I found myself staring at the ceiling the last couple nights, not able to sleep. Last night I was thinking about Bonnaroo, the night before that I was thinking about the bus, the night before that I was thinking of the mall. Maybe its just because I’m not really loving school this semester. Although its certainly better than last year was, its still failing to be what I wish it was.
No matter. Landshark is coming along, and in half a year’s time, I’ll have the bus.
I’ve been saying that a lot lately, as I code more of the Landshark site. I’ll look at something, and see no reason for it to not work. Today I had to find an incredibly roundabout (but ultimately more efficient) way of doing something, that should have worked when I wrote it the first time.
But saying ‘I hate code’ doesn’t help much. The code knows what its supposed to do, and it only does what you tell it. If something is wrong, then (most likely) you are to blame.
I don’t like code any more than I did before I realized this, but its good to know.
I’ve been wanting to create this category for a long while now. In fact, I’ve wanted to make it since Grey Fox this year. The idea is that I’ll write stories of long ago in here, so that I’ll actually remember them. A perfect example of this is making this category. I mention that I’ve wanted to make it for a while, because its true. But whenever I’m on my blog I don’t remember it. The only reason I remembered it today is because someone reminded me of something that happened to us which I had forgotten about, and I thought about writing it on here. Which made me remember the Stories category. So here it is. I’ll probably go back and apply it to older posts that fit in. If there are any.
Anyway, the story I wanted to tell today is one that happened to me freshman year of school. Many of my friends and I were in ENGR 100, which is the Intro to Engineering class. It was only worth one credit, and was more or less a joke class. Everyone in the School of Engineering had to take it at some point, so we had to take it as well. There was no final exam, but there was a final project that we had to complete. We had to Reverse Engineer something. Meaning, we had to break something down and explain how it was put together and how it worked. We were allowed to work with other people on this, so I worked with my friend Eric.
For some reason we chose a microscope. Seemed simple enough: two lenses, a long tube, and a tray for stuff to go on. And we were right, it was pretty simple. There was only one problem. When we went to go take pictures of us taking it apart, and pictures of individual parts, we found ourselves without a microscope. I had thought I had one at home, and Eric did as well, but neither of us could find one. We didn’t want to waste money on this one credit class, so didn’t want to buy one. Instead, we managed to get a friend to take pictures of his microscope, and email them to us. We managed to make a almost presentable project, Which we got a D- on.
Now, I say we got a D-, but as far as we were concerned it had been a perfect score. Not only had we done our project without the object the project was about, but we had passed. I make a point of that because there were many, many people who didn’t pass. Many. Including some of our friends, who had worked longer, harder, and actually had the thing they were reverse engineering. I’m still proud of that, and I’m glad Eric reminded me of it.