For years I've waited to use this excuse, ever since I saw it employed on xkcd. The time has finally come: office setting, employer next door, project at a standstill for what looks to be the next four hours, and it really is code related. I can finally do something fantastically goofy on company time and shout "Compiling!" in response to any questioning. Not that that would really protect my internship, but it's the PRINCIPLE of the matter: I have an opportunity to slack off, I should take it!
But- for the life of me- I can't think of anything outrageous to do.
I don't even want to Stumble-Upon or Reddit. I don't particularly want to video game or do any sort of nonsense. If this is what growing up is like, Father Time and I are going to have problems.
Anyway, this is the project I'm working on: Swiper.
The bottleneck in question is installing THE ENTIRE LINUX KERNEL on top of Windows by way of cygwin. The default install didn't have the ncurses package, so I couldn't use the command `clear`. Who knows what else was missing so instead of picking packages out of the heap and installing one at a time, I told cygwin to just get everything, that way it will almost measure up to Linux in a CLI sense. And it's taking forever. I've installed and upgraded and then reformatted Ubuntu releases in the time that this is taking.
Let that one set in.
In less than thirty minutes I could install a Linux distro and this would work like magic. But no. I have to Windows.
Windows* /ween-Dohz/ (verb) - to settle for the incompatibilities, inconsistencies, and ineptitude surrounding computer users who fear anything missing the logo that they have become familiar with, usually at great cost to both parties in question.
*It might be worth it to come up with a different name for that, so as to use it out of a computing context. I hate having to 'Windows' while driving.
What makes me particularly sad is that Mac users, on the whole, are now becoming more progressive than Windows users- becoming comfortable with dual-boot systems, being open to different types of software; and seemingly because these skills are necessary in a Darwinian sense (suggesting that if you aren't okay with it, you just stop using computers; natural selection).
Is this what Jobs intended? Equip a large enough population with even more limitations on hardware and software and eventually a larger percentage of users will pursue higher education? A sort of staggered learning curve, where first you learn to use a computer, the you learn how to use a computer? Is that ethical? Does it work? Is it working? I digress.
The point is that my code is compiling.
