LOA and programming

the lead up to today's WOW was kind of boring. i have been staring at this problem all week. the program i was trying to fix at work had an elusive bug. i rewrote some code, and i could not see the difference between the functionality i gave it and the old functionality. well, there was the obvious upgrade in efficiency, but there should be no reason that the new code didn't work. what was it, what could it be?

now coding can be one of the most frustrating things ever. i have called my computer names (in the pre-loa days) that i wouldn't throw at any human being. yes, i have hurt my computer's feelings on more than one occasion. it was powerless to do anything about it, although it didn't speak to me for a few days. no, wait, it never speaks to me.

these days, however, i'm taking a more upbeat approach. i am a competent programmer. i can find the solution. no matter that i work at a place that creates semiconductor machinery, which i have absolutely no clue about. i can point out the machine in a line-up, if i have to, but don't ask me what all the bits do. i just know i can pass it information and get information back from it. if the machine is in the mood.

all week i had been on the edge of keeping it loa-friendly. instead of getting angry or frustrated, i simply thought about something nice, and repeated the 'i am a competent programmer' mantra. today i was starting to have doubts i could find it on my own, instead of having to ask one of the far more knowledgeable guru-like programmers for help. they are busy, or they'd have been helping me already. so i pushed on.

today, in particular, i really focused on just feeling good. difficult when you want something you aren't getting - a working program. but every time i started to think "c'mon!!!! work!!!!" i pre-empted myself and thought about something that made me happy. that means that i thought about work precious little today. i wouldn't have admitted this to my boss, but i hardly thought about it at all today. i looked through the code, then checked out a website i like. i looked through the code a little more, then wrote a little funny mini-essay. i looked through the code and then did some pray-rain journalling. i looked through the code a little then went mushroom picking. no, i mean, i talked to dave (coworker) about kids. it's our favorite distraction topic.

then, i spotted it. it just jumped out at me like a sore thumb. "no," i said, "it couldn't just be *that*..." i made the change, and re-ran the program.
as
if
by
magic, right in front of me, the dang thing WORKED! i could NOT believe it. i mean i could believe it but i could NOT believe it! HOW WONDERFUL! i jumped up from my chair, and shouted "YES!" at my machine, the one i was pointing to in an 'in your face' way. then i turned to each of my coworkers and pointed at them and shouted "YES!" they are used to my mad-american ways, so they were quite amused by it and the subsequent jokes i made about comparisons between getting code to work and a male-female activity.

do i care that the entire open-plan office heard me? no. do i care that most of the place thinks i'm nuts? no, not really. do i care that i got my code to work? OH YEAH! that was truly amazing. it's not just amazing that i got it to work. it's amazing that i got it to work with LOA. that totally rocks.

i have to go now, there's a middle-east crisis i'm going to attract a solution for now. . .
kidding! i only attract stuff for me! let the others attract their own lives!