12-10-2012, 01:52 AM
(12-10-2012, 01:00 AM)Greatbacon link Wrote: [ -> ]whargarbl programmingwololo programming
Picture it: Sicily, 1942Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas, 1994.
Our narrator, a young computer science major, has entered Hades.
His boulder, CPSC 211. Assembly Programming.
His unending hill, the venerable IBM 370.
His boat captain, the professor, reminded him of none so much as the weird little psychic lady from Poltergeist.
Ol' Blue could read files from hard disk, but still called them "stacks" of "cards".
Every time, he tried entering the carefully crafted programs.
Every time, when it came time to load his stack and execute, he'd wait for the printer to chug out the outputs, and instead of a neat row of numbers, it would come back with register dump and n to the millionth memory protection errors.
He could not figure this rock covered in hieroglyphs out, but he kept pushing it up the hill, only to see his GPA crushed again and again.
Alas, it was too early in the age of super nintendo, and IT (then known only as MIS) did not exist, except as a weird business school specialization.
So he cast aside his boulder, and renounced his degree path. Our narrator then called upon Tesla's angels, ascended out of Hades via a transfer to TV journalism, where he could play with wires and buttons all day.
And yet he saw himself sinking deeper into debt with graduation going farther and farther down the calendar.
And his weird Internet friends said "Come to Silicon Valley and learn UNIX, everyone needs a sysadmin."
A degree would have made it easier, even if it were in Creative Writing, and the job market today would eat me alive if I were just starting out, so my experience may not be directly relevant.
(12-10-2012, 01:24 AM)LT Crow link Wrote: [ -> ][quote author=k0ala link=topic=3709.msg258176#msg258176 date=1355116256]
I did the responsible thing and canceled a hotel reservation because I didn't have enough in checking.
So the hotel charged my debit card with smaller and smaller amounts until they found one that would go through :/
WTF?Â
[/quote]
They were determined to get the cancellation penalty. When I worked at hotels I'd run the cancellation charge once, and if it got declined, I'd leave it alone.