When Emily the cat went missing a month ago, her owners looked for their wandering pet where she had ended up before — the local animal shelter. This week they learned Emily sailed to France.
Lesley McElhiney now figures her cat went prowling around a paper warehouse near home and ended up in a cargo container that went by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and was trucked to Nancy, a city in northeastern France near the border with Germany.
What with my week-long trip to cold, cold Saskatoon, my sister’s wedding and the accompanying family visits, work, and — oh yeah — sleeping — I’ve spent October getting a wee bit behind on my school work.
This hasn’t been helped by the fact that I haven’t been excited by this course from the beginning.
“Computer Organization with Assembly Language”.
Just the sound of it fills the heart with glee, doesn’t it?
If I had been expecting to take this course, it might have been better, but I was all pumped up to take the databases course. (I know. To most people, this sounds equally low on the Woo-Hoo!-Meter.) But then I discovered that the databases course wasn’t being offered until winter and the only second year course left for me to take was this one… well, this bit of Shakespeare comes to mind:
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.- As You Like It, II.vii
(Pretty shmancy, eh? Came here expecting Legos and zombies and you get Shakespeare. Gotta keep you on your toes.)
So, as I was saying — behind on schoolwork.
Here’s a bit of advice — if you ever find yourself back in the cold, clammy grasp of academia, and your whims and pleasures lead you to study the fascinating field of computer science, and if you somehow have the preternatural ability to chose the material which you will get behind in…
Don’t pick digital circuits.
For the past week or so I’ve been going like crazy trying to apply my knowledge of binary arithmetic and boolean logic to the actual concrete means of designing ridiculously simple digital circuits. But some crucial “circuit” just ain’t been connecting in my brain. I’m a fairly intelligent guy (shut up) but every once in a while, I hit a roadblock. This one was a doozy. More than a roadblock. More like a “Hey! It’s Paris and we’re peasants so let’s overthrow the French Monarchy” barricade.
Last night, we had an assignment due. The assignment was due at 11:59. Assignments are submitted electronically and late assignments are not accepted. When it hits 11:59, the assignment submission option disappears from the course website.
So. I had a deadline.
If you know me, you know that deadlines do something to me. Or I should say, deadlines actually cause me to do something. The rest of the time I’m a nasty procrastinator. But give me a looming deadline and I’m there, baby!
Well, to make a long (and astonishingly rambling) story short, I had a breakthrough with digital circuits last night. That mental circuits got turned on and I was able to take what I knew logically and apply it practically to — I’ll repeat — a ridiculously simple digital circuit.
What was the elapsed time between the moment that I had my breakthrough and started to design the circuit to when I actually finished and hit “Submit”?
17 minutes.
And what time was it when I hit submit?
11:58:37.
A man who claimed he was Superman and could fly was hospitalized early Tuesday after leaping from a fourth-floor window, authorities said.
…
They said the man — who apparently had drunk several bottles of red wine before attempting the jump — appeared at the window ledge at around 4 a.m. and shouted: “I am Superman! Nothing can happen to me!”
Well… the next time it’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep worrying about the choices I’ve made in my life, I can just look back at this and say, “Idiot.”
