Blind

Joke from CS245 today (retold as I remember. Forgive me if I butchered it):

A program manager went missing one day. His co-workers called the police and they searched his house, only to find him laying dead on the shower floor. In his hand, was a bottle with the instructions:

1. Lather
2. Rinse
3. Repeat

I’ve heard a variant of this joke; however, the punch line has to do with blondes rather than being trapped in an infinite loop. The joke goes something like this:

A blond girl wearing headphones suddenly drop dead. A passerbyer picks up the headphones and hears nothing. After re-winding the tape, he discovers the tape repeating: “breathe in, breath out.”

What an interesting dichotomy here! In one joke, the program manager dies by the infinite whereas in the other, the blonde dies by the finite. The world works in strange ways.

I often worry about how much I am absorbing in my classes. I was hoping that research would give me a chance to dive deep into a subject, but I’ve found that there is so much I don’t know. It’s hard to be productive without just following instructions. I really want to stop every few minutes in our meetings to ask questions but I know that would ruin their productivity.

I think most of what I’m missing is the chunk in the middle of our project. I understand the high level bits and I understand my little peice of the pie. But all the interesting argumentation goes on in the middle, where my lack of experience ruins me. One of the grad students I’m working with is taking a break immediately after we submit our paper. I’m hoping I can snag the other to just help me learn stuff.

I came across a neat quote by Robert A. Heinlein:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

First, I love how quoting anyone immediately gives you some street cred. I have no idea who Robert A. Heinlein is—he can’t be too old since he talks about computers. Also, I think insects were only discovered around the year 2000, hypothesized to be the result of unfixed Y2K bugs. Second, I definitely can’t do all of them, and I suppose I can’t die gallantly without doing the rest. Finally, I can’t say that I agree, but the quote is catchy: “Specialization is for insects.” Brilliant.