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gabe_billings
President and CEO of Wirthlingsux Inc.

Member Rated:

I need some good ideas. Here's the deal: At work we've got a pretty decent cafeteria which has a 'Your Suggestions' board near the exit. There's a pile of blank forms which you fill out then leave in a little box. Someone in the cafeteria writes a response on your submission then sticks it on the board with a magnet.

All of this stuff is just sitting out there in the open. Not behind a locked glass case to foil evildoers. Thus it's just itching for a good pranking. I'd love to do it on April Fool's day, but unfortunately I'll be gone. So I figured I'd just do it whenever.

Rather than think all these up by myself, I thought to enlist the likes of the Stripcreator hive mind. If you'd like to help out, all you need to do is come up with some complaint that you'd expect to crop up in a cafeteria environment. Then write a good response for it. The idea is to make the comments seem realistic, but have really whacked responses. Nothing really vulgar, though. Try to leave out major profanity. I'll get all the comment cards written out then some morning I'll pop in and switch them all.

If no one's interested I'll come up with them myself.

Let the creativity flow.

G

---
100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

2-21-02 1:37pm (new)
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KajunFirefly
chooby digital (in stereo)

Member Rated:

"Benny stole my thighmaster"

"more spoons, less forks"

"wallpaper hates me"

"I found someone's glass eye in my tuna roll"

"no more suggestion boxes"

"you need more suggestion slips"

"I've lost my glass eye"

"Dad was flammable"

---
Dad was flammable

2-21-02 1:49pm (new)
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BigEvilDan
Comic Overlord

Member Rated:

You could always write a series of complaints about your fawn.

As for responses to serious suggestions, I'm having a hard time with that one. What kind of complaints are already up there?

---
"Oh, look, a joke! How original! Thank you, but if I wanted my emotions stimulated pleasurably, I'd get a whore." - Donald B. Jones III

2-21-02 2:34pm (new)
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Jael
Resident Wench

Member Rated:

Gabe:

As an evil HR manager aka Catbert. I advise against such actions in stuffing the suggestion box.

As a bitter formerly employed HR Manager might I offer the following suggestions:

1) My green beans are swimming in bacon fat. They tell me they are tired of being vegetabably oppressed.
2) I would like to know if OSHA has Safety sheets on the contents of the meatloaf.
3) (Name of fellow employee you don't like) stuck his fingers in all the desserts. Something should be done to prevent molestation of dessert foods along the line. What steps will you implement to counter attacks such as this?
4) I am allergic to eggs. How much of your food contains processed egg powder?
5) Is it customary to leave bandaids in the macaroni and cheese? Who do I talk to about foreign objects in my food.

Lastly, I once got this complaint.
6) What's the point of this box...nothing ever gets changed. This is stupid. You should take this box down and quit killing trees for the paper for the suggestions.

Okay so they aren't funny...but it will piss someone off.

---
Women are fisher's of men because we all know.... The small ones you throw back. The medium ones you eat. The large ones you mount.

2-21-02 3:01pm (new)
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gabe_billings
President and CEO of Wirthlingsux Inc.

Member Rated:

quote:
You could always write a series of complaints about your fawn.

As for responses to serious suggestions, I'm having a hard time with that one. What kind of complaints are already up there?


Boring, everyday crap. Your oatmeal is pasty, the coffee takes crappy, when are you going to have wraps again... Mundane shit. We need to stir things up.

---
100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

2-21-02 4:14pm (new)
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fuzzyman
Alpha Geek

Member Rated:

Hmmm... maybe a love letter as the "complaint" and an equally amorous "response?"

I once got suspeneded from work for three days from my former employer for creating a parody company newsletter that looked a little too much like a real one. It contained stories like these:[list][*]Recent testing has shown that the chili from the cafeteria must be classified as a hazardous substance. In the future, all chili cups will have a substance tracking label and barcode. Employees removing chili from the cafeteria should wand the barcode at the machines which will be placed outside the doors on those days that chili is offered. Once the chili is consumed, the container and remains of the chili should be brought to the nearest hazardous waste transfer area, wanded, and put in the yellow container with the red skull on it. Those personnel who choose to eat the chili are asked to submit stool and blood samples for analysis and proper disposal.
[*]As of August 1, 1997, all safety programs will be discontinued. Recent studies have shown that fatal accidents cost the company less than those where employees are injured and must undergo lengthy rehabilitations. All employees will be required to deposit their safety glasses in new plastic recycling
bins placed strategically around the plant. It is asked that all those involved in accidents show consideration for others and ensure that their accidents are fatal.
[*]Due to excessive abuse of personal copying privileges by Helicoptrix employees, all copying machines are to be fitted with copy monitors to reduce abuse. When making copies, employees will pass their badge through an electronic reader, and enter the purpose for the copies via a keypad. Helicoptrix personnel will be allowed ten personal copies a month; contractors and temporary employees, five. Those who exceed this number will be suspended for one day without pay. After three incidents, the employee will be terminated. Classes in the use of the copy monitors will be held in Conference Room 12 throughout the month of July.
[/list]The straw that broke the camel's back was the story about how the plant was going to be moved to a local Native American reservation / casio. I quoted a fictional executive as saying, "The Indians are very good workers. Plus, we can pay them with liquor and brightly-colored beads."

It was meant to be a commentary about how cheap the management was (given half a chance, they'd move the whole operation overseas, screw the workers!) but I can see where it could be interpreted differently.

---
...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

2-21-02 4:44pm (new)
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KajunFirefly
chooby digital (in stereo)

Member Rated:


My graffiti has landed me in similar trouble,

last Christmas a woman from our Deli put up a notice in the canteen asking people to pay her £10 for a deposit for the night out.

Under

"Please pay Pauline £10"

I wrote

"for services rendered!"

not really that clever, or funny, but I got suspended for sexual harrasment and had to attend a hearing with some big wigs from Safeway, I got let off due to my clean record.

they accidentally paid me for the full Sunday that I would have worked, double time, yahoo!

Then, two weeks later I got another written warning for writing graffiti in the cubicles at work, I wrote:

"Benny stole my thighmaster"

"Squeeze harder"

and

"In the event of an fire, the emergency exit is located directly in front of you. If there is a loss in air pressure, oxygen masks will fall from the panel above you, please ensure you fit your own mask before helping anyone else with theirs. A lifejacket is located under your seat, should you fall in."

I also included a plan view drawing of the cubicle with "you" and "exit" highlighted.

again, I got let off with it, due to a somehow clean record.

not even a full month later, my HR manager filed an official greivance against me because I had written that she was an "incompetent bastard" in the staff communication book.

1 year later....

AND I STILL WORK THERE!!

---
Dad was flammable

2-21-02 5:50pm (new)
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NeoVid
Stripcreator Irregular

Member Rated:

Off the top of my head...

"I want the chefs to stop using all those herbs that look just like pubic hairs."

---
"Only things I approve of should exist." -some guy on the internet

2-21-02 6:31pm (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

- Complaint: I found a dead cockroach in my cornbread.
- Response: That's better than finding a live one, eh?

Sorry, that's the best I can come up with right now. I'm sapped from spending most of the evening figuring out ASP and VBScript.

By the way, does anyone know what the difference is between ASP and PHP? Ordinarily, I would research that question, but I'm pooped.

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-21-02 7:32pm (new)
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lara7
Jimmy Carter says YES!

Member Rated:

an actual one from my college cafeteria's suggestion box:

"More potatoes, please"

The laugh riot ensued when the (serious) response given by the managment recounted all the times potatoes had been served in the last week and wanted to know which potato dishes the complainer thought we needed more of.

---
When they invent BookFace, I'm -there-.

2-21-02 8:01pm (new)
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Spankling
Looking for love in ALL the wrong places, baby!

Member Rated:


I was sooo going that direction! I was going to suggest gabe pick out the thick-shouldered matron with the hairnet and tattoo and blather on about how there love can never be and that the one night rolling about in the cooled deep fryer grease was all they would have to remember each other by. But then, whenever the reused grease heats up, just breath deep.... and remember.

---
"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

2-21-02 8:25pm (new)
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bunnerabb
Some bloke.

Member Rated:

"I realise that our suggestion box isn't the best way to mention this, but I think my mother is an alien. As she has aged, I have taken care of her needs and lately I've noticed little quirks about her that my mother never had. She's been supplanted by aliens, I just know it. I don't know who to talk to about this. I spend most of my work time crying in the rest room. Please help."

(Tear stains optional.)

"Can I get some of the food that's not eaten for my dog, Punky? I can supply a collection can and a little baggie to line it with. Please tell everybody to fill it with their remaining food as they exit. Thank you."

"I got sick from the tuna melt. Can I get workman's comp? No visible signs of my ailment other than vomit in the morning and I pass a lot of gas. Should I see the company nurse?"

"I saw the UPS guy eating in here the other day. They can't eat in our cafeteria. I know it. I told him to leave and he hit me with some ice cubes. Can I sue?"

"The cleaning guy in the cafeteria always has an erection. It is disconcerting and makes eating here uncomfortable. Is he on Viagra? Please talk to him. Thank you."

"The server ladies smell funny. I think we should institute bathing guidelines that the food service staff must adhere to, or be fired. They might just be old. I don't know. It's bad, though."

---
I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

2-21-02 11:17pm (new)
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evil_d
Riding through your town with his head on fire

Member Rated:

PHP is free. It's also probably supported on more platforms than ASP.

As for the suggestion box... I think "Raaarr, Tobor will cornhole you" or similar threats of violence are a good response to any suggestion. Or you could write actual complaints that you have about matters unrelated to food service and then provide nonsensical answers. Or request that they "bring back" that thick black coffee that they served to the workmen who were paving the street outside (or anything else inedible). Or write "I think your responses should be less wordy" and then have a rambling response that continues on to the back of the card (like the one about the time I took the ferry over to Shelbyville. I was wearing an onion on my belt...). Or have the question ask "How do you spell (some complex word)?" Or ask obscure trivia questions. Or multiple choice questions.

I don't know if any of those ideas are that hilarious. I guess it depends on how you use them.

---
The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

2-22-02 6:07am (new)
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boorite
crazy knife lady

Member Rated:

quote:

By the way, does anyone know what the difference is between ASP and PHP? Ordinarily, I would research that question, but I'm pooped.

PHP is a scripting language. ASP works with scripting languages. ASP is sort of like CGI. You can write CGI scripts in PHP, Perl, VBScript, etc. Same with ASP. Like CGI, ASP provides I/O, environment variables, and so on, plus some built in object-oriented ODBC hoodoo. If I could get IIS to run without my reading a mile-high stack of user-friendly crap and reinstalling everything AND keeping up with the continual drizzle of Microsoft security bulletins, I'd probably use ASP. If you have good MS guys at your shop and don't have to DIY, then it's something to try.

I do use PHP-- a LOT, constantly. I used to use Perl, and really the languages are very similar, but PHP is more suited to the HTTP/CGI environment. Getting CGI variables is a breeze, and you can embed naked HTML in your scripts. I also find referenceing/dereferencing and complex data structures (hashes of hashes etc) much easier in PHP. Lastly, if you're running PHP and Perl as apache modules, mod-PHP is much easier. You just write the script as always. With Perl, you have to jump through some hoops.

I haven't got Perl regexes to work in PHP, and so I'm stuck with lousy Posix. Really, for regex stuff I'd prefer Perl.

Never worked with VB or VBScript but it would probably make me crazy. It seems more suited to local windows apps than web apps.

My .02 bucks US.

---
What others say about boorite!

2-22-02 8:02am (new)
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JrnymnNate
I fling the shoddy polo stick

Member Rated:

Gabe has a picture for his sig!

2-22-02 8:26am (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

quote:
quote:

By the way, does anyone know what the difference is between ASP and PHP? Ordinarily, I would research that question, but I'm pooped.

PHP is a scripting language. ASP works with scripting languages. ASP is sort of like CGI. You can write CGI scripts in PHP, Perl, VBScript, etc. Same with ASP. Like CGI, ASP provides I/O, environment variables, and so on, plus some built in object-oriented ODBC hoodoo. If I could get IIS to run without my reading a mile-high stack of user-friendly crap and reinstalling everything AND keeping up with the continual drizzle of Microsoft security bulletins, I'd probably use ASP. If you have good MS guys at your shop and don't have to DIY, then it's something to try.

I do use PHP-- a LOT, constantly. I used to use Perl, and really the languages are very similar, but PHP is more suited to the HTTP/CGI environment. Getting CGI variables is a breeze, and you can embed naked HTML in your scripts. I also find referenceing/dereferencing and complex data structures (hashes of hashes etc) much easier in PHP. Lastly, if you're running PHP and Perl as apache modules, mod-PHP is much easier. You just write the script as always. With Perl, you have to jump through some hoops.

I haven't got Perl regexes to work in PHP, and so I'm stuck with lousy Posix. Really, for regex stuff I'd prefer Perl.

Never worked with VB or VBScript but it would probably make me crazy. It seems more suited to local windows apps than web apps.

My .02 bucks US.


I followed the 1st paragraph ok, but you pretty much lost me after that. I have never had access to a UNIX server, so I have had little opportunity to teach myself CGI and the related scripting languages. At work, we have IIS. Up until yesterday, I did everything with JavaScript (JScript, actually) that I needed to do, but I was getting tired of its client-side limitations. I asked our local web master about ASP and he gave me some sample ASP code. It seems pretty easy.

In the course of doing ASP research, I came across PHP examples and thought it looked quite a bit like ASP. Was I looking at examples of PHP being used within ASP?

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-22-02 10:13am (new)
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boorite
crazy knife lady

Member Rated:

Possibly. Incidentally, you can use CGI (Common Gateway Interface) on IIS. I use PHP's CGI facilities in all my database-driven web applications.

Probably the ASP script you looked at was actually a VBS script that used ASP. Or maybe you say "within ASP." I dunno because I've never used ASP, but my understanding is that it's sort of analogous to CGI but provides more database-related features.

Anyhow, depending on what you're doing, it may be just as easy (and way more portable) to do the whole project in PHP and use CGI for input and PHP's native ODBC functions for DB access. Have you used other procedural languages?

BTW, regex = regular expression (pattern matching/substitution stuff)

For insight into the "complex data structures" stuff (in Perl, though the concepts apply in PHP, where they're easier to execute) see here.

What the heck is this project, anyhow?

---
What others say about boorite!

2-22-02 11:03am (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

quote:
Possibly. Incidentally, you can use CGI (Common Gateway Interface) on IIS. I use PHP's CGI facilities in all my database-driven web applications.

Probably the ASP script you looked at was actually a VBS script that used ASP. Or maybe you say "within ASP." I dunno because I've never used ASP, but my understanding is that it's sort of analogous to CGI but provides more database-related features.

Anyhow, depending on what you're doing, it may be just as easy (and way more portable) to do the whole project in PHP and use CGI for input and PHP's native ODBC functions for DB access. Have you used other procedural languages?

BTW, regex = regular expression (pattern matching/substitution stuff)

For insight into the "complex data structures" stuff (in Perl, though the concepts apply in PHP, where they're easier to execute) see here.

What the heck is this project, anyhow?


(We should probably be having this discussion in the "I am a Colossal Geek" thread.)

I designed and maintain an intranet web site for use by our call agents. We get a lot of different types of calls from various customers and for various products, so the intranet web site provides reference materials to aid the call receipt and technician dispatch process. The site consists of dozens of web pages accessed through a Javascripted front-end form.

The project for which I originally started looking into ASP involved creating a form that would feed the data into a pre-formatted email message. I found out that this particular email process was probably going to be temporary, so I am holding off on that project for now.

I was intrigued by ASP, though, and used it yesterday to create a form for another process. This one required filling out a form, printing it out, and faxing it to a particular customer. (We do have a fax server, but I haven't the slightest clue how to access it.) We were using a Word document, but it takes too long to load and the boneheads here could alter the form. I used ASP to create a form that sends the data into a pre-formatted page that the user can print out.

I would try to do more, but I am somewhat handicapped by my status here. All of this web development work that I do is not part of my job description, and I am not part of our IS staff (they are outsourced). Therefore, I can only do things that don't require formal development or expenditure of company resources. I'd love to learn how to tie in a database to our web site, but I don't have the resources (time, IS cooperation, etc.) for that at this point.

I think I may try to tackle an ASP-based search tool next. I have a Javascript-based search page, but it requires manual entry of keywords. I've been dying to improve on that for a while. I was thinking of using ASP's textfile-reading and FileSystem capabilities to do this, but I would have to figure out how to weed out html tags and files that I don't want read. Any suggestions?

As far as procedural languages go, I just recently started learning C++ (more the procedural aspects of it than object-oriented methods so far).

Doesn't PHP have to be enabled on the server to work?

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-22-02 12:15pm (new)
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gabe_billings
President and CEO of Wirthlingsux Inc.

Member Rated:

We have some cool fax server, too. You use it straight from Lotus notes, and just use an address like fax@8003456798 and zoom! Off it goes into the netherworld of faxes.

---
100 pounds of shit in a 25 pound sack.

2-22-02 12:22pm (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

Actually, I should have specified that I'm looking more for strategic suggestions rather than Perl examples here. I assume that one can do pretty much the same thing with different languages. It's just that I have pretty much 0 experience reading from files and doing complicated string-matching, so I would appreciate some suggestions on how to go about this.

Should I read all the text for each file into one big string per file? Or should I break the contents of each file into an array? Would it be worthwhile to create a text-based database page that reads in all of the pages once a day (or whenever) so that each search would not entail having to read all files and create and arrays and whatnot?

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-22-02 12:30pm (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

I'm looking into seeing how I might be able to make this fax page be sent to our fax server rather than having to print it out and manually fax it. I don't even know if this is possible. If Lotus Notes can do it, I assume there is someway I can do it using MS network stuff. Anyone know how to access a fax server using a web page on an MS network?

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-22-02 12:48pm (new)
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evil_d
Riding through your town with his head on fire

Member Rated:

I hope these links will still work when you click on them. Whatis has a habit of changing things around, in my experience.

ASP
PHP
CGI

I don't know much about ASP. I don't code professionally and can rarely afford to use software that isn't free. I can tell you that if I had to write a script that involved a lot of reading from files and/or complicated string matching, I would use Perl rather than PHP, just because PHP doesn't make those tasks as easy as it could.

Yes, PHP has to be installed before you can use it. Being open source won't help much if you can't get IS to install it for you.

I'd be worried that reading a whole file into one string might cause memory problems if the file was too big. I don't know if that's a valid concern, but it's the first thing that occurs to me. Reading it line-by-line into an array might be a better or worse idea depending on what you can safely assume about the structure of the files. I don't really know what to recommend for stripping out HTML tags... I'm still working on that problem myself.

Daily caching sounds like a good idea as long as there's not an urgent need for up-to-the-minute information. But consider how much time it'll really save per execution vs. how much disk space it'll take up.

---
The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

2-22-02 1:06pm (new)
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wirthling
supercalifragilisticexpialadosucks

Member Rated:

Thanks, d.

I don't think having PHP added is an option here. Some day, I intend to set up a linux server at home to play with, and I'll certainly give PHP a shot at that point.

I'm thinking that I can create a word-by-word array by matching for " " and various punctuation. I'm also thinking that html tags could be separated out by looking for strings starting with "". I'm just worried that, as you suggested, the processing may take a long time. Maybe I could just do a rough string-match (find out of a file contains the search phrase at all) and then just do more complicated string-parsing only on files where the search string was found (and then only on the line where the string was found)? (I assume this would still cause a long wait if someone searches for "a" or "the" or the like.)

As for my last question about accessing a fax server, never mind. I consulted our web master, and he said he thinks it is possible to access an ActiveX dll interface to the fax server. He is going to help me out with that next week.

---
"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

2-22-02 1:23pm (new)
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boorite
crazy knife lady

Member Rated:

Yes, Perl would be the language of choice for indexing, and maybe (maybe!) for retrieval. But since you don't have PHP, it's Perl. None of the other languages you mentioned have the regex capabilities necessary (unless I missed something).

I've written full-text search engines for fairly large websites (1000s of documents). I've done it all kinds of ways. If I had to do it today, I'd use a relational db with three tables: Words, Documents, and the middle one, WordsDocuments. Let me know if you need expansion on that.

I have written them to parse documents on the fly, but yes, that's a time and CPU-killer. So what you want is a two-script deal: One an indexer, and the other a retriever with a web front-end.

To address one issue that came up: It is no big deal for Perl to slurp an entire big document into one string-- in fact, it almost surely takes up fewer CPU cycles and gives better results. Just undef the end of line delimiter ($/). I wouldn't parse whole files any other way.

Wirthling, you mentioned "a, an, the" etc. These and other common words (e.g. prepositions) basically have no power to distinguish one document from another. We call them "stopwords," and we filter them out in both the indexing and the retrieval.

The way I did this thing five years ago was: the indexing program creates a "dictionary" of words on the site. It also creates a list of documents on the site. In each dictionary entry, instead of a definition, you'd see a list of numbers. The numbers are associated with documents. So:

cornhole 12 35 98 142 1209

means that the word "cornhole" occurs in those documents.

These entries are stored in a series of ASCII files, one for each initial alphanumeric character. The entry for "cornhole," for example, would be stored in an ASCII file called "c.dat".

The retrieval script just looks at these files and breaks the numbers up into arrays, which are then boolean ANDed or ORed to get your results. For exact phrase searching, an extra step would be required, but no biggie.

Here's a still-running example of the thing I wrote 4 or 5 years ago. For a script that does whole table scans, intense pattern matching, and even file ops on every search result(!), it runs pretty damned fast. Yes, you do get performance gains with a real DBMS, but at the cost of overhead. This thing has zero overhead.

Lemme know if you want me to dig up a copy of this old thing. Or if you wanna discuss how to do it with real fancy-like technology, such as Microsoft Access. ;-) Or if you just wanna hire me.

---
What others say about boorite!

2-22-02 2:25pm (new)
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boorite
crazy knife lady

Member Rated:

BTW, it's an environmental activism site, so searches for things like "cement kiln" and "tire burning" and "airport noise" are more likely to get hits than, say "free bukkake pics."

---
What others say about boorite!

2-22-02 2:31pm (new)
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