No. You're missing the point. The design of the thing is functional. The plan is not to shoot you. The plan is to get the girl. If there's no girl, then the plan, well, is like the room.

Early ,'Objects In Space'


Buffistechnology 3: "Press Some Buttons, See What Happens."

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Consuela - Jan 03, 2019 10:39:09 am PST #25239 of 25505
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

Good catch, Tom! At least you recognized it for what it was, even if after the fact. Don't beat yourself up too much, these folks are professionals.

Me, I just spent half an hour on the phone with Venmo (pretty hard when you've lost your voice), and discovered that I had 2 accounts, somehow. Happily, that has now been resolved.


Maria - Jan 03, 2019 10:43:37 am PST #25240 of 25505
Not so nice is that I'm about to ruin a Friday morning for a bunch of people because of a series of unfortunate events and an upset foreign government. - shrift

I had to call ABT and Shutterstock to cancel accounts I didn't create and never wanted. My spam folder count was 570-some this morning. After this nonsense it's up to 2200+.

Are there planets in retrograde or something?

DX, I've been getting them for months, with a DC area code. I'd love to know what they're saying.

I'm sorry, Tom. You caught it quickly, and that's good.

Consuela, yuck for voice-loss, but hooray for a quick fix on the Venmo issues.


Jesse - Jan 09, 2019 10:59:24 am PST #25241 of 25505
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

I wonder if any of you can help me talk to my operations people, because I'm afraid I'm not using the right words to describe what I want. My dream is to have a database (?) that is full of paragraphs of information, each of which is tagged (?) in various ways. Then someone can choose different tags and a word document will be automagically created with the relevant paragraphs.

Does that sound like a thing that could exist?


flea - Jan 09, 2019 11:30:26 am PST #25242 of 25505
information libertarian

I am wondering if words like "content modules" might be useful. You basically want to build a text document using different chunks of text (paragraphs) selected from a pool, right?

I've done this for web pages for library resources - you have a box that explains how to use the VPN, a box that gives the subject librarian's profile, a box that has library hours, and then blank boxes you can customize for whatever you need. The boxes were called "content modules" in the setup.


Dana - Jan 09, 2019 11:32:26 am PST #25243 of 25505
I haven't trusted science since I saw the film "Flubber."

Sounds like DITA.


Jesse - Jan 09, 2019 11:42:23 am PST #25244 of 25505
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Both of those sound good! Assuming this is DITA? [link]

Thank you both!


Dana - Jan 09, 2019 12:23:04 pm PST #25245 of 25505
I haven't trusted science since I saw the film "Flubber."

Yes, that is DITA. It might be a buzzword that helps evoke what you're looking for. In DITA, information is broken down into standalone chunks and put into a content management system, and then a map is created to pull those chunks and assemble them into your end result.


Sophia Brooks - Jan 09, 2019 1:29:42 pm PST #25246 of 25505
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here

In the database I use (Slate) they are called snippets.


Jesse - Jan 09, 2019 4:53:48 pm PST #25247 of 25505
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

OMG, why is our database so janky? That looks amazing.


Gudanov - Jan 09, 2019 5:29:22 pm PST #25248 of 25505
Coding and Sleeping

Sounds like a tool that be an excellent candidate for basing on MongoDB. A bit of Java Spring to manage a REST interface used by a Vue js frontend. Generating the result in Word format would be a PITA though. Maybe there's a library that does the heavy lifting though. At least it would be docx, doc is a nightmare. I mean, it made sense in the day, but OMG it was a mess. There's a reason that formatting could go all wonky in old versions of Word.