Harry's Ruminations

POWERS OF CONCENTRATION If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech areas have started checking resumes before processing the bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it. link

I'll take an E30-size car with 240 hp for under $30k, please, Alex :-) I think BMW finally figured-out that the 3-series was getting a little too big. Supposedly, there's plenty of the previous gen 3-series engineering in this car (as there is in the R50/R53 MINIs). Nummy...now in about 10 years when I can afford a used one :-)

J-M (with heavy French accent): ...and now vee have zee tree per-son who get ze 'ate wall certification. J: [raised hand] May I ask a question? J-M: Cer-tan-lee J: What's 'eight wall'. J-M: It is zee next thing af-tur seven wall. * * * Perhaps this was one of those 'you had to be there' moments, but dang was it funny! J-M goofing on my old boss. Beautiful.

link At Georgetown College, I took Compilers, a 400-level capstone course that scared the hell out of everyone. Everyone was like 10 students, because our CS department was that small. However, it was a required course. If you wanted to graduate witha B.S. in CompSci, then you had to have this course. The prof was Bryan Crawley. Mister Crawley (insert Ozzy reference here). A strange guy, he was without a terminal degree, which made him the bootheel of the Math, Physics, and Computer Science department. The one thing this guy *loved* was compilers--he started introducing compiler-like concepts back in CS 111. Anyway, the class was pretty boring, but it covered all the bases--using lex and regex's to tokenize, then using yacc to generate the Abstract Syntax Tree, and then writing the C code to do the code generation by traversing the tree. The language we were using was a fairly trivial stack-based affair, but it did demonstrate most of the problems with compillation. In p...

Two words: Loved it. link Dumb, enjoyable comic book movie. Not pretentious (a la "Hulk"), nor overlong (Spidey #3). Any move where a flaming skeleton rides a demonic motorcycle up a skyscraper to defeat an elemental demon is worth at least a look. The CGI looked great, and Cage got to chew the scenery (and co-star Eva Mendes) for a full 112 minutes. Probably the best part for me is Peter Fonda as Satan, strolling by Cage's motorcycle offering "Nice Bike." Cage's bike is a replica of Fonda's from "Easy Rider"

Happy Father's day to all the men out there. As I sat in Church today, I was taken back to February 10th , to a particular moment I'd like to share. * * * The operation was over. Maria was fine--pink, healthy, and squalling. Whitney was holding up well; I hated to leave her, but I wanted to stay with the baby in her first minutes of life. I gazed upon her as she got her first examinations; the pediatrician said she was fine, with a nice twinkle in her eyes. I guess they could ID the noobies (never had a baby before) dads. My relief was like another person in the room...I wish I'd had a mirror to look into so I could say, "She's gonna be okay." This was the moment I came back to in church today, this moment of relief, of the battle being over. That day, the feeling broke over me like a wave, and I excused myself. I went back to the room, snuck into the bathroom and sobbed like a baby. I've never felt smaller, more powerless in my life. Good when God...

Blue People Yes, this is an article in Pravda (the former Soviet newspaper) about the blue Fugates from Troublesome Creek, on the border between Breathitt and Perry counties. Fun times.