holed up in a room above a hardware store
This semester it’s just one class plus an independent study.
Ling 3001: Introduction to Linguistics
CSci 5991: Independent Study
Oh, dear lord, there’s something about helping one’s favorite professor graft c and c++ extensions onto an obscure programming language like Icon that just fills one with hope and delight. That might be hyperbole, but getting two calls from a professor in a day is a bit like the pretty girl calling you when you’re seventeen: a little flummoxing, but intoxicating.
I spent a couple of evenings in my room while Sarah crocheted and read in the living room. Whatever she did was slightly quieter than my tapping of keys and occasional swearing. That stood in stark contrast to the gleeful cackling that would erupt from me while I read my linguistics book on the crapper. Sarah would holler in to ask what made me laugh so joyously, and I would crack the door to recount the hilarity:
“It says here that ‘nouns are above all nouny‘!” I would chortle, slamming the door firmly shut and resuming reading. There’s nothing like suspiciously made-up words in a book about words (and sentences, and speech, and how they all fit together with cognition to form language, but that’s, uh, oh man I really want to write parsers) to make me guffaw. It should come as no surprise (based on my vocation (and of late merely occasional) attempts at writing) that I find language to be absolutely fascinating. I do. I am hoping that this class does not burn my psyche with white hot flames of awfulness.
Anyway, here are some of the things that are on my mind of late:
- Linguistics
- Use and abuse of, extensions to, and confusions by Icon, c, c++, c in c++, c++ called by c, c and c++ called by Icon
- g++, ld, ldd, Makefiles,
- Installing the new dual-quad-core-eight-gigs-of-ram server at work so we can finally get to mySql 5 and PHP 5, apc/memcache/etc.
- Putting together that zombie photo show at the place with Paul
- My grandfather on my dad’s side having been in the hospital
- Another family medical issue that I am not allowed to talk about in public
- Other family issues that aren’t medical but I really shouldn’t talk about in public
- My resting heart rate is 64, but my cholesterol is probably so high that you could butter a month’s worth of bread with the bad lipids in my veins
- I put on the freshman fifteen in the last two months
- Picking out icons from several icon packs to associate with actions in Gallery2
- Reviewing some stuff in Gallery1 because I’m the only one (besides Jens) who doesn’t recoil in abject horror at the sight of it’s code base. (I’m just immune, like a doctor, only I don’t drive a Beemer)
- That other thing that I’m not talking about here
Sarah has been pressuring me to “take a vacation over Spring Break.” I don’t know what she means.
From Harvey (1950):
“Wouldn’t that get a little monotonous, just Akron, cold beer and “poor, poor thing” for two weeks?”
“No! It would be wonderful.”
Other family issues? That “other thing”?
If you have to ask…
A mother needs to know things…. I’m a mother….. Ergo……
Mom, you already know. You are in the know.
I am thinking about the weight thing as well. This girl needs to lose 30 pounds. Is that possible before summer? If you ever want to tag along with Stan and/or I to our gym, you are more than welcome.
I have something else to ask you about, but, like your list, this is not the appropriate place. Switching to e-mail in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2. . . 1
Of course the irony is that on the new machine you’ll have a pretty difficult time doing a write up on just how effective APC and memcached are…
Execution time before optimization:
0.0 sec
Execution time after optimization:
0.0 sec
I don’t know about any of that c+++=+c+ hooey, but I’ve always been really interested in linguistics (and linguini), too. In fact, if I can’t hack it as an artist, that’s what I’d want to go back to school for. Can I take a look at your nouny textbook sometime?