mind that you didn't mention testing are RAM and system load levels.
RAM should be easy, but I'm not sure if there's anything about backup that would cause use of a bad area that wouldn't be triggered in regular use - it just doesn't fit.
The other thing is load levels on the hardware. When backing up, it's going to be moving a lot of information both from disk and through the NIC.
* You already have one suggestion of checking the RAID controller; I'd add to that checking it by doing some high-volume transfers attempting to simulate the load of the backup. Also, does it die at the start of the backup or after some period of sustained throughput?
* For the NIC load, I'd try a few things - another NIC, forcing it down to 100MBit, pushing large amounts of data through it (again, to simulate backup load).
The biggest headaches with testing those may end up being in testing them independently. I'd start with the NIC(s) as the easiest item to test. If you can throw one or more additional drives into the system independent of the RAID controller, that may give you a good way to isolate whether the RAID controller itself is the source of the problem - copy everything to the non-RAID drives and see if you can back those up cleanly.
For the continuing/repeating lockups after the first - does completely removing power from the system resolve the issue? Remember that a powered-down server isn't fully off - in particular the network interface may well remain live for wake-on-LAN. If some internal state in the hardware is incorrect, just restarting may not actually clear it. |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | The hanging at the Windows splash screen makes me pretty suspicious of your RAID controller firmware or drivers. Is it a Dell PERC? Are you current on firmware and drivers?
Is there anything special about the last few files and directories that are being successfully backed-up (i.e. something uncharacteristic of the files up to that point in the backup)?
You could turn on debug logging in the Backup Exec remote agent on the file server, though if the filesystem or disk driver is falling down and crashing you probably won't get a debug log written. Stop the remote agent service and start it with the "-debug" parameter specified in the "Start parameters" text-box on the service properties (assuming you're using the "Services" MMC snap-in to do this starting / stopping). If you're prefer the "-debug" setting to be permanent, add it to the ImagePath value in "HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BackupExecAgentAccelerator". | I've had a similar problem with Backup Exec(albeit, much older version 10) I installed the latest update and my server started BSODing randomly at or little after scheduled backup. I never determined the exact cause of the problem, but it seems to all be somehow related to TrendMicro too and all together it caused memory protection faults.
My solution was to revert back to oler Backup Exec version as well as update my TrendMicro(if you use officescane, there's a new major release that came out recently). |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | The hanging at the Windows splash screen makes me pretty suspicious of your RAID controller firmware or drivers. Is it a Dell PERC? Are you current on firmware and drivers?
Is there anything special about the last few files and directories that are being successfully backed-up (i.e. something uncharacteristic of the files up to that point in the backup)?
You could turn on debug logging in the Backup Exec remote agent on the file server, though if the filesystem or disk driver is falling down and crashing you probably won't get a debug log written. Stop the remote agent service and start it with the "-debug" parameter specified in the "Start parameters" text-box on the service properties (assuming you're using the "Services" MMC snap-in to do this starting / stopping). If you're prefer the "-debug" setting to be permanent, add it to the ImagePath value in "HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BackupExecAgentAccelerator". | I would suspect drivers issue. Just a similar experience. A legacy application uses ISDN modem. I moved it to a new computer and downloaded latest modem drivers.
ISDN connection kept on dropping and I thought it was the modem/the line... but after all searching I replaced the newest drivers with 6(!) years older and since then it works without problems. So latest drivers aren't always the best - don't fix if it ain't broken.
Good luck! |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | The hanging at the Windows splash screen makes me pretty suspicious of your RAID controller firmware or drivers. Is it a Dell PERC? Are you current on firmware and drivers?
Is there anything special about the last few files and directories that are being successfully backed-up (i.e. something uncharacteristic of the files up to that point in the backup)?
You could turn on debug logging in the Backup Exec remote agent on the file server, though if the filesystem or disk driver is falling down and crashing you probably won't get a debug log written. Stop the remote agent service and start it with the "-debug" parameter specified in the "Start parameters" text-box on the service properties (assuming you're using the "Services" MMC snap-in to do this starting / stopping). If you're prefer the "-debug" setting to be permanent, add it to the ImagePath value in "HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BackupExecAgentAccelerator". | This may be an open file issue, and the open file may be getting corrupted. Try backing everything up EXCEPT the windows (and below) directories. See if backing up just data freezes the sucker. Also, if you have the disk space do a disk to disk backup with NT backup, then backup that file to tape. Make a current rescue disk. Also manually backup the AD files.
If it backs up data without hanging, it's an open system file issue. If it still blows up, unless you run exchange or SQL server, I would suspect drivers or possibly hardware. |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | Posted November 2011 - Try this:
1) Right-click file C:\program files\symantec\SYMEVENT.SYS and choose Properties > Version (tab) and notate the version info.
2) Download the SymEvent installer / updater:
<ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/symevnt/Sevinst.exe>
3) Update SymEvent, as per the following article:
<http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH98521>
Excerpt:
To update the Symevent files on Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT (Including Server versions):
A. Download Sevinst.exe from the Symantec FTP site. Save the file to a folder on the hard drive.
B. Open a command prompt, and change to the folder where you downloaded the Sevinst.exe file.
C. Depending on the program version, do one of the following:
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 9.x **or later**, type the
following command:
*sevinst.exe /log SAVCE*
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 8.x **or earlier**, type the following command:
*sevinst.exe /log NAVNT*
D. Restart the computer | The only things that jump to mind that you didn't mention testing are RAM and system load levels.
RAM should be easy, but I'm not sure if there's anything about backup that would cause use of a bad area that wouldn't be triggered in regular use - it just doesn't fit.
The other thing is load levels on the hardware. When backing up, it's going to be moving a lot of information both from disk and through the NIC.
* You already have one suggestion of checking the RAID controller; I'd add to that checking it by doing some high-volume transfers attempting to simulate the load of the backup. Also, does it die at the start of the backup or after some period of sustained throughput?
* For the NIC load, I'd try a few things - another NIC, forcing it down to 100MBit, pushing large amounts of data through it (again, to simulate backup load).
The biggest headaches with testing those may end up being in testing them independently. I'd start with the NIC(s) as the easiest item to test. If you can throw one or more additional drives into the system independent of the RAID controller, that may give you a good way to isolate whether the RAID controller itself is the source of the problem - copy everything to the non-RAID drives and see if you can back those up cleanly.
For the continuing/repeating lockups after the first - does completely removing power from the system resolve the issue? Remember that a powered-down server isn't fully off - in particular the network interface may well remain live for wake-on-LAN. If some internal state in the hardware is incorrect, just restarting may not actually clear it. |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | Posted November 2011 - Try this:
1) Right-click file C:\program files\symantec\SYMEVENT.SYS and choose Properties > Version (tab) and notate the version info.
2) Download the SymEvent installer / updater:
<ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/symevnt/Sevinst.exe>
3) Update SymEvent, as per the following article:
<http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH98521>
Excerpt:
To update the Symevent files on Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT (Including Server versions):
A. Download Sevinst.exe from the Symantec FTP site. Save the file to a folder on the hard drive.
B. Open a command prompt, and change to the folder where you downloaded the Sevinst.exe file.
C. Depending on the program version, do one of the following:
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 9.x **or later**, type the
following command:
*sevinst.exe /log SAVCE*
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 8.x **or earlier**, type the following command:
*sevinst.exe /log NAVNT*
D. Restart the computer | I've had a similar problem with Backup Exec(albeit, much older version 10) I installed the latest update and my server started BSODing randomly at or little after scheduled backup. I never determined the exact cause of the problem, but it seems to all be somehow related to TrendMicro too and all together it caused memory protection faults.
My solution was to revert back to oler Backup Exec version as well as update my TrendMicro(if you use officescane, there's a new major release that came out recently). |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | Posted November 2011 - Try this:
1) Right-click file C:\program files\symantec\SYMEVENT.SYS and choose Properties > Version (tab) and notate the version info.
2) Download the SymEvent installer / updater:
<ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/symevnt/Sevinst.exe>
3) Update SymEvent, as per the following article:
<http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH98521>
Excerpt:
To update the Symevent files on Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT (Including Server versions):
A. Download Sevinst.exe from the Symantec FTP site. Save the file to a folder on the hard drive.
B. Open a command prompt, and change to the folder where you downloaded the Sevinst.exe file.
C. Depending on the program version, do one of the following:
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 9.x **or later**, type the
following command:
*sevinst.exe /log SAVCE*
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 8.x **or earlier**, type the following command:
*sevinst.exe /log NAVNT*
D. Restart the computer | I would suspect drivers issue. Just a similar experience. A legacy application uses ISDN modem. I moved it to a new computer and downloaded latest modem drivers.
ISDN connection kept on dropping and I thought it was the modem/the line... but after all searching I replaced the newest drivers with 6(!) years older and since then it works without problems. So latest drivers aren't always the best - don't fix if it ain't broken.
Good luck! |
96,363 | I have a Dell PowerEdge 2850 running Windows Server 2003. It is the primary file server for one of my clients. I have another server also running Windows Server 2003 that acts as the core media server for Symantec Backup Exec 12.
I recently upgraded from Backup Exec 11d to 12. This upgrade was necessary because we also just upgraded from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. After the upgrade I had to push-install the new version 12 Backup Exec Remote Agents to each of the servers I am backing up (about 6 total). 5 of my servers are doing just fine, faithfully completing backups every night. My file server routinely crashes.
**Observations:**
* When the server crashes, it does not blue screen, it just locks up completely. Even the mouse is unresponsive. If you leave the server locked up long enough, it will eventually reboot itself and hang on the Windows splash screen.
* There is absolutely zero useful Event Viewer evidence of a problem. The logs go from routine logging to an Unexplained Shutdown Event the next morning when I have to hard reset the server to get it to boot.
* 90% of the time the server does not boot cleanly, it hangs on the Windows splash screen. I don't have any light to shed here. When the server hangs all I can do is hard reset it and try again. Even after a successful boot and chkdsk /r operation, if you reboot the machine, you have a 90% chance it won't back up again cleanly.
**The back story:**
This server started crashing during nightly backups about a month ago. I tried everything I could think of to troubleshoot the problem and eventually had to give up because I could not keep coming to the office at 4 AM to try to get the server back online. One Friday I got lucky and the server stayed up for its entire full backup. I took this opportunity to restore the full backup to a temporary server I set up and switched all my users to the temporary. Then I reloaded the ailing file server.
I kept all my users on the temporary file server for about 3 weeks. I installed the same Backup Exec Remote Agent and Trend Micro A/V client on the temporary server that I was using on the regular file server. During this time, I had absolutely no problems backing up the temporary server.
I tested the reloaded file server extensively. I rebooted the server once an hour every day for 3 weeks trying to make it fail. It never did. I felt confident that the reload was the answer to my problems. I moved all of the data from the temporary server back to the regular server. I got 3 nightly backups out of it before it locked up again and started the familiar failure to boot cleanly behavior.
This weekend I decided to monitor the file server through the entire backup job. I RDPd into the file server and also into the server running Backup Exec. On the file server I opened the Task Manager so I could view the processes and watch CPU and memory usage. Everything was running smoothly for about 60GB worth of backup. Then I noticed that the byte count of the backup job in Backup Exec had stopped progressing. I looked back over at my RDP session into the file server, and I was getting real time updates about CPU and memory usage still - both nearly 0%, which is unusual. Backups usually hover around 40% usage for the duration of the backup job.
Let me reiterate this point: **The screen was refreshing and I was getting real time Task Manager updates** - until I clicked on the Start menu. The screen went black and the server locked up. In truth, I think the server had already locked up, the video card just hadn't figured it out yet.
I went back into my bag of trick: driving to the office and hard reseting the server over and over again when it hangs up at the Windows splash screen. I did this for 2 hours without getting a successful boot. I started panicking because I did not have a decent backup to use to get everything back onto the working temporary file server.
Once I exhausted everything I knew to do, I took a deep breath, booted to the Windows Server 2003 CD and performed a repair installation of Windows. The server came back up fine, with all of my data intact. I can now reboot the server at will and it will come back up cleanly. The problem is that I'm afraid as soon as I try to back that data up again I will back at square one.
So let me sum things up:
**Here is what I've done so far to troubleshoot this server:**
1. Deleted and recreated the RAID 5 sets. Initialized the drives. Reloaded the server with a fresh Server 2003 install.
2. Confirmed with Dell that I have installed the latest, Dell approved BIOS and NIC drivers.
3. Uninstalled / reinstalled the Backup Exec Remote Agent.
4. Uninstalled the Trend Micro A/V client.
5. Configured the server **not** to reboot itself after a blue screen so I can see any stop error. I used to think the server was blue screening, but since I enabled this setting I now know that the server just completely locks up.
6. Run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console. Several errors were found and corrected, but did not help my problem.
**Help confirm or deny the following assumptions:**
7. There are two problems at work here. Why the server is locking up in the first place, and why the server won't boot cleanly after a lockup.
8. This is ultimately a software problem. The server works fine and can be rebooted cleanly all day long - until the first lockup - following a fresh OS load or even a Repair installation.
9. This is not a problem with Backup Exec in general. All of my other servers back up just fine. For the record, all of the other servers run Server 2003, and some of them house more data than the file server in question here.
Any help is appreciated. The irony is almost too much to bear. Backing up my data is what is jeopardizing it. | 2009/12/21 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/96363",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/3497/"
] | Posted November 2011 - Try this:
1) Right-click file C:\program files\symantec\SYMEVENT.SYS and choose Properties > Version (tab) and notate the version info.
2) Download the SymEvent installer / updater:
<ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/symevnt/Sevinst.exe>
3) Update SymEvent, as per the following article:
<http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH98521>
Excerpt:
To update the Symevent files on Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT (Including Server versions):
A. Download Sevinst.exe from the Symantec FTP site. Save the file to a folder on the hard drive.
B. Open a command prompt, and change to the folder where you downloaded the Sevinst.exe file.
C. Depending on the program version, do one of the following:
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 9.x **or later**, type the
following command:
*sevinst.exe /log SAVCE*
* On computers that run Symantec AntiVirus 8.x **or earlier**, type the following command:
*sevinst.exe /log NAVNT*
D. Restart the computer | This may be an open file issue, and the open file may be getting corrupted. Try backing everything up EXCEPT the windows (and below) directories. See if backing up just data freezes the sucker. Also, if you have the disk space do a disk to disk backup with NT backup, then backup that file to tape. Make a current rescue disk. Also manually backup the AD files.
If it backs up data without hanging, it's an open system file issue. If it still blows up, unless you run exchange or SQL server, I would suspect drivers or possibly hardware. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | First of all, there's a huge difference between being the leader of the characters' party and being the leader of the players. In your question and in your answer, it seems that you've mixed them. As such is the case, I will try to address both subjects in my answer, but I'll be far happier to know on which one I shall focus.
For this answer, table level means the level of the players around the table, where the players tell the story. Story level is the level of the actions and characters inside the story. If we take a fight against a dragon as an example, the dragon is in the story level fighting the PCs, while the players and the GM describing actions and rolling the dice is the table level.
Leader of the characters
========================
I believe that this is the easier thing to handle, as everything that happens in this level can stay in this level. This means that in the table level, everyone can participate, but in the story level there is a person who leads. This is a huge difference. As such is the case, I believe that the key here is to let the players talk between themselves and after they've decided about their route of action they should present it as the leader's idea or something.
Another idea might be a weak leadership, with the leader having the final vote, in cases of ties. This, again, lets the leadership be entirely in the story level, and thus it won't interfere that much with the players themselves.
Leader of the players
=====================
This is the more difficult part, but again it can be solved. Being the leader of the players means that one is the PM of the players; she is the one who will decide about the courses of action.
For this level, I think that the first thing to do is to talk with the other players and see if everyone wants it but also to decide upon the rules and habits that the leader should follow. This ensures that everyone is on equal grounds, and that the leader won't disuse his or her power. Personally, I prefer the extra vote kind of rule, meaning that the leader has an extra vote in times of ties between the players ("2 wanna go south, 2 wanna go west, so the leader is the decider").
In addition to that, though, the leader should try as much as she can to make sure that everyone is having fun. If someone is bored, it is her duty to make sure that this bored player will participate. In a nutshell, the leader should act as a lesser GM in this particular matter.
Rebellions
==========
I believe that this deserves a section of its own. As I see it, rebellions in the party, be they in the story level or in the table level, should be discussed beforehand. Rebellions can be seen as a revenge act, or as a way of saying that one doesn't like the leader or something, and this can lead to much hard feelings between the players if it goes out of hand. Due to this reason, I truly believe that they should be discussed beforehand.
Addendum
========
A few things to keep in mind that just didn't fit anywhere else:
Firstly, one should keep in mind that the leaders in the table level and the story level don't have to be the same one. If Bob wants his character to lead the players' characters and Lisa wants to lead the players, they don't have to be the same.
Secondly, there doesn't have to be a leader in the table level in order to have one in the story level, and vice versa. They usually coexist but it is not mandatory. Bob's character can lead the PCs without the need for Lisa to lead the players or vice versa.
Lastly, the players can and should switch leaders if they don't enjoy the leadership of a certain player and the characters can switch their leader too should the PCs' leader prove not good enough or the like. | Games are a great way to teach complex subjects. Have you considered using a setting where the player characters are in a hierarchical organization?
I learned how to handle this as a GM and player from playing FASA *Star Trek* and *Twilight 2000*. In *Star Trek*, sometimes I would play as a Captain and lead the Crew on a mission and other times I'd play as a Lieutenant and follow orders. Constraints like having to follow orders can present great roleplaying and creative opportunities.
If you are worried about how a particular player would handle it, consider experimenting with it in the fiction. Using *Star Trek: The Next Generation* as an example, let's say someone is playing Lt. Barclay. He's not a good leader, but the senior staff wants him to improve.
So, Lt. Barclay is given command of an away team. Riker mentors him through picking a balanced team and making sure the Lt. is set up for success -- picking experienced away team members for a mission with a high probability of success. Riker models being a good follower and Barclay learns to handle team leadership. Then, the Crew and Lt. Barclay debrief and discuss the mission.
By extension, the players learn how to handle the table dynamic at the same time. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | I've been thinking about this question a fair bit and feel that, for me, the answer to this question has three constituent parts: party leadership, player leadership and how to make it work.
Party Leadership
================
In-game leadership (aka leadership of the party) is the most common form of RPG leadership and the type I most like to see in games. Party leadership can create an interesting party dynamic and is an intensely useful wedge for a GM to play with during the course of a game. However, there are a number of factors that can make or break having a party leader in a game.
When
----
Not all situations work with a party leader, but I've found there are a series of conditions that are most conducive to a party leader.
* Large groups typically benefit from a party leader - largely as a way of managing the number of voices and the activity. I've written on this topic before, but it's worth repeating, in-game leaders are able to act as assistants to the GM, helping to absorb some of the management aspects of a game.
* Some settings are just *designed* for an in-game leader. Military, caper and many other settings lend themselves to having an in-game leader.
* Passive players/characters can force the need for an in-game leader, someone who can provide voice to these more passive characters (though this carries some dangers of keeping more passive voices quiet).
* During a character spotlight (whether a session or an arc), it's very natural for the spotlight character to become a leader. While not a leader in the traditional sense, the spotlight role does have many of the same characteristics of an in-game leader.
Methods
-------
There are a few basic approaches to acting as in-game leader that provide basic models for in-game leaders:
* Good ol' fashioned dicatorship is the simplest in my view. Simply having someone who is acknowledged as the leader and has some form of vested authority solves a great many problems, though it can seem out of place in some settings.
* Democracies where players vote on their path forward always seem popular, but I rarely see this model work in practice. It's time consuming, a bit annoying (and has a tendency to turn games into a non-stop series of debates) and tends to create power plays that hurt the concept of a unified leadership.
* Leadership by concensus, with one character acting as the vocie of the party. This model arises surprisingly often in games and is a very natural form of in-game leadership.
* The emergence of a de facto leader is about as common as the leadership by concensus model and is the model I most often fall into when I get to play in a game.
Techniques
----------
So how does an in-game leader get established in a given game? There are a few different models that work well in establishing a leader (I've not included the raw assumption of power option) in my experience:
* The most direct approach is for the GM to help directly establish the position of the leader. This approach is direct, but I find it particularly troublesome - it takes away from party autonomy and establishes one player as different in a way that often creates issues in my view.
* Structured parties that have specific roles defined often establish a leadership position. This works well, but I find that parties defined in a more traditional manner (as opposed to through a party template or other structuring mechanism) have difficulty with this model.
* One approach that I really like is the character who acts as a mentor figure (I sometimes call this the "father knows best" character), guiding the other characters through advice and mentoring. This model doesn't work with all of the methods outlined above, but it can be a very soft approach that ruffles fewer feathers in execution.
* Nominating one character as a questing knight figure can be an effective approach. This approach combines a number of different options, but can be a useful tool that simultaneously allows a player to be spotlighted while establishing clear leadership for a party (and this appraoch can be used to move leadership around a party).
* Some systems have firm mechanics for establishing leadership within a party. I'm not a huge fan of this appraoch, but many systems with social conflict systems handle this appraoch well.
Gotchas
-------
A few potential snags can disrupt in-game leaders and really need to be addressed head on if they begin to emerge:
* Some characters lend themselves to becoming petty dictators (heck, some players tend to guide characters this way even if the character wouldn't normally display that type of trait), moving from leading the part to lording their "power" over the other players.
* Some characters just don't want to be led and will rebel at the merest sign of an established power structure (again, some players drive this above and beyond how their characters would act), undermining the leader and creating drama that may not aid the narrative.
* Some leaders overwhelm the more muted characters, creating a situation where they withdraw further rather than get an opportunity to shine.
* Similar to the last issue, some leaders are so powerful a presence that the situation turns into a show starring the leader with a background supporting staff made up of the other characters.
Player Leadership
=================
While in-game leadership is the most common form of leadership in a RPG, games are made up of people and people are inherently social animals. This means that often, some players will emerge as leaders, some as followers and some with less defined roles. In my mind the biggest difference beteween player and character leadership is that player leadership is rarely a necessity in a game (large games being the most obvious exception). Leaders amongst the players can be useful, but the GM has to pay attention to the dynamics caused by such a situation. Strong leaders can help to encourage and promote other players, but they can also drive away or mute other players.
Working It
==========
So after all that, what makes leadership in a RPG work? In my opinion, there are a few key attributes that can make it work:
* Get the buy-in of the players; if they don't believe in having a leader then a leader simply won't work.
* Reflect the presence of leadership in the game itself; in the case of in-game leadership, this is generally fairly obvious. In the case of player leaders, it tends to be a bit more nebulous. Something as basic as addding mechanics reflecting the leadership of player leaders can establish the legitimacy of the leaders (I've used something as simple as having leaders help run intiative).
* Some people are born leaders - extroverts with a healthy dose of charisma; these people will tend to gravitate to act as leaders or play leaders in a game and tend to do well in this role in my experience.
* Having the GM actively recognize the leaders (in-game or players) can go a long way to making sure that everyone is on the same page and helps to reinforce the notion that the players and the GM are all acting cooperatively in the game.
* For in-game leaders, make sure that the character is appropriate as a leader. Nominating the introverted mage who sulks in the corner as party leader is probably not a great idea.
* Allow (possibly encourage) healthy tension in the party/group between the leaders and other characters/players. Healthy tension can help to drive the narrative and create a more realistic and alive game (after all, in real life, no one agrees with their leader/manager all the time). Just keep an eye on this and ensure that the tension remains healthy - if it becomes contentious or personal, it's best to step in and address the issue rapidly. | One trick is to have them elect their leader, if the setting allows that.
Players will accept his leadership much more easily if it's them who gave it to him.
*(of course the others good suggestions still apply)* |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | I've been thinking about this question a fair bit and feel that, for me, the answer to this question has three constituent parts: party leadership, player leadership and how to make it work.
Party Leadership
================
In-game leadership (aka leadership of the party) is the most common form of RPG leadership and the type I most like to see in games. Party leadership can create an interesting party dynamic and is an intensely useful wedge for a GM to play with during the course of a game. However, there are a number of factors that can make or break having a party leader in a game.
When
----
Not all situations work with a party leader, but I've found there are a series of conditions that are most conducive to a party leader.
* Large groups typically benefit from a party leader - largely as a way of managing the number of voices and the activity. I've written on this topic before, but it's worth repeating, in-game leaders are able to act as assistants to the GM, helping to absorb some of the management aspects of a game.
* Some settings are just *designed* for an in-game leader. Military, caper and many other settings lend themselves to having an in-game leader.
* Passive players/characters can force the need for an in-game leader, someone who can provide voice to these more passive characters (though this carries some dangers of keeping more passive voices quiet).
* During a character spotlight (whether a session or an arc), it's very natural for the spotlight character to become a leader. While not a leader in the traditional sense, the spotlight role does have many of the same characteristics of an in-game leader.
Methods
-------
There are a few basic approaches to acting as in-game leader that provide basic models for in-game leaders:
* Good ol' fashioned dicatorship is the simplest in my view. Simply having someone who is acknowledged as the leader and has some form of vested authority solves a great many problems, though it can seem out of place in some settings.
* Democracies where players vote on their path forward always seem popular, but I rarely see this model work in practice. It's time consuming, a bit annoying (and has a tendency to turn games into a non-stop series of debates) and tends to create power plays that hurt the concept of a unified leadership.
* Leadership by concensus, with one character acting as the vocie of the party. This model arises surprisingly often in games and is a very natural form of in-game leadership.
* The emergence of a de facto leader is about as common as the leadership by concensus model and is the model I most often fall into when I get to play in a game.
Techniques
----------
So how does an in-game leader get established in a given game? There are a few different models that work well in establishing a leader (I've not included the raw assumption of power option) in my experience:
* The most direct approach is for the GM to help directly establish the position of the leader. This approach is direct, but I find it particularly troublesome - it takes away from party autonomy and establishes one player as different in a way that often creates issues in my view.
* Structured parties that have specific roles defined often establish a leadership position. This works well, but I find that parties defined in a more traditional manner (as opposed to through a party template or other structuring mechanism) have difficulty with this model.
* One approach that I really like is the character who acts as a mentor figure (I sometimes call this the "father knows best" character), guiding the other characters through advice and mentoring. This model doesn't work with all of the methods outlined above, but it can be a very soft approach that ruffles fewer feathers in execution.
* Nominating one character as a questing knight figure can be an effective approach. This approach combines a number of different options, but can be a useful tool that simultaneously allows a player to be spotlighted while establishing clear leadership for a party (and this appraoch can be used to move leadership around a party).
* Some systems have firm mechanics for establishing leadership within a party. I'm not a huge fan of this appraoch, but many systems with social conflict systems handle this appraoch well.
Gotchas
-------
A few potential snags can disrupt in-game leaders and really need to be addressed head on if they begin to emerge:
* Some characters lend themselves to becoming petty dictators (heck, some players tend to guide characters this way even if the character wouldn't normally display that type of trait), moving from leading the part to lording their "power" over the other players.
* Some characters just don't want to be led and will rebel at the merest sign of an established power structure (again, some players drive this above and beyond how their characters would act), undermining the leader and creating drama that may not aid the narrative.
* Some leaders overwhelm the more muted characters, creating a situation where they withdraw further rather than get an opportunity to shine.
* Similar to the last issue, some leaders are so powerful a presence that the situation turns into a show starring the leader with a background supporting staff made up of the other characters.
Player Leadership
=================
While in-game leadership is the most common form of leadership in a RPG, games are made up of people and people are inherently social animals. This means that often, some players will emerge as leaders, some as followers and some with less defined roles. In my mind the biggest difference beteween player and character leadership is that player leadership is rarely a necessity in a game (large games being the most obvious exception). Leaders amongst the players can be useful, but the GM has to pay attention to the dynamics caused by such a situation. Strong leaders can help to encourage and promote other players, but they can also drive away or mute other players.
Working It
==========
So after all that, what makes leadership in a RPG work? In my opinion, there are a few key attributes that can make it work:
* Get the buy-in of the players; if they don't believe in having a leader then a leader simply won't work.
* Reflect the presence of leadership in the game itself; in the case of in-game leadership, this is generally fairly obvious. In the case of player leaders, it tends to be a bit more nebulous. Something as basic as addding mechanics reflecting the leadership of player leaders can establish the legitimacy of the leaders (I've used something as simple as having leaders help run intiative).
* Some people are born leaders - extroverts with a healthy dose of charisma; these people will tend to gravitate to act as leaders or play leaders in a game and tend to do well in this role in my experience.
* Having the GM actively recognize the leaders (in-game or players) can go a long way to making sure that everyone is on the same page and helps to reinforce the notion that the players and the GM are all acting cooperatively in the game.
* For in-game leaders, make sure that the character is appropriate as a leader. Nominating the introverted mage who sulks in the corner as party leader is probably not a great idea.
* Allow (possibly encourage) healthy tension in the party/group between the leaders and other characters/players. Healthy tension can help to drive the narrative and create a more realistic and alive game (after all, in real life, no one agrees with their leader/manager all the time). Just keep an eye on this and ensure that the tension remains healthy - if it becomes contentious or personal, it's best to step in and address the issue rapidly. | I find that a related problem is that players are a lot smarter than their characters. They will also take 15 minutes in Real Life to debate whether to open the chest. And so you have to decide: are you playing to min/max and get the loot or are you there to focus on fun and roleplaying? (Neither is right nor wrong, but I find when it comes to Monty Hauling, good tactics is always the leader and there's no problem.)
So if you're focusing on role-playing style and a leader...
I have found the solution to this problem (over analyzing in the meta) is arrived at through good role-playing. Make the party leader the Paladin and give the Paladin to "that guy" in the group (you know the one I mean) who leads by his station. Encourage the players to respect his social position, but talk behind his back. Make sure they make decisions in a game-timely-manner. In short, make the *characters* experience interpersonal conflict and not the players.
It takes a little effort to switch gears, but some of the most hilarious moments I have had were when the *characters* bickered. Once, I (as DM) said, "In the middle of the room is a pillar with a giant chest on top, laden with gold. A mysterious magical light casts a luminous glow around it from above—" The impulsive rogue, interrupting my description of the room, picked up his 20 sider. Player #2 yelled (in character) "DUCK!" and he was so into the game he almost threw player #3 out of his chair onto the floor out of instinct.
So long as the DM honors the unwritten contract "try not to kill the players," not going along with the group can add to the experience. I find most players start to understand the unwritten code of things, like "If I run off in this direction, we separate the party and then it's half as fun for everybody." So they stop doing that. Most people can find the right way to be just rebellious enough to not ruin it.
Another time the party was getting wrecked by this Hydra growing heads. So the Sorcerer said, "I'm dropping lightning bolt." I pointed out the old school lightning bolt+water=fireball rule and warned him the entire party (which foolishly charged into the water) would also get zapped. The whole table held its breathe as he considered it briefly and said "we gotta kill this thing." He literally saved the entire party from a wipe, but no character ever forgot that Mork thought they were expendable, even when that's not the truth of the situation. That's Epic story right there.
The best part is I didn't plan a second of it. They rush in, made a bad situation worse, and he pulled it off—and they never forgave him. Ah the memories. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | Games are a great way to teach complex subjects. Have you considered using a setting where the player characters are in a hierarchical organization?
I learned how to handle this as a GM and player from playing FASA *Star Trek* and *Twilight 2000*. In *Star Trek*, sometimes I would play as a Captain and lead the Crew on a mission and other times I'd play as a Lieutenant and follow orders. Constraints like having to follow orders can present great roleplaying and creative opportunities.
If you are worried about how a particular player would handle it, consider experimenting with it in the fiction. Using *Star Trek: The Next Generation* as an example, let's say someone is playing Lt. Barclay. He's not a good leader, but the senior staff wants him to improve.
So, Lt. Barclay is given command of an away team. Riker mentors him through picking a balanced team and making sure the Lt. is set up for success -- picking experienced away team members for a mission with a high probability of success. Riker models being a good follower and Barclay learns to handle team leadership. Then, the Crew and Lt. Barclay debrief and discuss the mission.
By extension, the players learn how to handle the table dynamic at the same time. | I find that a related problem is that players are a lot smarter than their characters. They will also take 15 minutes in Real Life to debate whether to open the chest. And so you have to decide: are you playing to min/max and get the loot or are you there to focus on fun and roleplaying? (Neither is right nor wrong, but I find when it comes to Monty Hauling, good tactics is always the leader and there's no problem.)
So if you're focusing on role-playing style and a leader...
I have found the solution to this problem (over analyzing in the meta) is arrived at through good role-playing. Make the party leader the Paladin and give the Paladin to "that guy" in the group (you know the one I mean) who leads by his station. Encourage the players to respect his social position, but talk behind his back. Make sure they make decisions in a game-timely-manner. In short, make the *characters* experience interpersonal conflict and not the players.
It takes a little effort to switch gears, but some of the most hilarious moments I have had were when the *characters* bickered. Once, I (as DM) said, "In the middle of the room is a pillar with a giant chest on top, laden with gold. A mysterious magical light casts a luminous glow around it from above—" The impulsive rogue, interrupting my description of the room, picked up his 20 sider. Player #2 yelled (in character) "DUCK!" and he was so into the game he almost threw player #3 out of his chair onto the floor out of instinct.
So long as the DM honors the unwritten contract "try not to kill the players," not going along with the group can add to the experience. I find most players start to understand the unwritten code of things, like "If I run off in this direction, we separate the party and then it's half as fun for everybody." So they stop doing that. Most people can find the right way to be just rebellious enough to not ruin it.
Another time the party was getting wrecked by this Hydra growing heads. So the Sorcerer said, "I'm dropping lightning bolt." I pointed out the old school lightning bolt+water=fireball rule and warned him the entire party (which foolishly charged into the water) would also get zapped. The whole table held its breathe as he considered it briefly and said "we gotta kill this thing." He literally saved the entire party from a wipe, but no character ever forgot that Mork thought they were expendable, even when that's not the truth of the situation. That's Epic story right there.
The best part is I didn't plan a second of it. They rush in, made a bad situation worse, and he pulled it off—and they never forgave him. Ah the memories. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | I find that a related problem is that players are a lot smarter than their characters. They will also take 15 minutes in Real Life to debate whether to open the chest. And so you have to decide: are you playing to min/max and get the loot or are you there to focus on fun and roleplaying? (Neither is right nor wrong, but I find when it comes to Monty Hauling, good tactics is always the leader and there's no problem.)
So if you're focusing on role-playing style and a leader...
I have found the solution to this problem (over analyzing in the meta) is arrived at through good role-playing. Make the party leader the Paladin and give the Paladin to "that guy" in the group (you know the one I mean) who leads by his station. Encourage the players to respect his social position, but talk behind his back. Make sure they make decisions in a game-timely-manner. In short, make the *characters* experience interpersonal conflict and not the players.
It takes a little effort to switch gears, but some of the most hilarious moments I have had were when the *characters* bickered. Once, I (as DM) said, "In the middle of the room is a pillar with a giant chest on top, laden with gold. A mysterious magical light casts a luminous glow around it from above—" The impulsive rogue, interrupting my description of the room, picked up his 20 sider. Player #2 yelled (in character) "DUCK!" and he was so into the game he almost threw player #3 out of his chair onto the floor out of instinct.
So long as the DM honors the unwritten contract "try not to kill the players," not going along with the group can add to the experience. I find most players start to understand the unwritten code of things, like "If I run off in this direction, we separate the party and then it's half as fun for everybody." So they stop doing that. Most people can find the right way to be just rebellious enough to not ruin it.
Another time the party was getting wrecked by this Hydra growing heads. So the Sorcerer said, "I'm dropping lightning bolt." I pointed out the old school lightning bolt+water=fireball rule and warned him the entire party (which foolishly charged into the water) would also get zapped. The whole table held its breathe as he considered it briefly and said "we gotta kill this thing." He literally saved the entire party from a wipe, but no character ever forgot that Mork thought they were expendable, even when that's not the truth of the situation. That's Epic story right there.
The best part is I didn't plan a second of it. They rush in, made a bad situation worse, and he pulled it off—and they never forgave him. Ah the memories. | One trick is to have them elect their leader, if the setting allows that.
Players will accept his leadership much more easily if it's them who gave it to him.
*(of course the others good suggestions still apply)* |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | I have extensive experience with this style, having been the GM, "party leader", and under a "party leader". I will describe the situation where the "party leader" player makes real game decisions for the group.
We first came to the idea of having party leaders as a way of managing large games. It can be extremely difficult for a group of 12+ players to work together and come to a timely decision; in this case a party leader may help the situation.
The foremost thing that has to be said about having a party leader is that the **player must be a good leader** in and *out* of RPGs. Every time I've seen this be successful the player has had some prior leadership experience such as business executive, technical lead, or non commissioned officer. The skills that are required to be a good leader in a game are the same as in most other situations: giving clear direction, motivating others, listening to those you work with. I'm not going to try to write a book on leadership here, there are many many books written on the subject already.
The party leader should not be a tyrant at the table, even if the character might be. The player should give general direction and resolve the questions that need immediate answers such as *do we go left or right*, but should not micromanage other players. He needs to trust their competence and allow them to make mechanical and roleplaying decisions for themselves. If the party leader sends the rogue to scout the enemy stronghold, the rogue still gets to decide how he does that. He also needs to take good ideas from other players. When making a big decisions he should poll the group before making decisions.
It is OK to have RP conflicts if you have a party leader, in fact it can be one of the more entertaining aspects of the style as long as people can separate their character's emotions from their own. In one game where we played a mercenary adventuring company there was the often good-natured conflict between characters and leadership, which was countered with "This is not a democracy!", which was in our social contract and company charter.
**Being on the same page is critically important.** The leader should know his limits and the players should know theirs. An explicit social contract can be a great tool for this, as has been written about here and elsewhere often enough.
The party leader should also be a help to the GM at the table. Duties such as maintaining the initiative order and calling the table to attention often fall to the party leader, freeing up the GM to focus on the NPCs and other matters.
All this said, it can go wrong, and people can get their feelings hurt. Everyone needs to sign on to the style of game, and have the emotional maturity to follow leadership. Both the GM and the party leader should keep a close eye on the player's attitudes and act quickly out of character to defuse any conflicts. There are also some players who naturally chafe at leadership, and are likely never to be comfortable in this style of game. | First of all, there's a huge difference between being the leader of the characters' party and being the leader of the players. In your question and in your answer, it seems that you've mixed them. As such is the case, I will try to address both subjects in my answer, but I'll be far happier to know on which one I shall focus.
For this answer, table level means the level of the players around the table, where the players tell the story. Story level is the level of the actions and characters inside the story. If we take a fight against a dragon as an example, the dragon is in the story level fighting the PCs, while the players and the GM describing actions and rolling the dice is the table level.
Leader of the characters
========================
I believe that this is the easier thing to handle, as everything that happens in this level can stay in this level. This means that in the table level, everyone can participate, but in the story level there is a person who leads. This is a huge difference. As such is the case, I believe that the key here is to let the players talk between themselves and after they've decided about their route of action they should present it as the leader's idea or something.
Another idea might be a weak leadership, with the leader having the final vote, in cases of ties. This, again, lets the leadership be entirely in the story level, and thus it won't interfere that much with the players themselves.
Leader of the players
=====================
This is the more difficult part, but again it can be solved. Being the leader of the players means that one is the PM of the players; she is the one who will decide about the courses of action.
For this level, I think that the first thing to do is to talk with the other players and see if everyone wants it but also to decide upon the rules and habits that the leader should follow. This ensures that everyone is on equal grounds, and that the leader won't disuse his or her power. Personally, I prefer the extra vote kind of rule, meaning that the leader has an extra vote in times of ties between the players ("2 wanna go south, 2 wanna go west, so the leader is the decider").
In addition to that, though, the leader should try as much as she can to make sure that everyone is having fun. If someone is bored, it is her duty to make sure that this bored player will participate. In a nutshell, the leader should act as a lesser GM in this particular matter.
Rebellions
==========
I believe that this deserves a section of its own. As I see it, rebellions in the party, be they in the story level or in the table level, should be discussed beforehand. Rebellions can be seen as a revenge act, or as a way of saying that one doesn't like the leader or something, and this can lead to much hard feelings between the players if it goes out of hand. Due to this reason, I truly believe that they should be discussed beforehand.
Addendum
========
A few things to keep in mind that just didn't fit anywhere else:
Firstly, one should keep in mind that the leaders in the table level and the story level don't have to be the same one. If Bob wants his character to lead the players' characters and Lisa wants to lead the players, they don't have to be the same.
Secondly, there doesn't have to be a leader in the table level in order to have one in the story level, and vice versa. They usually coexist but it is not mandatory. Bob's character can lead the PCs without the need for Lisa to lead the players or vice versa.
Lastly, the players can and should switch leaders if they don't enjoy the leadership of a certain player and the characters can switch their leader too should the PCs' leader prove not good enough or the like. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | Games are a great way to teach complex subjects. Have you considered using a setting where the player characters are in a hierarchical organization?
I learned how to handle this as a GM and player from playing FASA *Star Trek* and *Twilight 2000*. In *Star Trek*, sometimes I would play as a Captain and lead the Crew on a mission and other times I'd play as a Lieutenant and follow orders. Constraints like having to follow orders can present great roleplaying and creative opportunities.
If you are worried about how a particular player would handle it, consider experimenting with it in the fiction. Using *Star Trek: The Next Generation* as an example, let's say someone is playing Lt. Barclay. He's not a good leader, but the senior staff wants him to improve.
So, Lt. Barclay is given command of an away team. Riker mentors him through picking a balanced team and making sure the Lt. is set up for success -- picking experienced away team members for a mission with a high probability of success. Riker models being a good follower and Barclay learns to handle team leadership. Then, the Crew and Lt. Barclay debrief and discuss the mission.
By extension, the players learn how to handle the table dynamic at the same time. | Besides all the great answers already given, I think I have an idea to add to this -- maybe it will prove useful to some. (I seriously hope I'm not duplicating anyone: I read/skimmed all the answers, but even so I might have missed a paragraph or sentence. Should that be the case, sorry.) So:
Superficial hierarchy
---------------------
So, there's a group of PCs. One of them is a leader, because they're all part of a military task group or something. Be the leader strong or weak, she's practically in an elevated position, which, as you say in your Q, is not welcome by some players. A solution is to introduce, either overtly or covertly, secondary hierarchies that raise the other PCs' status as well to that of the obvious leader. How do you do that, and what do I mean by that?
Let me answer with examples:
The group plays soldiers, three grunts and a sarge. The sarge is the leader, obviously: the military background provides the primary hierarchy. However, unknown to everyone else, one of the PCs (one who has trouble playing a subordinate) is a spy, who has to report on his group's activities regularly, and might be / might have been commanded (by NPCs) to sabotage this and that subtly, or even to revolt and act openly against the party. But this latter moment will possibly never come - or perhaps only during the great showdown of the campaign. Till then, he's supposed and ordered to play along with the sarge's organization. This option empowers the player playing the spy: he's not a simple subordinate, he's a sleeper agent.
In the same group, another grunt (whose PC also dislikes being a simple underling) is also an agent -- but he works for the counter-intelligence of the sarge's army, and knows that *one* of the other grunts is a spy. He's not sure, though, and has been told (by NPCs) to play along even if he uncovers the identity of the enemy agent, because that way his superiors could feed false information to the enemy. This PC is, in fact, a higher ranking officer than the sarge... but he's not allowed to reveal this, only under the direst of circumstances. Yet again, this empowers the player playing this character.
Still in the same group, the third grunt, whose player has no trouble playing a simple grunt, an underling, is... :drumroll: just a grunt. But you're a twisted GM, so you decide in secret that he's a lost bastard of the King -- and an heir to the throne, should anything happen to the prince. Practically nobody knows this. Yet. However, one day, the now distinguished group is assigned on top secret guard duty: they must escort the sickly prince out of a besieged city... and the spy receives a secret order.
I hope the example is good enough illustration of secondary hierarchies. Use such hiearchies to fine-tune and balance out the inequalities present in the apparent, primary hiearchy - but do so subtly, planning for the long run, discussing the options with the concerned players (possibly in private, if you feel that necessary.) |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | While some groups may accept an authoritarian structure, my experience has been that, for most groups, it is better to recognize that, even though one *character* is in charge in-game, all of the *players* are still equal out-of-game. So you and I would still be able to discuss plans or decisions out of game, even if my character must obey your character without question in game. | Games are a great way to teach complex subjects. Have you considered using a setting where the player characters are in a hierarchical organization?
I learned how to handle this as a GM and player from playing FASA *Star Trek* and *Twilight 2000*. In *Star Trek*, sometimes I would play as a Captain and lead the Crew on a mission and other times I'd play as a Lieutenant and follow orders. Constraints like having to follow orders can present great roleplaying and creative opportunities.
If you are worried about how a particular player would handle it, consider experimenting with it in the fiction. Using *Star Trek: The Next Generation* as an example, let's say someone is playing Lt. Barclay. He's not a good leader, but the senior staff wants him to improve.
So, Lt. Barclay is given command of an away team. Riker mentors him through picking a balanced team and making sure the Lt. is set up for success -- picking experienced away team members for a mission with a high probability of success. Riker models being a good follower and Barclay learns to handle team leadership. Then, the Crew and Lt. Barclay debrief and discuss the mission.
By extension, the players learn how to handle the table dynamic at the same time. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | While some groups may accept an authoritarian structure, my experience has been that, for most groups, it is better to recognize that, even though one *character* is in charge in-game, all of the *players* are still equal out-of-game. So you and I would still be able to discuss plans or decisions out of game, even if my character must obey your character without question in game. | I have extensive experience with this style, having been the GM, "party leader", and under a "party leader". I will describe the situation where the "party leader" player makes real game decisions for the group.
We first came to the idea of having party leaders as a way of managing large games. It can be extremely difficult for a group of 12+ players to work together and come to a timely decision; in this case a party leader may help the situation.
The foremost thing that has to be said about having a party leader is that the **player must be a good leader** in and *out* of RPGs. Every time I've seen this be successful the player has had some prior leadership experience such as business executive, technical lead, or non commissioned officer. The skills that are required to be a good leader in a game are the same as in most other situations: giving clear direction, motivating others, listening to those you work with. I'm not going to try to write a book on leadership here, there are many many books written on the subject already.
The party leader should not be a tyrant at the table, even if the character might be. The player should give general direction and resolve the questions that need immediate answers such as *do we go left or right*, but should not micromanage other players. He needs to trust their competence and allow them to make mechanical and roleplaying decisions for themselves. If the party leader sends the rogue to scout the enemy stronghold, the rogue still gets to decide how he does that. He also needs to take good ideas from other players. When making a big decisions he should poll the group before making decisions.
It is OK to have RP conflicts if you have a party leader, in fact it can be one of the more entertaining aspects of the style as long as people can separate their character's emotions from their own. In one game where we played a mercenary adventuring company there was the often good-natured conflict between characters and leadership, which was countered with "This is not a democracy!", which was in our social contract and company charter.
**Being on the same page is critically important.** The leader should know his limits and the players should know theirs. An explicit social contract can be a great tool for this, as has been written about here and elsewhere often enough.
The party leader should also be a help to the GM at the table. Duties such as maintaining the initiative order and calling the table to attention often fall to the party leader, freeing up the GM to focus on the NPCs and other matters.
All this said, it can go wrong, and people can get their feelings hurt. Everyone needs to sign on to the style of game, and have the emotional maturity to follow leadership. Both the GM and the party leader should keep a close eye on the player's attitudes and act quickly out of character to defuse any conflicts. There are also some players who naturally chafe at leadership, and are likely never to be comfortable in this style of game. |
38,331 | I think the most natural party organization for a group of friends that are playing a game is a flat one, in which no one has authority over another, and decisions are made by consensus (and if that fails, with votes).
But there are times when the setting implies that the party should have a leader. In theory that shouldn't be a problem, as roleplaying is about portraying people who are not yourself, be they a noble or a servant, but in practice not everyone is okay being subordinate to another even if it's fictitious.
I have been in games in which leadership went smoothly, because everyone accepted the leader. But I have been in others in which players had a hard time accepting the leader, and every decision and step was an argument.
What are the keys to successfully including a leadership role in a party? How should the leader lead and the followers follow? | 2014/05/30 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/38331",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/5641/"
] | I have extensive experience with this style, having been the GM, "party leader", and under a "party leader". I will describe the situation where the "party leader" player makes real game decisions for the group.
We first came to the idea of having party leaders as a way of managing large games. It can be extremely difficult for a group of 12+ players to work together and come to a timely decision; in this case a party leader may help the situation.
The foremost thing that has to be said about having a party leader is that the **player must be a good leader** in and *out* of RPGs. Every time I've seen this be successful the player has had some prior leadership experience such as business executive, technical lead, or non commissioned officer. The skills that are required to be a good leader in a game are the same as in most other situations: giving clear direction, motivating others, listening to those you work with. I'm not going to try to write a book on leadership here, there are many many books written on the subject already.
The party leader should not be a tyrant at the table, even if the character might be. The player should give general direction and resolve the questions that need immediate answers such as *do we go left or right*, but should not micromanage other players. He needs to trust their competence and allow them to make mechanical and roleplaying decisions for themselves. If the party leader sends the rogue to scout the enemy stronghold, the rogue still gets to decide how he does that. He also needs to take good ideas from other players. When making a big decisions he should poll the group before making decisions.
It is OK to have RP conflicts if you have a party leader, in fact it can be one of the more entertaining aspects of the style as long as people can separate their character's emotions from their own. In one game where we played a mercenary adventuring company there was the often good-natured conflict between characters and leadership, which was countered with "This is not a democracy!", which was in our social contract and company charter.
**Being on the same page is critically important.** The leader should know his limits and the players should know theirs. An explicit social contract can be a great tool for this, as has been written about here and elsewhere often enough.
The party leader should also be a help to the GM at the table. Duties such as maintaining the initiative order and calling the table to attention often fall to the party leader, freeing up the GM to focus on the NPCs and other matters.
All this said, it can go wrong, and people can get their feelings hurt. Everyone needs to sign on to the style of game, and have the emotional maturity to follow leadership. Both the GM and the party leader should keep a close eye on the player's attitudes and act quickly out of character to defuse any conflicts. There are also some players who naturally chafe at leadership, and are likely never to be comfortable in this style of game. | I find that a related problem is that players are a lot smarter than their characters. They will also take 15 minutes in Real Life to debate whether to open the chest. And so you have to decide: are you playing to min/max and get the loot or are you there to focus on fun and roleplaying? (Neither is right nor wrong, but I find when it comes to Monty Hauling, good tactics is always the leader and there's no problem.)
So if you're focusing on role-playing style and a leader...
I have found the solution to this problem (over analyzing in the meta) is arrived at through good role-playing. Make the party leader the Paladin and give the Paladin to "that guy" in the group (you know the one I mean) who leads by his station. Encourage the players to respect his social position, but talk behind his back. Make sure they make decisions in a game-timely-manner. In short, make the *characters* experience interpersonal conflict and not the players.
It takes a little effort to switch gears, but some of the most hilarious moments I have had were when the *characters* bickered. Once, I (as DM) said, "In the middle of the room is a pillar with a giant chest on top, laden with gold. A mysterious magical light casts a luminous glow around it from above—" The impulsive rogue, interrupting my description of the room, picked up his 20 sider. Player #2 yelled (in character) "DUCK!" and he was so into the game he almost threw player #3 out of his chair onto the floor out of instinct.
So long as the DM honors the unwritten contract "try not to kill the players," not going along with the group can add to the experience. I find most players start to understand the unwritten code of things, like "If I run off in this direction, we separate the party and then it's half as fun for everybody." So they stop doing that. Most people can find the right way to be just rebellious enough to not ruin it.
Another time the party was getting wrecked by this Hydra growing heads. So the Sorcerer said, "I'm dropping lightning bolt." I pointed out the old school lightning bolt+water=fireball rule and warned him the entire party (which foolishly charged into the water) would also get zapped. The whole table held its breathe as he considered it briefly and said "we gotta kill this thing." He literally saved the entire party from a wipe, but no character ever forgot that Mork thought they were expendable, even when that's not the truth of the situation. That's Epic story right there.
The best part is I didn't plan a second of it. They rush in, made a bad situation worse, and he pulled it off—and they never forgave him. Ah the memories. |
388,903 | Can FSMO roles be switched over a period of time? or do I have to do them all at once, same day? I wanted to move a role, wait, see if anything blows up, wait a few days, do another one.
I have a forest root that is on it's last leg, but I don't want to destroy everything. Thanks. Windows 2000 Forest and Domain. | 2012/05/14 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/388903",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/15827/"
] | Each FSMO role is more or less independent of the other roles. If you had enough DCs, you could assign a role individually to each of them if you wanted, though for a variety of reasons, you probably don't want to do this.
So yes, your plan sounds reasonable.
In fact, I've actually never heard of or experienced issues with moving roles around. As long as you make sure your domain controllers are healthy and that replication is happening as it should, you shouldn't see any issues. | Yes they can but with some caveats depending on your domain configuration and placement of Global Catalogs.
Refer to: <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223346> for how to decide what goes where and why. |
450,242 | As above, what is the reason for needing a memory module on a RAID card?
The card I am looking at (HP P410) comes with either 256MB or 512MB but unsure which to get and why. | 2012/11/19 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/450242",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/146175/"
] | The memory is used for read and write cache which improves the performance of the storage. The basic rule when it comes to cache is buy as much as you can afford. The more cache you have the better the performance of the disks will be as data can be written to the memory if the disks aren't in the correct position.
You'll also want to make sure that the RAID card has a battery built on to protect the data in the write cache if there is a power outage. | Aside from the read/write cache, without the memory, some RAID controllers disable some functions like array expansion. It's definitely better to have it, than to not. |
450,242 | As above, what is the reason for needing a memory module on a RAID card?
The card I am looking at (HP P410) comes with either 256MB or 512MB but unsure which to get and why. | 2012/11/19 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/450242",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/146175/"
] | The memory is used for read and write cache which improves the performance of the storage. The basic rule when it comes to cache is buy as much as you can afford. The more cache you have the better the performance of the disks will be as data can be written to the memory if the disks aren't in the correct position.
You'll also want to make sure that the RAID card has a battery built on to protect the data in the write cache if there is a power outage. | The purpose of RAM on a RAID controller is to provide a level of cache to allow write operations to hit stable storage without incurring the latencies involved with rotating disks.
The RAM on the controller can usually be split between read and write cache. A common ratio is 75:25 write:read.
Write caching is helpful because applications can write to low-latency controller memory with no delay. That data then gets flushed to disks, which are an order of magnitude slower.
Read caching helps keep hot or frequently-used data on the controller's memory so that requests don't need to be fetched from slower disks.
For your HP ProLiant server and Smart Array controller, you will want a larger cache *and* at battery-backed or flash-backed unit for it (aka. BBWC or FBWC). Those improve performance by enabling the write accelerator tied to the cache module. The write accelerator is disabled where there's no BBWC or FBWC available.
See the following questions for specific scenarios and use-cases.
[Non-volatile cache RAID controllers: what kind of protection is there against NVCACHE failure?](https://serverfault.com/questions/401488/non-volatile-cache-raid-controllers-what-kind-of-protection-is-there-against-nv)
[Incredibly low disk performance on HP ProLiant DL385 G7](https://serverfault.com/questions/221541/incredible-low-disk-performance-on-hp-dl385-g7/221553#221553) |
450,242 | As above, what is the reason for needing a memory module on a RAID card?
The card I am looking at (HP P410) comes with either 256MB or 512MB but unsure which to get and why. | 2012/11/19 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/450242",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/146175/"
] | The purpose of RAM on a RAID controller is to provide a level of cache to allow write operations to hit stable storage without incurring the latencies involved with rotating disks.
The RAM on the controller can usually be split between read and write cache. A common ratio is 75:25 write:read.
Write caching is helpful because applications can write to low-latency controller memory with no delay. That data then gets flushed to disks, which are an order of magnitude slower.
Read caching helps keep hot or frequently-used data on the controller's memory so that requests don't need to be fetched from slower disks.
For your HP ProLiant server and Smart Array controller, you will want a larger cache *and* at battery-backed or flash-backed unit for it (aka. BBWC or FBWC). Those improve performance by enabling the write accelerator tied to the cache module. The write accelerator is disabled where there's no BBWC or FBWC available.
See the following questions for specific scenarios and use-cases.
[Non-volatile cache RAID controllers: what kind of protection is there against NVCACHE failure?](https://serverfault.com/questions/401488/non-volatile-cache-raid-controllers-what-kind-of-protection-is-there-against-nv)
[Incredibly low disk performance on HP ProLiant DL385 G7](https://serverfault.com/questions/221541/incredible-low-disk-performance-on-hp-dl385-g7/221553#221553) | Aside from the read/write cache, without the memory, some RAID controllers disable some functions like array expansion. It's definitely better to have it, than to not. |
3,599 | Could anyone give me hints as to a model framework that can be used in the following setting:
The outcome A is dichotomous. I want to investigate the effect of a continuous variable B and a continous variable C on A in a longitudinal setting. So far so good.
The problem is that C depends on B, in that values of B above a threshold (Unfortunately we do not know the threshold and the threshold itself might not be constant over time) will change C. The change in C will furthermore reduce B in the next measurement.
How can I decipher the isolated effect og B and C on A?
Would a mixed-logistic-regression model be OK?
ie;t=time
A~B\*t+C\*t+B\*C\*t
Any other ideas?
//M | 2010/10/14 | [
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3599",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com",
"https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1291/"
] | Not easy at all. This starts to sound like the sort of thing that [Jamie Robins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Robins) and colleagues have done a lot of work on. To quote the start of the abstract of one of their papers:
"*In observational studies with exposures or treatments that vary over time, standard approaches for adjustment of confounding are biased when there exist time-dependent confounders that are also affected by previous treatment.*"
(Robins JM, Hernán MA, Brumback B. Marginal Structural Models and Causal Inference in Epidemiology. *Epidemiology* 2000;11:550-560. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3703997>)
In their example, low CD4 count means you're more likely to get anti-HIV drugs, which (hopefully) increase your CD4 count. Sounds very much like your setting.
There's been a lot of work in this area recently (i.e. more recently than that paper), and it's not easy to get to grips with from the journal papers. [Hernán & Robins are writing a book](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/), which should help a lot -- it's not finished yet, but there's a draft of the first 10 chapters available. | Your problem is one of multi-collinear regressors (since B and C are correlated). I would suggest that you look at the answers to the question: [Dealing with correlated regressors](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/3561/28).
The following paper may also be relevant in your context: [Using principal components for estimating logistic regression with high-dimensional multicollinear data](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2005.03.011) |
7,055,891 | I am quite confused with idea of implementing 8-queen problem using dynamic programming. It seems it is not possible at one end as for DP " if the problem was broken up into a series of subproblems and the optimal solution for each subproblem was found, then the resulting solution would be realized through the solution to these subproblems. A problem that does not have this structure cannot be solved with dynamic programming" ([Reference](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4278188/good-examples-articles-books-for-understanding-dynamic-programming)). By taking this in account, the optimal solution for 7x7 board might not optimal as well (even incorrect) for 8x8. So, the result of problem might not realize through optimal solution of sub-problem.
At the other hand, DP is optimization for backtracking problems... if so then 8-queen problem can be solved by backtracking... does it mean that by storing only dead-ends can convert backtracking solution into DP? If so, then might 2,1 is not feasible for parent 1,1 but might feasible for 1,2.
**Update**
anyone have idea that whether 8-queen or n-queen problem can be solved by using dynamic programming? If so then what will be your comments on observations given above? | 2011/08/14 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/7055891",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/121575/"
] | *optimal solution for 7x7 board might not optimal as well (even incorrect) for 8x8.*
Yes, you are correct. But this is not a good way to split the problem. Look into [paper yi\_H posted in his answer](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.115.9993), theorem 2.4, and look at the algorithm description. They divide the solutions into equivalence classes according to the sets of closed lines (i.e. lines which are threatened by queens). The theorem 2.4 guarantees that **once they solve the sub-problem on the particular set of closed lines, they can solve the rest separately and then combine the result!** Very clever. | Just posting the obvious google hit:
[A dynamic programming solution to the n-queens problem](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.115.9993)
Note: this is still *very* slow for large n's, O ( f(n)\*8^n), you better use some other algorithm:
[A Polynomial Time Algorithm for the N-Queens Problem](http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.57.4685) |
42,700,888 | A simple question: I used to have a Braintree SDK test access token. Now it's gone. When I try to generate a new one, I get this:
>
> You don't have any sandbox Business accounts in (AU, CA, GB, FR, IT, SG, JP, DE, US, IN, C2, HK) to generate Braintree SDK test access tokens. First, please create a sandbox Business account from any of the countries listed above in order to generate a new Braintree SDK test access token.
>
>
>
But I do have a Business Sandbox Account in DE ... not sure what I'm doing wrong (as I said, I already had a token).
Does anyone know whats going on? | 2017/03/09 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/42700888",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/523247/"
] | I think their Sandbox may be broken right now. My two Sandbox accounts (buyer and facilitator) have disappeared from their system though I can still log in. Payments are also failing on my test application. | I started implementing a PayPal Checkout Workflow today and tried for several hours to create a sandbox account and app, so I could get REST API credentials. No luck until now.
It looks like their backend is broken right now. |
83,718 | I want to change the photo aspect-ratio, of course without stretching the image, to print them on a fixed size screen.
It is okay to leave two horizontal or vertical white bands around the image to achieve this, but I can only use the basic mac "preview" software to modify the images. Is there any way to do this? | 2016/10/15 | [
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/83718",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/53504/"
] | If you look in the "Tools Menu" you'll see there's an "Adjust Size…" option. This does not do what you want, but it turns out you can use it to get what you need. You can do the following:
1. Open your image and choose "Select All" (Cmd-A) from the "Edit" menu
2. Choose "Copy" (Cmd-C) from the "Edit" menu
3. Choose "New from Clipboard" (Cmd-N) from the "File" menu
At this point you have a full-sized copy of your image in a new window. Now we're going to resize the canvas to the size you need.
1. From the "Tools" menu, choose "Adjust Size…". It should bring up a dialog box that looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n4ILs.png)
2. Uncheck the "Scale Proportionally" check box
3. Change either the width or hight to match your desired width or height at the new aspect ratio
4. Click "OK"
This will stretch your image out to the aspect ratio you want. *Don't Panic!* We will not be using the stretched image. Next we're going to fill the entire canvas with your desired fill color.
1. Choose "Select All" (Cmd-A) from the "Edit" menu
2. Press the delete key, or choose "Cut" (Cmd-X) from the "Edit" menu to remove the image
3. From the "Tools" menu, open the "Annotate" sub-menu, and choose "Rectangle" (Control-Cmd-R)
4. This will put a red outlined rectangle onto the canvas. From the "View" menu, choose "Show Markup Toolbar" (Shift-Cmd-A). (If it says "Hide Markup Toolbar", then it's already showing.)
5. Click on the fill color tool and choose your fill color. It should look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cx4XC.jpg)
6. You can also change the border to the same color by using the tool next to the fill color tool
7. Resize the rectangle to cover the entire canvas
At this point you have an image that is a solid color in the shape you want. To finish:
1. Go back to your original image, select all
2. Copy the image onto the clipboard
3. Switch back to the solid color image
4. From the "Edit" menu choose "Paste" (Cmd-V)
5. Move the pasted image to the correct location (probably the center)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fTirh.jpg)
6. Save your image with the name and format you want | why don't you download some other good software?
<http://x.photoscape.org/mac/> - Photoscape is a good and handy software which helps in quick photo edits, resize, crop, etc. You don't have to go for conventional crude preview software. |
64,162,805 | So I've seen this question asked many times but I have not found an answer to my issue. I'm using phpmyadmin, I have 1 table with 2 columns and I have a .csv with 2 columns. My csv does not have headers and my columns are separated by ";", already changed it in phpmyadmin to "Columns separated with ;", but I still got the same error. Can anyone help?
edit: I'm using the "Import" option of phpMyAdmin to import my csv
edit2: So I decided to export my table to see how the csv was generated. It exports like this:
"1", "1001"
"2", "1002"
Do you know why? or how can I create an csv file with the same format?
[export table](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s9djs.png) | 2020/10/01 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/64162805",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/11745254/"
] | As it says in the manual
>
> When importing data into a table from a CSV file where the table has an ‘auto\_increment’ field, make the ‘auto\_increment’ value for each record in the CSV field to be ‘0’ (zero). This allows the ‘auto\_increment’ field to populate correctly.
>
>
>
see <https://docs.phpmyadmin.net/en/latest/import_export.html> | So, what worked for me was: I exported the table as an csv and worked over that. After I was done, I imported this modified csv and it worked. It must've been what [nbk](https://stackoverflow.com/users/5193536/nbk) said about termination, so I guess in a way that was the answer |
149,900 | The Antequera-Granada high speed line [opened 2019-06-26](https://www.railwaygazette.com/europe/granada-joins-the-ave-network/48776.article). When I search for tickets on the [RENFE website](http://www.renfe.com/), I find tickets up to and including 2019-12-15 for trains Granada-Madrid and Granada-Barcelona, but none after that (only MD rail replacement for the old line). I'm aware that RENFE are often very late in opening bookings after the December timetable change, but other AVE tickets such as Madrid-Barcelona and Madrid-Málaga are available for sale and have been for more than a week, so it appears to be something about the new line to Granada.
Is the high speed line Antequera-Granada still open after 2019-12-15 or is it closed? | 2019/11/19 | [
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/149900",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com",
"https://travel.stackexchange.com/users/2509/"
] | Yes it is. I contacted privately the Renfe official account in Twitter ([@Renfe](https://twitter.com/Renfe)) and they replied:
>
> Los billetes Madrid-Granada y Barcelona-Granada, a partir del 15 de diciembre, se pondrán a la venta en los próximos días.
>
>
>
That is:
>
> Madrid-Granada and Barcelona-Granada tickets, from December 15, will be for sale in the upcoming days.
>
>
>
Note by the way that you can also buy a Madrid - Antequera AVE ticket and then have the Antequera - Granada ticket with a normal train (1h 30' time). | Tickets became available 2019-11-21 (Thursday), 24 days in advance. Thanks RENFE! `</s>` |
198,776 | Does anyone know how to create a iTunes Playlist that shows only songs in My Library which are part of a complete album in My Library.
Essentially I want to see all my complete albums. You can in Spotify but with Apple Music every song you add to a playlist it assumes you want it added to My Library. | 2015/08/04 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/198776",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/6342/"
] | There is no way to automate this functionality in iTunes today. To do so, the system would need to know how many songs were in each album and that isn't immediately available. Plus, what if you have an album with twelve songs and you only have eleven, but you still want it in the list. Or what about singles that have only one or two songs. Are these "complete" albums?
In any case, the only way I know to do this is to mark complete albums manually.
For example, you could put a note in "Comments" like "CompleteAlbum" and build a playlist for all files with Comments that contain "CompleteAlbum". If you want to stay out of the comments, you could use the Disc X of Y, clearing the Disc # for non-album tracks and setting it to 1 (or 2 or whatever) for albums. Then, you build a playlist that looks for songs with Disc # >= 1. It's up to you.
You just have to remember to do that for each album you add, but your playlist would contain all your 'complete albums'. | Apple has released a fix for this. In Settings>Music it lets you toggle between showing playlist songs in library or not. |
198,776 | Does anyone know how to create a iTunes Playlist that shows only songs in My Library which are part of a complete album in My Library.
Essentially I want to see all my complete albums. You can in Spotify but with Apple Music every song you add to a playlist it assumes you want it added to My Library. | 2015/08/04 | [
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/198776",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com",
"https://apple.stackexchange.com/users/6342/"
] | I don't have a full answer for this, but I eliminated about 200 songs from my latest Smart Playlist (e.g., 2017 songs) by adding criteria of Album does not contain text "Single". There's unfortunately no filter for "of" field for total count of tracks, because then you could filter out anything where this is set to 1 (1 of 1 tracks, vs. 1 of 13 on an album, for example). | Apple has released a fix for this. In Settings>Music it lets you toggle between showing playlist songs in library or not. |
12,739 | I'm working in a big project, where we're creating a standard software A for several customers and in parallel extending that software for one customer (software B). There are several Scrum teams. The teams, which work on A, are geographically and contractually separated from B teams.
Often we need to have something fixed or changed in A to complete our user stories in B. That causes a lot of friction, because we often cannot complete our planned tasks. We try to analyse user stories to avoid in-sprint dependencies on A, but when we discover a bug in A, we have to wait for the next sprint to get a fix.
Another problem is that we had to chose between long implementation cycles (sprint of A + sprint of B) or integrating mid-sprint deliverables with incomplete or buggy features. So far we've chosen to use mid-sprint deliverables, because we can continue our tasks faster.
Now we're rethinking our approach: How should we setup Scrum in teams, which depend on some other team's work? How can we reduce canceled tasks in mid-sprint? | 2014/12/02 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/12739",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/1264/"
] | Some ideas coming from working in the same environment:
Small Changes
-------------
1) Shorten the duration of iterations for team A so that they are required to ship product more frequently and in smaller increments. Shortening the iteration will allow for quicker response to changing priorities at a higher coordination cost. You're still doing scrum but basically marching towards CI and a more Kanban style.
2) Improve Team A's ability to promote to a staging environment frequently within an iteration. My last scrum team served lots of other teams with integration work. They started off having 1 big promotion to staging every 2-3 weeks where the integration could then be tested externally and consumed. With better prioritization, smaller stories, done criteria, and PO communication the same team was able to promote a release candidate every 2-3 days to staging. You're still doing Scrum, but it requires the team to have a very tight developing to QA cycle. Developers need to be able to write code on day 1 of the sprint and can't lose time clarifying requirements and story scope.
3) When dependencies arise, have members from team A attend team B standup when work is occurring in parallel. This will create a transparent dev-to-dev relationship and force a daily sync on the dependency at slightly higher coordination cost.
Big Changes
-----------
4) Merge team A and team B to deliver 1 backlog. Use something like a feature toggle framework to control which features are always part of vanilla and which features can be toggled on/off for certain customers.
5) Alternatively don't do scrum at all for Team A, do Kanban instead. | **Make sure you are communicating.** Make sure the Product Owners responsible for A understand the dependencies that B is relying on. Work with them to get agreement on prioritizing the items that are needed for the teams working on B to be able to make progress. If necessary, escalate this to whoever is in a position to care about both A and B succeeding.
**Be more cautious in your sprint planning.** If what you have described is a recurring problem, consider adjusting your process. Do not bring a story into a sprint unless you know that the dependencies from A have been addressed and that they are working as expected. If you are not sure, then bring in a technical spike to investigate. Depending on the outcome of the spike you can be more certain about the commitment to complete your task in the following sprint, or if the outcome of the spike is not positive, you'll at least know what needs to be addressed and can avoid that story until the dependency is fixed.
**Have B help out A** I've seen a similar situations where B was started while A was not actually far enough along. This led to the problems that you've described, and part of the solution was to have the teams working on B spend some amount of time helping the teams working on A (even if just addressing the issues that you run into). This will likely take a higher-level discussion, but it is likely a better use for your team than to have them constantly hitting roadblocks. |
60,526 | My friend has an early draft of a math result he would like to publish.
In telling me about his results, I made an observation that significantly simplified a portion of the proof. He wanted to list me on the final publication (not as a co-author, but more of a shout out for contributing), which I was happy with. I don't plan on going into academia so publications aren't essential to my career.
However, as I've thought more about the results, I've seen more and more places where the proof could be simplified using alternate methods, to the point where the proof can be reduced to a fraction of its original size and bears little resemblance to the original.
My friend doesn't know about the new results yet and I worry it would seem like all the work he had done before was unnecessary. But his work was certainly influential as it was easier to make the observations given that I knew what the result should be.
I certainly wouldn't want to withhold my findings, so I suppose my question boils down to how should I handle telling him? | 2015/12/23 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/60526",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33257/"
] | **TLDR:** Well, looks like I wrote a pretty long answer! I don't really see how I can summarize it in a single sentence, sorry... You'll just have to read the whole thing. :-)
---
You are worried about being the bearer of bad news and upsetting your friend, which is very noble, but it's not clear to me that that's in fact the right way to view the situation. From your description it sounds like both you and your friend made notable and unique contributions: he discovered the result and was the first to prove it, and you found a much simpler proof (something that's often not hard to do when you know what you're trying to prove but aren't encumbered by the baggage of all the dead ends the original discoverer of the result had to travel to get to his complicated proof). Your achievement does not necessarily devalue his, and might actually *increase* its value, in which case he should be *happy* to hear the news. Let's examine the possibilities for how your discovery can affect your friend:
1. Maybe your new proof is so simple that it completely trivializes the result, making it unpublishable or at best a lemma that can only be published as part of a larger paper with additional results.
Well, in that case your friend would be right to be disappointed that the result he thought he so cleverly proved turned out to be trivial. This is the only possibility I can think of where your discovery would really be bad news.
2. Alternatively, your new proof might be such that it makes the result seem even cooler, since while the result was and remains publishable either way, the original proof was clumsy and inelegant, which would have made for a long and uninteresting paper that not many people would enjoy reading, whereas the new proof opens up a new perspective or adds a new kind of argument that makes the result itself seem more interesting and would make for a much more interesting and elegant paper.
In that case your friend should be happy, except that:
3. Your friend might worry that your discovery would entitle you to be a coauthor of the paper. Perhaps he was looking forward to publishing his own solely authored paper, where he would completely "own" everything.
Well, it makes sense that the idea of having to add you as a coauthor might come as a bit of a shock to him and take some getting used to. However, if he were more experienced he would realize that having a coauthor has many advantages; **the value of having written a paper with a coauthor is not half of the value of a solely authored paper** -- it is more than that, since the combined value of both coauthors' contributions often makes for a paper that's worth much more than the sum of its parts. This could very well be the case here, as I noted above.
Taking this into account, in this scenario your friend should still be happy, although it might not be obvious to him that that's the case, and it's an interesting question how to make him see that. If he were to consult with his advisor, I'm sure that would help.
4. Finally, there is the delicate matter of your friend's ego. It may be that while from a professional point of view the news you would deliver him about the simplification of his proof is good, it would still hurt his ego and make him feel like he is stupid or inadequate for not having found the simplified proof himself.
This is another example where having some experience can help soften the blow. The truth is, in math each of us has some unique skills and abilities, and one person's skills and abilities often complement those of another person such that the second person is able to see things that the first person didn't, even if they've been thinking about the problem for much longer. This works both ways, and many of us have had experiences where others have found simplifications of our proofs or points of view, and conversely we have done the same to others. So, over time we learn that being outdone by someone doesn't mean we're stupid and the other person is a genius, or even more clever than we are. Another way of saying this is that comparing mathematicians by mathematical ability isn't a linear order relation: you cannot order all mathematicians in a line such that if A stands to the right of B then A is a better mathematician than B. I hope your friend will be able to see that. (It may be a bad idea for you to try to explain it to him yourself though; that might come across as condescending.)
Now, to conclude let me talk about the authorship of the paper, since I keep referring to you as a coauthor. The reason is that it seems clear to me that with the simplification you found you have earned authorship of the paper. Again, it's very noble of you to dismiss this as unnecessary, but you won't actually make your friend feel better by giving up authorship, since if you do that he would only feel like a fraud who writes a paper with someone else's proof. A joint paper would give the credit where it belongs: with both of you, each having made an important contribution without which the paper could not exist in the form it does -- this is something that it's crucial that your friend should understand if he is to feel good about the whole story. Second, although it's possible that you are an ego-less, yoda-like person who doesn't have trivial human desires like wanting to get credit for some cool math you did, I would dare speculate that you not only deserve such credit but will actually feel good about being made a coauthor of the paper. The fact that you don't need it for your professional success is both irrelevant, and, in my opinion, false (even if you don't work in academia, people are *very impressed* by things like authorship of math papers; trust me). So my suggestion is, let's save this kind of modesty for those 95% of situations in life where it is warranted and helpful. | Tell him what you have figured out. Maybe he will want to modify his own proof and add you as an author. Maybe he will just add a note that it has been pointed out to him that the result can also be proven using other specified methods. Maybe he will look over your shorter proof with interest but not change his manuscript at all.
Understanding how a result can be proved is obviously of key importance in mathematics, but do not forget that result that he has proved ought to have some interest unto itself. It can be more important to know that something is true than to have the most elegant proof of its truth, and realizing that a result is provable and interesting is a significant accomplishment on its own, even if a "better" proof can be found later. |
6,261,311 | I need to load an image into my program. I want to allow the user to browse for any image s/he wishes and open. I need a function which asks the user to browse and select the desired file and can generate a string containing the complete path of that particular file. | 2011/06/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/6261311",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/668279/"
] | You don't say on which platform you are working.
If you are working on Windows, the fastest way is to use the OPENFILENAME structure with the GetOpenFileName function as shown in this example: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646829(v=vs.85).aspx#open_file>. You can then use cvLoadImage with the lpstrFile member of the structure.
On linux, I would recommend using Qt and the QFileDialog. Note that you can also use Qt on Windows. | Use fltk, namely: <http://seriss.com/people/erco/fltk/#Fl_File_Browser> |
3,528,481 | What are best practices for managing custom logging in Ruby? Should I be monkeypatching logger to do what I want? Or extending from it? Or delegating? What's the rubyish way? I'm sick of custom hacks for this; I'd like something cleaner, and ideally more elegant. | 2010/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3528481",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/90042/"
] | Bates has a [screencast](http://railscasts.com/episodes/56-the-logger) on customizing logger.
And here is a blog post on custom [logging in Rails](http://ianma.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/custom-logging-in-ruby-on-rails/).
Here are some tips on [logging in Rails](https://web.archive.org/web/20100527042613/http://maintainable.com:80/articles/rails_logging_tips). | There's a Ruby implementation of Slf4j, the popular Java logging framework, imaginatively called [Slf4r](https://github.com/mkristian/slf4r). This separates the actual logging method from the code, and provides a standard interface for logging different message levels. |
3,528,481 | What are best practices for managing custom logging in Ruby? Should I be monkeypatching logger to do what I want? Or extending from it? Or delegating? What's the rubyish way? I'm sick of custom hacks for this; I'd like something cleaner, and ideally more elegant. | 2010/08/20 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3528481",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/90042/"
] | According to my experience, log4r is no more popular (and I don't know why these days I can't access log4r's homepage). Instead [logging](https://rubygems.org/gems/logging) is far more better.
FYR
<https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/logging> | There's a Ruby implementation of Slf4j, the popular Java logging framework, imaginatively called [Slf4r](https://github.com/mkristian/slf4r). This separates the actual logging method from the code, and provides a standard interface for logging different message levels. |
10,728,309 | I keep getting this error when running this python script (that I know runs and works since I ran it in VI) within eclipse.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/kt/Documents/workspace/Molly's Scripts/src/ProcessingPARFuMSData.py", line 181, in
annotations = open(sys.argv[1], 'r')
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'Tarr32\_Lane2\_Next34\_FinalAnnotations.txt'
I double checked to see that all of the txt files that I need to run the script with are included in the specific directory and yet it is still giving me a bit of trouble. I know it has to be something with eclipse or PyDev because like I mentioned previously it works in the other editor. Any help would be appreciated and I can try a screen shot if one is needed.
Thanks,
KT | 2012/05/23 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/10728309",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1413663/"
] | I had the same issue, but it turned out that my text file was in fact in the wrong place, even though it was in the same directory as my python script. I had to move it into the same *package* as the script, not just the same directory (I did this by simply dragging the text file onto the package name in the sidebar in Eclipse).
So, for example, this is what my setup looked like:
* Hello World (project)
+ helloworld (package)
- \_\_init\_\_.py
- hello\_world.py
+ hello\_world.txt
Here's what it *should* have looked like (by moving hello\_world.txt into the helloworld package):
* Hello World (project)
+ helloworld (package)
- \_\_init\_\_.py
- hello\_world.py
- **hello\_world.txt** | Seems you're launching in the wrong dir. You can configure your launch in run > run configurations. |
29,450,131 | I built an iOS app with a companion Apple Watch app and recently submitted it to the App Store. This morning, it was rejected for failing to install. Here are the steps to reproduce:
1. Install the app on iPhone
2. Launch the companion app
3. Toggle the "Show App on Apple Watch" switch
4. The app attempts to install on the Apple Watch
5. Error message is displayed on Apple Watch and app in not installed.
6. Toggle switch in the companion app is set to "off"
Obviously, I don't have an Apple Watch to test this with, but it works fine in the simulator (and installs fine on the Apple Watch simulator). Perhaps it has something to do with how I'm signing before submission? Has anyone run into this same issue?
Here is the error message reported on the Apple Watch (given to me by Apple's Review Team):
>
> App Verification Failed
>
>
> | 2015/04/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/29450131",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4688605/"
] | Have you ever opened the project in Xcode 6.3? If so, it likely set your deployment target to iOS 8.3, which will cause this error. | The problem is that if you opened your project in Xcode 6.3 at some point, it updates your deployment target to iOS 8.3. This however isn't reflected in the project's UI, you have to right click your project file and show contents, then open up your project.pbxroj and search for deployment target and change it to 8.2 |
29,450,131 | I built an iOS app with a companion Apple Watch app and recently submitted it to the App Store. This morning, it was rejected for failing to install. Here are the steps to reproduce:
1. Install the app on iPhone
2. Launch the companion app
3. Toggle the "Show App on Apple Watch" switch
4. The app attempts to install on the Apple Watch
5. Error message is displayed on Apple Watch and app in not installed.
6. Toggle switch in the companion app is set to "off"
Obviously, I don't have an Apple Watch to test this with, but it works fine in the simulator (and installs fine on the Apple Watch simulator). Perhaps it has something to do with how I'm signing before submission? Has anyone run into this same issue?
Here is the error message reported on the Apple Watch (given to me by Apple's Review Team):
>
> App Verification Failed
>
>
> | 2015/04/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/29450131",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4688605/"
] | Have you ever opened the project in Xcode 6.3? If so, it likely set your deployment target to iOS 8.3, which will cause this error. | I had exactly the same error.
Went to the Apple developer portal website and to the devices section.
Then I had to go through the 'device reset' procedure.
The reason being that I had entered a new developer programme year. It seems that it had refused to provision the device until I went through that reset - not that it told me!
Once I had done this, I popped into the Window->Devices (from xCode) and I would see the watch.
From that point on it worked fine.
(I checked back in the device list on the developer Portal and there it was).
Also, if it does not turn on automatically, that Window->Devices shows the UDID that you can use to manually add your device.
Hope that might be of some help :) |
29,450,131 | I built an iOS app with a companion Apple Watch app and recently submitted it to the App Store. This morning, it was rejected for failing to install. Here are the steps to reproduce:
1. Install the app on iPhone
2. Launch the companion app
3. Toggle the "Show App on Apple Watch" switch
4. The app attempts to install on the Apple Watch
5. Error message is displayed on Apple Watch and app in not installed.
6. Toggle switch in the companion app is set to "off"
Obviously, I don't have an Apple Watch to test this with, but it works fine in the simulator (and installs fine on the Apple Watch simulator). Perhaps it has something to do with how I'm signing before submission? Has anyone run into this same issue?
Here is the error message reported on the Apple Watch (given to me by Apple's Review Team):
>
> App Verification Failed
>
>
> | 2015/04/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/29450131",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4688605/"
] | The problem is that if you opened your project in Xcode 6.3 at some point, it updates your deployment target to iOS 8.3. This however isn't reflected in the project's UI, you have to right click your project file and show contents, then open up your project.pbxroj and search for deployment target and change it to 8.2 | I had exactly the same error.
Went to the Apple developer portal website and to the devices section.
Then I had to go through the 'device reset' procedure.
The reason being that I had entered a new developer programme year. It seems that it had refused to provision the device until I went through that reset - not that it told me!
Once I had done this, I popped into the Window->Devices (from xCode) and I would see the watch.
From that point on it worked fine.
(I checked back in the device list on the developer Portal and there it was).
Also, if it does not turn on automatically, that Window->Devices shows the UDID that you can use to manually add your device.
Hope that might be of some help :) |
1,206,141 | Is it possible to use an msbuild task to build a smart device project into a cab file for deployment.
I've seen a couple of pages on the web:
<http://guystarbuck.blogspot.com/#115584006223003606>
<http://blog.opennetcf.com/ctacke/2008/09/18/AutomatingCABFileGenerationWithMSBUILD.aspx>
but I can't believe that you have to go to that much trouble for something that *should* be simple!
Thanks. | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1206141",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/99860/"
] | It is that difficult and, yes, that is lame. | You can use [CAB42](https://bitbucket.org/adambrengesjo/cab42/) in order to automate the build process of device CAB-files. This tool is great when using at build servers and automated processes where it is necessary with multiple CAB-file configurations for example. The tool gives you options to define your own configurations for CAB-packages and executes the necessary msbuild commands accordingly.
>
> Summary
> -------
>
>
> CAB42 is a graphical tool to quickly setup and build multiple CAB files with diferent configurations for Windows Mobile smart devices.
>
>
> About
> -----
>
>
> I use CAB42 to build Microsoft Mobile .CAB files with different profiles and settings. Also, cabwiz.exe is a PITA to configure when you want to dynamically include files in various directories relative to your output as all files must be explicitly be included with a absolute file path.
>
>
> |
17,271 | Baseband version: **I9020XXKF1**
Current software build number is **GRK39F** on Android 2.3.6
I seem to have a pretty much unrecognised baseband version of the Nexus S. I brought mine carrier-free in the UK.
There are a bunch of updates listed in this thread on XDA: <http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1063664>
But there are 2 versions beginning with **I9020**, but they have extra letters on the end (no X like I do) : I9020A and I9020.
None of them match up perfectly, what update do I need/any dangers of using the wrong one? | 2011/12/21 | [
"https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/17271",
"https://android.stackexchange.com",
"https://android.stackexchange.com/users/3868/"
] | My baseband is ever so slightly different from yours: it is I9020XXKI1 (I think; it's hard to read). I upgraded by following the steps at <http://www.androidcentral.com/how-manually-update-your-gsm-nexus-s-ice-cream-sandwich>; I am pretty sure that you can't go wrong doing the same. At worst, your phone will refuse to install the thing. | The correct build was [here](http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespo/VQ8PQk_V.zip). It's listed in incremental updates 2.3.6 - 4.0.3. |
12,198 | I just got a 2000 BMW R1100RT and the previous owner told me the battery is 7 years old so I figure it's time to go.
I saw this video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEBjekqUV9c> and the guy points out that the battery sits right next to the engine and gel batteries deal with the heat better, and the current battery is a gel battery.
I have a regular lead acid battery I was going to use (spare backup I keep around) but now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to use it, if it's going to be right next to the engine.
Any idea? | 2014/09/07 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/12198",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/1149/"
] | A typical lead acid battery require occasional maintenance. As the battery is recharged the acid outgasses. It essentially evaporates. This gas is corrosive and an explosion hazard if it concentrated in an enclosed container. Many motorcycles utilize a covered battery box. They may also use a drain hose to remove any acid fumes out of the battery and the battery box. A gel battery can offer lower maintenance and reduced outgassing. This is important if the battery is difficult to service or subject to high temperatures where the acid is likely to evaporate quicker. So the simple answer is yes it will work providing it is of the correct size (both physical size and amp rating). It may not last as long as a gel battery and may require more frequent service. Be aware that if the battery?box does not contain a vent tube you may see some corrosion in the battery box area. | I got this from Craig Hansen of <http://www.hansensmc.com/>
Stu,
You can put in a acid battery, but most times the ABS system will fault on
cold mornings. The BMW Gel battery doesn't normally doesn't have this
issue. |
12,198 | I just got a 2000 BMW R1100RT and the previous owner told me the battery is 7 years old so I figure it's time to go.
I saw this video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEBjekqUV9c> and the guy points out that the battery sits right next to the engine and gel batteries deal with the heat better, and the current battery is a gel battery.
I have a regular lead acid battery I was going to use (spare backup I keep around) but now I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to use it, if it's going to be right next to the engine.
Any idea? | 2014/09/07 | [
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/12198",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com",
"https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/users/1149/"
] | A typical lead acid battery require occasional maintenance. As the battery is recharged the acid outgasses. It essentially evaporates. This gas is corrosive and an explosion hazard if it concentrated in an enclosed container. Many motorcycles utilize a covered battery box. They may also use a drain hose to remove any acid fumes out of the battery and the battery box. A gel battery can offer lower maintenance and reduced outgassing. This is important if the battery is difficult to service or subject to high temperatures where the acid is likely to evaporate quicker. So the simple answer is yes it will work providing it is of the correct size (both physical size and amp rating). It may not last as long as a gel battery and may require more frequent service. Be aware that if the battery?box does not contain a vent tube you may see some corrosion in the battery box area. | To have this discussion, it is important to understand a few different lead acid battery types:
A **wet flooded cell** battery is a lead acid battery that, among other traits, makes use of case vents. This is one of the oldest battery technologies and is relatively high maintenance because the water in the battery will evaporate, requiring the owner to maintain the electrolyte level.
An **AGM** battery is a lead acid battery that has the electrolyte contained in a glass mat material. The acid absorbed in the glass mat containst just enough electrolyte to store energy, but not enough to have any freely flowing inside of the case. Because the AGM batteries do not have any freely flowing electrolyte and are maintenance free, they are often confused with gel batteries, though they are different from gel batteries in both technology and performance. The AGM lead acid battery is the most popular type of battery found in motorcycles.
A **gel** battery is a lead acid battery that uses a silica based gel to contain the electrolyte. Gel batteries are most popular in power supply applications such as a wheel chairs. Gel batteries have increased cycle life over other lead acid batteries but have the drawback of not being able to maintain high amounts of current in both charge and discharge. This drawback makes usage of gel batteries in automotive applications undesirable because both high discharge and recharge rates are required.
The issue you describe of problems related to a battery being near an engine have to do with wet flooded cell batteries where the water in the electrolyte evaporates more rapidly because of the heat. This is not an issue for any sealed lead acid battery, such as an AGM battery.
The only motorcycle manufacturer known to have used gel batteries is BMW, and generally only the OEM batteries from certain model years used gel technology. There is no modification required to replace a gel battery with an AGM battery, the AGM being the most popular type for sale for motorcycles. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | Your workplace is disorganized
------------------------------
It sounds like your workplace is disorganized. If your co-worker can jump on items saying "I've already done that" then you probably don't have an issue tracking system in place.
Also, the idea behind DevOps is that developers and operations are not separate roles. Your colleague is separating the roles. **This is not DevOps.**
Organize *your* work
--------------------
This is the key.
Keep track of what you do and send your boss a status update every friday. This will show that you're working hard enough and shoveling your share of support issues. Write it in a neutral/upbeat tone, not as a passive-aggressive complaint.
Don't come in during the weekend if you're not getting paid. Enjoy your free time. Maybe work on a hobby programming project, to get more development skills that *you* enjoy sharpening. If your boss complains that the support work is piling up, point to your status update that shows you did *your share* of it.
Grab some of the work you want
------------------------------
You don't have to get greedy and take everything, but pick some of the development tasks that you want and announce "it's okay guys, I'll take this issue".
Meanwhile, don't commit to too many support tasks. Do your share, but don't pick it up before you're done with the previous task. Give other people plenty of time to pick up those tasks.
If the support work isn't all done by friday, go home for the weekend anyway. If your status update is showing that you did enough of the support work, then you have no moral obligation to come in during the weekend. If your boss wants to complain about that work not getting done, just politely say that you've processed a lot of issues but if there's still more then your boss should consider:
* Pushing more of it the other guy's way
* Hiring more people, since apparently you're chronically understaffed
Do *not* suggest coming in during the weekend, and don't do it without being asked
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It depends on your type of contract whether you're required to come in during the weekend, and whether that's paid for. But in all cases, if there's a pattern of structural overtime, you need to get compensated in some way. This is why you don't offer and don't do it without being asked. Every time you work overtime, it has to be asked for. That way, your boss incurs an obligation.
* If according to your contract overtime has to be paid for, then make sure you get paid. Typically this is at a higher rate than during regular hours. That should incentivize your boss to just hire someone extra.
* If it's not paid for but it's happening structurally, then it's time to ask for a raise or promotion because apparently this job requires more work than the contract really covers.
* In both cases, get recognition because *you* are willing to (occasionally) come in on the weekend. You don't have to say it, but it your colleague isn't doing that, it's going to show. | **Fundamentally, you are being taken advantage of.** Your coworker has no interest in playing fair with you. He wants to do all of the fun/interesting jobs. Your manager has no interest in changing the status quo. Right now, he has two DevOps people who are specializing in ways that he personally finds quite useful. Your coworker is getting better at the development side, while you're learning the customer base. Changing things over from that paradigm will only make you both less efficient, so he's got no incentive there either. The current situation is all upside for both of them, which means that any attempt on your part to change it is going to get pushback from both (thus far seen in the form of your coworker ignoring rules and your boss letting them). You've let yourself be pushed into this. Similarly, you've let your clients push you into working on weekends, without particular acknowledgement, and with more than your fair share of abuse.
So... what are your options?
* You could force your boss to understand and acknowledge the situation. He's not going to want to do that, because he's in a position where it's beneficial to him to have everything run along smoothly while he ignores the personal cost to you, but it is a fact that your coworker has been permitted to take all fo the development work, and you've been stuck with all of the customer-facing work, and this was not the job as it was described to you when you agree to join. It is a fact that your coworker's unwillingness to do part of their job has left you with more work than can be covered in a standard workweek, and that you're having to work overtime to try to keep things afloat. You can bring these things to your boss, explain that you feel that this is not fair to you, and ask him to help fix it. It's possible that he'll respond well to it. It is much more likely that he'll respond well if you can come up with reasonable, concrete ways in which your current position could be made more tolerable that don't require significant effort on his part and don't require him to seriously corral your coworker. I don't think those exist, mind. It seems like your situation is beyond that, but if you'd be willing to settle for, say, being actually acknowledged for the significant contributions you make (tracking on the number of user tickets handled per week, with posting in the weekly meetings? Something?) and possible making a few changes to reduce some of your workload so that you aren't working overtime by default, then that's the sort of thing you might be able to get him to agree with.
* You could just suck it up and deal. I think this is a bad choice, and working at a workplace where you know that people are mistreating you is mildly toxic, but it doesn't sound like things are *entirely* intolerable (yet).
* You could leave. Find another job, and just go. Next time, make sure that you have "and won't take too much advantage of my nature" on the list of things you're looking out for when you consider positions. There are certainly plenty of people out there who will exploit folks like you, but it's not everyone, or even most. You can find folks who will treat you better. Perhaps you should. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | **Fundamentally, you are being taken advantage of.** Your coworker has no interest in playing fair with you. He wants to do all of the fun/interesting jobs. Your manager has no interest in changing the status quo. Right now, he has two DevOps people who are specializing in ways that he personally finds quite useful. Your coworker is getting better at the development side, while you're learning the customer base. Changing things over from that paradigm will only make you both less efficient, so he's got no incentive there either. The current situation is all upside for both of them, which means that any attempt on your part to change it is going to get pushback from both (thus far seen in the form of your coworker ignoring rules and your boss letting them). You've let yourself be pushed into this. Similarly, you've let your clients push you into working on weekends, without particular acknowledgement, and with more than your fair share of abuse.
So... what are your options?
* You could force your boss to understand and acknowledge the situation. He's not going to want to do that, because he's in a position where it's beneficial to him to have everything run along smoothly while he ignores the personal cost to you, but it is a fact that your coworker has been permitted to take all fo the development work, and you've been stuck with all of the customer-facing work, and this was not the job as it was described to you when you agree to join. It is a fact that your coworker's unwillingness to do part of their job has left you with more work than can be covered in a standard workweek, and that you're having to work overtime to try to keep things afloat. You can bring these things to your boss, explain that you feel that this is not fair to you, and ask him to help fix it. It's possible that he'll respond well to it. It is much more likely that he'll respond well if you can come up with reasonable, concrete ways in which your current position could be made more tolerable that don't require significant effort on his part and don't require him to seriously corral your coworker. I don't think those exist, mind. It seems like your situation is beyond that, but if you'd be willing to settle for, say, being actually acknowledged for the significant contributions you make (tracking on the number of user tickets handled per week, with posting in the weekly meetings? Something?) and possible making a few changes to reduce some of your workload so that you aren't working overtime by default, then that's the sort of thing you might be able to get him to agree with.
* You could just suck it up and deal. I think this is a bad choice, and working at a workplace where you know that people are mistreating you is mildly toxic, but it doesn't sound like things are *entirely* intolerable (yet).
* You could leave. Find another job, and just go. Next time, make sure that you have "and won't take too much advantage of my nature" on the list of things you're looking out for when you consider positions. There are certainly plenty of people out there who will exploit folks like you, but it's not everyone, or even most. You can find folks who will treat you better. Perhaps you should. | I suggest when such a task becomes visible to work on, you tell the co-worker that you've got this one. Ideally in a way (group slack channel? group email?) where both boss and co-worker can see you've claimed it, so he won't decide to do it anyway.
Also, keep in mind that studies have shown that working fewer hours (35 is ideal) tends to lead to maximum overall productivity. Too easy to quickly burn out a little if working more than that. If working over the weekend allows you to grab one or two such tasks first though.. might not be such a bad idea. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | >
> I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity
>
>
>
You *are* being given the same opportunities, it's just that you are choosing to prioritize other, "boring", work. At the end of the day your manager doesn't care who does the tasks, only that they get done and done well. If you want to do some of the tasks instead of your colleague, you need to go and do them yourself, not wait around.
Secondly, you need to tell your manager about all the work you've been doing for the company at the weekends. You will only be given credit for that if people know you've been doing it.
The fact that you feel you need to work at weekends means that something is seriously wrong with your team. | There's several sides to this issues that I've seen and even have done myself. I'll talk about a few of them, but there's more than I can cover as well as variations and combination of things that are far too many for even think about.
Insecurity
==========
The other dev could be insecure about their abilities, so they take the easiest things to work on, knowing it's within their capabilities. They do it to try to impress people with their skills as well as getting an ego boost. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can definitely be annoying or even a major problem if they are literally always doing this. Also, if they are literally doing this all the time, they are likely wasting a lot of time looking at the job queue instead of doing their normal work.
Burnt-out
=========
Sometimes people just need to take some easy tasks to either prevent or recover from working too hard. This will be something done on a fairly short term basis and will go away as suddenly as it started.
Similarly, there may be some things going on at home that are temporarily increasing their stress, so they need to get some easy stuff on their plate to be able to handle things at home better.
Egotist
=======
Similar to the insecure dev, and egotist will take all the easy jobs to impress people, but will do it to prevent anyone else from being able to do it, then show the boss how many tasks they were able to perform, as compared to other people. If you have a point system for tasks, they may even be able to rack up a bunch of points this way, while others trudge along with higher point tasks that take considerably longer to do. This type is specifically doing it to further themselves and/or to hinder others.
Lazy
====
Sometimes you'll get someone who doesn't have a very good work ethic or simply knows their time at that employer is short. It could be short due to a recent move in jobs that hasn't taken effect yet, the end of a contract coming up, or they just don't care and are willing to get fired to get out of the job.
Helper
======
This is the type of person who sees something really easy and to not waste time of others who are clearly better to be doing harder projects, they take the easy stuff. This allows others to concentrate on getting the real work done.
Observation
===========
From what you've described, your co-worker is a bit of a mix between insecure and egotist. They may not be doing this to specifically hurt others, but they seem to be doing it to boost their rank in the eyes of the boss. Which way they lean (as to egotist or insecure) depends on why they are doing it.
Your manager/boss should have a policy on how work is taken, but if there isn't a policy or the policy is vague, it needs to be implemented to prevent this type of "sniping" work. No policy will be able to prevent all of it, but a decent policy should be able to prevent some of it without making people mad. You co-worker may think they are the "helper" type, so continuing to let them know it isn't actually helping will fix this. Knowing why people do things will make it easier to figure out how to prevent them from doing undesirable things.
Some things need to be done in a specific order. If they do things out of order, it'll cause more problems. Make sure people know about these situations. They shouldn't come up very often, but they can.
Not your job
============
Just to keep things in perspective, you correcting your co-worker is not your job. It's the job of your boss/manager or your team lead. That said, you mentioning it in a non-accusatory fashion can be useful. Offer solutions, instead of whining or suggesting punishments. Suggest a better policy for handing out work. Suggest peer programming for more training. Suggest something that'll show forward movement in policy, whatever it may be, rather than negativity. You should be offering these to your superiors, not your co-worker specifically. You can offer them in a team meeting in a way that all of you can make things better, just don't single out anyone. Doing so will not win you any friends.
Conclusion
==========
There's things that you can do and things you can't do to fix this problem. Even if you do make progress with policy, you aren't going to fix every problem. Anyone who is willing to spend the time will be able to "game the system", unless doing the real/normal is more interesting or less actual work than trying to cheat. And trying to prevent all forms of cheating will likely cause a lot more work for everyone as well as while trying to prevent the cheating. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | >
> Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
>
>
>
Frankly, this is just a poor team work culture. Someone could argue that you could rush to grab the cool tasks for yourself too, but why prolong that culture? The team should really have a way to prioritize and assign tickets without creating silos.
>
> The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
>
>
>
Your manager should really care about the long term development of the team's skills e.g. by rotating team members through different kinds of task. Besides the obvious of just moving to a different company, I would suggest to you to suggest to your team to implement a round robin-like ticket assignment system. This way everyone gets different kind of tickets. | There's several sides to this issues that I've seen and even have done myself. I'll talk about a few of them, but there's more than I can cover as well as variations and combination of things that are far too many for even think about.
Insecurity
==========
The other dev could be insecure about their abilities, so they take the easiest things to work on, knowing it's within their capabilities. They do it to try to impress people with their skills as well as getting an ego boost. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can definitely be annoying or even a major problem if they are literally always doing this. Also, if they are literally doing this all the time, they are likely wasting a lot of time looking at the job queue instead of doing their normal work.
Burnt-out
=========
Sometimes people just need to take some easy tasks to either prevent or recover from working too hard. This will be something done on a fairly short term basis and will go away as suddenly as it started.
Similarly, there may be some things going on at home that are temporarily increasing their stress, so they need to get some easy stuff on their plate to be able to handle things at home better.
Egotist
=======
Similar to the insecure dev, and egotist will take all the easy jobs to impress people, but will do it to prevent anyone else from being able to do it, then show the boss how many tasks they were able to perform, as compared to other people. If you have a point system for tasks, they may even be able to rack up a bunch of points this way, while others trudge along with higher point tasks that take considerably longer to do. This type is specifically doing it to further themselves and/or to hinder others.
Lazy
====
Sometimes you'll get someone who doesn't have a very good work ethic or simply knows their time at that employer is short. It could be short due to a recent move in jobs that hasn't taken effect yet, the end of a contract coming up, or they just don't care and are willing to get fired to get out of the job.
Helper
======
This is the type of person who sees something really easy and to not waste time of others who are clearly better to be doing harder projects, they take the easy stuff. This allows others to concentrate on getting the real work done.
Observation
===========
From what you've described, your co-worker is a bit of a mix between insecure and egotist. They may not be doing this to specifically hurt others, but they seem to be doing it to boost their rank in the eyes of the boss. Which way they lean (as to egotist or insecure) depends on why they are doing it.
Your manager/boss should have a policy on how work is taken, but if there isn't a policy or the policy is vague, it needs to be implemented to prevent this type of "sniping" work. No policy will be able to prevent all of it, but a decent policy should be able to prevent some of it without making people mad. You co-worker may think they are the "helper" type, so continuing to let them know it isn't actually helping will fix this. Knowing why people do things will make it easier to figure out how to prevent them from doing undesirable things.
Some things need to be done in a specific order. If they do things out of order, it'll cause more problems. Make sure people know about these situations. They shouldn't come up very often, but they can.
Not your job
============
Just to keep things in perspective, you correcting your co-worker is not your job. It's the job of your boss/manager or your team lead. That said, you mentioning it in a non-accusatory fashion can be useful. Offer solutions, instead of whining or suggesting punishments. Suggest a better policy for handing out work. Suggest peer programming for more training. Suggest something that'll show forward movement in policy, whatever it may be, rather than negativity. You should be offering these to your superiors, not your co-worker specifically. You can offer them in a team meeting in a way that all of you can make things better, just don't single out anyone. Doing so will not win you any friends.
Conclusion
==========
There's things that you can do and things you can't do to fix this problem. Even if you do make progress with policy, you aren't going to fix every problem. Anyone who is willing to spend the time will be able to "game the system", unless doing the real/normal is more interesting or less actual work than trying to cheat. And trying to prevent all forms of cheating will likely cause a lot more work for everyone as well as while trying to prevent the cheating. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | **Fundamentally, you are being taken advantage of.** Your coworker has no interest in playing fair with you. He wants to do all of the fun/interesting jobs. Your manager has no interest in changing the status quo. Right now, he has two DevOps people who are specializing in ways that he personally finds quite useful. Your coworker is getting better at the development side, while you're learning the customer base. Changing things over from that paradigm will only make you both less efficient, so he's got no incentive there either. The current situation is all upside for both of them, which means that any attempt on your part to change it is going to get pushback from both (thus far seen in the form of your coworker ignoring rules and your boss letting them). You've let yourself be pushed into this. Similarly, you've let your clients push you into working on weekends, without particular acknowledgement, and with more than your fair share of abuse.
So... what are your options?
* You could force your boss to understand and acknowledge the situation. He's not going to want to do that, because he's in a position where it's beneficial to him to have everything run along smoothly while he ignores the personal cost to you, but it is a fact that your coworker has been permitted to take all fo the development work, and you've been stuck with all of the customer-facing work, and this was not the job as it was described to you when you agree to join. It is a fact that your coworker's unwillingness to do part of their job has left you with more work than can be covered in a standard workweek, and that you're having to work overtime to try to keep things afloat. You can bring these things to your boss, explain that you feel that this is not fair to you, and ask him to help fix it. It's possible that he'll respond well to it. It is much more likely that he'll respond well if you can come up with reasonable, concrete ways in which your current position could be made more tolerable that don't require significant effort on his part and don't require him to seriously corral your coworker. I don't think those exist, mind. It seems like your situation is beyond that, but if you'd be willing to settle for, say, being actually acknowledged for the significant contributions you make (tracking on the number of user tickets handled per week, with posting in the weekly meetings? Something?) and possible making a few changes to reduce some of your workload so that you aren't working overtime by default, then that's the sort of thing you might be able to get him to agree with.
* You could just suck it up and deal. I think this is a bad choice, and working at a workplace where you know that people are mistreating you is mildly toxic, but it doesn't sound like things are *entirely* intolerable (yet).
* You could leave. Find another job, and just go. Next time, make sure that you have "and won't take too much advantage of my nature" on the list of things you're looking out for when you consider positions. There are certainly plenty of people out there who will exploit folks like you, but it's not everyone, or even most. You can find folks who will treat you better. Perhaps you should. | You could raise the issue that the "bus number" of particular areas of knowledge (the development side) is one.
Bus number: *how many people need to be run over by a bus for a critical peace of knowledge to disappear*
When the bus number is 1, only one person knows it. This is poor organisation for any team, and a **risk**.
It would be prudent that *both* you and your colleauge can write code, and are familiar with the codebase. Therefore the bus number will 2.
Starting taking development tasks, one at a time, and do them well. Gradually learn your way around the code base. Be nice, but persistent about it.
You can do it, good luck! |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | Your workplace is disorganized
------------------------------
It sounds like your workplace is disorganized. If your co-worker can jump on items saying "I've already done that" then you probably don't have an issue tracking system in place.
Also, the idea behind DevOps is that developers and operations are not separate roles. Your colleague is separating the roles. **This is not DevOps.**
Organize *your* work
--------------------
This is the key.
Keep track of what you do and send your boss a status update every friday. This will show that you're working hard enough and shoveling your share of support issues. Write it in a neutral/upbeat tone, not as a passive-aggressive complaint.
Don't come in during the weekend if you're not getting paid. Enjoy your free time. Maybe work on a hobby programming project, to get more development skills that *you* enjoy sharpening. If your boss complains that the support work is piling up, point to your status update that shows you did *your share* of it.
Grab some of the work you want
------------------------------
You don't have to get greedy and take everything, but pick some of the development tasks that you want and announce "it's okay guys, I'll take this issue".
Meanwhile, don't commit to too many support tasks. Do your share, but don't pick it up before you're done with the previous task. Give other people plenty of time to pick up those tasks.
If the support work isn't all done by friday, go home for the weekend anyway. If your status update is showing that you did enough of the support work, then you have no moral obligation to come in during the weekend. If your boss wants to complain about that work not getting done, just politely say that you've processed a lot of issues but if there's still more then your boss should consider:
* Pushing more of it the other guy's way
* Hiring more people, since apparently you're chronically understaffed
Do *not* suggest coming in during the weekend, and don't do it without being asked
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It depends on your type of contract whether you're required to come in during the weekend, and whether that's paid for. But in all cases, if there's a pattern of structural overtime, you need to get compensated in some way. This is why you don't offer and don't do it without being asked. Every time you work overtime, it has to be asked for. That way, your boss incurs an obligation.
* If according to your contract overtime has to be paid for, then make sure you get paid. Typically this is at a higher rate than during regular hours. That should incentivize your boss to just hire someone extra.
* If it's not paid for but it's happening structurally, then it's time to ask for a raise or promotion because apparently this job requires more work than the contract really covers.
* In both cases, get recognition because *you* are willing to (occasionally) come in on the weekend. You don't have to say it, but it your colleague isn't doing that, it's going to show. | You could raise the issue that the "bus number" of particular areas of knowledge (the development side) is one.
Bus number: *how many people need to be run over by a bus for a critical peace of knowledge to disappear*
When the bus number is 1, only one person knows it. This is poor organisation for any team, and a **risk**.
It would be prudent that *both* you and your colleauge can write code, and are familiar with the codebase. Therefore the bus number will 2.
Starting taking development tasks, one at a time, and do them well. Gradually learn your way around the code base. Be nice, but persistent about it.
You can do it, good luck! |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | >
> I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity
>
>
>
You *are* being given the same opportunities, it's just that you are choosing to prioritize other, "boring", work. At the end of the day your manager doesn't care who does the tasks, only that they get done and done well. If you want to do some of the tasks instead of your colleague, you need to go and do them yourself, not wait around.
Secondly, you need to tell your manager about all the work you've been doing for the company at the weekends. You will only be given credit for that if people know you've been doing it.
The fact that you feel you need to work at weekends means that something is seriously wrong with your team. | I suggest when such a task becomes visible to work on, you tell the co-worker that you've got this one. Ideally in a way (group slack channel? group email?) where both boss and co-worker can see you've claimed it, so he won't decide to do it anyway.
Also, keep in mind that studies have shown that working fewer hours (35 is ideal) tends to lead to maximum overall productivity. Too easy to quickly burn out a little if working more than that. If working over the weekend allows you to grab one or two such tasks first though.. might not be such a bad idea. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | There's several sides to this issues that I've seen and even have done myself. I'll talk about a few of them, but there's more than I can cover as well as variations and combination of things that are far too many for even think about.
Insecurity
==========
The other dev could be insecure about their abilities, so they take the easiest things to work on, knowing it's within their capabilities. They do it to try to impress people with their skills as well as getting an ego boost. This isn't always a bad thing, but it can definitely be annoying or even a major problem if they are literally always doing this. Also, if they are literally doing this all the time, they are likely wasting a lot of time looking at the job queue instead of doing their normal work.
Burnt-out
=========
Sometimes people just need to take some easy tasks to either prevent or recover from working too hard. This will be something done on a fairly short term basis and will go away as suddenly as it started.
Similarly, there may be some things going on at home that are temporarily increasing their stress, so they need to get some easy stuff on their plate to be able to handle things at home better.
Egotist
=======
Similar to the insecure dev, and egotist will take all the easy jobs to impress people, but will do it to prevent anyone else from being able to do it, then show the boss how many tasks they were able to perform, as compared to other people. If you have a point system for tasks, they may even be able to rack up a bunch of points this way, while others trudge along with higher point tasks that take considerably longer to do. This type is specifically doing it to further themselves and/or to hinder others.
Lazy
====
Sometimes you'll get someone who doesn't have a very good work ethic or simply knows their time at that employer is short. It could be short due to a recent move in jobs that hasn't taken effect yet, the end of a contract coming up, or they just don't care and are willing to get fired to get out of the job.
Helper
======
This is the type of person who sees something really easy and to not waste time of others who are clearly better to be doing harder projects, they take the easy stuff. This allows others to concentrate on getting the real work done.
Observation
===========
From what you've described, your co-worker is a bit of a mix between insecure and egotist. They may not be doing this to specifically hurt others, but they seem to be doing it to boost their rank in the eyes of the boss. Which way they lean (as to egotist or insecure) depends on why they are doing it.
Your manager/boss should have a policy on how work is taken, but if there isn't a policy or the policy is vague, it needs to be implemented to prevent this type of "sniping" work. No policy will be able to prevent all of it, but a decent policy should be able to prevent some of it without making people mad. You co-worker may think they are the "helper" type, so continuing to let them know it isn't actually helping will fix this. Knowing why people do things will make it easier to figure out how to prevent them from doing undesirable things.
Some things need to be done in a specific order. If they do things out of order, it'll cause more problems. Make sure people know about these situations. They shouldn't come up very often, but they can.
Not your job
============
Just to keep things in perspective, you correcting your co-worker is not your job. It's the job of your boss/manager or your team lead. That said, you mentioning it in a non-accusatory fashion can be useful. Offer solutions, instead of whining or suggesting punishments. Suggest a better policy for handing out work. Suggest peer programming for more training. Suggest something that'll show forward movement in policy, whatever it may be, rather than negativity. You should be offering these to your superiors, not your co-worker specifically. You can offer them in a team meeting in a way that all of you can make things better, just don't single out anyone. Doing so will not win you any friends.
Conclusion
==========
There's things that you can do and things you can't do to fix this problem. Even if you do make progress with policy, you aren't going to fix every problem. Anyone who is willing to spend the time will be able to "game the system", unless doing the real/normal is more interesting or less actual work than trying to cheat. And trying to prevent all forms of cheating will likely cause a lot more work for everyone as well as while trying to prevent the cheating. | I suggest when such a task becomes visible to work on, you tell the co-worker that you've got this one. Ideally in a way (group slack channel? group email?) where both boss and co-worker can see you've claimed it, so he won't decide to do it anyway.
Also, keep in mind that studies have shown that working fewer hours (35 is ideal) tends to lead to maximum overall productivity. Too easy to quickly burn out a little if working more than that. If working over the weekend allows you to grab one or two such tasks first though.. might not be such a bad idea. |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | >
> I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity
>
>
>
You *are* being given the same opportunities, it's just that you are choosing to prioritize other, "boring", work. At the end of the day your manager doesn't care who does the tasks, only that they get done and done well. If you want to do some of the tasks instead of your colleague, you need to go and do them yourself, not wait around.
Secondly, you need to tell your manager about all the work you've been doing for the company at the weekends. You will only be given credit for that if people know you've been doing it.
The fact that you feel you need to work at weekends means that something is seriously wrong with your team. | You could raise the issue that the "bus number" of particular areas of knowledge (the development side) is one.
Bus number: *how many people need to be run over by a bus for a critical peace of knowledge to disappear*
When the bus number is 1, only one person knows it. This is poor organisation for any team, and a **risk**.
It would be prudent that *both* you and your colleauge can write code, and are familiar with the codebase. Therefore the bus number will 2.
Starting taking development tasks, one at a time, and do them well. Gradually learn your way around the code base. Be nice, but persistent about it.
You can do it, good luck! |
151,585 | I'm a DevOps. In my team, we do many "boring" tasks such as replying to client emails that are related to technical issues, and maintaining the system, cleaning DB. But we also do some development.
I have a problem with one of my colleagues. He always works on the nice development tasks, leaving the support for me. He has become pretty good in development because he's been practicing it.
Whenever there is a nice/important task, he does it without consulting the team if there is another one who would like to work on it.
I complained about this to my manager, who gave feedback to the colleague, but now the situation is worse. He does the important tasks without saying that he's working on them. He says that he's doing X (which is a boring task) and after some time when we prioritise the important task, he jumps and says, hey I've done that already.
The manager is ok with this because he already became pretty good at developing while I'm a newbie
I feel very bad that I'm not getting the same opportunity.
Any advice?
### First update
Most of you suggested that I just pick up a development task and work on it. I did .... It backfired horribly. Two clients complained to the manager about delay and the manager gave me a strong feedback. | 2020/01/20 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/151585",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/113757/"
] | Your workplace is disorganized
------------------------------
It sounds like your workplace is disorganized. If your co-worker can jump on items saying "I've already done that" then you probably don't have an issue tracking system in place.
Also, the idea behind DevOps is that developers and operations are not separate roles. Your colleague is separating the roles. **This is not DevOps.**
Organize *your* work
--------------------
This is the key.
Keep track of what you do and send your boss a status update every friday. This will show that you're working hard enough and shoveling your share of support issues. Write it in a neutral/upbeat tone, not as a passive-aggressive complaint.
Don't come in during the weekend if you're not getting paid. Enjoy your free time. Maybe work on a hobby programming project, to get more development skills that *you* enjoy sharpening. If your boss complains that the support work is piling up, point to your status update that shows you did *your share* of it.
Grab some of the work you want
------------------------------
You don't have to get greedy and take everything, but pick some of the development tasks that you want and announce "it's okay guys, I'll take this issue".
Meanwhile, don't commit to too many support tasks. Do your share, but don't pick it up before you're done with the previous task. Give other people plenty of time to pick up those tasks.
If the support work isn't all done by friday, go home for the weekend anyway. If your status update is showing that you did enough of the support work, then you have no moral obligation to come in during the weekend. If your boss wants to complain about that work not getting done, just politely say that you've processed a lot of issues but if there's still more then your boss should consider:
* Pushing more of it the other guy's way
* Hiring more people, since apparently you're chronically understaffed
Do *not* suggest coming in during the weekend, and don't do it without being asked
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It depends on your type of contract whether you're required to come in during the weekend, and whether that's paid for. But in all cases, if there's a pattern of structural overtime, you need to get compensated in some way. This is why you don't offer and don't do it without being asked. Every time you work overtime, it has to be asked for. That way, your boss incurs an obligation.
* If according to your contract overtime has to be paid for, then make sure you get paid. Typically this is at a higher rate than during regular hours. That should incentivize your boss to just hire someone extra.
* If it's not paid for but it's happening structurally, then it's time to ask for a raise or promotion because apparently this job requires more work than the contract really covers.
* In both cases, get recognition because *you* are willing to (occasionally) come in on the weekend. You don't have to say it, but it your colleague isn't doing that, it's going to show. | I suggest when such a task becomes visible to work on, you tell the co-worker that you've got this one. Ideally in a way (group slack channel? group email?) where both boss and co-worker can see you've claimed it, so he won't decide to do it anyway.
Also, keep in mind that studies have shown that working fewer hours (35 is ideal) tends to lead to maximum overall productivity. Too easy to quickly burn out a little if working more than that. If working over the weekend allows you to grab one or two such tasks first though.. might not be such a bad idea. |
133 | Do you consider questions about community management of a website to be on-topic or off-topic? | 2010/07/20 | [
"https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133",
"https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/users/9301/"
] | There are several community management questions already:
[How do you handle Suicide Threats?](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/1031/how-do-you-handle-suicide-threats)
[Where do you draw the line on hate speech in user generated content?](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/1298/where-do-you-draw-the-line-on-hate-speech-in-user-generated-content)
Personally, I'm not interested in these questions, but I don't see them as off-topic since this is part of webmastering, isn't it? | Community management should be on-topic. For example, *[Is there any way to really ban people from a website?](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/720/is-there-any-way-to-really-ban-people-from-a-website/731)* is a great question, and is a community manaegment question.
Obviously "on-topic" is on a case by case basis, but I think community management is on-topic. |
70,982,447 | I'm trying to use Lottie Library in jetpack compose
For animating image, I made animating svg file.
But in <https://lottiefiles.com/svg-to-lottie>, the animating svg file converted to static json file which I didn't intent.
How could I convert animating svg file to animating json file? | 2022/02/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/70982447",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13919587/"
] | You can use [this](https://javiercbk.github.io/json_to_dart/) tool to convert your json to dart. It also supports null safety and complex lists. | just go to browser and type quick type that is the best for converting json to any model class.copy your json code and paste it over there it will generate your model class. |
70,982,447 | I'm trying to use Lottie Library in jetpack compose
For animating image, I made animating svg file.
But in <https://lottiefiles.com/svg-to-lottie>, the animating svg file converted to static json file which I didn't intent.
How could I convert animating svg file to animating json file? | 2022/02/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/70982447",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/13919587/"
] | You can use [this](https://javiercbk.github.io/json_to_dart/) tool to convert your json to dart. It also supports null safety and complex lists. | There is no way to do that perfectly. JSON does not contain type information of the kind you need for null safety.
For example, there is no way to know, whether there are fields that are nullable, because it would be perfectly fine to just not have them in the JSON data at all. There also is no way to know whether a field is nullable, that right now is in there and has a value.
So, you can use a generator, but to actually create a good model, you will either need your own knowledge or you need a description like Swagger/OpenAPI that is not just example data, but actual interface definition. |
10,459,984 | I have a uiview that has all my buttons, that has its controller. How can I include the button view in all my uiviews using the interface builder? The buttons must work when click. The purpose is to increase maintainability. | 2012/05/05 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/10459984",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2514963/"
] | You can create a custom UIView in interface builder like this:
[Loading custom UIView from nib, all subviews contained in nib are nil?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7588066/loading-custom-uiview-from-nib-all-subviews-contained-in-nib-are-nil)
Then add your custom view to other views in IB by adding a normal UIView and changing the class to your subclass. | [Try this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2945910/build-xib-interface-builder-and-load-them-as-subview-in-iphone). I'm not sure that adding UIView in Interface Builder will work, but adding subview programmatically always works. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.