Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Mouse? What Mouse?
| With the CFCC 50th birthday celebration and our department's decision to go with "Information Technology over the past 50 years" I saw my opportunity to crack open the vault of ancient programming languages. (If you don't want to read about the evolution of programming languages, stop reading NOW!) When I was teaching at Mercer, one of my classes was the Theory of Programming Languages. A large portion of that class was devoted to the evolution of programming languages. Now that I think of it, I guess it is only natural that I find the topic fascinating. My father is a history buff, so perhaps I am, too, except in the very narrow field of programming languages. The dirty little secret is, not only do I know about them, I can also program in them (and have in fact taught many of them too!)  Beside the FORTRAN is Lisp. While not one of my all time favorites, it is fun to play around with. Lisp is probably the VW Beetle of programming languages. Those who "get it" love it and won't ever let it go. They'll swear up and down they can make it do anything all the other languages can do and more. But when it gets right down to it, they never really do. It's cute, and it's fun, but really, very few people in the real world have much use for it. (Lisp is for those artificial intelligence geeks at UC Berkley.) The Lisp example solved the Towers of Hanoi problem, but taking advantage of Lisp's strong recursive abilities.  The cute little flowcharting book represents the paradigm shift from "Unstructured" to "Structured Code". Goto statements are gone. Well not really, but programming classes stopped teaching them. I now regularly tell my students that no matter where and no matter when if they ever use a goto at any time in their lives, I will jump out of the shadows and punch them in the back of the head. Using a goto statement is a clear indication that you don't have a clue what you are doing. Yes, I currently teach flowcharts in my job. For purely theoretical reasons I'd rather teach Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams (or "Nasty Schneiderman Diagrams" as we'd call em). But since they pay me to teach em, I guess I'll just go with the flow... charts. (Yes it's a bad pun. Sue me!) Ah, Pascal. The cute, fun, little teaching language. I squeezed a whole lot out of that language, and made a little money off of it over the years. Eventually, though, I simply HAD to take off the training wheels and step up to the grown ups table.  I included Ada, not because it is an especially great language or even because it represented some new trend in the evolution of programming. I put it on display as an example of what you get when the government (DoD) decides to make it's own programming language. The language was so bloated and complex and took so long to create that by the time is was "done" no one would use it. The DoD basically FORCED people to use it, but within 10 years even the DoD stopped using it. The problem then was that they had a fleet of aircraft with Ada software on them that had to be maintained. Thus my job teaching Ada on the base, since the Air Force cannot find Ada programmers to maintain code they have to grow their own. That's your tax dollars at work folks! Keep that in mind next week (April 15th)!  I'd certainly love to crank up a C++ class. (That's actually a pun, but only geeks will get it.) There are a few aspects of VB and the particular book we use that makes my skin crawl. (Global variables, which are almost as bad as Gotos, are standard fare in our text.) While I certainly got a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction out of my languages display, I think the only thing that anyone else got out of it was the fact that in the old days of programming, there was no mouse and you actually had to type in words to tell the computer what to do. You lazy kids today with your crazy mouse with not one, but two buttons! You don't know how spoiled you are!  |
Monday, April 07, 2008
Happy birthday to us!
| This year, my school is celebrating it's 50th birthday. This past weekend was the official celebration and the school and the city went all out. I am constantly amazed at the relationship between Wilmington and CFCC. The school loves the city and the city REALLY loves the school. We get all sorts of perks. Students and faculty get free parking in the big parking decks downtown, which may not seem like much until you see Wilmington's parking situation. I routinely have people, upon finding out I work for CFCC, tell me "their story." And they all have one. Either they went to CFCC, or their parent or child has gone. So this birthday wasn't just a celebration of the school it was a celebration of the city that supports us. Every department was put on notice that they would so something for the celebration. We would invite the city and surrounding counties to come visit our home and see what we do. Our department decided to do a big display on "Information Technology Over The Past 50 Years." For the past 3 weeks I have kicked myself almost daily for all of the "crap" I threw away when I moved up here. It would have been PERFECT. But we made due anyway.    On Thursday as we were hooking up and testing everything out everyone in the office gathered around as we hooked the 8-track to the amp and then the speakers. Charlie Pride and Conway Twitty never sounded so good! But then we were hit with a sudden conundrum. How do you turn off the 8 track? The amp had an obvious off switch, but the 8 track only had volume and balance knobs. Turning them all the way down didn't turn it off. We scratched our heads for a while. Being computer geeks we are trained to look for an off button or off switch, a graceful and clearly marked method to turn the power off. We joke in the office because Michelle can't ever figure out if she turned the coffee pot off, since it has an "Oh" and an I on it. (All computer geeks reading this are now laughing, since it's obviously a 1 and a Zero, being binary for On and Off.) We thought about just unplugging the 8 track. The ideas was also floated,"What if we just pull the tape out?" This of course goes against EVERYTHING you are taught about computers. You never EVER just unplug stuff, for fear of damaging the equipment. I was preparing to place an emergency call to Jimmy, the only other person I know with a working 8-track. (Ahh all those afternoons in the basement playing pool and darts and listening to the Eagles on the Hi-Fi!) Melissa just grabbed the tape and yanked it. Problems solved. Those crafty 1960's engineers.  Later this week I'll show you my portion of the display, of which I am quite proud, with one small exception that makes me sick to my stomach. More on that later. While we were having all sorts of Techno-Fun in our room, next door was the OST (Office Systems Technology) Department's display. I figured I better stop by since I am technically dual appointed to CIS and OST. OST teaches all of the typing and medical transcription classes on campus and their interactive display was a timed typing test. Those who know me know I avoid typing tests. I never listened to Ms. Cope in Business Ed in Middle School. My fingers never felt comfortable on the home keys, so they ran away from home a long time ago. Now they are homeless. In fact I only type with 5 fingers: index and thumb on both hands and middle finger on the right. (Why don't I use the middle finger on my left hand? Well I save that one to show to those who critique my typing!) I have long known I type very fast but my accuracy is poor. I also have to watch my fingers while I type making "copying" very slow, but "composition" (like this blog) flows very quickly. When Jarrett and I shared an office we'd both be typing at roughly the same speed. He'd be typing the correct way and I would be typing my dysfunctional way. Thankfully in the world of computers with spell check and "autocorrect" many (but not all) of my typos are easily or automatically fixed. However, since Blogger's spell check is barely functional you have experienced first hand my poor typing. During a lull in the festivities I wandered next door and was immediately attacked by the OST folks who wanted me to take the typing test. I protested and tried to sneak my way out, but they had the exit guarded. So I sat down and got the 15 second explanation of how it works. A book was placed in front of me with two paragraphs on it. I was told to hit tab when I was ready to start the 3 minute timed test, and then type what was on the page. I took a deep breath then started typing. When I had finished, I still had like 30 seconds left so I started looking around to ask how to stop the clock. Finally they came near enough I could ask them and they explained that I was supposed to just start over at the top and keep going. So that cost me about 15-20 seconds of my time. When I was done with my practice run, my score showed up on screen: 39 words per minute with 2 errors. My two errors were that I didn't know I was supposed to hit tab before each paragraph. When the results popped up there was a long pause followed by several comments of disbelief. I was then told that when I was ready for the official timed test I was to click a button and I could get started. This time they watched me.  My errors are almost exclusively due to hitting the space bar too soon or too late, or poorly timeD sHifting. Basically these are the only operations that require BOTH of my hands to work together. One hand certainly knows what the other is doing, it just doesn't care. When I finished the test there was a round of applause and I was congratulated by all of the OST instructors. I was given my complimentary certificate and I went on my way. It was only 15 minutes later I found out that I had the fastest speed so far. At that point several other instructors decided they were going to go try and beat it. Somehow I had accidentally started a competition. I guess they didn't want to answer my Yar's Revenge challenge. (Chicken! Bawk Bawk!) At the end of the day I was called back in to the OST room where I was informed I had the fastest speed in the Faculty category. There was also an under-18 category, a student category, and then a non-student category. Since I had won in my category, I got the prize: a gift card to Office Depot. (I think it's $10.) So now it is official and documented. I type like crap, but I type like crap really really fast. But lest I allow my crushing victory to go to my head I placed a call to Courtney. Courtney is a medical transcriptionist, AKA a hired gun. The faster she types the more she earns. When she types it sounds like a machine gun going off. Computer keyboards cower in fear and run and hide when she enters the room. Courtney says she doesn't know how fast she types. I suspect she may be modest. Or perhaps she's so fast she doesn't register on regulation equipment. Perhaps they need to bring in a radar gun. She offered to take a typing test if I would find her one online, but I suspect I am going to pass on that offer. I don't want to lose my prized Office Depot gift card. Yeah, I may be chicken (bawk! bawk!) but I bet I could kick her butt in Yar's Revenge!  |
Labels: CFCC, Middle Ga Tech, Wilmington
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Feathered Friends
| Since my recent trip to the Murrell's Inlet Krystal for a taste of the new Saucy Chiks and to acquire a Krystal Chik Calendar, I just haven't been able to stop thinking about chiks! this week it finally dawned on me why. With Thanksgiving (aka Turkey Day) swiftly approaching, it is only fair to have a Poultry Oddessey (yes I meant to spell it like that!). This evenings post will be the first in about a week long series on all that if toothless, two footed, and tasty. When I returned to Macon last month, I stopped by my old school to visit friends. While I was there I felt I had to inform them: Cape Fear's geese are smarter than Middle Ga Tech's geese. Of course they demanded proof. Before I give my proof of our geese's smarts I need to explain the whole goose situation. AT MGTC they have a water retention pond on campus, like you see in most large construction sites these days. For years there's always been a few geese who spend a portion of the summer at the pond. Raising their little ones and basically enjoying the weather. Well apparently word got out because one year we had roughly 20 geese hanging out at the pond. I found it to be quite refreshing to have wildlife hanging out on our campus. The school however, did not agree. Apparently the geese "got in the way." At one point they decided to put up a "Geese Crossing" sign. Two problems: the picture on the sign is clearly a duck, not a goose and second, geese cannot read. The sign only resulted in humans cracking jokes. (And one human wondering how easy it would be to steal the sign.) Then one day during class change the geese were scattered across one of the road out of campus blocking traffic. That evening (after most everyone had left) the local wildlife exterminators were doing a drive by on the campus to assess the situation. Don't worry, they did not poison the geese. They instead put up metal posts around the retention pond and ran string between the posts at roughly 8" and about 24" off the ground. Apparently in one of the worst ironies in the natural world: Geese can't duck. With the height of the srings the geese could no longer get to the pond so they left and moved down the street. You can see the poles in this picture of the (goose free) pond from last month:  Fast forward to July. My first day driving to CFCC and I find that we have 4 large retention ponds, one at each corner of the north campus. And we have TONS of geese.  This was a relatively light day. Usually there's 30 or 40 geese.  I asked security what the proper procedure was if the geese get in my way. He said they'll usually move, if not, just honk your horn and they'll get up. He then told me they had them trained. I asked him how they trained geese and his reply was very simple:  This guy waddled right out of my way as I was leaving campus. When I was working on the base, some days I would stand out in the parking lot and watch the F-15s do "touch and goes". This is where they tale off, fly a long loop then come back in to land, and immediately crank the engines back up and do it again. I get the same sort of thing here at CFCC. If you get out there early enough in the morning you can occasionally catch the geese as they're switching ponds. They'll take off from one pond, form thir classic V formation, do a very big long loop, and then come back down near another of our retention ponds. While the constant honking sound doesn't compare to the deep rumbling in your chest from a roaring F-15 engine, I am sure the neighbors appreciate the difference. The down side to our rather large collection of geese is the goose poop. Apparently they only like to poop on sidewalks, not in the grass. So about once a week the ground keepers are out with brooms and dust bins sweeping up the goose poop. I spared you pictures of the goose poo. But lets just say if you ever pooped on by one of our well fed campus geese in flight, you're pretty much done for the day. While the geese dominate our campus there are a few stray ducks here and there.  Lastly, we have a shopping center just down College Rd. from campus with another retention pond and that pond happes to have a couple of swans in it.  So lets see, we have geese, we have ducks, and we have swans. If someone had the time, guts, and motivation, they could have a right tasty Thanksgiving feast and not have to go too far. (For the record I'm going to my parents for Thanksgiving and they're supplying the fowl.) But this does bring up an interesting idea I'll address tomorrow. So migrate back this way tomorrow evening my friends. There's plenty of poultry to come!  |
Labels: CFCC, Chiks, Macon, Middle Ga Tech
Sunday, August 12, 2007
What color blue is that?
Here's a picture of something I picked up at the Grocery store this evening: In Georgia, it is against the law to purchase alcohol at the grocery store on Sunday. In fact the only place you can buy a drink is at a "restaurant." Yes there's a legal definition for what is a restaurant versus what is a bar. Here in NC, apparently you cannot buy alcohol at the grocery store on Sunday until after noon. The laws in georgia are often referred to as "Blue Laws". Since the law here in NC isn't as strict, I figured you might call them "Light Blue Laws." It is also interesting to note that Blue Laws in some states also restrict the sales of tobacco. Since NC is the worldwide capital of tobacco, it does not surprise me that there is no restriction on sales of that at any time. In fact, you might be able to get a pack of smokes in your Happy Meal up here. I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised. As I was laughing to myself about the whole "Light Blue Laws" I heard a voice in the back of my head. It said,"That is not light blue, that is Carolina Blue! You see ever since I was a very small child there's been UNC blood in my veins, passed down from my grandfather to my father to me. I suspect my 30+ years in exile in Georgia never really squeezed it out of me, and it appears it only took a month to come back full force. I have distinct memories as a child of singing "I was Tarheel born, and I was Tarheel bred, and when I die I'll be Tarheel dead!" I really had no idea what it meant, but it sure sounded funny. I knew why the sky was not "light blue", but "Carolina Blue" (because God pulls for UNC, of course). I remember vaguely my grandfather and my father taking my brother and I to a UNC football game against "The Spiders" (Richmond). UNC had a quarterback whose first name was Jason. For the life of me I cannot recall his last name, but I do know that was the first time I can remember hearing of someone with the same name as me. I remember at the football game laughing at the goat with the horns painted gold. Of course modern football fanaticism and animal rights have forced them to change their mascot from a real goat (ram) to a guy in a costume ("Ramses"). I suspect it was due to the fact that the goat can't throw t-shirt and frisbees into the stands, and getting him to do cartwheels wasn't working out. The brown smelly mess that results from throwing a goat into the air after touchdowns is sure to mess up the cute cheerleader's outfits. I also remember we got these:  Now the reason I am not drinking my adult beverages this evening is simple: Tomorrow is a school day. Not only that but it's my first day at my new job. Well technically, i don't start on the payroll until Tuesday, but I have to go in tomorrow to see where I need to report on Tuesday. It's not a smart move to have alcoholic beverages the day before your first day on the job at an educational institution. And speaking of my new job. In case I hadn't told you, I will now be teaching at Cape Fear Community College here in Wilmington, NC. Every time I tell people where I am going to be teaching they hear "Cape Fear" and start thinking of that movie where Robert De Niro yells in a fake southern accent "Come out come out wherever you are!" Some might remember the much older version starring Gregory Peck. Oddly enough, the 1991 version is on right now on AMC right now (for another 30 minutes) and then the 1962 version will be on AMC at about 11:30 tonight. And yes that's pure coincidence. But that's sort of how my life goes. Cape Fear is named for the Cape Fear River. The school's main campus actually overlooks the river. And the river got its name because of how hard it was to navigate and ships would run aground and wreck, so sailors gave the river it's name. While I doubt I'll see De Niro around town. One Tree Hill is still filmed here and they use the downtown campus as a filming location for the outside of the school in the TV show. Also apparently this season they'll have some local newscasters doing cameos in the show. Really it doesn't matter a lot to me as I've never watched the show (or Dawsons Creek that was also filmed here). Frankly there isn't enough estrogen in my body to make me watch those shows. Lastly, given that I am finally going to be returning to work after roughly a month off, I strognly suspect my posts here are going to slow down for a while. Some of your are probably thankful as I have kept a rather furious pace lately. Until I get my new job under control and my classes moving in the right direction, the blog must take a back seat. And that may be a while since I will now be teaching MS Office 2007 (aka "MS Office for people who this backward compatability is stupid") But hang in there, I will be back. And Krystals will still be on the Thursday menu, so no worries there. Since I have fridays "off" you can expect Fridy updates at the minumum. So until then, Peace, Love, and Krystals! PS I changed the background of this post to "Official Carolina Blue" so everyone can enjoy! |
Labels: CFCC, Wilmington
