No Parser No Error

I'm currently writing an XML Parser for my job (please don't ask). As I was working on some function or other I entered the return value, xml_parser_no_error.

I hit compile, and got an error message saying xml_parser_no_error was unknown. Silly me, it has to be xml_no_parser_error. So I went to the return value and added the first no.

I was about to delete the second no, when in a moment of programming Zen, the fundamental thruth that was standing on the screen struck me.

xml_no_parser_no_error

Om.

Speech Impediment

I have this absolutely annoying habit - annoying to myself and, I'm sure in no lesser degree to my listeners - of making pauses in the middle of a sentence. I absolutely hate it. When it happens, I just stop in front of a noun or verb while my brain page faults and loads more vocabulary.

I think this is caused by my hopeless perfectionism. Every sentence I say has to be perfect, and so I have brought myself to the point where I can't even utter simple short sentences without sounding like a deranged, senile, absent-minded fool.

The habit has got to go, and I'm taking measures to get rid of it. Like not trying to come up with extremely sophisticated sentence structures, or using exotic vocabulary.

In the meantime please excuse me while I ... ponder on a more ... suitable way to ... express my ... sentiments.

OMG WTF V

Phillips #0 screwdriver replacement manufactured by our hardware guy.





This is so not going anywhere near my iBook.

For lack of a stupid phillips #0 screwdriver

That's how far I got.

Hardware Humour

We have a SLUT in our company.

Actually in our software.

It's the Shrink LookUp Table. Aahahahaa *cough*

More funny mnemonics:

ANDI (And immediate)
STS (Store direct to data space)
WDR (Watchdog reset) (down, boy)

Running out of RAM

Out of RAM, of all things. But it can happen.

At my work, we use (among others) ATMEL ATMega128 micorcontrollers. As I increased the size of two buffers to 256 bytes, the box started screwing up badly, in completely unpredictable ways. Most of the time, it would not even finish booting.

After a great lot of head scratching, then cursing, then making obscene gestures at my monitor (I do that a lot), I finally discovered the reason: The buffers I had allocated had run into the stack (or rather, the stack had run into them), and since they were constantly changing, the return addresses on the stack, where the runtime system expected them, were worth fuck all after a few milliseconds.

The thing has only four K of RAM, for crying out loud. I have never before had to code for such a resource - deprived environment. It's certainly very instructive. But it can also be annoying as hell. You never know how far exactly you can go, since the size of the stack, after all, depends on the the nesting of your function calls. I hate that feeling, when you never can be completely sure some situation with deeply nested calls doesn't come along and mess everything up.

I've had that feeling before when coding.

I suspect there's actually something that can be done about this. Since we don't use dynamic memory allocation, we should be able to figure out the maximum safe stack size.

Maybe that feeling is actually an indication of a deficiency in our process.
Maybe it can be fixed.
Maybe it needs to.

Damn

God damn it I did what he said.

Now I'm looking at cat pictures all day. I hardly get any work done.

Damn.