Systems Check

Sitting here in a coffee-shop, ripping out a couple of inches of crap-tastic sock (too tight across the arch) and not enjoying the process. Jaywalker pattern, should be easy but I have flubbed it up enough for three socks worth of knitting. So I thought I'd try mobile blogging, and get some swype practice while at it. Much quicker with swype than with piddly hunt and peck touch keyboard...this is the future of input, my friend. Dance class in an hour, just waiting for hubby to appear and make my heart race as always. :)

(tried to add an image but go figure, my Google phone wants me to use Picasa and I'm a Flickr kind of gal.There's probably a work-around but I can't be bothered at the moment...will upload at home.)

From the Society Desk

In an unexpected move, Ms. Geek Muffin of Ottawa, ON, formerly of Vancouver, BC, married Nexus One in a secret ceremony this week. It was known that she currently was engaged in a relationship with Nokia barphone, but close friends and family knew that she secretly lusted for the sleek Motorola Milestone. Interestingly, Nexus is the faster, more full-featured big brother of Milestone. Says one source in the family, "I guess it makes sense. When she decided to throw away her 7-year relationship with Nokia, she decided to go big or go home."

In mourning about the shocking decision are Ms. Muffin's MP3 player, camera and travel alarm clock, to say nothing of Nokia, saying "She doesn't need us anymore, now that she has Nexus." The laptop is taking it slightly better as his position in her life is assured, but acknowledges that plans for a GPS in her life are now highly unlikely.

Ms. Geek Muffin is unavailable for comment at this time, as she is busy compulsively clicking on the courier website, tracking the location of Nexus, who is expected to arrive early this week from his home at Google Headquarters.

Take it Easy

In my first programming class, we had a prof who had been around the block a time or six. He was close to retirement; in fact, ours was the last class he taught. He had started his career as a procedural programmer, which I suppose is a redundant statement, considering that object-oriented (OO) programming wasn't the dominant programming methodology until the mid-1990's, and at a guess, I'd say this prof learned his coding skills in the 70's. Long story short, although he learned OO programming and taught it (some might say with varying success), he was still procedural at heart.

This was exemplified by his choice of development environment. He recommended that we do all of our coding in simple Notepad and execute at the command line. This made sense to us, as we had no other point of reference. This was ironic because our textbook came with a hefty book called "Eclipse Distilled" that looked so intimidating that neither us or the prof touched it (and that was just the condensed version of the book!).

A brief aside for anyone still reading that doesn't know what Eclipse is. It is to programming what MS Word is to word processing. Sure, you can type in text on a blank screen in a pinch. However, context-sensitive help, auto formatting, spell check, thesaurus and a hundred other tools make Word so much more powerful than Notepad. Same goes for programming. Eclipse is your Java on speed. It compiles, outputs, debugs, helps and offers an insane amount of power and control when coding.

It wasn't until towards the end of that first semester that some students explored Eclipse and extolled its virtues to the rest of us. I fought the steep learning curve to develop a deep fondness for Eclipse, and the more I learn about coding and Eclipse itself, the more helpful it is to me. I doubt I'll ever plumb its depths; the full documentation could be substituted for a boat anchor in a pinch.

I am not ashamed to say that I have been spoiled by the power. When given a project to complete at work, I held out until they installed Eclipse and the appropriate plug-in to allow me to use it to program in Perl. Though it is absolutely possible to program Perl in UNIX using vi and the command line... why would you want to? Why would you willingly deprive yourself of the power-tools and use a manual screwdriver and hammer?

Three things I've learned along the way: coders are lazy; laziness is a virtue, and it is the real mother of invention. To borrow an example from the O'Reilly "Learning Perl" book, the wheelbarrow was invented by someone who was too lazy to want to carry heavy loads. IDE's were invented by programmers who loath working in Notepad. Masochists need not apply.

Signs of Life!

It's a week into the New Year and this is my first post in quite some time, but I won't waste time with a summary of 2009. Or perhaps I will, but it will be short and sweet: study, homework, coding and exams, repeated endlessly in any order. I worked my tail off but it's been more than worth it; finding a career that I love this much is it's own reward. Apparently I'm good at it, too, at least academically. Despite the trials of the last semester, during which I had my doubts if I could make it through intact and sane, I pulled off a high A average and managed my third consecutive semester on the Dean's List. I dream now of graduating with honours...

2010 brings two co-op terms and my final semester of college in Sept. I'm in my first week of my first coop right now, in a slick, shiny, sexy Federal agency in the heart of downtown. (I am in no way being facetious when I say "sexy" and Federal gov't in the same sentence... this place is super-hip.) I have been hired in the capacity of a UNIX system administrator; something that no doubt would cause my UNIX prof to double over in glee... while I did very well in his class, I bitch and moaned continuously through it and failed to see how it was relevant to the Real World. It appears my education is about to begin.

One thing that delights me about the vocation I have chosen is how everything is interconnected. In school, the classes are distinct... Perl, UNIX, Java, SQL, System Design. They seemed in school like separate disciplines that really didn't have many connections. Here, I am learning that I was very wrong. Everything is connected. I may administer UNIX systems but I use PHP and Perl whilst doing so, and am supporting Java development and Oracle databases in the process. The system design principles underlay the continuous upgrades and migrations of the entire IT department. It's a thing of beauty and I expect to receive practical experience in so much more than just UNIX admin in my time here.

My only complaint at this point in time is time itself... from my relaxed student hours and a period of utter hedonism over the Xmas holidays, getting up at oh-dark-thirty is an extremely painful jolt to the system. I get home, have a quick nap and am still utterly exhausted and dream of bedtime. I expect I will acclimatize shortly but right now it's all exhaustion, all the time.

I Take It Back

As compared to the first two semesters, this one started slowly. The first few weeks trickled past, and there was a little homework, but nothing to make me wish I could knit time, as happened in the first two terms. The words "This is going to be a light semester!" may have crossed my lips.

I know not what vengeful homework god I pissed off when I said that, but I'm really, really sorry and I'd like to know what I can do to make it right. You see, I only have 24 hours in the day, and by the time I get the lab and assignment and study for that little midterm in web programming, read 300 pages in that utterly bone-dry Systems Analysis textbook and study for that exam, read 100 pages of online design papers and design a coffee machine in Java (I kid you not), and finally code a massively complex (or so it seems to me now) and completely unintelligible application in C#.... well, you see, there's not a lot of time for the little pleasures in life. Like sleeping. Or enjoying a stable, balanced mind.

Which I don't have at the moment so it's just as well I have no time to enjoy it.

Anyhow. You get the point. I profusely apologize for the sin of hubris. Not that it will make much of a difference, because I can't be un-smoted... unsmitten?... but I have been properly put in my humble meek place again. Thanks for the helpful reminder.

Crisis Averted

I have a crisis of confidence every semester. I know (to the point of arrogance, perhaps) that I'm smart enough to handle anything that comes at me, yet in Week Two when we're given our first significant assignment in a new programming language, I panic. I flip wildly through textbooks, Google twenty related topics, email friends, click through menus, and generally have a little melt-down. "THIS language will do me in. I'm really not smart enough to be a programmer and this moment is proof!" moans my internal wimp.

Then I get frightened, and determined. I make a pot of coffee, fix some snacks, do a little knitting to clear my head, and sit down and tackle it again, banishing that negative voice in my head. Failure is not an option; giving up even less so. Hours pass, my shoulders and neck and wrists ache, but I have written something that, while not perfect, gives me hope.

I ask a friend in class about some issues still remaining, and he points to an innocuous line of code and says "Why is that there?". I comment it out, and suddenly my major issues are solved. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I feel as if I'm slowly climbing on top of the language.

Then in class, the prof stops by my laptop to answer a question I have, and comments that I'm doing everything right and this is what he wants to see. I know then that the panic and fear was unfounded and that this is not the language that will finish me. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, I will stay up late and code early and obsess about it, but knowledge will reward those who earnestly seek it. C# shall be mine.

PS... I'm looking for interesting co-op opportunities for the winter and summer semesters, Jan-Aug. Do you know of any companies that could use some cheap programming for the duration? Especially in the tropics? *grins*

Do You Want To Date My Avatar?

If you've been around for five minutes or so, you'll know that in my down time I am Aishaii, hammer warrior, Legendary Cartographer, and soon to be Elona Vanquisher and Holy Lightbringer. I also roam around as Puck, a hot necromancer, but I'm concentrating on getting my titles for Aishaii.

Most of you are probably going "WFT?" about now. It's okay not to know what I'm talking about. You see, I'm addicted to Guild Wars, an MMORPG. As a female programmer and avid gamer, this makes me uniquely geeky.

Then, I found this through a contact in my guild.



Aaaah. My love of gaming and alternate reality set to a catchy pop beat by a hot girl who is WAY nerdier than I am (check out her education!). I have a new heroine. :)

The Week That Was

I found out today that I should be receiving my first LTD payment next week. Even better, and I don't know why I didn't see this coming, it's retroactive from April. *huge sigh of relief*

I had two mid-terms this week. The first, in computer architecture, was two hours of joy... like sitting down on a Sunday and working through the crossword puzzle. It was all on ASCII encoding/decoding, packed decimal format, floating point number format, and some LMC encoding as well... a thoroughly amusing exam and one I know I scored well above 90% on.

Today's Java exam, by the same prof no less, was an exercise in humility. There were an uncomfortable number of questions I simply had to take an educated guess on... it was a brutally difficult exam, despite the fact that it was largely multiple choice. I think I'll be lucky to score 70% on that one.

Though I have assignments due and another midterm next week, I am giving myself the night off. I shall make tea and putter in the sewing room, concluding the evening with a soak in the tub and a glass of wine. I deserve it after this week!

I leave you with random beauty. These orange mini-roses and carnations made my heart glad to look upon them; I'm glad they're frozen in time.

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

I always wanted to do something with computers; I've loved them ever since we got our first one (TRS-80) when I was in my early teens. I have no idea what prompted my father to drop over $800 at Radio Shack that day (for a computer with a whopping 16 k of memory!) , but I was thrilled. I dove in immediately, teaching myself how to program in BASIC and spending hours poring over Rainbow programming magazines. Later on when Macs were introduced to my school I volunteered as a tutor in the computer lab, just so I could spend more time with those magical machines.

I got sidetracked with photography right after high school, not because it was a passion but because I got the job and it paid the bills. However, a friend at the camera store I worked at kept my interest in computers strong by supplying me with hardware that he didn't need anymore and teaching me how to build computers from the motherboard up. I had a 286, then a 386, and continually upgraded and learned as he upgraded and taught. I will always be grateful to him as he taught me to be fearless with computers; to roll up my sleeves and dive on in.

Then I joined the army, because they told me they'd pay me to become a computer tech. Sho'nuff, I spent 13 months training to be an IT hardware tech... and then got shunted away from it with each and every posting. True, I did some very interesting things in the fields of electronic warfare and long-range sat comm, but it wasn't what I really wanted to do, you know?

When I knew I had to leave the army due to a knee injury I had a long period of soul-searching and aptitude tests with the Personnel Development section, until one day I had the revelation that I could now do exactly what I wanted to do: programming. (Every aptitude test I took pointed me strongly in that direction... hello? Clue phone on aisle 8?)

A semester and a half into the program and I know with every fiber of my being that this is where I belong. It's such a good fit for my OCD-leaning, detail- and puzzle-loving logical mind. I am grateful for this chance to pursue my dream and look forward to the journey ahead.

A Post-Script about Fedora

...To be fair, let me also state that I'm using Fedora Live, with a 2Gb USB key as the boot drive. I am pretty sure that Fedora installed onto a fixed system disc would be less hinky. As well, as my prof says with a giddy grin on his face, Fedora is the Linux for Linux geeks... so it may well not be the most straight-forward version of Linux out there.

Back to your regularly scheduled Sunday, and I'll get back to my shell scripting. Carry on! :)

Not Tipping My Hat to Fedora

I've been using Windows Vista on my laptop for just about a year now. It's freakin' beautiful, and does everything that I need it to do. No issues worth mentioning, and certainly no crashes.

I've been using Linux (Fedora 10) for 6 weeks; since the beginning of the second semester. So far, it's had a cataclysmic crash four times. That's pretty much once a week, and that's crashed-so-bad-you-need-to-format-your-hard-drive crashed. Gone, baby... gone. It even wishes you "good luck" as it drools in a corner, its little mind gone, your command and control reduced to a black screen with a prompt from which you can do absolutely NOTHING.

But in the world of the geek, they worship Linux. I don't get it. Actually, I hate, detest and loathe Linux with a fiery passion and shall never use it of my own volition unless I am seeking to self-destruct an otherwise perfectly running system.

I am not qualified to talk Apple, not having the small personal fortune required to buy one, but I hear they're pretty nice. I lust one, and maybe when I'm a private software consultant, I shall indulge... but for now, I adore my Gateway laptop, the Vista that is installed upon it, and its supreme reliability.

Mission Aborted

Well, that was entertaining. I prowled the 'net and found a couple of blog templates I'd like to try, and plugged them in to see how things might look. One or two of them might have looked okay, but for the fact that all my text stayed orange. As far as I can tell, there's no way to change all the text at once... and I don't have the time or desire to change it all manually. So, for now... orange and black it is. (Good techie that I am, I saved the original template before I frigged around with it.)

Tedium Alert?

What with being so immersed in school right now, the only blog posts I find time to write seem to me very heavy. I've not posted anything light or crafty or even taken pictures for what seems like forever. My reality right now is very book-bound; it's extremely exciting on a personal level but learning COBOL, SQL, Java, computer architecture, and Fedora do not for good blog fodder make.

Yes, I'm a Blogger Without Obligation Or Apology, and I'm apologizing for possibly being tedious.

Another thing I find tedious is the layout of this blog. Now that I have just enough HTML to be dangerous, expect some major cosmetic surgery to the blog in the near future. This orange on black thing has to go.

This concludes tonight's random musings.

Spring Semester, Ho!

I completely and totally rocked last semester, if I do say so myself... I even surprised myself with an A in Java, which meant I must have walked on water for that final exam. In Database I got the B that I expected... but that didn't stop the chair of our department from sending me a letter today, telling me that he thought I rocked, too. Very, very good stuff.

Second semester looks scary, and I'm only a couple of days in. However, I think I was scared for the first semester, too... every time I feel overwhelmed I'll log in and read my marks again.

I'd like to thank the anonymous smarty-pants who corrected my writing on the last post. While it's a perfectly valid point, and I did indeed mean "bated breath", rather than "baited breath" as written... dude, don't you have anything better to do than to anonymously nit-pick blogs? At least have the balls to offer your name along with your criticism.

(Had to laugh at the imagery of worms in my mouth, though. Nicely phrased, despite it all.)

"Nothing to See Here!"

To distract you from the fact that I have had no new blog content for ages, please go tour this site. I have been laughing continuously all evening over the entries... if you're a grammar weenie like I am, this is your kind of place.

A New Low

So I was sitting here doing homework and came to the realization I've hit a whole new level of geekiness. I can't even find it within me to see this as excessive in any way...

I was also sitting in a reception area earlier this week, scribbling out Java code for giggles. Another sign the transformation is in progress. :)

Speaking of Java... that last mid-term I was waiting for was in Java, and it was a solid "B" exam. It will do... for now. Not bad for the hardest exam I've ever written, but I know I have to dig deeper. This will probably sound arrogant, but I am not a "B" student.