Functions, wtf were you thinking.

It saddens me that most developers/programmers/derps don't understand the basic contract a function builds in computer science. I don't have my original notes but here is a awesome article from Prabhaker Mateti over at Wright State University, the article can be found here.

tl;dr -> don't be a dipshit when writing functions, do some sort of validation on the parameters you are passing in, especially in PHP where we are a loosely typed language and type hinting only works on objects or arrays and not primitive types.

Detecting 0xFFFD characters in MySQL

If you ever have to scrub the database for extraneous characters always do yourself a favor and convert the column to HEX and search that column for the correct HEX sequence. For example lets say we want to detect OxFFFD characters in MySQL due to a botched UTF-8 conversion, simple enough do a conversion to hex

Query: SELECT id FROM table T WHERE HEX(T.column) LIKE '%EFBFBD%';

This will give you all rows in the table where there is a reference to the 0xFFFD character sequence (0xef, 0xbf, 0xbd).

I don't get it...

I don't get why it take three to five days to remove someone from an email list. For example, I take the time to click on your unsubscribe link I expect to be unsubscribed immediately. If you run a mailing list with stale data shame on you and deserve to have a can of spam shoved up your anus.

Looking for a new job...

After you spent two years trying to build a start up is a fucking nightmare. That is all. :)