This is SHOUTING-for-MODERATOR thread pt. III!! [derailed: go to thread IV]

Step one: Stop saying "sorry" when you totally don't mean it. It's more passive aggression, and it's intensely dislikeable (= many points on the "Reasons Not To Cuddle Graham" charts of literally dozens of readers).
Step two: Say sorry, sincerely, to Alan. You owe him a massive, absolute apology, on AND off-board. (Failure to do this = many more points on the "Reasons Not To Cuddle Graham" charts.)

I realise in the mood you're in this afternoon that one and two may not be simultaneously achievable. Try and ensure this mood passes swiftly.

Step three: one really obvious way of showing reciprocal friendship towards me would be behaving in a minimally civil manner towards people that I like.

I think I'll keep the other steps for personal email.

More seriously, without going into the history, it's very nasty to insult someone for a coding "mistake". It's just a little query rewrite and there are ways of being diplomatic about these things.

Graham, I'm sorry this has happened. You were less than civil with me and I just wasn't in the mood for it today. I'm not changing my mind though. Let's just let it lie.

There was no need to rewrite the query. If you understood how much work I put into making this all work, and how much stress it's caused me, how much hassle everyone put me through wehn stuff didn't work, you'd understand why having some buffoon coming in and changing things without any care for why I might have done things the way I did was so totally offensive to me.

Alan doesn't get an apology until I get one from everyone here that's hurt me.

You know when you grab a kettle and it burns you and that hurts. Well, this is a reaction to tell you not to do it again.

Good luck with that.

Another point on the reasons not to cuddle Graham chart. Don't you get it yet?

Uh, WTF?

This is a shot in the dark, but it may be because you seem to be clinically disturbed and exhibit enough antisocial tendencies to match the profile of the average fictionalized serial killer.

http://www.fishtaxidermist.com/images/mutton.jpg
I think Graham needs to learn how to be more tactful.

No, that bit was great!

This is a shot in the dark, but it may be because you seem to be clinically disturbed

This is the nub of it. I don't think there's any point in trying to impress upon Graham anymore what is normal behaviour that doesn't alienate people. He just can't see it. Or in trying to give advice on how to live his life. He is not ready for it. I hesitate to say all this publically, Graham, but it may serve to discourage fruitless ILX stuff about you every rearing its head every so often, be it well-intentioned friendly advice or exasperated hostility. You need help from a professional. I think you have already sort of pursued this and been disappointed, and I know it is a maze and underfunded and everything else, but I don't think you cannot get what you need here and us all (inc. you) banging our heads against the wall here is not helping anything.

This row did not start from your being mistreated in any way. Alan tried out something he thought might work. He's a very clever and skilled man, and it did little if any harm as far as I could see, and there was certainly nothing wrong in his giving it a try - a lot of SQL performance issues can only really be settled by trying them out in real conditions. If there was really a slowdown in performance, why not just tell him so in an email and either of you could have switched back (or tried something new again, whatever). Why insult him publicly? The worst he did was make an entirely understandable mistake while trying to improve matters. You might be a better coder than Alan, I wouldn't know, but I have a job where I am currently basically in charge of and supervising a number of programmers and helping them write better code, including tuning their SQL and so on, and I would never treat any of these people the way you have behaved here. I'd expect real disciplinary trouble if any senior person behaved that way, and the fact that there is no such structure here doesn't make your actions any better.

Fuck this, I'm taking it to e-mail. I'm too angry.

So I guess I should have known better than to open a thread called "tongue splitting: C/D" if I didn't want to see a huge pic of, well, a split tongue. Maybe I'm stupid and oversensitive, but maybe there should be a warning? Eek ick ack uck.