Comment On A Little Out of Place

I've actually watched _Percy's Ghostly Trick_ and I certainly felt damned afterwards.

{rimshot}

So, Seth, do you work for -------- -------- or just do business with them ?


Ed: Redacted... accidently left that in the screenshot!

my 6 year old would rank all of these at the same level of horror...

Sheet, in any ep Mr. Conductor could disappear and appear anywhere he wanted, like a ghost. And George Carlin is dead now, so... Do you think if God turned out to be sore about all those things George said, he'd get sent to the Isle of Sodor?

And yes, I know that place because it's too late for me as well.

Yeah something is out of place with the "Classic Horror Titles". They're all shit.

Seriously, any "classic" collection of horror isn't classic unless it includes some Hammer house of horror flicks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_House_of_Horror).

TRWTF is this article is a little out of place. I think it should be in "Error'd".


Ed: Ugh, double error. Fixed!

Jack:

TRWTF is this article is a little out of place. I think it should be in "Error'd".

It's a Confederate spy!

It's Charlie the Choo-choo! O_O

Oh, Seth, I'm totally getting Hollywood on your IP!

IKnowThis> hack into 69.64.155.124



Hacking in progress.... ACCESS DENIED! Invalid IP range.

Damn, I forgot to run the IP address through the "555 Filter"

IKnowThis>  hack into 300.569.222.111



Hacking in progress... Password needed. Please randomly mash the keyboard (except the space bar)



Hacking... 25%....50%....75%....100%.... computer hacked! 



Now listing all files tagged "Important to Plot" 

or "Director's In-Joke"....

Ed: Redacted actual IP address

This type of expiration date marking is very common lately. This one isn't that hard to guess, 07149APC, would be July 14 2009. Not sure what the APC is though. Some companies use numbers and letters and you have to decifer them on their website. Some folks like Vitamin Water I've yet to figure out.

Hey companies, if I can't quickly figure out the expiration date, I'm not buying your product!

APC should be "After Packaging Date". 7149 days equates to about 19 years 7 months - not unheard of when dealing with dried cereal.

halcyon1234:

Hacking in progress... Password needed.

Nice, but you don't need to hack the password; it's clearly _Gv#dOl|w#WeNGNli:cRpmQL:xkZW&-

Mihai:

APC should be "After Packaging Date". 7149 days equates to about 19 years 7 months - not unheard of when dealing with dried cereal.

That doesn't sound very likely to me. Even sea salt doesn't last this long and it's already millions of years old when you buy it!

Anonymous:

Mihai:

APC should be "After Packaging Date". 7149 days equates to about 19 years 7 months - not unheard of when dealing with dried cereal.

That doesn't sound very likely to me. Even sea salt doesn't last this long and it's already millions of years old when you buy it!

Sounds off to me - 19 years, maybe, but 19 years 7 months is just too exact.

scott:

Hey companies, if I can't quickly figure out the expiration date, I'm not buying your product!

And if the shop-keepers can't, they're not stocking it - how are they going to rotate the oldest stock to the front?

"07149APC"

Typically when you see anything that's not easily identifiable as an expiration date, it's going to be a 'born on' date, or possibly a control code. Control codes are used by manufacturers as a way to trace back exactly when and where the product was made so if there is any sort of recall, (i.e. salmonella outbreak, bad imported tomatoes, etc.), then they can easily take care of the problem, warn consumers, track down states or stores that have bad products, yadda yadda. You get the idea.

If it is a born on date, it could mean "May 29th, 2007" if 07 = the year, and 149 = the julian date, meaning the 149th day of that year. Some companies use Julian date sets because it only needs 3 characters instead of the usual 4 with the mmdd format. Saving 1 character per item on hundreds of thousands of items can add up!

Any way you slice it, it isn't clearly marked on the packaging. Consumers shouldn't have to friggin decode their cereal to know whether or not it's bad! I personally just use the sniff test.

*sniff*...

I'd eat it...

Anonymous:

Mihai:

APC should be "After Packaging Date". 7149 days equates to about 19 years 7 months - not unheard of when dealing with dried cereal.

That doesn't sound very likely to me. Even sea salt doesn't last this long and it's already millions of years old when you buy it!

I'm pretty sure salt will indeed last a few million years, but at least over here (EU) there seems to be some law that food items are not allowed to last more than two years, so I'll probably never see that kind of expiry date :(

Well the password looks pretty secure for me.

So the real WTF is that you cannot copy + paste from windows dialog boxes?

No wait. The real WTF is that you're installing Postgresql on Windows!

If they want to save characters by shortening the date, why not use 0795?

Write down that password and DO NOT SLUG IT!

scott:

Hey companies, if I can't quickly figure out the expiration date, I'm not buying your product!

But others will, and the companies that use confusing expiry dates will be able to cut costs under the consumers' noses, and undersell competitors. Before long you won't have any choice (other than becoming a local food disciple). Presumably, at some point the new administration will come in and whack these assholes around a bit. Of course they'll come up with some 500 page specification for acceptable expiry date that is almost as unreadable as the current encryption schemes.

rainer:

I'm pretty sure salt will indeed last a few million years, but at least over here (EU) there seems to be some law that food items are not allowed to last more than two years, so I'll probably never see that kind of expiry date :(

That's not a law. That's some manufacturers realizing that, by putting overly short expiry dates on the food, you'll throw away perfectly good old food and buy more from them.

Anonymous:

"07149APC"

Typically when you see anything that's not easily identifiable as an expiration date, it's going to be a 'born on' date, or possibly a control code. Control codes are used by manufacturers as a way to trace back exactly when and where the product was made so if there is any sort of recall, (i.e. salmonella outbreak, bad imported tomatoes, etc.), then they can easily take care of the problem, warn consumers, track down states or stores that have bad products, yadda yadda. You get the idea.

If it is a born on date, it could mean "May 29th, 2007" if 07 = the year, and 149 = the julian date, meaning the 149th day of that year. Some companies use Julian date sets because it only needs 3 characters instead of the usual 4 with the mmdd format. Saving 1 character per item on hundreds of thousands of items can add up!

Any way you slice it, it isn't clearly marked on the packaging. Consumers shouldn't have to friggin decode their cereal to know whether or not it's bad! I personally just use the sniff test.

*sniff*...

I'd eat it...

I saw a <a href="http://consumerist.com/5120395/cheat-sheet-for-sketchy-food-expiration-codes.html">very informative guide</a> on the Consumerist. Your guess seems like the most likely interpretation, although the of the letters could also indicate a month. Really there's no telling with only one of the product. Cryptic expiration dates are nothing new.

I don't know about you guys, but Thomas the train scares the shit out of me!! Not as much as Barney, but still...

I think TRWTF with the movies is that Amazon classified 3 of them as being "classic" when they're dated for 2005-2007...

Alfred:

I saw a <a href="http://consumerist.com/5120395/cheat-sheet-for-sketchy-food-expiration-codes.html">very informative guide</a> on the Consumerist.

BBCode only please Alfred. Now, about that Consumerist article...

Anonymous:

I personally just use the sniff test.

*sniff*...

I'd eat it...

That's how all my dates start out.

scott:

Hey companies, if I can't quickly figure out the expiration date, I'm not buying your product!

I used to work in a supermarket, and I had a customer come in to exchange a box of crackers because she thought it was expired. I explained that they use the DDMMYYYY date format, and told her what that date really was (well into the future). She said, "Oh, OK... But I still want to exchange it for a new one". So I told her that that was OK, but the new one would have the same date format on it. So she decided to just return it...

The joys of retail...

amischiefr:

That's how all my dates start out.

Surely if the first one in the packet is OK then all the rest are OK too? It must take you ages to eat a packet of dates, let's hope you don't take so long over raisins.

[Bazzzzing!!]

BC - Before Christ
AD - Anno Domini
APC - After Personal Computing

APC refers to a future epoch of all-browser applications.

AnonCoward23:

It's Charlie the Choo-choo! O_O

TRWTF is I thought exactly the same when I saw little Blane uhh... Thomas

What the Frag?:

So the real WTF is that you cannot copy + paste from windows dialog boxes?

Of course you can. At least form the standard MessageBox(Ex). Just hit Ctrl-C, and the whole message box (title, text and buttons) will be in you clipboard.

SenTree:

So, Seth, do you work for -------- -------- or just do business with them ?


Ed: Redacted... accidently left that in the screenshot!

No need to redact anything. A little bit of investigation tells me that Seth works for Great Bay Software, had a sister who died in an automobile accident in 1999 when she was 21, and another sister (one of a set of twins, actually) who wrecked his 2001 Pontiac sedan on December 5, 2002.

I know, it's creepy isn't it.

rainer:

Anonymous:

Mihai:

APC should be "After Packaging Date". 7149 days equates to about 19 years 7 months - not unheard of when dealing with dried cereal.

That doesn't sound very likely to me. Even sea salt doesn't last this long and it's already millions of years old when you buy it!

I'm pretty sure salt will indeed last a few million years, but at least over here (EU) there seems to be some law that food items are not allowed to last more than two years, so I'll probably never see that kind of expiry date :(

Can't possibly be true. I've got some cans over here that expire in 2012 (bought about 2 years ago)

Anonymous:

halcyon1234:

Hacking in progress... Password needed. Please randomly mash the keyboard (except the space bar)

Nice, but you don't need to hack the password; it's clearly _Gv#dOl|w#WeNGNli:cRpmQL:xkZW&-

Well, he said 'randomly mash the keyboard'.

Looks about right to me.

Not True. sugar has no expiry date at all, and these tins of tuna expire in 2012.

...POW right in the kisser...POW right in the kisser...POW right in the kisser...PETER!!

Oh GOD I accidentally slugged it!
What should I do?

The Apple Jacks have a Julian date - Either you're eating really old cereal (147th day of 2007) or your photo's old.

I hope the photo's old, because I assume Apple Jacks lose their appley, jacky goodness well before the second year.

WTF is up with resizing images in the browser?

dtech:

[...] I've got some cans over here that expire in 2012 (bought about 2 years ago)

tom:

[...] and these tins of tuna expire in 2012.

And, as I want to point out, this is not a coincidence ;)

Generated Random Comment is: 'fsd$%$fgarfdew4@$%_)(*367--+543rg23'

What the Frag?:

the real WTF is that you cannot copy + paste from windows dialog boxes

Dialog box: Ctrl-C.
Notepad: Ctrl-V.

the_mayans_were_right:

dtech:

[...] I've got some cans over here that expire in 2012 (bought about 2 years ago)

tom:

[...] and these tins of tuna expire in 2012.

And, as I want to point out, this is not a coincidence ;)

You're right - the food is Incans ! You Maya complain, but Olmec no apologies.

Actually, I submitted the picture towards the end of 2008 (can't remember the exact date) shortly after buying the cereal. The cereal tasted completely normal so I am positive that it was not "Better If Used Before" some time in 2007.

A few years ago, I was on a project to integrate an ecommerce engine into a major UK retailers website, the product chosen handled the recommendations (people who brought also brought, related products, up-sell, cross-sell etc etc)

The system was coded up, integrated went through sys-test, integration test and onto the UAT enviroment. The plan was, the marketing / pricing / promotions business users would get onto the system and start setting up the christmas offers etc on UAT, and when we went live the UAT enviroment would become the Live enviroment.

We had an automated script which ran through a 'purchase journey' sticking several (the same for each time the script was run) products into the basket then buying it, we used these scripts for load testing the system.

Anyhow, the system went live and in under an hour, a very very worried call from one of the clients Project Manager, appararntly the Department head of something or other had just given him an ear bashing, and had just stopped short of sacking him and throwing sationary at him..

It turned out this department head, seeing the new site was live went to buy a disney film for his children, to find that among other things the recomendations engine was pushing tripple x porno's, death metal albums (well, german industrial rock) and several other products you realy wouldn't associate with a childrens film

turned out, one of the test scripts that was executed a few thousand times, brought several Disney films, porn and a few Rammstein albums

The recomendation data was never cleared down before the live switch over, so the recomendations was whatever was in the warped minds of the test team.

Are you sure about that? Are you sure it's not

_Gv#dOI|w#WeNGNli:cRpmQL:xkZW&- ?

The real WTF is that the password is displayed in a sans serif font, so "l" (lower-case 12th letter of the alphabet) looks identical to "I" (upper-case 9th letter of the alphabet).

Paolo G:

The real WTF is that the password is displayed in a sans serif font, so "l" (lower-case 12th letter of the alphabet) looks identical to "I" (upper-case 9th letter of the alphabet).

Depending on font, resolution and sight, you may be able to spot a tiny difference in spacing or height.

Brian K:

Actually, I submitted the picture towards the end of 2008 (can't remember the exact date) shortly after buying the cereal. The cereal tasted completely normal so I am positive that it was not "Better If Used Before" some time in 2007.

Best before dates are often lies. Many times I've eaten things past the date and only got food poisoning a couple of times. I've also had properly stored food stuffs go bad before the expiry date. Of course I was able to take it back and exchange it, but what if it was in a nuclear bunker and it's the apocalypse?! What then? Starve!?!