Vote Archives

Question:

Happy New Year to everyone and welcome to 2012. A short read of some sites reveal that there is speculation the world will end on December 21st. How sad to worry about things like that, instead, I turn my attention to my part time hobby that's not quite come off yet - I've been messing around writing an App for the Android and wonder whether I'll publish one in 2012?

Results:

Yes - you will publish an Android App was the clear winner with 80% of the votes from the following selection:

• Yes - you will publish an Android App (80%)
• No - you will continue to get distracted (20%)

Analysis:

One dissenting view, but on the whole, most people are in agreement that I'll get there at some point during the year. I'm pretty sure I will as I've completed a set of tutorials on this and read a couple of books, so it's just a matter of starting the project and plugging away at it. I think the first app will probably be quite weak, but you've got to start somewhere.

Question:

The other day I was walking William back home from school and was making fun or something or other. I looked at him and saw him laughing and asked what he was smirking at. What do you think his reply was?

Results:

He'd just farted was the clear winner with 100% of the votes from the following selection:

• You Daddy because you're so funny (0%)
• Michele Bachmann's presidency campaign (0%)
• Selling 10,000 extra synchronized swimming tickets (0%)
• He'd just farted (100%)

Analysis:

Not surprisingly everyone got it right. William was rather impressed by the fact that he'd made a trumpet noise with his bottom and that it was accompanied by an appropriately bad smell. Farting is pretty much the funniest thing to a six year old.

I'm sure most of you will be thinking - like father, like son!

Question:

It's time to go all nostalgic. We go back to a time where men were men and computers had a DOS prompt ... oh those heady days! But can you remember those errors you used to get? In particular, did you know what the difference was between abort and fail in the “abort, retry, fail?” message that MS-DOS used to give you?

Results:

No - I just used to select one or the other was the clear winner with 60% of the votes from the following selection:

• Yes - I know the difference between abort and fail (20%)
• No - I just used to select one or the other (60%)
• I have no idea what you're talking about (20%)

Analysis:

Not really surprised that the majority of people don't know the difference between abort and fail. The answer is that abort terminated the program whereas fail returned a fail command from the operating system back to the program making the request. Typically, this error came up when there wasn't a disk in the disk drive and the program making the request for access to the disk drive would get a fail response if you select fail. Selecting abort just ended the program and took you back to the DOS prompt. Trouble is that most programs that received a fail exited you back to the DOS prompt, so there was no real visible difference to the user between selecting abort or fail. There's an interesting article on Wikipedia if you're interested. It provides the following definitions (including ignore which was added to the abort, retry, fail message for certain errors).

• Abort (A): Terminate the operation/program and return to the system command prompt. In hindsight this was not a good idea as the program would not do any cleanup (such as completing writing of other files). "Abort" was necessary because early MSDOS did not implement "Fail". It may have remained necessary for poorly written software for which "Fail" would have caused a loop that would have repeatedly invoked the critical error handler with no other way to exit.
• Retry (R): DOS would attempt the operation again. "Retry" made sense if the user could rectify the problem. To continue the example above, if the user simply forgot to close the drive latch, they could close it, retry, and the system would continue where it left off.
• Ignore (I): Return success status to the calling program/routine, despite the failure of the operation. For instance, a disk read error could be ignored and DOS would return whatever data was in the read buffer, which might contain some of the correct data from the disk. Attempting to use results after an "Ignore" was an undefined behaviour. "Ignore" did not appear in cases where it was impossible for the data to be used; for instance, a missing disk could not be ignored because that would require DOS to construct and return some kind of file descriptor that worked in further "read" calls.
• Fail (F): Return failure status to the calling program/routine. "Fail" returned an error code to the program, similar to other errors such as file not found. The program could then gracefully recover from the problem. This option did not exist in MSDOS 2.0.

Question:

As we near the end of the weekend, I'm somewhat run down with an annoying cold and am facing a rather busy week. The only thing really on my mind is how long will this stupid cold last for?

Results:

2 days, 3 days, 5 days, 6 days and Longer than a week tied with 20% of the votes each from the following:

• It will be gone in the morning (0%)
• It will take a day (0%)
• 2 days (20%)
• 3 days (20%)
• 4 days (0%)
• 5 days (20%)
• 6 days (20%)
• 7 days (0%)
• Longer than a week (20%)

Analysis:

I've been accused of having “man flu”. Given all the things I've gone through recently, I hardly think it's fair to accuse me of exaggerating the effects of a cold. That said, I have to acknowledge that I've needed more love and attention for this cold than being hospitalized with stomach problems. Oddly enough, I think I've had more pain from this cold that the stomach problem as I've had the most thunderous headaches which is a new one for me.

Anyway, it seems to have gone now and I'd say it lasted 5 or 6 days, so if you guessed in that ballpark, then you're about right and can give yourself a good old pat on the back.

Question:

You're in your office or at home and someone comes in to meet you. Which of the following is the last thing you want to hear after they shake your hand?

Results:

Your toilet paper's useless - my finger went right through it was the clear winner with 67% of the votes from the following selection:

• This cold is really bad (17%)
• I've been gutting fish all day (17%)
• I had my hand in there up to my elbows as I helped Daisy give birth (0%)
• Thbrrrrrt [noise of person farting] (0%)
• I just finished squeezing the puss out of my zits (0%)
• Here ... smell my fingers (0%)
• Your toilet paper's useless - my finger went right through it (67%)

Analysis:

There's nothing worse than having your finger go through the toilet paper is there? Don't pretend it hasn't happened to you. I know you've tried to put it out of your mind. That you've tried very hard to forget looking at your hand and seeing that brown nugget on the end of your finger. Frantically grabbing a wad of toilet paper to get it off, then washing your hands with half a bar of soap to make sure there's no trace left and hoping that nobody can tell that you just wiped your arse with your finger.

There's nothing worse than having your finger go through the toilet paper ... or so you thought until now. Until I've just pointed out that worse than your finger going through the toilet paper is someone else doing this and then shaking your hand. Did they abide by the same rules of sanitation and wash their hands with half a bar of soap? You'll never know ....

Question:

After the ingenious question of last week, I somewhat find myself devoid of creative thought. Result of a long week I guess. This week, I simply invite you into my humble abode for dinner and ask you the question of the evening. Who is going to have the last roast potato?

Results:

Jamie and One of the cats tied with 29% of the votes each from the following:

• Karen (14%)
• William (14%)
• Jamie (29%)
• One of the cats (29%)
• Nobody as it fell on the floor (14%)
• You're going to come round and steal it (0%)

Analysis:

The results are tied between myself and one of the cats. I see you know how things work in our house. Every night when I get home of an evening I have to wrestle my food away from the cats. To be honest, if you saw how fat they've become, you'd think they were eating my food. Anyway, I don't actually know the answer to the question. Last I saw it, the lone potato was being carted away as nobody could eat it. I suspect it may have ended up in the compost bin/trash.

Question:

It's time for one of those question's that's not going to mean very much to many people. Anyone who's been around me this weekend knows I've immersed myself in the world of excavation. Some may say all facets of excavation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Which facet of excavation in the San Francisco Bay Area do you find most fascinating?

Results:

Demolition was the clear winner with 40% of the votes from the following selection:

• Basements (0%)
• Demolition (40%)
• Drilling (0%)
• Excavation (20%)
• Grading (20%)
• Pools (0%)
• Shoring (0%)
• Site Preparation (20%)

Analysis:

So we like knocking things down do we. Fancy yourself as the Demolition Man, eh? Don't know that there's a lot else to say on this, so I'll leave it at that.

Question:

So, I was doing a bit of searching to see where my site pops up as anyone who's read the article about Fanny Valley will know. There are a number of sites that give you stats etc and then try to sell you their product to help you improve your sites ratings. I came across one site that ranked EastBayRag in the top 12% of websites (and that was based on the previous design with the purple icons that you've all forgotten about now). Anyway, it also gave an estimated value of the site based on the amount of anticipated traffic. How much do you think EastBayRag was valued at?

Results:

$0.01 was the clear winner with 33% of the votes from the following selection:

• $0.01 (33%)
• $0.10 (17%)
• $1 (0%)
• $10 (17%)
• $100 (17%)
• $1,000 (17%)
• $10,000 (0%)
• $100,000 (0%)
• $1,000,000 (0%)
• $10,000,000 (0%)

Analysis:

1 cent! 1 cent? That's all you think this site is worth. The majority of you voted for 1 cent. How dare you? It's worth way more than that. Ten times more than that to be exact. I can't actually remember the site to go back and see what or how it was valuing things and I think it was actually saying that based on the content of this site, an advertiser should look to pay $0.10 for a click through add, but I saw something that said approximate value $0.10 so I'll go with that. Five years worth of effort for a return of 10 cents. Sounds about right to me.

I seem to have a long way to go in order to increase the value to the $10 million that's in the business plan for the site. Still, we live in hope that someone at Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. will put in a bid .... dream on.

Question:

As we say au revoir to mademoiselle and bid a fond farewell to the hoards of school kids we had employed on a government backed scheme for free labor (until someone let the cat out of the bag), we find ourselves having to wait another day for the Daytona 500. Well, I guess none of that really matters as it's all in the past, but what about the future? If you could find out what's going to happen in the future, would you want to know?

Results:

I'm not sure was the clear winner with 50% of the votes from the following selection:

• Yes - I would want to know (33%)
• No - I want it to be a surprise (17%)
• I'm not sure (50%)

Analysis:

Interesting, a tie between those who want to know and those who are not sure. Difficult dilemma this one - do you suddenly acquire the ability to see the future only to find out that you're going to get run over by a bus tomorrow? Or would you rather just not know that number 29 is coming up fast?

The difficult thing to get over though is the ability to predict the lottery numbers. Always a good one to start with.

Not expecting to acquire this ability anytime soon, so I guess it'll remain hypothetical.

Question:

So, last week was indeed a bit of a filler. This week isn't a filler, but I need to word the question differently to avoid a duplicate. We're off to the races again and last time I was in Vegas I asked whether we were going to see Uncle Jesse again. Let's put a different spin on that. If we see Uncle Jesse at the races, should Owen stand next to him whilst I take a photo?

Results:

Yes - Owen should stand next to Uncle Jesse for a photo was the clear winner with 100% of the votes from the following selection:

• Yes - Owen should stand next to Uncle Jesse for a photo (100%)

Analysis:

Alas, poor Jesse, I knew him, Horatio.

Although my partner in crime was up for the photo shoot, we were let down by a lack of Jesse. This may be due to the fact that we hung around after the race waiting for the crowds to die down and the crowds were no where near as bad as they have been in prior years. We were out of the parking lot and back to the hotel room in record time. Sadly, there is no photo to post.