Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Bark louder, little dog.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

I was promised a recession.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Updating Theme; The Site Will Look Off for a Bit

Reader Interactions

199Comments

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    Strong bold em

    This is a quote

    This is a quote inside a quote

    Why has the left margin for comments been shifted to the right, and where have the comment numbers gone?

  7. 7.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Amir Khalid: Read, then follow instructions. As I said, the site will look off until the initial cleanup is complete.
    Now, back to such adjustments – I’m having to compare the old versions of formatting/function files to the new versions to re-incorporate my changes. This is a painstaking process. Unlike yesterday, my head is not in pain, so I can actually concentrate.

  10. 10.

    Amir Khalid

    The different font sizes for quotes and quotes-inside-a-quote looks weird. And anyone used to hand-typing the HTML code for bold should be aware, that code is now stripped from your comment and your supposed-to-be-bold text appears as regular text.

  12. 12.

    p.a.

    I still say the ‘Chalk on Old Sidewalk’ look is the way to go. In Comic Sans*.

    * Intertubes says there’s a Comic Sans Pro. Oxymoron!

  17. 17.

    Schlemazel

    deleted

    I made a joke then read the thread and didn’t want to appear to have been insulting to anyone

    Thanks for all you hard work on this for all us ungrateful mob

  18. 18.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat: Homer picks on everyone but Toby, hates Ginger and chases him under the couch. Toby hates Homer and chases him under the couch. Ginger Kitteh plays with Toby, wrestles and fusses enough that Tobe runs to the top of the tree and smacks him if he follows. Bitsy will ambush Bea but is generally pretty laid back. Bea just wants to be left the fuck alone.
    The kitteh dramas upset Annie, she seems embarrassed for them. Jack won’t allow any kitteh antics near him, he’s nearly blind and quite deaf, but he still has some kitteh chase in him and uses it to restore local order. Katie is still very timid and runs to her safe spot during any fracas. She has learned to nudge my elbow for a treat and I indulge her most of the time. The other day, though, she was about to take to tidbit from my hand when a remote control fell off the end table and startled her. She ran to her room sans treat.

  22. 22.

    Dolly Llama

    I’ve been out of the site-update loop for a good while now. Did Tommy finally just give up and run away?

  27. 27.

    Alain the site fixer

    Ok folks, I’m going to try something now.

    I’ve copied much of the formatting (fonts, spacing/padding, etc.) from the old site files to a new child theme. In just a few minutes, I’ll enable it. Ideally, it will be transparent to all of you.

    If, in fact things go as they often do on Balloon Juice and the site “shits the bed”, I’ll undo that immediately! Otherwise, that will be the end of the CSS edits from the theme upgrade, and I’ll move on to editing the functions that do things such as the content under a Post title, etc.

  32. 32.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Green text and a missing sidebar probably qualify as shitting the bed.

  33. 33.

    Alain the site fixer

    I once had a very kind photography professor who, upon seeing my latest work on the wall before class, said “life is about making steps and you’ve made some”. What he really meant was that yes, I had made a step, sideways, not forward.

    And so we have green text and buttons, etc. Which we shouldn’t.

    I’ll figure that out. And then I’ll get to work on the functions, extra content showing (such as the Pages, below).

    Once it’s all done, we’ll re-insert the ads and it will be similar to before. Thanks again for your patience or at least for not spam-complaining!

  35. 35.

    The Other Chuck

    I hate to be a complainer, but don’t you have a dev site? Today it’s the theme, I’d hate for it to be the database getting corrupted tomorrow.

  38. 38.

    jeffreyw

    I need to step out for a piss…Don’t touch anything while I’m gone!

    #BREAKING: Boston train leaves station without driver. @tamronhall with the latest details now on @MSNBC.
    — MSNBC Live w/Tamron (@TamronMSNBC) December 10, 2015

  39. 39.

    Alain the site fixer

    @The Other Chuck: No, it was costing me $ and so once the main dev was done, I killed the dev server – no point in paying for something out of my own pocket! BJ dev doesn’t work on a $5 a month server, we found that $40 for a good cloud server was what we needed memory and processor-wise. We had problems with the next level down from that, and there’s no point in wasting lots of time fighting such issues! None of this is ideal, but then again, if we’d charged what we knew it would really be worth, there never would have been an update.

    Oh, and I do backup db and files before doing major work, but that process takes a while (3.5 gb db, about the same in files). When we upgrade the comment system, for 1-4 hours, the commenting will be offline as the db is scanned and upgraded to support it. That cannot happen on a test server, etc – it needs to occur on the real thing.

    So rather than continue worrying about how far from ideal so many aspects of this are, I am plowing ahead to meet my goals.

  41. 41.

    Alain the site fixer

    One last note before I go grab some food – I have a support request in about the child theme misbehavior and will not do much more work until I get that resolved. So, sorry to leave the site without the edited functions, comment numbers, etc., but for now, it’s not worth putting more time and work into it if something major is wrong and the child theme won’t work.

    OT, but it’s so nice to hear “Take Off (to the Great White north)” – good-day to all, ehl! Now to find a toque…

  42. 42.

    The Other Chuck

    @Alain the site fixer: A dev instance for BJ would run on a laptop in virtualbox. The database upgrades would take eons, especially on an old laptop, so using a pared-down db would be ideal — just delete everything over a year old. Wouldn’t be a perfect mirror of prod in that case, but it’d still be adequate.

    Yes, I’m volunteering (and my fancy MBP could do the whole DB), though I don’t imagine Cole is keen on giving any more people database access :-/

  45. 45.

    Alain the site fixer

    @The Other Chuck:Understood. Not doing it at this time, especially as we’re on the tail end of this project. With a background in software testing, dev, etc., I can say that when I setup dev or test environments, I’m a stickler for making things as close to possible to reality so that there aren’t tons of assumptions, “oh yeah, that woks differently in our test environment because…”, etc.I cannot tell you how many times I’ve worked with developers who say “well it works in my environment”!

    Now, off to lunch and hopefully I’ll return to answers from the theme support folks since their child theme instructions resulted in the hybrid default look/balloon juice look.

  47. 47.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Alain the site fixer:

    BJ dev doesn’t work on a $5 a month server, we found that $40 for a good cloud server was what we needed memory and processor-wise.

    You…don’t have a local stack for cosmetic testing?

    *boggles*

  50. 50.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Steeplejack: I’ve done enough work with databases far more massive than the software was designed for that I’m sympathetic to Alain’s POV for back-end testing. But cosmetics like the text color should be consistent from server to server, if not always from browser to browser. Theming should absolutely be done on a local box.

  52. 52.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Elmo: I’m very curious what people are seeing when they make this complaint. What browser/device they’re using, etc. As datapoints for my own development practices, y’see.

    I’ve never seen this at any time in this journey, so I’d like to know what I need to add to my “check how this design looks in X, Y, and Z browsers” checklist.

  54. 54.

    Steeplejack

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    I have worked with multi-gigabyte databases in environments from Access (eek!) up to SQL Server, so I’m not insensitive to the problems. But c’mon:

    1. Forty bucks a month is an unacceptable expense? And I don’t see why Alain assumes it would have to come out of his pocket. We could have raised enough to pay for three or six months’ coverage in about five minutes with a whip-round here.

    2. As The Other Chuck suggested, you could pare the database to a small but useful subset for a test environment.

    3. Agree completely that user interface and cosmetics (“look and feel” and “theming”) should be done on a test box.

  55. 55.

    Schlemazel

    @The Other Chuck:
    Given the miillions JC is bringing in from this little gold mine I would expect he has a DEV a SIT (system integration test) and a CAT (capacity and activity test) environments to go with a team of 50 or so developers. The guy must be socking it all away on mustard instead

  56. 56.

    Eric U.

    @Elmo: that would be fine, but the text being upside down and backwards is really getting to me. One or the other is fine

  57. 57.

    Peale

    @Schlemazel: He had a choice between hiring a crack team of 50 developers from India to spend six months living on his sofa, or 30 cosplay maids dressed like Salior Moon to throw him the party of a lifetime. He hired Alain and Tommy and is brushing up on his calligraphy. Coni Chawa.

  58. 58.

    NotMax

    Theme wasn’t designed by the same people who did the initial ‘Obamacare’ site, by any chance?

    :)

  59. 59.

    The Other Chuck

    @Alain the site fixer: Yah, I guess as long as backups are reliably done, then it’s all good. I’m in the habits of my old job where we had dev, stage, and prod instances, but since the production DB was a couple terabytes, restoring that from backups was kind of a major deal. Ergo, I tend to think of backups as the absolute last resort of a rollback plan.

  67. 67.

    Amir Khalid

    So this is the green Balloon Juice people were talking about upthread. It’s … interesting.
    strong bold em

    Quote.

    Quote inside quote.

  73. 73.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Steeplejack: I’ve tried to stay out of the feeding frenzy over the site changes because I could guess that some of them were tied into reducing load to make it possible to get the Recent Comments back, but I gotta agree with your 1 and 3. 2, well….

    I think I’ve mentioned here before about the efforts to keep a large and busy phpBB forum going. (It was the best forum software available at the time that had some of the features we needed.) The support forum regularly saw threads of people begging for help with the trouble their huge forum’s 10MB database was causing. We were at 4GB at the time and frantically tweaking everything we could think of.

    WordPress was similarly never designed for this kind of database, hence the long disappearance of the Recent Comments. That feature was searching the entire 3GB comments table on every page load. Can’t test that on a subset of the database; I tried. But I’m a self-taught hobbyist; writing and debugging a WP plug-in to do it differently was beyond my limits of skill and available time at that time. I tossed suggestions on how I’d approach it out into the threads, but no one ever ran with it.

  77. 77.

    The Other Chuck

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    That feature was searching the entire 3GB comments table on every page load

    Wow. That’s. so. fucking. stupid. Even for a normal sized WP site. But not at all surprising — I’m rankled every day at how shitty software like WP managed to edge out almost every other blog platform, most of which were far-better designed.

  79. 79.

    The Other Chuck

    @Mark B.: Three measly gigs should not require partitioning. All it needs is an index.

    (and yes, I’m old enough to hesitate a little at saying “three measly gigs”)

  80. 80.

    Roger Moore

    @Mark B.:

    A database that size will need to be partitioned, either through native database partitioning, or through some ad hoc method like splitting it up by time period.

    I think the easier solution would be to convert older pages from dynamic to static content. Posts older than a few days would be closed to comments and converted from something created dynamically from the database into a stored straight HTML page saved as a static file. When you did the conversion, you could delete all the content needed to create the page dynamically from the database, keeping it reasonably sized. You lose a tiny bit of functionality- old pages might stick with the old theme and people couldn’t go back and comment on them anymore- but it would be a reasonable price to pay. AFAIK, this is how sites like Slashdot manage to keep running smoothly even with a lot more content and a bigger usebase than Balloon-Juice.

  82. 82.

    The Other Chuck

    @Roger Moore: “Slashdot” and “running smoothly” is quite a pair to put in the same sentence. Besides, slashdot probably has less traffic than BJ these days after everyone jumped to digg then reddit.

  84. 84.

    Alain the site fixer

    Sorry for issues. I have to leave it screwy so theme support person can take a look.

    ‘And to clarify, in case folks have forgotten, I was the back end, more techie part of a partnership and Tommy did the front end stuff. Due to issues, I stepped in and have been working to solve problems.

    Here’s my thinking about the test server (at this point):

    • Being as I am not so artistic and thus am not the front end designer, having a test site for only me to look at isn’t worth it. I spin up and discard servers when I need and am done with them.
    • I didn’t want any legal liability because of my hosting the database for BJ in case my setup was hacked – the sooner client data is out of my control/responsibility, the better!.
    • the site works (and such things as the sidebar showing below the main content was a weird design bug whose effect showed up one day so would not have shown up in testing) .
    • I did my testing of an earlier version of the upcoming commenting system and I know what to expect. Its initial launch will use the default look, and I’ll modify it quickly based upon user comments.
    • The new site is live and thus no need to keep a test server going/wasted $ in my hosted server environment
    • Having a local test site is great unless you need the opinions of lots of folks, and no, screen sharing is not the same as someone being able to use and play with a website!

    Don’t forget – we had a whole test site, got the ok from John, and launched. We cleaned up a few issues. Contractually, we did what we said we’d do, but folks weren’t happy. It’s been a non-stop series of tweaks ever since.

    Due to the extra work, John did let me know that he’ll be taking care of me later this month so that’s all good. But at this point I’m not going to invest the time to setup a testbed to change fonts, spacing, etc. If that bothers folks, I’m sorry. This isn’t mission-critical, and once this theme stuff, then the comments and remaining issues get solved, we’re freezing the site, streamlining the CSS, JS, etc. files and getting CDN setup to really make the site hum.

    And yes, I have a big list (on the website, so John, etc. can see it) of things you all have suggested, etc. So once things are at a good point, I’ll post it and see what else folks need and we’ll try to whittle the resulting list as much as possible.

  90. 90.

    WereBear

    Don’t let them bother you, Alain! I know how little things can run into hours and about a gallon of coffee.

    And I greatly appreciate all the Juicers who threw me some dough recently. I’m not going to get all sissy on a site rebuild… that all goes to bandwidth, people!

  92. 92.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Roger Moore: To be clear, about 75% of the DB space is comments – 3.75 million of ’em.

    There’s no easy solution here – host comments ourselves or go to an offsite solution. John doesn’t (and many of us concur!) want to do that for principles of privacy, so we’re going to need to go through this one painful conversion step for the local comments in a few weeks, and then things will be good. If we did it off-server, we’d need to close comments for the conversion time because of how it’s architected, so I’d just as soon use the powerful, 32GB-having server with the data just down the bus to do the processing than one of my home machines that has to download and upload the data using my not-so-fat pipes!

  93. 93.

    NotMax

    OT:

    So, for any watching Fargo, did they jump the shark this week or what?

    One episode left; an awful lot of loose ends to tie up.

  98. 98.

    Alain the site fixer

    @The Other Chuck: Last resort, yes. And yes, ideally, dev, test, and prod. But this is a new gig for me, trying to build a new self-employed career, so I don’t have lots of resources that I’ve had access to previously. Lots of experience, lots of skills, want to be somewhere else in 20 years than I would have been sticking with my past career.

    As time goes along and I can invest in some infrastructure, I will. Until then, it’s cloud servers and the like, and not AWS pricing – that’s what I hope to grow into but for now, Digital Ocean is my good friend.

  99. 99.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @The Other Chuck:

    I’m rankled every day at how shitty software like WP managed to edge out almost every other blog platform, most of which were far-better designed.

    User interface. For several years, I kept up with all the different platforms, and I ended up recommending WP for most blogs because of the interface.

    @Mark B.:

    A database that size will need to be partitioned, either through native database partitioning, or through some ad hoc method like splitting it up by time period. It’s very doable but will require some expertise.

    I did take a stab at it, but managing it as a plugin got unwieldy quickly.

    My other proposal was to create an extra datatable, which is something that many WP plugins do, that would hold the Recent Comments data and would be updated with each new comment. The plugin would only query that datatable on page load. Again, my hobbyist expertise in php programming wasn’t up to the task, but it would be a lot easier to maintain through WP upgrades.

  100. 100.

    Alain the site fixer

    For those new to the discussion, yes…green. And a little wacky footer/sidebar action. And more, I’m sure.

    It’s temporary so theme support person can help me diagnose why the child theme isn’t taking all of the parent theme’s settings even though it said it did so successfully.

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Can’t tell because of ongoing stuff, but there’s a link to a beach cam at the words “right now” in comment slightly above.

  102. 102.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Roger Moore:

    I think the easier solution would be to convert older pages from dynamic to static content.

    I suggested that, too. Many, many times.

  103. 103.

    Roger Moore

    @Alain the site fixer:

    To be clear, about 75% of the DB space is comments – 3.75 million of ’em.

    Sure, and I assume that most of the rest is the posts. My point is that you could reduce that by a factor of 100 if you archived everything more than 1 month old to static HTML pages rather than keeping them in the database. It would make the load on the serve much lighter at only minor cost to functionality.

  104. 104.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Interesting idea. Perhaps you me and Chuck can come up with something? After BJ is done, of course! :)

    We’re planning on using wp-discuz plugin for comments once they add the quicktags/buttons support. I know it uses the main comments table, but in their testing , they had posts with millions of comments, so maybe they do some magic that you/me/us might be able to mine?

  105. 105.

    WaterGirl

    I was horrified by the rollout of the site upgrade in November. Sure, there’s still no DEV server, etc etc etc, but that ship sailed in early November. We are where we are now, and it’s a hell of a lot better than where we were a month ago.

    Alain lets us know in advance that a change is coming. He’s not being disrespectful or condescending. He welcomes input. He has made it clear that we won’t be left in a lurch with a non-functional, awful website.

    All of which makes me willing to hang in there while Alain tests out the new changes and implements the improvements. Your mileage may vary.

  106. 106.

    jeffreyw

    @NotMax: We’ve been watching it, the saucer appears twice, I think, before this last one in the motel parking lot. I think the first time was the day of the diner massacre, and the second was when the trooper’s wife found the pistol in the snow. No idea where they are going with it, but I guess we’ll find out.

  107. 107.

    mai naem mobile

    Was this rich classy green picked in honor of Trump? If it was how come the font isn’t yooooge. Also too, the Donald wants it to be the same green as a million dollar bill. Also also too, the black in the comment box is not going to work. The Donald does not like black – on anything. He had asked for orange.

  108. 108.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    We’re having our annual office potluck tomorrow. I’m already practicing my neutral tone for when I say, “If you don’t like the decorations, you should have signed up for the decorating committee.”

  109. 109.

    NotMax

    @jeffreyw

    Yeah, lights in the sky have shown up several times but never a close-up encounter before.

    IMHO, Bokeem Woodbine (Mike Milligan) richly deserves an Emmy nomination. Dude is acting his heart out.

  110. 110.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Roger Moore: Gotcha. Looked into it a bit just now; to be honest, looks like a lot of work lacking sufficient benefit!

    If Balloon-Juice was a company, I’d try to sell them on it to get more business! It does look like it’s not so hard to make a mirror of a dynamic site, but that’s only part one, the easiest part! Re-engineering WordPress and continuing it through WP upgrades and updates is a commitment!

  111. 111.

    The Other Chuck

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I admit the UI of wordpress is and always has been pretty slick, but even that has has some serious WTFs attached to it: for example, installing any plugins or themes demands you run an FTP server and give wordpress.com access to it. This is about the fucking stupidest thing I can imagine for software that itself relies on HTTP. Needless to say, I don’t use that functionality, I use wp-cli instead.

    Also too, I still don’t see the need for fancy table-juggling hacks; doesn’t an index suffice?

  113. 113.

    Alain the site fixer

    Green is not permanent; It is a troubleshooting step as I await answers from the theme support folks.

    Nothing else is going to change until I hear back from them in case I have to throw it out and restore the old theme from earlier today.

  115. 115.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Alain the site fixer: mistermix has my email. Well, an email. My schedule is spotty through the holidays, but January, maybe. (I’m currently on a laundry break. Can’t sew any more Santa bags until the fabric finishes preshrinking.)

    BTW, the green seems to be coming from div class “container_wrap container_wrap_first main_color sidebar_right”. I’m not familiar with Avia, so I can’t tell you more than that.

  116. 116.

    Amir Khalid

    I am watching an episode of the US version of Gordon Ramsay’s show Kitchen Nightmares. It strikes me that there are a few parallels between that situation and this.

  122. 122.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @The Other Chuck:

    I admit the UI of wordpress is and always has been pretty slick, but even that has has some serious WTFs attached to it

    I know nozink about giving wordpress.com access to my FTP server. I’ve always done my own uploading etc. and have never seen a request to allow additional access. Or is this for blogs hosted on wordpress.com?

    The big thing about the UI is that once everything is set up, most of the effort is going to be handholding the users. I kept going back to WP because the non-techie users I was setting the sites up for could create their own content immediately and weren’t calling me every other day for help.

  125. 125.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @MomSense: You mentioned a pup and a pig’s ear. Did the newer pup find a new residence? I think I recall the integration process was stressful for everyone.

  127. 127.

    NotMax

    @MomSense

    Trivia: There’s actually a word for that – meconium.

    Would link to the Wikipedia page except it is graced with a large picture of the discharge.

  131. 131.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @The Other Chuck:

    Avia again?

    The CSS I’m looking at has multiple mentions of Avia Builder, and the base theme is Enfold, so it’s an obvious conclusion that he’s using the builder.

    @Roger Moore:

    So IOW it’s a great idea, but nobody makes a tool for WP that does it.

    Most of the people who have done it in the past first migrated the comments to Disqus. That’s a non-starter.

    Personally, I’d start by closing comments on the old posts and then spider them, put a script together to pull the comments out, and then convert them into a single comment per post. AFAICT, the real issue isn’t the datatable size in GB but the number of rows in the datatable.

    The biggest downside is that I don’t know if it could be automated. It would eventually have to be done again. And again.

  133. 133.

    WaterGirl

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): May I suggest a small change?

    “If you don’t like the decorations, you should have signed up for the decorating committee I hope you sign up for the decorating committee next year.”

    It still makes your point, but in a gracious way. (not that you asked for input.)

  134. 134.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: I was also wondering about the new pup. Did he not work out?

    Also, I will try one final time (don’t want you to think I’m stalking you), but wondering if you got my email on december 1?

  135. 135.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @WaterGirl:

    It still makes your point, but in a gracious way. (not that you asked for input.)

    That’s not the ‘Balloon Juice Way”, we’re never gracious and always provide input(asked for or not).

  136. 136.

    Schlemazel

    @F:
    UT has said “no” and if they don’t leave when asked they will be charged with trespass. In keeping with the tasteful nature of the event the ammosexuals should call it the “Charles Whitman Memorial Dance”.

    Those of you too young to remember Chuckie, he was the first I remember in the line that leads to today

  138. 138.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Schlemazel:

    In keeping with the tasteful nature of the event the ammosexuals should call it the “Charles Whitman Memorial Dance”.

    As I said, next Aug. 1 would have been a better day to do this.

  139. 139.

    Schlemazel

    @WaterGirl:
    I’d go with the more festive, “If you don’t like the holiday decorations I’d ask you to see how many can be anally inserted before your colon explodes” But thats just me

  142. 142.

    Schlemazel

    @Amir Khalid:
    Particularly when some folks make it personal. There was absolutely no call for some of things said about the people doing there best here and they had every right to take offense. Add to that the know-it-all comments from people who are not doing the work that this is all so easy and they could do it blindfolded with their hands superglued to their crotch and anyone would get a little testy.

  143. 143.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Schlemazel: The post title is “Updating Theme, the site will look off for a bit”, I can deal with a Carter/Mondale themed flashback; reminds me of my college days. Good times.

  146. 146.

    p.a.

    Since I do nothing to support/maintain the site and virtually nothing positive via comments my only issues would be eaten comments- never happened to me, and some design issue that would induce a grand mal. Not yet.

  147. 147.

    Amir Khalid

    @Schlemazel:
    The criticism Tommy took was strong, but as I recall much of it was from knowledgeable Juicers and well-justified. It is true that the roll-out could have been better managed, and he got hit hard on this. That’s supposed to be the cue to step away from the keyboard and cool off. It might have kept him from making those really unwise “God mode” remarks.

  149. 149.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax: The deus ex machina was a wee jarring but actually touches on prior events and random artwork scattered across the season. Still… The book and voiceover narration (sneaky way to get Martin Freeman back) were brilliant, as was the cinematography. Think I need to go back and read some of the pages.

    Crap, they can ever rub out a lot of folks. I want one or two survive (other than the two we know did) so they can move to D.C. and join “The Americans.” Maybe Bruce Campbell’s Reagan. Jean Smart and Kirsten Dunst both deserve Emmy noms, maybe Zahn McClarnon now that Hanzee’s character has been fleshed out. So many great lines I can’t begin recalling them all. Holy shit, has Peggy gone full Rambo or what?

    Next week’s finale is also directed by Adam Arkin.

  153. 153.

    MomSense

    @WaterGirl:

    I didn’t see it in my inbox but when I get to a computer, I’ll check the new gmail folders. I keep finding emails in “promotions”. I didn’t get back to the earlier threads because of kid coming home from his trip.

  154. 154.

    Schlemazel

    @Amir Khalid:
    I actually missed his meltdown, I avoid this place mostly when changes happen because there are far too many people who are either inconsiderate or just plain assholes about it. Perhaps he cared about what he was doing, was tired and fed up with people talking shit. Its been know to happen to the best of us. I can forgive Tommy a lot faster than the assholes who attacked him

    We were told to be patient and let things work out but instead people immediately started bitching and many of them were nasty as well as too soon. That has been the history of every change here and yet it never changes. Its times like that I tend to agree with Cole, as a group we are all inconsiderate assholes who need to calm the f down.

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: I used your iCloud address because that’s the last one you used to email me. If there’s a better one, please send it to me?

    I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you to keep the super-sweet pup. Darn it! :-(

  157. 157.

    WaterGirl

    @Schlemazel: We all have our own role to play! :-) But seriously, I don’t see you nearly as dark as you see yourself. I would be sad if you went away.

  159. 159.

    Felonius Monk

    WTF? Everything was green and then I clicked back and suddenly everything is not green. I think somebody has been fckng with my soft-drink.

  160. 160.

    MomSense

    @WaterGirl:

    Yeah, I’ll never joke about vitriolic jackals again. If I didn’t have a kid who would be home alone with them a few hours every day, it wouldn’t have been so risky. The problem is that she is very much my youngest son’s dog. She sleeps with him, plays with him, follows him around, and doesn’t want to share him with another dog.

  162. 162.

    JustRuss

    Hey, when did comments stop being numbered? I actually liked that, although they were a bit yooooooger than necessary.

  165. 165.

    WaterGirl

    @MomSense: I’m sorry you had to let the sweet pup go. Sometimes it sucks being a grown-up, having to do the right thing even when it’s not what you want. sigh.

  168. 168.

    Ahasuerus

    Does anyone know if the Balloon Juice Troll-B-Gone script has been updated for the site redesign? The original author seems to have disappeared.

  169. 169.

    Steeplejack

    @MomSense:

    So did the sweet dog just go back into “general population” at the adoption place? Have you followed up on his status? Inquiring minds want to know.

  172. 172.

    rikyrah

    because, of course, there was no racism before January 20, 2009

    uh huh

    ………………….

    stop making us be racists!

    By Liberal Librarian

    I found this picture on the Twitter box yesterday. I shook my head and pursed my lips and moved on. Saved it for future use, however.

    I had no idea that the future is today.

    Over on the National Review (no link, as I don’t wish to give them clicks directly), there’s an article blaming Il Douche’s rise to—wait for it—that damned Obama! Yes, see, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault that a large swathe of white America has lost its puny little minds. If only someone not as black were inhabiting the White House the country would be a paradise of racial comity.

    That’s the lie right there. This country has never been a paradise of racial comity. As the President acknowledges, things have improved. But a lot of that improvement was, I believe, cosmetic. The racial animus simmered underground, waiting for a chance to boil up, as in Yugoslavia once it was freed from Marshal Tito’s iron grip. Only in this regard is Pres. Obama “responsible” for white people losing their shit; his election and conduct as president have held up a glaring light to their prejudices, and as often happens with human beings, once a fault is revealed we tend to scream louder that it’s not us, it’s them.

    What’s most amusing is that conservatives are the ones preaching taking personal responsibility. But why have they turned racist? Oh, it’s not us; we wouldn’t be screaming racial epithets if it weren’t for Barack Obama being black and in the White House, or liberals more generally.

    http://theobamadiary.com/2015/12/10/stop-making-us-be-racists/

  179. 179.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, I’m back here late because I had to run out to deal with a minor emergency—discovered I needed to get the doughty Kia inspected before I could renew my license tags on line—but I had to comment on this.

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    That feature [“Recent Comments”] was searching the entire 3GB comments table on every page load.

    Holy shnikeys. Every database system I have ever used, as well as MySQL, the database used by WordPress (PHP is the scripting language), has the ability to easily retrieve the last 10 (i.e., “most recent”) records from a table. I did two minutes’ research on WordPress and see that you could get the information you want with something like:

    select [needed fields] from wp_comments order by comment_ID desc limit 10

    Or, as you suggested later, you could maintain a tiny table of 10 records for the most recent comments. When someone makes a comment, insert a record in the tiny table and delete the oldest record currently in there. When you need the 10 most recent comments—boom!—just read the entire tiny table.

    Note: I’m not saying that either of these is a slam-dunk easy fix (as WordPress and the Balloon Juice site stand now). I guess I’m registering my shock that such an asinine solution—searching an entire table on every page load—was ever implemented in the first place.

  180. 180.

    Schlemazel

    @catclub:
    Propitious it is the anniversary of Mr. Whitmans little adventure. But I am sure the ammosexuals don’t remember this

  181. 181.

    J R in WV

    Now it isn’t green. Some of you say that it was never green, but we know better. IT WAS GREEN!

    You guys are gaslighting us to make us suspect our very senses. To make us wonder if somehow we have been republicans all along!

    What a conspiracy! What a – wait. I gotta go fix dinner. Bye.

    And thanks Alain! Comment numbers and call it all good!

    Sorry for all the flack. Tell Tommy to please come back. I miss his comments about that nice little Illinois country town with all the corn fields, and – wait. I gotta go fix din. Bye.

  182. 182.

    Douglas

    @Steeplejack:

    select [needed fields] from wp_comments order by comment_ID desc limit 10

    Well, that will give you the last 10 comments… if it has to look at only those or all comments to find those depends on the implementation of the DB however.
    Considering that comment_ID should be a key (and an autoincrementing primary key, at that), it shouldn’t be necessary – there should be a pointer to last one, and getting the previous 9 should require (close to) constant work… so yeah, pretty much no work at all.
    But I’ve seen enough to imagine someone implementing a simple “eh, let’s not bother checking that, just query all entries, then order it and give out the top ten”… cause hey, it works. Performance is somebody else’s problem.
    (In that case, you could bypass that by saving the last comment_ID, displaying that comment and manually querying the 9 previous comments via their IDs. Or yeah, just keep a table for the last 10 comments)

  183. 183.

    Mark B.

    @Steeplejack: The problem is that it has to do a table scan to find the most recent comments, because apparently there is no index on the datetime of the comment. Sorting by comment id descending would work better, because as a primary key, it’s gotta have an index.

    I’ll take back my comments about needing to partition the database. If you only have a couple million records, that’s not necessary. I’m used to databases where each individual row is relatively tiny, where you could end up with hundreds of millions of records in a database that size. Partitioning would be a nice extra, but it’s probably not worth the extra effort when a decently structured index would do the trick. If it’s a database that gets frequent inserts (and comments do) you’ll want to do a recalculate stats on a regular basis to rebuild the indices to keep them from becoming bloated. Once a week is usually fine.

  185. 185.

    Steeplejack

    @Mark B.:

    The problem is that it has to do a table scan to find the most recent comments [. . .].

    No, it doesn’t. According to the WordPress codex, comment_ID is a primary (index) key for the WP_Comments table, and it auto-increments, so by definition selecting the “first” 10 records in descending order will get you the last 10 records added to the table—i.e., the most recent ones. You don’t have to do anything with either the comment_date field or the comment_date_gmt field—although the latter is an index field, if you insist on going that route. You don’t have to “scan” the table at all.

    Sorting by comment id descending would work better, because as a primary key, it’s gotta have an index.

    What part of select order by comment_ID above did you not get? When you do a select on an index field, you don’t have to do a (time-consuming) sort. That’s the whole point of having an index.

  186. 186.

    Steeplejack

    @Douglas:

    Well, that will give you the last 10 comments . . . if it has to look at only those or all comments to find those depends on the implementation of the DB however.

    That will give you the last 10 comments. As I explained to Mark B., comment_ID is a primary index key (auto-incrementing).

  187. 187.

    The Other Chuck

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    I know nozink about giving wordpress.com access to my FTP server. I’ve always done my own uploading etc. and have never seen a request to allow additional access. Or is this for blogs hosted on wordpress.com?

    No, it’s when it asks for an FTP username and password, so it basically “pushes” it from wordpress.com or some related site to yours. I mean sure, FTP is sandboxed by nature so it’s not that much of a security risk, but it’s cumbersome and stupid regardless.

    Anyway, I use WP for the same reason as you, easier for a non-techie to admin. In my case, it’s for my brother’s site, being used as a CMS-lite rather than a blog. Doesn’t stop me from hating it with a white-hot fury sometimes.

  188. 188.

    The Other Chuck

    @Ahasuerus: I’m still here, and TBG works … if you reinstall it. I borked the auto-update when I changed the namespace to my other domain. Shouldn’t happen again.

    Do count on it breaking again when the new comment engine comes in though :-/

  189. 189.

    The Other Chuck

    Whoah nevermind, TBG is in fact very very broken as my last test revealed. I’ll look into it once things stabilize around here.

  192. 192.

    redshirt

    It’s been interesting to see Tommy’s terrible changes reapplied but by Alain.

    Much smoother because he explained what was going to happen.

  197. 197.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Steeplejack: A quick search tells me that there are several new Recent Comments widgets since the last time I poked at this. I’ll put “look into the widget code” on my reminders list, maybe benchmark a couple on my test box after the sewing marathon is done. (t-7 days to finished baby quilt, Santa bags, and holiday bins. *twitch*)

    @The Other Chuck: Still don’t remember actually giving it the login info, but it’s been a long time since I did a manual install. Most recently they’ve been 1-click installs from the host’s panel followed by manual uploads of themes and plugins.

    I was mostly musing on why WP jumped out ahead of the alternatives way back before everyone and their granny had a blog. There was a couple of implementations where I really, really wanted to use Drupal, as their book module would have been perfect, but the UI made people run away screaming.

  198. 198.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Ruckus:

    If you work in IT long enough you’ll learn that EVERYONE’s knowledgeable and an expert.

    Until they aren’t.

    Yep! I’m one of those dreaded “knows just enough to be dangerous” types, and if I call you for support, I’ll tell you that right up front. I will cheerfully follow you through most of your support tree; I think of it as double checking my work. (I will balk at crawling under the desk to check the cables multiple times.) I mostly just don’t want to waste our time while you try to take me step by step through something.

    Of course, the other side of that was the poor girl who got my call when lightning struck my then-boss’ home office and fried the network ports on the router/modem. I don’t think she knew one end of a computer from the other. She started walking me through what eventually turned out to be an IP release/renew one click/key at a time and had no idea what to do when I told her that the computer I was on didn’t have a “Run” that I could click on. She had gotten onto the XP tree, I was on a Windows 7 machine, and I ended up trying to describe the XP interface from memory at each step. Forty-five minutes later she finally bumps me up to tier two support. “So, I see that you’re having trouble connecting wirelessly.” “No, wireless is working fine. Wired is shot.” “Oh.” *much key clicking*

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