TypeError: conversion from bytes to Decimal is not supported

[Skaperen]

yes that is obvious. i forgot that i already asked it. i tried to use it with some bytes with digits i got from a pipe, a couple days ago. i'll just have to decode them, which just gives me the same characters in a str. i'm "parsing" some output. or maybe i should just go look at code i used to "parse" the output from ping a couple years ago.