My First PC

Oh. My.

I was just sent a link to this machine in a computer museum. It is not only similar to the machine I spent 15 months (!) of my life slaving at, it is the exact same machine I fought with, trying to shoehorn a > 64 KB (right, KILObyte) program into the 64 kB + 64 kB "extra storage" that turned out to not be directly addressable.

I wish xkcd was a wiki....

so I could fix the missing right parenthesis. Having spent 7 years of my life working on a dissertation in LISP, this does, indeed cause a lot of tension... :)

Playing His Song?

Ahhh, handball again, after that horrible World Cup we'll just forget quickly.... The team the Füchse were playing, DHC Rheinland, had just registered for bankruptcy yesterday, the Füchse paid for their bus so they could come to Berlin. The Füchse had already rented the hall, printed up the flyers and ordered the catering, they were not amused at the thought of missing all that income.

Anyway.

Silvio Heinevetter started as goalie, and when the Rheinländer got a 7 meter, they started to play the melody from Tatort. They often play a snippet of music for a certain player. The Austrian player Konrad Wilczynski (of Polish parentage) always has to listen to "Ich bin der Anton aus Tirol", although Tirol is technically in Italy, but what ever. So why the Tatort melody? Well, Silvio's girlfriend (who is - gasp! - older than he is, much to the delight of the "entertainment" press) is an actress who plays a Kommissar in Tatort.

I felt uneasy at this, but couldn't pin it down until they did it the second time. I don't like it when women are defined as the "wife of" or "sister of" or "daughter of". And in this case, they are defining Silvio not as the great goalie that he is, but as the "boyfriend of" Simone. And it feels just as wrong as the other way around.

I don't know if they asked him if he's cool with this, apparently this happens at the away games all the time. I would think the joke would get old very, very fast.

Anyway. Just blogging to let the 8 readers left that I am still alive. It's the final week of school, and I am dead tired. I didn't answer 40 emails still in my box from today, there will be more to come tomorrow...

On Fire

I just heard a commotion in the kitchen and went to check up on WiseKid and his Girlfriend, who are cooking a late night snack. They had a pot of noodles on a high boil on the gas stove and she reached over to grab the frying pan to put the onions in.

She was wearing a flowing jacket that got too close to the flame - and suddenly she was on fire. WiseKid dropped whatever it was he had in his hand and tried to put out the flames, finally grabbing the flowing bit and cupping it in his hand. The flame extinguished.

He's trying to brush off being a hero, I made him use an ice bag ("Mommy's hot, use a cold compress!"). The floor is now covered with singed bits of jacket and her white T-shirt is now smoky dirty. That we can sort out - I hope that they have now learned to be careful when cooking and to dress for the kitchen when cooking.