Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! (Part 3) With Workaround

As of 2024-12-09, I am still getting this error but after messing around a bit, I think I may have found a workaround.

Workaround

It seems like you cannot login when you get the error. This time I decided to click on the chat. Nothing loads but now the usual profile icon shows and a banner to login also shows. If the banner doesn't show, the profile options should have the option to sign in.

After signing in, some things may load. For me, it loaded three or four of maybe eighty or hundred of chats I should have. The profile icon doesn't show nor does the status.

As with the prior login issue, reloading the application after signing in with the issues will then finally load properly.

At least, I can use the app in the morning now. I am not sure why waiting several hours will also reach the same state.

Possible Alternate Workaround

May be able to skip a step above by trying to sign in before closing the app if the option is available. Also closing the app before calling it a day seems to also bypass the issue.

Now that I am writing this alternate workaround, I think there is a possibility that the issue may be with the login token not expiring properly. To make a guess, it may be that it is reusing the token that expires in 24 hours. The reason I have to wait for it open again is that I am waiting for the 24 hours to expire. Closing the app probably removes that token properly. Signing in also kind of removes the token but the app still may be continuing to load so therefor only loading parts of the configurations. And for some reason, closing the app after getting the error does not remove the token properly.

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! (Part 2)

Seems like this issue only occurs in the morning.

Maybe waiting for something to load. If so, then it must be something that takes a long time to load as I am unable to log in for at least a couple hours.

Or maybe something to do with the system going into hibernation.

Update 2024-12-09

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! (Part 3) With Workaround

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/12/buggish-ms-teams-unable-to-login-weve.html

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! (Part 1)

 I've been getting this error. Reboot and app restart does not fix the issue.

We've run into an issue

Oops, something went wrong 

Sometimes later in the day, it'll work. Sometimes, it does not. I just use the web version.

Why can't Microsoft figure out how to log into their own application on their own operating system?

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/08/buggish-ms-teams-unable-to-login-device_30.html

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/08/buggish-ms-teams-unable-to-login-device.html

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-again.html

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-issue.html

Update 2024-12-09

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! (Part 3) With Workaround

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/12/buggish-ms-teams-unable-to-login-weve.html

Work Life: When is it too many minor mistakes to be a major problem?

When is it too many minor mistakes to be a major problem?

It seems there is no amount of minor mistakes where management will be willing to fire someone. Even if the minor errors cause a major error. The only time I have witnessed someone who makes too many minor mistakes (in my opinion) is when they have to cut the entire department or I had a direct involvement with the type of person.

I have already mentioned two people I have been involved with.

So to game the system, it almost seems better to continually make minor mistakes. That way you can also have a defense when you create a major issue. Because there is so much accountability to go around for those who did not catch the minor errors that led to the major issue.

Have I just been working for weak management or leaders?

Work Life: Should Developers Be Fired For Overlooking Small Details or Should the Company Be Happy That We Have Cheap Developers?

• 08/09/18 
• 11/09/18
• 02/22/22
• 06/05/2023
• 2024-06-24

These are the dates in the comment history of a source code. There is no documentation requirements in this team so technically they are doing no wrong. Also these are not consistent across the board. It is also not consistent among the same developer on the same file.

These are the developers we kept. The solution of 20+ years is becoming more and more unmanageable. Maybe because I am seeing it from a low, low point-of-view... and I just do not understand the macro-level of running a division or a company?

Personally, I find the ones that are worse at keeping the immediate local patterns also tend to have more issues from their changes. Unfortunately, this is just my feelings... and as evidenced no one seems to confirm my feelings are ever correct even though my feelings seem to be correct a lot of times after the fact.

Why Can't Good People Make a Good Company?

I think maybe I just do not understand normal people and the sheer number of normal people. I think I may have disillusioned myself in thinking that I am normal. Is this the dilemma of being above-average but not clearly smart enough to be obviously above others? Or am I smart and I just have not found the right person to identify me as smart? Or maybe I am just too smart for my own good... in that, in reality, I am normal and normal people inflate their self-worth?

Am I autistic? Or do I just run against the grain? Am I eccentric? Or maybe fake but really a non-conformist?

If I have such good ideas, why can't I run my own company? Am I blinded by having a steady paycheck? Do I not have what it takes to run a good company in a not-good society? Am I willing to sacrifice my dignity to take on a manipulative personality to sell or even get a better job?

Why I am not good?

I don't know...

Life: Why the 'd' in fridge but not refrigerator? Why I never thought of this before?

While trying to create an application to track why appliances, I wanted to build a list of common alternative spellings including misspellings of words to make it easier to find things. This brought me to search for alternative spellings for refrigerator.

The first article that came up was why is there a 'd' in fridge but not refrigerator. I already knew how to spell both but it has never occurred to me to ask why it is different. Of course once I thought about it, it made sense why it was that way.

I have always thought that I was pretty good at picking out these kinds of particularities. This experience has really grounded me more on my thought biases and how my mind over simplifies things.

For those who wanted to know the answer, this site does a pretty good job explaining: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/fridge-vs-frig-spelling-short-for-refrigerator.

Other pages seem a miss a point here and there.

Work Life: My git inexperience wasted so much of my time (Understanding EOL)

I was troubleshooting an issue where our developers are not consistent with their formats. For this case, their is an inconsistency to the usage of CRLF or LF. We have developers on both Windows and Mac for a solution built for Windows.

These developers are probably good examples one of the difference between a developer and a software engineer... in my opinion. In that, they just build whatever and however to do what they have been tasked to do. Create another connection string to the core database that has been used for 20+ years? Sure because I didn't know where the original connection string was. Drop an entire new JS library framework for an update to a page title? Sure because it looks cool. Add a parameter to an obviously generic function like ToString(string WhyDoesThisEvenNeedAnotherParameter, string HowDoesASecondParameterEvenMakeSense, string InCaseThatStillMadeSenseHereIsAnother) then expect it to not break everything else? Duh, I wasn't taked to make sure it passed regression test. (Of course, we don't do regression test... suddenly app support is up in flames because everything is burning except for that one new feature.) Yes if you were wondering how it even get that far, that is how "lean" we are because leadership needs to make that extra $20 buy cutting half the developers.

Sorry, story got away from me.

So, I was syncing files and realized a file has historically been CRLF for EOL. Suddenly, I see a wall of red because the file was suddenly LF. At first, I blamed the developer. Then I realized his branch was also CRLF. I tried to play around maybe it was GitHub or maybe Visual Studio. I had to go through backups to see if this happened earlier. This was not happening on all the files.

Then I noticed there was a period of time the git attributes was set to text=auto. Or rather, I was looking up the issue online and found someone reference this. I probably ignored this a couple times as it did not seem relevant. Clearly, I didn't know what this did but did not seem intuitive to me. Eventually I ran out of other options and just looked it up and found it was causing my issue. Somewhere in the history, the text=auto was removed...

So, I spent this whole time... I guess... understanding how different developers develop and what a pain it is to work with people who just don't care about their work. At least now I know what to look for.

Buggish: MS Excel (Web Version) Copy/Paste Issue with message "Retrieving data. Wait a few seconds and try to cut or copy again."

Some days, several brain cells just hate Microsoft. Is it MS' fault? Probably just another underpaid and overworked engineer. But still... why something as simple as copy/paste breaks?

I copy cells then I paste and I get:

"Retrieving data. Wait a few seconds and try to cut or copy again."

Copy something else (not in spreadsheet), paste, correct. Copy same cells again, paste, error message. Paste, paste, paste, paste, paste, paste, paste, paste, paste.... all error messages. Wait... paste... error message.

Sheet has 4700+ records, 9 columns of data.

Reduced record count to 4000+ records.

Now suddenly works.

Unrelated

Copy a cell, select into a cell (ie so that cursor appears in the cell), paste. In the Excel app, this will copy the value into the cell (instead of the equation or type).

This will work on the first cell. Select a second cell and suddenly doesn't work. This happens every time.

Somehow selecting into 1 cell won't delete the clipboard but the second one does. Or probably what is happening is when selecting out being inside of a cell deletes the clipboard. Whatever the case, why is moving cells impacting the clipboard at all?

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. Device must comply with your organization's compliance requirements. (Resolved? Two weeks and no issues)

Suddenly, I identified a pattern that was suspiciously correlated to my login issues with Microsoft Teams. I noticed that I was able to connect successfully when I connect to VPN to another network unrelated to the login that I use on Teams. I do not know why but I am able to replicate it by disabling my VPN.

Although I found the cause to my issue, I do not know why it is the cause to my issue. My login is to domain A. My system is on domain B. My VPN is to access B's Azure cloud solutions.

Maybe the compliance part requires access to Azure cloud? Shouldn't that be on the backend though? Any case, it has been two weeks and no issues as long as I wait for the VPN to connect first.

It still sucks that I have to restart Teams whenever my laptop is in sleep mode too long but at least it is not as irritating as the above issue. This is likely the end of this series of MS Teams bugs.

References

Part 3 - https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/08/buggish-ms-teams-unable-to-login-device.html

Part 2 - https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-again.html

Part 1 - https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-issue.html

Buggish: Visual Studio 2022 Stuck in Rebase

I got stuck in Visual Studio 2022 under Git Changes where I only get the options to Skip or Abort.

Short Answer

Got to your .git folder and delete rebase-merge folder then restart Visual Studio. Restart is required as the screen does not update.

RCA

The complicated part is that I was troubleshooting a separate issue where we get ghost files appearing for apparently no reason but related to white-spaces. I have a potential solution but it only impacts the main branch. Everyone's current branches will continue to have this ghost file issue.

One of the biggest problem with the ghost file issue is that you cannot remove it from the staged or unstaged list. When executing the rebase, it will stash the change. The ghost changes will be stashed but will also not go away so the rebase will fail. VS buttons to continue or abort will also fail. In CLI, it is functioning as normal so this is primarily a VS-ish bug. The bug is probably also on git side where the folder is not removed when either the rebase fails or when aborted.

Buggish: MS Teams Unable to Login. Device must comply with your organization's compliance requirements. (3rd post on same bug)

I just rebooted after a Windows update that required a reboot and behold... my "Device must comply with your organization's compliance requirements" infinite loop is back. You can see my past issues...

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-again.html

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-issue.html

Besides that I have little add from my other posts.

Rebooting again doesn't help.

Restarting app multiple times doesn't help.

Our IT help support is useless.

So-called online MS certified support or actual MS support just points you to the IT help which I already mentioned are useless.

Signing in again and again doesn't help.

It clearly logs in because each time I attempt I get updates to my chats.

The browser version works.

My personal phone which is definitely not org compliant works.

Only Microsoft knows how to break their own apps while all other non-MS apps on a Microsoft OS seem to work completely fine. Their copy/paste do not work across different apps and messes with the global clipboard. Visual Studio is slow as molasses. It takes up 90% of my hard drive (237 GB). Making me have to deal with our useless IT support and cheap-ass infrastructure team that is so penny-pinching to not get a hard drive big enough for someone to work. I constantly have to delete and uninstall then reinstall when I need it again which all requires admin rights which I have to deal with our IT support (at least this one is our department IT which actually is not useless). Ok, this last one may not be Microsoft fault, but I still blame them for all their bloated apps and complicated licensing. I just want to focus on working not trying to train myself to be IT.

Work Life: Pros of Working with Terrible Developers

Ignoring the several hours troubleshooting terrible developer work (my role is change management, not developer), I have been thinking there have been some benefits to working with such troublesome developers.

I learn a lot. I learned about the history of text encoding. I knew about UTF-8 and Unicode which helped me go down that route. Guiltily, I did go down a rabbit hole and probably didn't need to know the wikipedia version of its history. Surprisingly, there is no easy way to identify when text encoding a file uses. I ended up just using notepad and the open as option. I had to guess and hope I can read the file. There are some apps that I could download, but my work laptop is annoyingly locked down where I didn't want to spend time working around that.

I learn how underpaid I have been for so many years as a developer. Sometimes I wish I had a mentor but life can always be better. I feel fortunate that I was born smart enough to figure things on my own.... eventually. I have to teach our developers about file encoding. How did some of them figure out how to mess that up? I may never know but at least I know there is such an option. Also how do they do that in between version? The files were not even brand new. You open, you modify the one line, save, and commit. Yet, they managed to mess that up and not know why.

While on that note... how did they figure out how to change the configuration to change all EOL characters? When I review the git diff, I see a wall of changes for something that should be a line or two. I can even see the visible text being the same. Initially, I threw this over the wall to the developers to figure it out. A month later, still an issue. Because I was already looking into why git would think files were binary, I thought this would be related.

Having a hex editor would have saved me so much time on both these issues... but I simply just did a diff to ignore white spaces and suddenly only the one line is highlighted. 5 minutes of my time and paid developers couldn't figure it out for a month.

It is also interesting to learn how the value of just having the bare minimum work is financially positive. We just went through a layoff and lost about half our staff. The next couple months, they backfilled with cheaper developers. The remaining staff basically just spends their time fixing all the bugs, reviewing their codes where they basically rewrite about 80% of them. They all complain that they no longer just code. Yet, it seems we are doing well. The senior developers seem to be more stressed but that doesn't impact me. With more changes due to poor code and misunderstood requirements, my job is even more secure.

I have gained more experience on how much people are willing to lie and deceive about their work when there is so much evidence to show otherwise. And how unwilling management to action on these reports turn so many employees into quite drones yet wonder why no one says anything.

So in conclusion, it has been kind of good to me personally to work with such poor workmanship. I am continuously learning how to manage all the developers who don't want to do things properly, learning how much time is wasted yet still profitable, and learning how to remain positive throughout the entire turmoil.

Life: Why I haven't had a BofA credit card

My first "main" bank account was with what is now Chase. Life at Chase was perfectly uneventful. Then I moved to a location where Chase was less popular before the Fin crash of '08, and I got myself a BofA account because a branch was the closest one.

So many things were not automated like paying my credit card. At first, I thought it was because it wasn't the bank's credit card. So I suffered through that and eventually I moved again where Chase was more readily available and basically stopped using BofA.

Years later, technology is advancing more beyond my mom's capabilities so I started managing her bills. One of those was for a BofA credit card. She also has a BofA account and is now years later. At this time, you kind of could pay through some other payment system but it cannot pay the full credit card amount. You can only specify the minimum or a fixed amount. Just baffling to me that I had all these capabilities from Chase so long ago.

What a suffering that was to manage for my mom. She would get frustrated on trying to pay online. Because she was no longer getting paper bill, she doesn't remember to pay. I have been on several support calls with BofA to waive the late fee. BTW, BofA support was wonderful except for the waiting part. It is basically the only reason my mom is still with BofA to this day (also doesn't hurt that they finally eventually caught up technology-wise).

Now it is finally on full auto-pay and we are all happy except my mom still would like the paper bill but we convinced her it is greener this way. She is also a bit more tech-savvy now (or maybe that I am now physically farther than my sibling).

Any case, posting this as a reminder the importance of first-to-market or at least keep up with the competition within a reasonable amount of time. Chase and BofA are now relatively close to me but the memories have kept me away from BofA even though they now look modern (and possibly more advanced than Chase... wouldn't know since I haven't tried again since then). 

Buggish: MS Teams (Login again)

Still randomly having the same issue from last post, https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2024/07/buggish-ms-teams-login-issue.html.

Today I also found that I can open the app. It'll (as always) take forever to "login", error that login doesn't work, then the error will disappear, my chats will refresh (fully? I have no clue). I sent a single message to respond to a chat. As I check other chats, I notice that I have the login error again. When did it happy? I do not know. Why does it happen? Also don't know. But my message was sent... so.......

Why is this so complicating? At least two years (maybe even four but my memory isn't serving me right now). Or is this a white-paper on barely functional is better than holding new features?

Update

I also just noticed that my status is now offline but I have been message people since I created this post. This is also seen on the other end as a couple people have asked how I am offline but responding.

Work Life: Senior Developers Hate Doing Code Review, Newbies Unable to Properly Code Review

What I Think is My Relevant Background

Part of my job is the ensure the quality of the code deployments to the production environment. This is my first job where I kind of review at such a low level. I've been with three different companies as "release manager" (whatever that means) over 10 years.

Before that I was a software developer for over 10 years.

Although we are the technology arm of my current company, our company is not a technology company. Our system still runs classic ASP and "upgrading" to .NET 4 for many years. This "new" tech has not been supported by Microsoft for quite some time. Why don't we just upgrade to .NET Core? The answer to that remains unknown. I bring this up only to say that the internet is full of anecdotal examples of decent to best-in-class developers. A lot of the confusions to modern methodologies is that there is a large diversity of experiences in software development and why there are so many opinions on things that seem to logically work but don't.

Our Process

I probably should start on what code review is for us but I am going to over-simplify by just saying that someone kind of looked at it and there is some sort of checklist they should go through. Our process requires someone to at least sign off on the code review. There is no consequence if bugs are found or rolled back.

So for us, I found that they always give the code review to the newest member. And they always approve the code review. I don't think I have seen one finding from any newly hired developers. If there is a database code change, then it also goes through db review and possibly db performance review.

The code is also deployed to pre-deployment environment for "system end-to-end" testing but it is actually all testing because everyone is too lazy to figure out how to create test data for there changes. This deployment has now been delegated to other lead developers because I take too long to deploy changes. Or rather, I cause delays in the development process... because I care about quality?

Who Reviews our Code?

It always seem to be the newest person. Even after our massive layoff, that just went back to the prior newest person. Not only that, developers hate having their code reviewed. Because for a period of time, they always put in comment that "change was minimal, review now required." Yet rollbacks increased, and they never changed until I told leadership that seems to be the trend. Then magically, rollbacks decreased again after code review.

Does our code review work? I still have my doubts. I think it just forced the senior developers to actually slow down or face negative optics.

The amount of low quality development and review is mind-boggling to me. I look through code like a resume, for about 5-7 seconds. The amount of findings like incorrect dates, incorrect reference number, incorrect date format, misspelling of object names... is just astounding to me.

After seeing how little management or leadership cares about the consequences, I no long push back on many of these "minor" changes. I almost only push back when they update a generic library that I have not seen modified for 4 years suddenly needed for a specific function for a specific customer. This still blows my mind as no one (about 4 pairs of eyes) even questioned that before it reaches to me.

There was also a change to update a library to add a connection string to the primary database that the entire application has been using for the last 10+ years. How did no one question this? First, why is the connection string with user name and password hard-coded into a library. Second, no one bothered to think how did everyone else access the primary database over a decade. Do I even need a third? A second was probably not even needed.

Who Should Code Review? Jr or Sr?

In my opinion, everyone but should be a trusted resource that signs off on the code review. An untrusted code reviewer should review first then a trusted resource.

Technically from a release manager's POV, I only care that someone signs off. But as a dev lead, I would prefer multiple reviewers until all developers are trusted resources. Once everyone is trusted, then one reviewer is sufficient.

How do you know if someone is trusted? This all depends on the quality of the deployments. If too many, then the person is untrusted. What is too many? That depends on the company. If the company has a high tolerance for unexpected downtimes, then it is not as critical. If the company deals can impacts a person's life, then it is important a person has a record of good performance and possibly more safe guards to manage regular human errors.

Buggish: MS Web Excel find does not always work

Sometimes on Microsoft Excel (Web), the find feature does not nothing. You type in the search text and click Find All then nothing happens. Put in a different search text and still nothing happens.

Refresh the page and suddenly everything works as expected.

Possibility of issue may be that I keep the page open for a maybe an hour or two. Machine was rebooted in the morning a few hours prior. This is not the first time facing this issue.

IIS using unexpected (incorrect) Integrated Windows Login

This has just recently become a major problem for me because I created an app that uses the Windows login to access my intranet web tool. For some reason, it was accessing an admin account that I also use instead of my logged in user.

I found this really strange because I never put in the password. I tried to clear my cookies and rebooted my machine, yet somehow it retains my admin account.

I spent an hour figuring this out eventually giving up and worked on something else. Then somehow which seems almost randomly, I thought about checking the credential manager.

Solution

I use the credential manager to manage my user and password for different network solutions. At my place, they use a different login to access these resources for security purposes. I find it such a pain because a few applications are not designed for this scenario. I put in the network folder, user, and password so I thought this couldn't be the solution but I had nothing else to try.

I did notice on closer inspection that it changes the network path \\servername to just servername. I just removed the one related to my tool and suddenly my tool was working as expected again.

Buggish: Microsoft Web Outlook Cannot Send Message Error

 To no one's surprise, Microsoft has probably one of the worst user experiences.

Trying to send an email. Takes forever and returns an error that says something like "There was an error, please click here for more details." And the more detail returns:  "This message can't be sent right now. Please try again later."

Great, Microsoft, great.

I eventually figured it out. The issue was that I was tagging a private group. It was a group set up in my outlook with a bunch of people that I send to normally. This is separate from Active Directory because I don't have access and I hate dealing with admin support.

Buggish: MS Teams (Login issue)

I just used MS Teams yesterday with no issues for work. I come back today and now I get an error "We weren't able to connect. Sign in and we'll try again." on MS Edge. On most days, refreshing if web or reloading if Windows app will resolve this issue... but today it is not letting me in. Usually one or two attempts will bypass this.

It is not the same error with the Windows app version where I get that my corporate device is not compliant with corporate compliance. Go figure... it was working yesterday and nothing has been installed. And like the web, usually reloading will resolve this in 1-3 attempts... but today a no go.

And now I get a "We've run into an issue. Oops, something went wrong! Restart" error. Seems to be flipping between this error and the one above today.

On top of all that, MS Teams works almost perfectly on Google Chrome. It is again quite amusing to see that I also get the "... weren't able to connect..." error on Chrome but I can just continue to message and receive messages.

After 30 minutes of just refreshing the page, Teams on Edge started working. Also I did in that time was messaging people on Google Chrome, repeatedly refreshing Edge and repeatedly restarting the Windows app.

Review: GitHub "squash and merge" versus "merge pull request" for pull requests

I have been using "squash and merge" for a few months and just recently switched to "merge pull request" in GitHub. My opinion is that "merge pull request" is much better option than "squash and merge" for our case.

Brief Background

Here is a brief background to my case. The software development process (10+ developers) for this "project" is extremely chaotic and monolithic so a lot of changes are deployed "chaotically" which basically means they deploy whenever developers and/or testers think it is ready. So I may get changes A, B, C, D, E, F but may be deployed C, A, E, F, possibly never B, and D could be "maybe" on hold for a year or tomorrow.

For some reason, I am responsible for the implementation of git (with no prior experience). I am a deployment manager (technically release coordinator... whatever that means). Please forgive if I butchered the purpose of git. Also our tech team is extremely reluctant to change which means I am not going to change process over a minor issue even if it is the industry norm.

Environment

We have 3 environments: DEV, STG, and PRD. 

Each has only a single instance. Master branch is what is in production. 

Stage branch is what is in stage. Stage branch also almost like a fork of master but still technically a branch. By this I mean it is a branch that I never merge with feature branches or master branch. All changes are cherry-picked from the feature branch. 

The feature branch is a clone of master. All pull requests are for the feature branch onto master branch.

Please accept that this is the scenario. As to why we do it this way will be too long to explain for this post.

Squash and Merge

Pro

This was pretty cool to see on the git history. A nice single line and easy to see issues with merges. As I will learn later, this is a very minor pro.

Con

Although I knew that a squash and merge created a new commit id, I didn't fully realize what implications this meant.

For a long period of time, I have been merging the changes to master so I have been doing all the conflict resolutions in git. While trying to get the developers to get into the practice of merging master into their feature branch (particularly really old changes), I found that there were a lot of differences from my personal expectations.

I had thought that git will compare the differences to the final result, but it actually compares the commit history. Because it is a new commit id, this throws a lot of flags at git.

Merge Pull Request

Pro

Merges are much simpler if developers update their feature branches with changes from master branch.

Con

"Messier" history. It's not pretty looking. But from my experience, there has been no real value to seeing a pretty history because there is nothing to get from it. With a merge history, git will know which commits to merge. Also if there is an issue, there is more information in the history. A clean history won't be very helpful.

Conclusion

"Squash and merge" is positive only cosmetically. When things are good, I don't need to look at the history. When things are not good, there is usually not enough information. "Merge pull request" is helpful in both the merge and in troubleshooting. For those who skipped the above, this is based on our process.

If we following a process that was closer to FIFO, then the Merge Pull Request would be slightly less beneficial which I then can potentially see a case for Squash and Merge. I would still prefer Merge Pull Request.

If there was maybe a case for using Squash and Merge, that scenario would be if pull requests were on the development branch (eg feature branch). I have lots of commits of minor fixes and I want to bundle them all together so there is less commits to review when troubleshooting.

Buggish: Microsoft Office365 Excel (Web) Copy/Paste is so aggravating

I completely dislike how Microsoft implemented its copy/paste feature on the web. It completely ruins how copy/paste for EVERYTHING else even its own operating system. I just want to simply copy/paste a data from one cell to something else. Anything except a directly copy/paste from cell to cell is always questionable on why it works or doesn't work (even cell to cell is questionable in my mind but seems to at least work most of the time).

Why?!?! It is the most tested and used feature.

I just want to a text inside of one cell to a text inside another cell... same sheet, same row. Simple? Of course, Microsoft does not want it to be! Worst is to cut it because the original data is GONE so what am I supposed to go back to if the paste doesn't work? Obviously, I have to undo but that also messes with the clipboard. How stressful it is just to copy/paste!

What could possibly be wrong? I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOT IDEA! I just do it again and it will sometimes work and sometimes not. I just keep repeating until it works. No seeable changes to the steps. I even tested with other applications and they all copy/paste fine. So is it memory? Doesn't seem like it. I tried with the same browser and even the same tab. Is it the browser? Doesn't seem like it too. But for stupid's sake, I even rebooted and perform the same task first with no other applications open yet... and yet, not always!

WHY?!?!

While on this topic... why does inserting or delete a wrong clear my clipboard? Why does double-clicking into a cell SOMETIMES clear the clipboard? SOMETIMES? Why is it even SOMETIMES? I rather have the row insert where it is always cleared.

Oh is it just a temporary clipboard for web Excel? Nope, even if you do not copy/paste or copy from Excel (ie you had copied something from another browser, app, or even the app version of Excel)... it is completely gone.

Also, sometimes it'll appear to copy (where the border changes when you normally copy) then when you paste, it says the data is not available. Why does that happy? No clue. How to workaround? Repeat until it works. Sometimes it takes 10s of times until it works. I can even copy/paste in the middle with other apps and it will work perfectly fine. I can copy another row to change the border cell, go back to copy, and it still won't work. I can wait minutes, hours... and it will won't paste even though the message says to give it time. Perhaps Microsoft is a black hole and time works differently there because copy/paste works perfectly fine before, during, and after this issue. Seems to ONLY be the web version of Excel. It is also funny that there are more issues with pasting from web version to app version of Excel than everything else combined.

I think this is very border-line "Not recommending to others" deal-breaker. Especially if you have the manual task of copy/pasting menial tasks.

Even worse... I've been having this issue for over a year now. I even posted this here, Buggish: Microsoft Web Excel Copy/Paste (https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2023/09/buggish-microsoft-web-excel-copypaste.html).

WORK LIFE: Do or do not keep meetings short?

I just read this blog: https://timdenning.com/overly-productive-people/

I actually put on my resume and accomplishments that I have shortened meetings from 2 hours to 30 minutes, so I thought this read was interesting and I do agree on a lot of the points it made.

I do a lot of small banter, small talk, and weather. I agree that it is important to connect to people.

The post also mentions to avoid saying that I am busy because it makes it seem my time is more valuable than others. I also agree with this. In my meeting, I say that I want to keep it short to save everyone else's time.

I think this post does a good job of too much trimming to short meetings. I do believe a lot of meetings ARE too long but for reasons not listed on the post (which makes sense as it is not the point of the article).

For me, it is important to keep topics that seem to only address less than 10% of the attendance to a separate call. I do give them a minute or two because it usually takes me a couple minutes to know if the conversation is going off tangent. I do my best to interrupt and side-bar the conversation. (I do not understand why people still do not understand this concept after working with them for 4 years now but that is outside my control so I do my best to change course.)

Sometimes the small talk goes a little too long. I found the most affective way is to just continue the meeting topic. If I add something to the banter, this may trigger someone to rebut or one-up or just wanting to put in the final word. After 10 years, no one has complained about this method and I haven't noticed anyone take offense to it. Most people have complimented me on my meeting management and I also get the highest attendance rate in all companies I have worked for. That is including upper management who I rarely see in other calls.

I also make sure that the majority of my attendance are impacted by the majority of the meeting agenda. I do not like having full teams on my calls for status updates. I recommend team leads to join the calls then they can distribute the information as needed. This also encourages team leads to know what is going on (which I think is helpful for the team leads that are not leaders; I hate having team leads that just delegate to another individual for status because to me the basic team lead should at least know the status).

If I see managers forward to another individual that I do not believe will be helpful to them, I do remind the individual of the meeting agenda and their presence may not be needed.

Of course I am biased to my own meeting style, but I find the frequent attendees of my meetings are much more relaxed and focused which I believe is through the small communications that is mentioned in Tim Denning's post.

Take the title with a nuanced take on the topic. The content has some good things to say and is a recommended read.

LIFE: I am sad that I find coupons and discounts still feel too expensive to buy

Just received some coupons for fast food restaurant. I remember in my youth when these were great deals, but now even the discounted price seems too high too buy. 

$X.00 off? No longer even 50% off the item good.

BUY 1 GET 1 for $X.00? No longer BOGO?

Plus how expensive fast food is lately, I can only count my blessing that I am past the age of convenience. Inflation is also crazy... X%? It's more like 200%. My groceries typically cost around $100 just a year ago but now $300 for the same items.