I Can't Believe I Got Anything Working

Zowee. Today was the first day of a Master Class we signed up for.

I have done a wee itsy bitsy bit of programming in Perl since I took the introductory and advanced classes from Stonehenge back in ... 2001. That's right. We returned from Oregon the Sunday before 9/11. No kidding.

First of all, I brought my own personal tutor. Secondly, I've spent the week attending workshops where the presenter essentially read Perl code to me. Thirdly, I've gotten Perl working on my own computer (hah, wrong version) and gotten a couple of little (beginner) programs working.

But the amazing thing is that I'm actually doing ok. Not great, but ok. I'll work really hard to get some version of perl 5.10 working on my computer and get the last of the Catalyst examples working before I go to sleep tonight.

And I'm not getting any knitting done. Fortunately, I'm not falling asleep, either.

Notes To Self

In case I manage to lose both copies of the pattern, the sock I'm making is using pattern #154 from the 250 Knitting Patterns book.

I need to find an open source or free SmallTalk distro. One is called GemStone? Also investigate SeaSide.

We could always use perl2exe to free up our perl distro for upgrades. On the other hand, it's not like they do anything that's going to stop working ... until we hit perl6. I think.

My programming instincts were just identified as good practices. Great. And all the places where I didn't pay attention to my instincts in practice are predictably causing exactly the problems the gurus say they will. Whoopee.

Investigate mechanize.com.

Investigate donor.com.

Go through notes for other stuff to investigate.

Most importantly: In the future, if we're going to bother to check one bag, we might as just check anything we don't need to carry on. Leaving a sweater home (because it wouldn't fit in my carry-on) has led me to be the person in the conference wearing my towel around my shoulders. What's really scary are the ones who don't realize I got the idea from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Well, actually it was a combination of that and having nothing but a towel to huddle under on a freezing Connecticut Limo ride once several years ago.

Yeah - so now I'm the one wearing a towel and knitting a sock. Oddly enough, I fit right in.