Category: Programming

August 26, 2003 /

The day went very well, actually. Object-Oriented Software Development is going to be hard and a lot of fun; AI and Algorithms are going to be hard and… well, basically just hard. I managed to buy my books and a lunch and backpack. Oh! That’s a great excuse for a gimmick, because I was actually buying said backpack for Maria, and I had biked to class and had only one way to carry it. That’s right: for a few hours, mine was a metabackpack.

That biking was the first time I’ve ever actually done a real bike workout, and it was pretty cool. (It’s also longer than I thought; now that I’ve scouted the route, I think I’ll mostly TARC it.) At times I felt like an escapee of TRON, whizzing through lightfields with limitless dexterity. At others, such as when I ran into a chain link fence within five minutes of leaving my apartment, I did not. And at still others, I tried to stop, ha ha, whilst riding with a misaligned brake pad and fifty pounds of new textbooks. The other thing I learned today is “inertia.”

Also! I returned Sumana’s call and ended up talking to Leonard, who was gentle and solar-powered, the way I imagine dimetrodons. I babbled a lot, at one point, I think, engaging in extended discourse on the subject of avocados.

Yeah. I lived through one day, and tomorrow it’s already my weekly Hump Day Vacation, wherein I do nothing but hang out with Ian and get excited about secret projects. Also, try to find a longer CAT5 cable so I can get Yellow Puppy out on the interweb. Ph34r! My… vastly underpowered new computer!

August 26, 2003 /

Sumana recommended weeks ago that I read “In the Beginning was the Command Line,” a very long essay by Neal Stephenson about operating systems and Disney World and nuclear weapons. I’d heard of it before, and I like Stephenson a lot, although his direct-address form is so clear and dry that I spend a lot of time wondering if he’s making fun of me.

Anyway, today I got bored at work, and I read it (213k of plain text; I was very bored), and it got me all excited and I went home and dug out my reject iMac and now, a few hours of downloading later, I’m watching it brainwash itself with Yellow Dog Linux. This is way too easy. I want it to hit a snag now, so I won’t be won over.

You hear me? I won’t be won over!

I don’t know why I have such a grudge against Linux. Maybe it’s because my first experience with it was being thrown into the cold water of a bad implementation of Debian–a hacker’s imp, done by my hacker of a first professor, running chill and unfriendly in the basement that was the old Centre CS lab. (The new lab was still in the basement, it just ran Red Hat instead. I was shocked to realize Linux could do 24-bit color.)

Or maybe it’s just because I’ve been using Windows for such a long time, and I hate admitting I was wrong. Bleagh. Oh well.

The install’s 18% done, and I think I’m going to crash soon and let it run while I sleep. In the morning I should just about have a Linux box, as is only fitting for my first day of CS grad school.

The only problem now, really, is figuring out what I’m going to use it for. I’ve got my desktop publishing and image processing pretty well taken care of on this old warhorse (my PII), so I didn’t install any of that, but do I try to set up a friendly ftp server? Learn to write Xwindows apps? Run a MUD? Suggestions are welcome.

Pork-barrel entry-end tagalongs: I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch this evening, waiting for Yellow Dog to download. And they’re GOOD! I’ve been strutting around all night thanks to that. Also, The Devil’s Dictionary does in fact have an RSS feed, and its author, a Mr. Kn____, is apparently some kind of referral-log ninja. And I owe Maria big for letting me download and burn like a gig and a half of computer-geek stuff on her shiny new laptop, since my CD burner is still dead. Thanks, Maria! Get a blog!

Apparently I define myself by bloggers

August 20, 2003 /

Coincidentally, my farewell lunch was scheduled for the same day as Emma’s, and my last day would have been the same too–except I’m not leaving after all. I’m going to keep working here part-time, Mondays and Fridays, with class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m counting on that break in the middle of the week forcing me to get some work done.

This wasn’t a decision lightly reached. I talked about it to three people I respect a great deal–Sumana, Maria, and (the other) Emma (from GSP 2001)–and finally came around to staying after a lot of thought. This isn’t my dream job, but it’s a good job. My next best option would be a possible opening at The Great Escape, a really neat comic / music store on Bardstown Road, but a) it’d pay less, b) I’d have to have a driver’s license and c) it wouldn’t look nearly as good on my resumé.

So I’m going to get to know the people here a little better, and I’m going to pay my crap-programming dues, and I’ll be able to breathe a little easier financially. I’m going to be putting a big chunk of my pay into a savings account every month, and that account is going to be reserved for exactly one thing–Amtrak, California, Comic Con, Stephen Maria Lisa Will (Ian?) Sumana Leonard Graham next summer. You gotta believe!

this should have gone up last night but I’m slow

August 17, 2003 /

Finally fixed the “Journal last updated” indicator on all the other pages, for those of you peons who still don’t have an RSS aggregator. It’s pretty hacky (I finally got it by string-manipulating the aforementioned RSS feed), but I’m kinda proud of its ingenuity. It should be pretty adaptable, even if some of the preceding fields change length.

Yeah, I bet I could lift a car. If I wanted.

In which I worry and ramble

August 13, 2003 /

My boss just officially pitched me the do-you-want-to-keep-working-during-school question, and I’m torn. Working in a cube isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot more comfortable whatever retail or counter job I’d otherwise have this fall. Plus it looks a lot better to have months of programming experience already on your resume, even if it’s just as a part-timer.

On the other hand, I don’t like this job. The people are great and the environment is comfortable, but the work is boring, boring, boring and I’m only even halfway talented at it. At least if I (hypothetically) work at a bookstore I’ll be busy and competent, even if I’ll also be on my feet all day.

I just want to DO stuff. I want to be minting clean lean extreme code, not patching bugs in this enormous ugly proprietary system. It makes me tired and I look for distractions, and with broadband right here at my workstation, that’s not good for my productivity. That in turn makes me feel guilty about my work ethic, which makes me more stressed, which makes me tired, lather and rinse and so forth.

I know that I’ll probably start out bug-fixing wherever I go, so I should probably get used to it. The other thing, though, is that I have no idea what my workload is going to be like in grad school; my boss would clearly prefer that I keep my job uninterrupted, just dropping down to part-time, but by the time I get to midterms that could very well kill me. I don’t like taking twelve hours out of my day now, and I don’t want to find out what it’d be like to do that with homework. Also, I’m REALLY tired of getting up at 0630. I want an evening shift.

(It occurs to me that I’m posting this from work, and there exists the possibility of a random IT guy picking it up on a sniffer and sending it back to my boss with a cocked eyebrow. Just in case: Hello, IT guy! Your sister was great!)

Forty-five google minutes later, I’ve got a list of ten book or comic stores I could bus to. I think I’m going to make a bunch of phone calls tonight. At least thinking about this got me to dust off my bum and actually start thinking about what I’ll be doing in the fall. Sometimes questions find answers.

There’s one other thing to consider, too: if I keep up my secret practice project, it shouldn’t be too long until I’m confident about writing publishable short fiction. I know the money’s not great, but it beats all my other options until they spit candy. I also know that chances are slim, and that everybody and her grad school duck tries to write short fiction, but I do have one little in: not everybody or her grad school duck knows Nancy Zafris.

At least I’m in process now, which I think is the important thing. I could live on just my student loans, but I’d rather not, and it’s nice to be able to buy a comic book once in a while. I just need to figure out how and how much I can work. Hey, old people, anybody want to tell me what to do?

July 24, 2003 /

Did I say six of seven? Because officially, it turns out to be twelve of twelve. I generated an entire point release myself! I am Bug Barbecue!

Abruptly and without transition, check out Ken’s two–part account of his trip to Lollapalooza. It’s extreme!

“I, Ken Moore, the person you all know as a calm and not easily excited person, was jumping around and loving every second of it. These guy are the saviors of rock and roll.”

It’s great stuff, and I wish I could have been there, and I’m very glad Ken’s writing regularly.

July 21, 2003 /

I’m pretty sure I’m not violating my NDA by writing this: I’m famous! Whoo! Six of the seven changes in our next point release, which comes out Thursday, were bugs that I FIXED!

This is actually not a big deal, since all the issues I’ve done are what Justin calls “five-minute fixes” (except for me they take about a day). Still, code that I’ve written is now part of a commercial software product. I feel like I should have a badge, or at least a button.

Meanwhile, of course, the eleven other issues I’ve worked on didn’t pass muster with Quality Control and have all been assigned back to me. It’s almost like I’m a real programmer. I would demand to get paid more than eight bucks an hour for this, if I actually worked hard enough to earn it.

June 27, 2003 /

I’m writing way too much today. NewsBruiser makes it so easy!

From the back of my instant lemonade tub:

To make 1 quart, fill cap with mix up to line "A." Pour mix from cap into pitcher and add 1 quart cold water; stir to dissolve. To make multiple quarts, repeat instructions.

My instant lemonade tub was designed by a programmer.

December 11, 2002 /

First subject heading in my Programming Languages textbook:

Programming Is Difficult

Second subject heading in my Programming Languages textbook:

Programming Early Computers Was Especially Difficult

Test in an hour and a half. I’m going to miss this thing. (All the same, I should really start studying.)