I Owe It To My Mom ...

For years I badgered my mother with questions about whether Santa Claus is a real person or not. Her answer was always, “Well, you asked for the presents and they came, didn’t they?” I finally understood the full meaning of her reply when I heard the definition of a virtual device: “A software or hardware entity which responds to commands in a manner indistinguishable from the real device.” Mother was telling me that Santa Claus is a virtual person (simulated by loving parents) who responds to requests from children in a manner indistinguishable from the real saint.

Mother also taught the IF … THEN … ELSE structure: “If it’s raining, then put your boots on before you go to school; otherwise just wear your shoes.”

Mother explained the difference between batch and transaction processing: “We’ll wash the white clothes when we get enough of them to make a load, but we’ll wash these socks out right now by hand because you’ll need them for this evening's outing.”

Mother taught me about linked lists. Once, for a birthday party, she laid out a treasure hunt of ten hidden clues, with each clue telling where to find the next one, and the last one leading to the treasure. She then gave us the first clue.

Mother understood about parity errors. When she counted socks after doing the laundry, she expected to find an even number and groaned when only one sock of a pair emerged from the washing machine. Later she applied the principles of redundancy engineering to this problem by buying our socks three identical pairs at a time. This greatly increased the odds of being able to come up with at least one matching pair.

Mother used flags to help her manage the housework. Whenever she turned on the stove, she put a pot-holder on top of her purse to remind herself to turn it off again before leaving the house.

Mother knew about devices which raise an interrupt signals to be serviced when they have completed any operation. She had a whistling tea kettle.

Mother understood about LIFO ordering (Last In – First Out). In my lunch bag she put the cake/dessert on the bottom, the food in the middle, and the napkin on top so that things would come out in the right order at lunchtime.

There is an old story that God knew He couldn’t be physically present everywhere at once, to show His love for His people, and so He created mothers. That is the difference between centralized and distributed processing.

As any kid who’s ever misbehaved at a neighbor’s house finds out, all the mothers in the neighborhood talk to each other. That’s a local area network of distributed processors that can’t be beat.

Mom, you were the best computer teacher I ever had ... :)

Mistake ? Or a lesson ... ?

Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up.

You build up all these defences. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life ...

You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like smile at you, or kiss you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.

It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love ...


DISCLAIMER :
(guys please don't be dumb enough to think i wrote this of my own bad experience or something ... was just getting bored - wanted to write something and yeah, i'm good at fiction, that's all i can say, the smart ones can figure it out anyways ... )