Category: Humor

We often talk about dates and timekeeping as extraordinarily difficult tasks. And, at least in part, that may have to do with their origins as legacy technologies in the most legacy sense: we have strong evidence of calendar systems all the way back into the Neolithic period, and maybe some hints of them as far back as the Paleolithic. Literally, stone age technology, still in use today.

I wonder if that’s why calendar’s hold such a mystical hold over us? Many of us likely remember the New Age predictions that 2012 was going to mark the end of the world or some great reconfiguration of the world, simply because it marked the end of a cycle in the Mayan Calendar. Before that, prophecies centered on the year 2000, not just because of the Y2K bug, but simply because it’s a round number and people felt like that’s a good place to call it. Before that, there was the astrological predictions of the Age of Aquarius (which may fall anywhere from 1844 to sometime in the 24th century, but was real popular for a minute in the 60s and 70s). And we can walk farther back into history, finding eschatological predictions centered around significant dates.

Will some future society see the Y2K38 bug as a similar marker of the End Times™? And when that passes, will they turn to this prediction, found in Etienne‘s codebase?

tempDate = DateTime.Parse(dr["Start_Date"].ToString(), auCulture.DateTimeFormat);

if (tempDate.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy") == "31/12/3000")

You’ve heard it here first: December 31st, 3000, is the End of Time. Most importantly, if you’re into this sort of thing, is that this code was committed to the code base in 2012. Which clearly shows us that 2012 was just the first step in a cosmic transformation that will end time as we know it by the 31st century. And this prediction has just as much veracity and predictive power as every other such prediction, so you’ve been warned. Prepare yourselves, for the end times will be upon us… well after you and I are all dead.

Warning signs come in all shapes and sizes. While that sounds cliché, you still gotta admit that it is true—even more so when a sign breaks convention and casually throws a joke your way.

And those who get it might end up taking a picture and then posting it online. Perhaps, in a dedicated Facebook group called Funny Warning Signs. And then the rest of the world has a good laugh.

One effective warning sign, indeed.

What better way to feel bad and hopeless about your life than by seeing a gallery of demotivational posters? Spanish cartoonist Joan Cornella has mastered the art of bringing other people down. If you wish to see more of his dark and weird comics and are not easily offended, check out Mox Nox on Amazon. It’s a collection of Joan’s comics. The book is in Spanish, but it doesn’t matter, because characters in his comics do not speak. Meanwhile, scroll down to check out some of his best demotivational posters!

If you wish to see more of his dark and weird comics and are not easily offended, check out Mox Nox on Amazon. It’s a collection of Joan’s comics. The book is in Spanish, but it doesn’t matter, because characters in his comics do not speak. Please note that this site is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

“Generic exception handlers” sound like an oxymoron, but are a weirdly common pattern in web development. ASP .NET, for example, has a global.asax file, which can contain an Application_Error method. In practice, this is meant to handle all the otherwise unhandleable errors- each individual endpoint should still do exception handling for all the errors it can, but the errors that are impractical to handle locally, like the database being inaccessible, bubble up to your generic handler.

Of course, it’s important that the generic handler actually handle the exception. Which brings us to George‘s submission, an ASP .Net error handler.

       protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Exception ex = Server.GetLastError().GetBaseException();
            SysGenericException myExp;

            string msg = string.Empty;
            switch (ex.GetType().ToString())
            {
                case "FrameWork.Exceptions.SysException":
                    myExp = (SysException)ex;
                    msg = myExp.Message;
                    break;
                case "FrameWork.Exceptions.SysDatabaseException":
                    myExp = (SysDatabaseException)ex;
                    msg = myExp.Message;
                    break;
                case "FrameWork.Exceptions.SysNotifyException":
                    myExp = (SysNotifyException)ex;
                    msg = myExp.Message;
                    break;
                case "FrameWork.Exceptions.SysInvalidPrivilegeException":
                    myExp = (SysInvalidPrivilegeException)ex;
                    msg = myExp.Message;
                    break;
                default:
                    ExceptionPolicy.HandleException(ex, MDBExceptionPolicy.Global);
                    msg = "An Unexpected Application Error occurred";
                    break;
            }

            
            

            Server.Transfer(PageURL.GenericError, false);
        }

We start by looking at the last error and tracking down its BaseException– that is to say, if exception A happened, and the handler code threw exception B, we want to get a reference to exception A- the root cause. On its surface, this isn’t a bad idea, but as we’ll see, in this instance, it’s hiding a horrible choice.

We create a SysGenericException variable to hold our exception, which implies that we’ve created our own tree of exceptions for our application. I don’t love that approach, but it does at least give us the benefit of polymorphism so that we can easily identify which exceptions are our custom exception, and which aren’t.

And then we switch on the string name of the type of the exception. This is bad enough, but even worse: we do the same thing in every branch. There’s no point in switching here. If we actually needed to cast to our internal exception type, we don’t need a switch, we could use the is operator: if (ex is SysGenericException). But we don’t need to actually do that cast- the only property we access is Message, which is built in on all Exception types.

Except we don’t even need to do that, because the msg value is never used. It was used, once upon a time, and we stuffed the error into the Session object (likely so that we could print out the message for the user), but we’re not doing that now.

We can also see that they’re using an ExceptionPolicy object, likely a library designed to easily handle different error types in a declarative fashion, which means they likely should have just used that to handle all the exceptions, instead of trying to have a weird branching/type-checking thing here.

And we’re not done. Because we have to go back to that GetBaseException call. Best practice is that, if you catch an exception and need to throw an application specific exception, you leverage the InnerException property: if the database is down, but you want to throw a SysDatabaseException, you should construct the SysDatabaseException so that it contains the database error. Then GetBaseException will return the database error, the root cause of your problem.

Which isn’t what’s happening here. They likely are catching built in exceptions, and constructing entirely new, parallel exception objects, but not using InnerExceptions to maintain all the error information. They’re basically deleting all the root cause information so that they can use their own, internally defined, exception objects.

This is clearly a large, enterprise product. Likely the root cause of these problems- the inner exception if you will- is that you have developers who don’t actually know the language or its tooling, reinventing wheels badly because they want the language to fit their intuitions instead of having to learn anything. Like a child who hasn’t quite learned to dress themselves, they’re wearing their underwear backwards and claiming that this is superior, because it addresses all the problems they have if they wear their underwear front-way round. The chafing is just something you have to live with.

The 81st Golden Globe Awards dazzled with $500,000 gift bags distributed to winners and presenters, featuring extravagant items like yacht charters, private jet credits, and other exclusive experiences.

According to a press release on the official Golden Globe’s website, the gift bags, which were labeled as “The Ultimate Gift Box,” were curated by the luxury lifestyle magazine Robb Report especially for the Golden Globe Awards, which aims to honor the best in film and television each year.

The Robb Report also made a “generous” contribution to the Golden Globes Foundation to “support arts, education, journalism, humanitarian projects, and non-profit organizations dedicated to empowering underrepresented communities within the entertainment industry,” the release said.

The 81st Golden Globe Awards featured extravagant $500,000 gift bags with exclusive items like yacht charters and private jet credits

Image credits: Golden Globes

The gift bags featured more than 35 luxury products, everything from private jet credits to a session with a celebrity tattoo artist.

All 83 of the 2024 Golden Globe ceremony’s presenters and award winners received the Ultimate Gift Boxes, which were each worth more than $500,000, but some exclusive items went to a select few.

One of the experiences included in the lavish “goodie bag” was a five-day luxury yacht charter in Indonesia aboard the Celestia Phinisi Yacht

Image credits: celestiayacht

The A-listers were gifted with various travel experiences, including a five-day luxury yacht charter in Indonesia aboard the Celestia Phinisi Yacht, valued at $50,000, and a five-day “luxury experience” at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman, valued at $20,000. 

Those who wanted some new ink on their body could also receive a $2,500 tattoo from Atelier Eva, an internationally acclaimed fine art studio based in Brooklyn, New York, USA, founded by renowned tattooer Eva Karabudak. 

The spoilt Golden Globe attendees also received multiple beauty items, including an LED face mask from CurrentBody ($380), truffle eye serum ($114), and a $250 cream from Le Domain.

Up to 10 lucky recipients received a complimentary membership with $10,000 in flight credits to XO Jet

Image credits: flyxo

In addition, the gift bags included numerous luxury food and drink items like a bottle of Komos Varietals ($200).

One special guest received six bottles of the world’s most expensive wine, Liber Pater, a gift valued at $193,500.

Moreover, up to 10 lucky recipients received a complimentary membership with $10,000 in flight credits for XO Jet, while another fortunate individual received a pair of Coomi x Muzo emerald earrings retailed at $69,000.

The lavish presents beat last year’s Oscars gift bags, which were worth about $126,000, according to reports at the time.

A special guest received six bottles of the world’s most expensive wine, Liber Pater, a gift valued at $193,500

Image credits: liberpaterwine

The $126,000 gift bags that were handed out to Hollywood A-list Oscars attendees also came with a hefty tax bill, according to reports.

The Academy Awards was stocked with $126,000 worth of freebies to Oscars attendees, Breitbart reported.

The gifts reportedly included a $40,000 Canadian getaway, a $400 bottle of gender-neutral perfume, a $435 box of sweet dates, a $12,00 voucher for “body sculpting,” and much more among its more than 60 gifts.

A fortunate individual received a pair of Coomi x Muzo emerald earrings retailed at $69,000

Image credits: Coomi

However, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and California’s state authorities reportedly issued a $63,000 tax bill on the luxurious prizes.

According to Forbes magazine, the IRS slapped a $46,000 tax bill on the gift bag, while the state of California dipped its hands in to pull out another $16,000.

On Sunday (January 7), the most talented creatives and talents in showbiz were honored at the 81st Golden Globe Awards.

Winners and presenters were also offered a five-day, all-inclusive experience at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman

Image credits: ritzcarltongrandcayman

Taking place at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, USA, the glamorous ceremony was marked by two new categories: “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” and “Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television,” the Barbenheimer phenomenon, and, of course, all the glitz and glam brought on by celebrities’ lavish outfits.

While Oppenheimer won Best Motion Picture as a drama, Barbie brought home the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement golden statue crowned with a globe.

Cillian Murphy was awarded Best Actor for Best Performance in a Motion Picture in a Drama for his portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, Lily Gladstone won best actress for the female version of the category for her role as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon.

Many readers thought the gift bags were too excessive considering recipients are already privileged

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