Funny moment at work this week. It makes me look kind of stupid, but still it's funny, so I'll relay it.
As I've mentioned before I do a lot of computer coding at work. For a task I was working on, I had to use something called the ceiling function. It's a simple function that takes a number and rounds it up to the nearest integer. The call in C++ is ceil(), so for example ceil(1.3) = 2. To use this function in Visual Studio C++ (the programming environment we use at work), you have to include a file in your project called math.h. The .h extension means it's a header file. You frequently have to include header files when programming in C++.
Anyway, for some reason our software engineering team couldn't get my code to work because of this ceil() function. It lead to a long email chain trying to resolve the situation. I had to go home for the night before it got completely resolved, and the next day I had an email from a coworker saying,
"Instead of ceil, you have to use the function clion. If it doesn't work, include the file cmammal.h."
Now, this was a joke. Seal, sea lion, sea mammal, get it? I didn't. I got the "sea" connection, but instead of thinking it was a joke, I thought it was some sort of weird, cute naming by the Visual Studio C++ people (there is a programming language called Python, so it's not that absurd). So, I actually changed all the calls from ceil to clion and tried include the file cmammal.h in my project. Of course, it didn't work because there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.
I still didn't get that it's a joke, so I went online and started searching for documentation on this stuff. I Googled, "clion C++", "clion ceil C++", "cmammal C++", etc. Of course nothing meaningful came up because, again, there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.
I literally spent about an hour trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I was getting really frustrated when the guy who made the joke called me to talk about something else (we aren't in the same office). Here's the end of our conversation.
Me: Hey, also, I can't get this clion stuff to work. I can't even find any documentation for it online.
Him: [Pause] Uh... Yeah... That was just a joke. We got everything to work with that last night. Seal, sea lion,... no?
Me: [Everything clicks and I feel kind of stupid] Oh!... Hahahaha... Oh, OK, I didn't get it... Hahahaha
Him: You didn't actually spend time on this, did you?
Me: [Lying] Uh... Naw... Just a few minutes.
Him: Uh, OK. Sorry about that. I was just joking around.
Me: No worries. I, uh... I, uh, just didn't get it.
And that was that. Nerd humor.
Shifting gears completely, the big story this week is President Obama's announced support of gay marriage. Well done, Mr. President. This will hopefully go a long way in advancing gay rights. I never know what to think of the progression of gay rights -- the right to marry, in particular. On the one hand it seems inevitable. All polls point to a steady increase in support of same-sex sex marriage. In fact, the NY Times blogger Nate Silver, who provides a lot of good political statistical analysis, says here that support now outweighs opposition. And yet whenever it comes up as an initiative, it seems that voters roundly reject it. What gives?
I don't really know what gives, but my theory is that a lot of people who support gay marriage do so because they don't really care much about it. I sorta fall into this camp. I'm very much in support of gay marriage, but it's not one of my "causes". It's not super high on the priority queue of things I'd like to fix with this country. With me, you start with getting our economy moving again, then you go to healthcare reform (preferably universal healthcare), then you go to preventing people who can't adequately provide for a child from having a child (or five), then you go to fixing education, and then you have a few dozen sub-items off these main items, and then somewhere down the list you get to gay marriage. It's not that it's unimportant, it's just that we have to do some serious triaging in this country and denying gays the right to marry is more of a black eye than a hemorrhaging artery.
On the flip side of that coin, the people who are against gay marriage are adamantly against it. It is high on their list because they have screwed up priorities and think that two lesbians having a slip of paper that gives them hospital visitation rights and some tax credits is on a par with the collapse of our financial system. After all, The Bible says "homosexual offenders" will not inherit the kingdom of God, but it doesn't mention anything about housing bubbles. So, when it comes to a survey in which all people have to do is answer a yes or no question, gay marriage looks good. When it comes to an official vote in which people have to campaign and mobilize and actually vote, it doesn't look so good. I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but it's my theory.
Another big story this week is Time Magazine's cover of a woman breastfeeding her three-year old. This is relevant to me because a) I breastfed until I was about three, b) my wife is pregnant. Here's my take on it. I am all for breastfeeding, but I don't like the photo. It's sensationalistic and gratuitous. The woman is too attractive, too done up (without trying to look done up), and in kind of a strange, seductive pose. If you airbrushed out the kid it would be a really hot photo, which is extremely unsettling. It's like somebody trying to show the sexy side of breastfeeding, and I am not for that. I mean, if I have any oedipal feelings or if there exist any Freudian links somewhere in my brain between breast feeding and sex, I want to keep them deeply, deeply repressed.
Also, I understand that sometimes women have to breastfeed in public. If a kid has to eat, a kid has to eat, but a little discreetness isn't such a bad thing. You can try to use a cover or find a private area or turn toward the corner. I mean, by the same token, when a kid has to crap, a kid has to crap, but nobody wants to see this kid on the cover of Time dropping a baby deuce. What, isn't outputting food just as natural and beautiful a process as inputting it?
Well, that puts a bow on this entry. Until next week...
As I've mentioned before I do a lot of computer coding at work. For a task I was working on, I had to use something called the ceiling function. It's a simple function that takes a number and rounds it up to the nearest integer. The call in C++ is ceil(), so for example ceil(1.3) = 2. To use this function in Visual Studio C++ (the programming environment we use at work), you have to include a file in your project called math.h. The .h extension means it's a header file. You frequently have to include header files when programming in C++.
Anyway, for some reason our software engineering team couldn't get my code to work because of this ceil() function. It lead to a long email chain trying to resolve the situation. I had to go home for the night before it got completely resolved, and the next day I had an email from a coworker saying,
"Instead of ceil, you have to use the function clion. If it doesn't work, include the file cmammal.h."
Now, this was a joke. Seal, sea lion, sea mammal, get it? I didn't. I got the "sea" connection, but instead of thinking it was a joke, I thought it was some sort of weird, cute naming by the Visual Studio C++ people (there is a programming language called Python, so it's not that absurd). So, I actually changed all the calls from ceil to clion and tried include the file cmammal.h in my project. Of course, it didn't work because there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.
I still didn't get that it's a joke, so I went online and started searching for documentation on this stuff. I Googled, "clion C++", "clion ceil C++", "cmammal C++", etc. Of course nothing meaningful came up because, again, there is no such thing as clion or cmammal.
I literally spent about an hour trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I was getting really frustrated when the guy who made the joke called me to talk about something else (we aren't in the same office). Here's the end of our conversation.
Me: Hey, also, I can't get this clion stuff to work. I can't even find any documentation for it online.
Him: [Pause] Uh... Yeah... That was just a joke. We got everything to work with that last night. Seal, sea lion,... no?
Me: [Everything clicks and I feel kind of stupid] Oh!... Hahahaha... Oh, OK, I didn't get it... Hahahaha
Him: You didn't actually spend time on this, did you?
Me: [Lying] Uh... Naw... Just a few minutes.
Him: Uh, OK. Sorry about that. I was just joking around.
Me: No worries. I, uh... I, uh, just didn't get it.
And that was that. Nerd humor.
Shifting gears completely, the big story this week is President Obama's announced support of gay marriage. Well done, Mr. President. This will hopefully go a long way in advancing gay rights. I never know what to think of the progression of gay rights -- the right to marry, in particular. On the one hand it seems inevitable. All polls point to a steady increase in support of same-sex sex marriage. In fact, the NY Times blogger Nate Silver, who provides a lot of good political statistical analysis, says here that support now outweighs opposition. And yet whenever it comes up as an initiative, it seems that voters roundly reject it. What gives?
I don't really know what gives, but my theory is that a lot of people who support gay marriage do so because they don't really care much about it. I sorta fall into this camp. I'm very much in support of gay marriage, but it's not one of my "causes". It's not super high on the priority queue of things I'd like to fix with this country. With me, you start with getting our economy moving again, then you go to healthcare reform (preferably universal healthcare), then you go to preventing people who can't adequately provide for a child from having a child (or five), then you go to fixing education, and then you have a few dozen sub-items off these main items, and then somewhere down the list you get to gay marriage. It's not that it's unimportant, it's just that we have to do some serious triaging in this country and denying gays the right to marry is more of a black eye than a hemorrhaging artery.
On the flip side of that coin, the people who are against gay marriage are adamantly against it. It is high on their list because they have screwed up priorities and think that two lesbians having a slip of paper that gives them hospital visitation rights and some tax credits is on a par with the collapse of our financial system. After all, The Bible says "homosexual offenders" will not inherit the kingdom of God, but it doesn't mention anything about housing bubbles. So, when it comes to a survey in which all people have to do is answer a yes or no question, gay marriage looks good. When it comes to an official vote in which people have to campaign and mobilize and actually vote, it doesn't look so good. I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but it's my theory.
[Hmm... Thought-provoking. Maybe I have to rethink my support of same-sex marriage.]
Another big story this week is Time Magazine's cover of a woman breastfeeding her three-year old. This is relevant to me because a) I breastfed until I was about three, b) my wife is pregnant. Here's my take on it. I am all for breastfeeding, but I don't like the photo. It's sensationalistic and gratuitous. The woman is too attractive, too done up (without trying to look done up), and in kind of a strange, seductive pose. If you airbrushed out the kid it would be a really hot photo, which is extremely unsettling. It's like somebody trying to show the sexy side of breastfeeding, and I am not for that. I mean, if I have any oedipal feelings or if there exist any Freudian links somewhere in my brain between breast feeding and sex, I want to keep them deeply, deeply repressed.
Also, I understand that sometimes women have to breastfeed in public. If a kid has to eat, a kid has to eat, but a little discreetness isn't such a bad thing. You can try to use a cover or find a private area or turn toward the corner. I mean, by the same token, when a kid has to crap, a kid has to crap, but nobody wants to see this kid on the cover of Time dropping a baby deuce. What, isn't outputting food just as natural and beautiful a process as inputting it?
Well, that puts a bow on this entry. Until next week...
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