Random Thoughts

[kphoger]

It's especially hard when your whole workload is just waiting for you when you get back to work.  That's usually what it's like for me.

[Max Rockatansky]

Fortunately, I have a couple really skilled people working for me.  I had a scan of my work email about an hour ago and nothing appears to be out of whack for a Monday. 

[kphoger]

I recently took on doing a few daily reports that a field supervisor had been doing before he quit.  I decided to improve them.  Now, I realize, I'm the only one who knows how to do them this way.  D'oh!

[Rothman]

I wish that I could appreciate quiet sick days on the couch more.  I called out today because I caught the stomach bug that my wife had over the weekend.  I know that I should be relaxing, but I feel so damn unproductive.

I acknowledge your work ethic, which should give you the satisfaction desired from making this comment. ;D

[mgk920]

I have always gone on the 'room temperature' water as that which comes out of the cold tap right after one opens it, it was the water that was in the pipe in the walls and had time to reach room temperature.   let the tap run a bit and it is water that was in the part of the pipe that is underground and is much colder.

Mike

[kphoger]

water that was in the part of the pipe that is underground and is much colder

The point, though, was that just how much colder depends on a number of factors.

The tap water in my city comes from a reservoir, which means the temperature of the water coming into the main is affected by seasonal weather variation more than in places whose tap water comes from aquifers.

Then there's the fact that it's more likely than not for cold water lines to be uninsulated.  If they're run under your house in a crawlspace, then the starting temperature of the pipes themselves will be more greatly affected by seasonal weather variation.  At our previous house, we had to leave a trickle of water running when the weather got below 0°F, or else the water in the pipes would freeze.  Pipes that cold will make the water flowing through them noticeably colder than pipes that are better insulated, but they'll also be warmer than otherwise during the summer and may actually warm up the cold water coming to your tap.

[Scott5114]

I was washing my hands and I noted how the cold tap water isn't particularly cold with the hot weather we're having.

That was something I noticed last year, during my first summer in Las Vegas, which was the hottest on record. For most of July and August, the two tap water options were hot and warm. (And running the water long enough to clear the lines didn't really seem to affect it much, so I'm guessing it was coming off the mains that warm.)

It will be interesting to see, once we hit the really bad part of summer (we haven't gotten much above 110 yet), if that happens again where I live now, which is a few hundred feet higher in elevation than where I was last year. This part of the valley is high enough that it's usually about 3°F cooler than the Strip, and 6° cooler than Nellis.

I did the dishes yesterday and sure enough, warm water out of the cold line. So it's probably just the water temperature in Lake Mead, or whatever sort of storage they use for treated water after it's pulled out of the lake.

[mgk920]

You live that close to Lake Mead?  IMHO, that was just the warm soil under the street.  Around here in the upper Midwest, the pipes are normally laid below the frost line.

Mike

[Scott5114]

No, I'm on the opposite side of the valley, far enough away that the water has to go through several pump stations to get it up this high. (I'm about 1,500 feet above Lake Mead.) I suppose it could be soil doing the warming, though with how much energy it takes to warm water I'd think it'd take something a bit more than just that.

A quick glance through some water temperature data shows that it is not unusual for the temperature of Lake Mead to exceed 90° in July and August.

[Max Rockatansky]

I've been watching Temple of Doom tonight.  I can't help but wonder how the Thuggee cultists simply didn't just burn to death from all super heated lava being in an enclosed underground chamber?  That or how the toxic volcanic gases didn't take them out?

Also, remember when people used to complain about Temple of Doom being the worst Indiana Jones movie? 

[CoreySamson]

I've noticed that the biggest indicator that fall has come in Houston is that the water initially coming out of the tap is not blazing hot.

[1995hoo]

How to teach the use of a Venn diagram:

[Scott5114]

Wouldn't that be with and without you and not with or without you? The latter would have Bono in all three sections of the diagram, since

Code Select Expand

x || !x
is always true.

[kphoger]

exclusive or vs inclusive or
[/logic]

[kurumi]

Let's say "with you" and "without you" can be disjoint (possible to have neither or both).

When Bono says "I can't live with or without you", does he mean exclusive OR or inclusive OR?
* with XOR without => dead means he's dead in the 2 non-overlapping circle portions
* with OR without => dead means he's dead in all 3 partitions

Also, none of this implies he's alive under any conditions at all. It only enumerates (imprecisely) where he cannot live.

There's got to be an answer here, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for :-)

[Scott5114]

exclusive or vs inclusive or
[/logic]

Well, he didn't say with xor without you...

[kphoger]

Well, he didn't say with xor without you...

Sorry, but I learned ∨ as the symbol for inclusive or, and ⊕ as the symbol for exclusive or.  I never learned xor as a logic term;  I simply read them both to myself as or, while keeping the difference between them in mind.

[Scott5114]

Well, he didn't say with xor without you...

Sorry, but I learned ∨ as the symbol for inclusive or, and ⊕ as the symbol for exclusive or.  I never learned xor as a logic term;  I simply read them both to myself as or, while keeping the difference between them in mind.

Both of those are hard to type, so they are not often used in programming (and the few languages that do use them are generally unpopular because they're hard to type). These days you usually see them referred to using C's operators for them: && for "and", || for (inclusive) "or".* C uses ^ for exclusive-or, but newer languages often use ^ for exponents (which C doesn't have an operator for, instead using a function called "pow"), so exclusive-or is often written "xor".

* Confusingly, in PHP (which is the language this forum is written in) both "&&" and the word "and" can be used, but they have vastly different precedence (i.e. their places in the order of operations). "and" is so low priority it generally will not do what you want, so I just kind of try to forget it exists and use && with copious amounts of parentheses.

[hotdogPi]

I'm not sure why && and || exist. * should work in place of &&, and + should work in place of || as long as you're using it as a Boolean and not an int.

Now that I think about it, maybe the "short-circuiting" feature where it doesn't evaluate the second part of the expression if it's not needed makes it useful enough...

[Scott5114]

m not sure why && and || exist. * should work in place of &&, and + should work in place of || as long as you're using it as a Boolean and not an int.

Whaaaat??

Maybe if you're playing bitwise comparison games, but a) why the heck are you bit-fiddling in 2025, and b) even if it works mathematically they are in no way semantically equivalent. If I see if($dog + $cat) I assume the comparison needs to know what the sum of $dog and $cat are, while if($dog || $cat) clearly illustrates that it's looking for true/false values.

Also, maybe it's an abuse of the language, but I very often do test the truth value of integers. It's a very cheap way to avoid divide-by-zero errors, for instance, or to do a "skip this operation if we have nothing to operate on" structure. 

Altogether, to my eyes, " if($orders || $returns) " is a lot easier to understand than "if(($orders > 0) + ($returns > 0))" like you seem to be advocating for.

[Henry]

I've heard that song a zillion times in the almost 40 years since its release, and the title never made sense to me (a problem that's compounded by the fact that the chorus goes "I can't live with or without you"). You have to decide if you want to be with or without someone, and it can't be done both ways.

[kphoger]

Both of those are hard to type, so they are not often used in programming

Ah, but see, I never said anything about typing or programming.  This was logic class in 1999.

[kphoger]

We should start a separate thread about each and every gas station chain known to exist.

[Max Rockatansky]

We should start a separate thread about each and every gas station chain known to exist.

I demand EZ Trip news daily.  I have seen the divinity in their loss leader gasoline and the paradise it will bring us all.