Finding my face in this world... Interesting... Actually, I had no idea that face recognition software had gotten that good. Had I seen it on CSI... I wouldn't have believed it.
John Backus died Saturday... which is sad. He invented Fortran, but I'm more familiar with him due to his work on the Backus-Naur form, which is a formal language to describe programming languages (similar to Chomsky's grammer for natural languages).
Apparently, the goal of going to school for 7 years and getting a bachelors and a masters in computer science... is to be able to have Best Buy computer techs treat me like a total idiot.
I know the difference between a hardware problem and a software problem. I'm pretty sure the drivers don't mysteriously deteriorate to cause things like, sound, to stop working.
And I'm also pretty sure that if they do, the problem is not position specific... as in, the sound won't crackle more or less if you hold the laptop at odd angles.
Yeah... another developer tool I'll only be able to afford if they put it on MSDNAA (ie, it's free). Although, I think for my current needs, .NET works fine. So the upgrade is just for coolness value, I guess.
So if C# and Java 1.5 are essentially the same... why don't we trash C#? I mean... I guess variety is a good thing, but Java has been around longer... and I have a terrible hatred for C# (which, in fairness, may be an unreasonable bias, but still).
Hardware is the computer itself, its keyboard, casing, microchips, switches - rusting, dusty, fallible, and mortal. Software is the thousands of lines of written code that allow the computer to do incredible things at a high speed, and that never breaks down - invisible and immortal. Hardware and software; Mensch and Ubermensch.
~Fatal dose, by Barbara Wade Ross. Saturday Night, Jun94.
Ah. My new and interesting blogger interface was simply due to platform differences. Apparently blog for Mac is much differnt than blog for WinXP. Go figure.
Anyway... fun and exciting aside... apparently, my butt is recognizable and identifiable as belonging to me at 100 yards. By other females. Interesting. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to use this information, but I'm sure it will come to me. *eVil grin*
I'm trying to get lots of work done, while still "taking it easy", and managing to go home for the weekend.... [FYI: I'll be going home sometime on Saturday, I think, and returning Tuesday morning, if all goes well]
Anyway...
Quote of the day:
Programs don't have morals... they aren't considerate of other programs needs for processor or I/O time...
-- Dr. Baca
Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguincharging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0
As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
--Maurice Wilkes
If computers still can't figure out that those penis enlargement e-mails in their inboxes are spam, how can they possibly assess the merits of a book report on The Sun Also Rises?
~The Write-Stuff Software
Yeah. That's about it. I have this awful feeling that sometime this weekend I'm going to break my rule about not crying in the computer lab... It seems like everything is setting me off... I have cried more in the past three days than I have cried all bloody year... Yeah. So I guess tomorrow, I'll have to give Jeremy the "If I start bawling it's not your fault" speech. Hope I don't freak the dude out...
These coding nightmares are killing me... I tried to nap, but I started dreaming... I was stuck inside a java source file, and I couldn't get out... I was walking through all the member data and methods and everything (Like I was stuck in the computer screen, walking over the text)... I kept tripping over the dadgum curly braces, too.. they were getting caught in my shoelaces like some kind of wild vine or something. Then an SQL exception started chasing me through the code (I know it was an SQL exception, because it looked like a a giant squirrel... dadgum you, William)... I knew if I could make it into the Oracle database, I could hide in the User table I made for the site, and the SQLexception couldn't go there. But first I had to remember the password to get in... and then when I did, I couldn't connect to the database... And the SQL exception was still after me... and I looked at my watch and it was 11:00pm, which means the database was down for backup. For thirty minutes. And I knew I was going to die. The last thing I thought before the SQL exception pounced on me and I woke up was "Damn... Why didn't I just set up a try / catch block?"
And, of course, that made no sense to anyone who has never programmed in Java. But that's ok, you should get the gist of it (If you missed it in all the technical stuff: A giant squirrel was chasing me around a computer screen and I couldn't get away. And the squirrel caught me and did whatever sqirrels do to you when the catch you, but I missed that part, because I woke up).
So yeah... taking lots of drugs does weird things to your dream life.
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
