stored procedures

I had to debug a problem with a third-party e-commerce system today at work. It took a while to isolate the problem, and when I did, it led me to a certain stored procedure, which turned out to be 7400 lines long. I don’t think I’d ever seen a single stored proc quite that big before. Is that normal? I figured out what it was doing by running SQL Profiler, with the “TSQL_SPs” template that shows all the statements being executed within the procedure. With all the if/then logic in the proc, it was really only executing about 1000 lines of SQL for any given run. Still, that’s a lot to comb through just to figure out why the logic was returning wholesale prices instead of retail.

I also found a number of lengthy queries in the proc that ended with “and 1=2”, which would of course prevent that query from returning any results. I’m wondering why someone would do that rather than comment out the query. It made it fairly difficult to find the queries that were actually executing and returning results.

Dad’s birthday


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Originally uploaded by andyhuey

Today would have been Dad’s 79th birthday. Here’s a nice photo of Dad, having a little nap, probably after eating a couple of burgers off the grill. He looks quite peaceful and content.

It’s nearly a year since he passed away, but it really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. Happy birthday Dad, wherever you are.

The old house

I hit a minor milestone with my parents’ old house today. I have now completely emptied out the attic. There’s nothing left up there except a whole bunch of dust, and probably a few rusty nails. And, since tomorrow is bulk pickup day, I got their old mattress and box spring out on the curb. And a bunch of other stuff, including two Christmas tress and (hopefully) the last box of my brother Pat’s old clothes.

There’s still quite a lot of stuff to go through, and quite a few things to think about selling, storing, or tossing. But I feel like I’m making progress.

I’m still working my way through all of the negatives I had scanned in by ScanCafe, by the way. Here are a couple of nice photos, one of Mom and one of Dad, both from a Christmas long ago.

Death Index

Social Security Death Index Interactive Search

I wish I knew about this when I was filling out the ridiculous life insurance form I had to fill out for my Dad’s insurance. I had to give birth & death dates, and SSNs, for all his brothers, and his parents. (I actually left a bunch of stuff blank, since I didn’t know it, and seem to have gotten away with it, since I’ve gotten past that form, and onto another one. I think maybe two or three more forms, and they may actually send me a check. Almost a year after he died. Sigh.)

Anyway, this is a little scary. It seems possible to look up just about anybody dead in the US, and get their full birth date, death date, SSN, and at least a general idea of their last address. I guess the dead don’t need to worry about identity theft, but still.

Newsweek sold

Newsweek Deal Announced; Meacham Will Leave – Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com

I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s good that they found a buyer, and it’s interesting that it’s not anyone I would have expected. I’ve kind of liked Meacham’s Newsweek. I’m quite far behind though — I’ve got quite a few unread issues on my Kindle. Maybe it’s time to stop the Kindle subscription, and then think about starting it back up again once I see what the new guy does with the magazine.

San Diego Comic-Con 2010

For the second year in a row, I’ll be skipping SDCC. It’s been a weird year so far for me, but hopefully things are settling down enough that I’ll be able to go next year. I think maybe I’ll try to catch up on some comic book reading at home while the con is going on. Despite the fact that I haven’t bought a single comic book this year, I still have a huge backlog of stuff to read. I just started reading Desolation Jones this week, which started in July 2005, so that’s been sitting in the pile for a good solid five years.

domain names

For no good reason, I just went ahead and registered andrewhuey.net, so I now have andrewhuey.com, .org, and .net. And I also registered andyhuey.com, .org, and .net. Several of these domains were owned by a domain squatter at some point in the past. That’s why I first set up my blog at andrewhuey.org — it was the only variation on my name that nobody owned yet. Now, they’re all available. I guess whoever was squatting on them gave up.

I use 1&1, and they currently charge $8 for the first year, and $9/year after that. So I’m only spending about $50 per year on domains. Not bad, considering I can remember when it cost $100 a year to register a single domain.