“When I was young, if I built a house out of Lego, the house had to be all in one color. I used to play Lego with Ian Ball who lived up the street, back in Bellingham. He used to make his house out of whatever color brick he happened to grab. Can you imagine the sort of code someone like that would write?”

That reminds that I always tried to keep the colours in my LEGO house uniform too. But most of the time I would run out of bricks of the same colour and had to make do with a mix of them. I wonder what that really means (except that I do not have enough LEGO bricks*)?

* But that really is the point of playing with LEGO: creating something using limited resources.

看到餘弦棧介紹一本由建築師寫成的短篇集，其中一篇被棧主形容為建築界的《海角七號》，我想，工程師版的《海角》又是怎樣的呢？

因此，我構想了一個大綱：

1. 男主角因為金融風暴而被裁員，在辦公室外的停車場把電腦鍵盤砸爛，用英文（這是美國）大叫一句：「Fuck you… Fuck your mother’s Silicon Valley!」（中譯：我操你…我操你媽的矽谷！）
2. 因為沒錢的關係，男主角被迫回到老家，在父母家裡的地庫棲身。有一天，因為電腦硬碟壞了關係，男主角在中古店買了個舊硬碟。在那硬碟裡，有一些不明的檔案。
3. 男主角花了故事裡四分之一的時間嘗試打開那些檔案。「幹，這是用甚麼程式存的檔啊。」男主角說。
4. 在這個時候，當鎮政府要把一個project外判去印度的時候，有議員大叫：「我們這鎮上就沒有程式設計員嗎？」
5. 於是，鎮上的人拉雜成軍組了一隊「程式小組」，除了男主角之外，組裡還有：
   • 畢業後失業，老婆跑掉了的數學博士
   • 連上網也不太懂的主婦
   • 只有九歲的電腦神童（寫的程式能跑，但沒有人知道他在寫甚麼）
   • 還有一個七十多歲的退休工程師（「當年他們可說我是國寶啊！」他如是說。）
6. 男主角開始了白天寫程式，晚上嘗試開檔案的生活。
7. 不明檔案終於被打開。「原來這是第一代Eudora存的檔啊！」男主角說。
8. 程式小組的工作一開始，各人為了用甚麼程式語言而爭論不休。
9. 檔案裡有七封沒有寄出的電郵，看來是由男生寫給女生的。（背景音樂《1995》響起）那電郵的地址已經不存在，因為那電郵服務在上一次科網爆破的時候倒了。發電郵的男生，當年原來是工作証到期，被迫要回印度去。那七封電郵，是他給女生的情書。
10. 程式小組的工作還是毫無進展，男主角破口大罵：「你看你在寫甚麼？意大利麵嗎？」
11. 男主角嘗試用Google搜尋收信的女生，但無果
12. 程式小組的工作仍然是毫無進展，各人呈放棄狀態。男主角跟退休工程師講起電郵的事，退休工程師奇道：「那不是我的孫女嗎？」
    男主角說道：「要不我把電郵寄給你，你轉寄給她好了。」
    退休工程師搖了搖頭：「她惱了我，不會原諒我的啦，她已經在Facebook擋掉我了。」
13. 男主角唯有用一個匿名的Facebook帳號，把那些電郵傳了給女生。
14. 程式小組被解散，原因是鎮政府所需要的軟件，原來在網上有免費下載
15. 男主角到一家公司去應徵，面試完結之後，對方正要離開時，男主角說道：「Stay, or I go with you.」（中譯：留下來，或者我跟你走）就這樣，男主角居然被取錄了。
16. 掰不下去，故事完了。

甚麼？女主角在哪？田中千繪呢？在一個男單身工程師的生活裡，是沒有女性出現的（親屬除外）。因為這是寫實故事（？），所以這故事也沒有女主角的。

(a real story that happened to my friend Mr. Wong)

Labmate: Mr. Wong, you are such a director, I should call you Director Wong (you know, the ones that direct movies) from now on

Mr. Wong: (flattered) Really? Why?

Labmate: Because I am the script writer (she wrote the algorithm) and you implemented it, so you are the director.

Mr. Wong: That seems like a compliment.

Labmate: Really? No, it’s not.

Mr. Wong: Really, why?

Labmate: (with anger) Because you CHANGED my algorithm!

… Okay, not funny? Congradulations, you are officially not a geek. :p

(The article is useless without pictures, so I didn’t bother with copy and pasting)

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

It goes to show how dangerous electronic devices can be, Dell or non-Dell…

Some commented that they don’t like to use cases with side windows because of that reason…

If there’s something that would scare me away from marriages, this would really be it. Imagine this:

Wife: (measuring the length of the monitor using a tape measure) How come the monitor is longer today? Last week it was 30″, how come it is 37″ today?

(the wife doesn’t even realize the colour and brand of the monitor is different)

Me: urm… It… grew by itself! Yes, that is one of the monitor’s feature. That’s why I spent $1500 on it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5393904704265757054

What I’m most impressed with is that the guy took away the heatsink with his bare hand…

I hate it when people says “I don’t care about security” when I told them about how some software may be more secure/insecure than others. I hate it not because I care about whether their credit card numbers get stolen (if they don’t take the basic measures to protect themselves, they deserve to pay the price for a lesson), but because if their computers are compromised, it put my computer at risk too (there’s only so much your anti-virus / firewall can do when you get bombarded by msn and e-mail viruses).

And that “I don’t care about security” sentence coming out from a software engineering graduate is totally unacceptable to me.