One benefit of an apartment lacking air conditioning

[pseydtonne]

I got home at 11 p.m., after an eventful but enjoyable day off. I found our first MassElectric bill on the kitchen table (we had NStar, the old Boston Edison, in Woburn and in Somerville).

Four dollars, zero cents.

This bill only covered fourteen days, but it's still only four American bucks. I spent $3.75 on a really lousy eclair in Beacon Hill this evening (which went into the trash within two blocks of walking).

I'm tempted to call tomorrow and make sure. It says I've only used 11 kilowatt-hours. How? Maggie leaves her computer on all the time. The ceiling fan has churned at full blast nonstop. I own a TV and a bucket load of electronic appliances. We aren't stingy. How can I only wind up with a four-dollar bill?

Maybe I shouldn't call -- why jinx it, eh? tafkar, you'd know protocol about this, wouldn't you?

I miss air conditioning. I crank it in the car. I just about rub myself on the vents at the office. Air conditioning is civilization. Without it, though, life is amazingly cheaper.

That reminds me: I owe fangirl715 a check for gas and electric. I keep saying "I'll drop that off when I'm back over there to grab the filing cabinet". Then I get distracted.

I got up around 11:30 and had my body ablutioned and clothed by 1. I drove to the post office, filled out a change of address form, and walked next door to city hall.

Melrose City Hall is darling; they show it every day on the community cable channel. It's a little red brick number with a small set of steps and big offices inside. It reminds me of the church that was home to my experimental grade school in the early Eighties. To imagine a city of 24 thousand can handle its civic needs in a building without a gaudy waterfall (Utica) or even an abandoned public plaza placed on top of an old red light district (Boston, Utica too).

The nice ladies didn't send me to an office on the opposite side of town, the way Somerville did. One lady handed my a form for Maggie's voter registration and said "oh, why go to the RMV? Fill one out yourself while you're here." What a pitch!

Then I drove to the RMV (for those of you outside Mass: DMV). The guy handed me a fresh registration sticker for free. Then an even nicer lady took my change of address form and a check for fiddeen bucks.

It was about this point you expect a turn-around -- drama, tension, conflict. Instead, I kept feeling better. Everyone I dealt with today was chatty like me and friendly as could be. It's like I wasn't even in New England.

I drove down to the Fellsway and down McGrath to check out a Celeron. I parked easily, slipped into the store, and promptly realized I shouldn't be purchasing that chip right now. I am only avoiding getting a newer machine. Why not do that instead, since my next commission

So I crossed the street and walked into Best Buy. The SACD selection keeps improving, but the hardest title is still a Police album. There's a Motorhead album on DVD-Audio. Call me when there's an SACD release of a weirder album than Pet Sounds (great album, oh yeah! It's still not a test of the fidelity capabilities of new sonic format).

I walked back to my car, nary a purchase in my hands. I had parked under a shady tree and plugged my cel phone into the lighter port in my car's trunk. I left the trunk lid open and called hakamadare. He filled me in on a way to rescue my hard drive in Linux. Then I gave him my explanation of Why I'm Learning C.

Let's see how non-geek I can make this:

• My cousin wants me to learn a programming language called C# ("sea sharp"). To get there, I need to learn the fundamentals of the language C# came from, C. C is the most common programming language for applications and operating systems. All permutations of Windows are written in C (C++, actually -- rather than explain the difference, we'll just keep going), as is Linux. So is any Mac OS.
• It's not a smooth language -- getting a screen to print "Hello, World!" takes some weird commands. It is a potent mofo, though -- when you learn enough, you can make wicked fast stuff. Writing in C requires some mental discipline.
• My goal is not to become a programmer -- not in C#, not even in C. I want to be able to read C, to have a foundation for understanding algorithms, to be able to work a compiler with aplomb and be able to solve certain kinds of problems.
• I think of this the way I studied classical Greek (yes, epanastasis the made-up Erasmian stuff): I don't plan to speak it, but I realize I know too little about our world if I can't read it. The 21st-century Renaissance Man can code, even if only as poorly as a heathen quotes Scripture.

After that, I parked by Lechmere (I found a meter right in front) and rode to MGH. I got there around four, picked up Maggie's pills, and headed to walk-in.

"Eww! Sliver? Go to Emergency Ward. Go." So I waited a half-hour, filled out the papers (more chat!) and explained how a computer worm works to the woman that took my blood pressure. Then I waited another half-hour to be seated on a hospital bed. I started to read my book about C.

When I woke up, it was forty-five minutes later. The doc said "heck, we don't get 'em all out. I've still got a shard in my arm from ten years ago." This guy was my age. So I got dragged to Radiology (literally -- a Russian dude pushed the bed, even though I'd walked in), where I chilled some more. The radiologist told me some stories of the victims she handled from the Great White fire: "We'd take scans just to make sure certain tubes were placed correctly and find broken bones. These folks had been trampled, then burned. It was the worst stuff I've ever seen."

This was my first non-dental X-ray. It showed no sliver at all. Another doc came in and explained "our success rate is only 20 or 30 percent when we can't see the sliver. Come back if you feel an inflammation. Otherwise, you can leave!"

Now it was almost 8 p.m., four hours since I'd entered the joint. All I'd eaten since noon was the beef empanada I grabbed outside the turnstile. (Next time, I'm going to get the spicy one.) So I grabbed a lousy meal, but I was so hungry that it tasted great.

I went to the home of haka, chaiya and lightfixer to welcome home the Pennsic battlers. Haka mentioned that he'd chosen to drive home via the Thruway instead of Penn Pike, which led me to ramble on and on about Albany and Schenectady. He said I should start writing the stories I have about upstate New York in my journal. Would that be cool with you folks?

I got home, where Munkee is still very sick. She's been puking and feels dehydrated from the diarrhea. Mrowr. She can't sleep. Sleep is calling me.

By the way, hakamadare? I ran "fsck -y /dev/hda7" in Linux rescue. Then I tried to reboot and still had problems. In fact, the system then said to run fsck MANUALLY (no -a), which led me to choose one no instead of a yes and no further developments. I'll poke around in the morning.

-I feel like Bob Dobbs, fnord

Comments

C?

[sml.livejournal.com]

Why are you learning C? And C#? Ick.

You know perl, right? Pick up a decent object oriented language first. My bias is for Java, especially since it looks like you want to be on linux most of the time. C#, I suppose, is acceptable, though I think Java is a better learning language.

Once you have the foundations of a good OO language, going back and picking up C is easier, the syntax is similar and the complexities that C adds (pointers, pointer addition, memory allocation, etc) become easier to fill in.

Unless of course you are looking to do kernel hacking right off the bat. :P

What is your goal for learning a language? Are you trying to find a job programming ASAP or just trying to be a well-rounded computer geek?

-Seth

Re: C?

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

yeah, what he said. i was trying to say this last night, but couldn't put it so succinctly.

some links that may be illuminating:
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=1289
http://www.martinb.com/software/language/beginner/

-steve