Sunday, April 26, 2009

Cell Phones and Driving

I don't really have an opinion on cell phone usage while driving. In Vermont there is nothing that would forbid people from using their cell phones as far as I know, although there are some proposals on imposing the use of hands free devices as of this year (2009). They may or may not make it into law, but here's something I found really interesting today:
A lady (that's not to say that women drivers are worse, it just happened to be a female driver) drove by me in the other direction today. Do you know how some people (usually women :))... waaait, just joking!) tend to accompany their speaking on the phone with hand gestures to illustrate their point (as if the other party could actually see them)? That's exactly what the lady was doing. She just took the other hand off the wheel to gesticulate.

So what the possible law would do is to free up the hand holding the cell so it can hold something else. Now you have people doing all these things at the same time: hand gestures, iPod play list set up and paying attention to the discussion on the phone. Here's how I think they should drive: speed up to 50 mph, engage cruise control and hold the right foot hovering slightly over the break pedal just in case. Why the right foot? Well, remember the gesturing hand... you can also use it to nail polish the left foot.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Infinitely Endless

Today I was reviewing the code in a friend's bash script and I found two comments that I found quite interesting:
  1. at the end of a loop: 'end of the endless loop'.
  2. at another position: 'kill the infinite loop'
Apart from not being able to end something that doesn't end, kill something that lasts forever and the fact that the comments are correctly depicting their purpose, I wonder if there is a a more appropriate word out there that would actually offer a better connection between the theoretical concept of an 'infinite loop' and the practical reality.

Here are some suggestions: indefinitely long loop, vaguely infinite loop, hopefully infinite loop, "maybe it will go forever" loop, infinite loop under normal conditions, Round and Round (Aerosmith), "yo' mama's so big that you run out of gas when you drive around her" loop...


"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. " (Ben Franklin).

Bitch, Pleeze!

Just when I thought SNL was becoming boring they came up with this...