Heike tells a story

One of Heike's sisters lives in a remote area in southern Spain. They recently got a modem connection to their house. Heike was Skyping with her nephew, and typed, "I have to go now, time to walk the dog and meet people for dinner." The nephew replied, "Where will you go for your walk?" "In Görlitzer park," replied Heike, "... why don't you come with me?" Nephew (10 y.o.) said "I will! I will come with you on google earth!"

So sweet!

Integer Overflow Week, or When Things Get Bigger Than The Biggest Things

* Tuesday - riding to work, when suddenly some boofy german bloke in a big navy blue BMW slows down next to me. He's wound down the passenger side window and is shouting at me across the body of his tiny, weaselly-looking mate - "Hey You went through the red light! Red lights are for bicyclists, too, you know! Do you think you are special?"
OK, whatever, if I went through a red light at an intersection where there were no cars except for me and this guy, that's my business, right?. But I got /angry/. Really really angry. BMW roared off up the street, obviously proud to have done his civic duty. But I know the streets here, and I know that the light he was heading for is very slow. So I caught up with him there, and slammed the closed window with the flat of my hand. "Fuck you!", I yelled, and (the only german swearphrase I know coz it is written on the wall in the stairwell of my friend's house) "Fich dich, Opfer!". The lights changed to green, I got off my bike and strolled nonchalantly across the road to work, whilst BMW had to drive off, because of all the other cars waiting behind him at the lights.

* Tuesday, Part Two. I'm enjoying an afternoon coffee in the breakroom with Tobias from work. He's the 28-y.o., Go-playing, maths-PhD fella with the shiny head. He explains about a great bug that he's working on - there's a biggest integer down there in the engine of the software, and you're not supposed to get a value that's higher than it. But he found a situation where input from a MIDI keyboard wraps the value, and returns exactly the right value to give exactly the right behaviour - playing a note. We chuckled over this accidentality, and went back to work.

* Wednesday. I'm reading the latest xkcd cartoon - poor Mr. xkcd is trying to get to sleep, and is counting sheep. He counts and counts, when suddenly the number of the sheep goes into negative values. Integer overflow. http://www.xkcd.com/571/. Fitted nicely, coz I had terrible insomnia meself the night before. Might explain why I got so pissed at Mr. BMW.

* Wednesday, Part Two. Boss at work is working like a fiend - for him, that's typing up a storm, not talking to /anyone/, going into the machine room a lot, four or five terminal windows open at the same time on his monitors. At about four in the afternoon, he turns to me and explains that the job-tracker database needed to be upgraded live. He shows me some log files to do with the search component. "Search array out of range. Search daemon stopping." Apparently the new version fixes this, but it's completely undocumented. Well, the search engine is working now, but it was having a kind of integer overflow.

* Thursday. Riding home, going down a one-way street. Full of potholes, had to weave around a bit to avoid being chucked of the bike. It's a slow road anyway, running alongside a hotel with lots of waiting cabs, and tour buses. Suddenly massive horn-beeping from behind me. Without thinking, I yell, "Fuck /OFF/!". I've just about had it with these impatient, self-righteous cars. Surprise surprise (not) a big silvery BMW roars past me ... straight into the loving arms of another slow set of lights. Ha ha ha. Revenge is mine. I pull up next to Wanker Number Two and shout into the driver window - "What the fuck is the big hurry?" Mr. Big Arab yells back at me, "Fuck me?! Fuck you! I fuxk the Americans! I fuck the Israelis! I fuck your mother! I fuck the South Africans! I fuck the Brits!" Quite a large part of my brain is thinking, "How interesting. He's trying to figure out what kind of English-speaker I am." By now, the lights have changed, and we're both going round the corner together during this tirade. I yell back, "You must have a huge cock, then!" He and his mates all shout with laughter, and he roars off down the street.

* Friday. Today. I declare integer overflow week to be officially Over.