(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

Well... if I can keep working...

I have a story to write. It requires an upper class British accent for no particular reason. It just so happens that one of the characters that lives in my brain has just such an accent... Oh, Charleston!

(Explanations given on request)

I think I can write it.

I'm at a weird point in my programming studies. I'm studying C++, possibly the original, but certainly the most 'famous' Object Oriented Programming language.

Object oriented programming is programming where you try to think in terms of "things" that your program will represent. Rather than thinking of "we'll need names, addresses, social security numbers..." you think "we'll need employees. Employees have (names, addresses, social security numbers, etc.)" Rather than thinking about how to manipulate the data, you think about what the objects do (or have done to them), and write specific functions that do those things... those functions are tied to your object. So, you have a special "employee.hire" function and a special "employee.terminate" function. (Termination refers to any ending of employment... thank you, Mr. Schwarzenegger, for making it sound much more brutal and permanant).

This breaks programs down into easier-to-understand pieces and makes planning and changing things a bit easier. But there's a bit more to it, I think... and I think I'm about to understand it. I feel like I'm ready to understand it. To quote a character from, I think, the Wild Cards series, I feel like I'm an olympic diver, reading a description of a complicated dive, and thinking "I can do that..."

I hope so... Worldcom stock is hitting prices so low it's not even funny.

It's funny how that works. People stop buying the stock for as much money, which makes other people sell it because now it's losing value, which makes more people sell... and soon, the price is so low, they start talking about "how can they make any money by selling stock? They can't! So it's worth even less!"

It's a crazy cycle. And, other than a large debt, it looks, to me, like Worldcom is a fundamentally healthy company. If it hadn't been decided that it's stock price was overvalued, this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

But "why" isn't really important. The key is, they're looking at carving up the company, and selling off a big segment. That will make the investors think that the company could rebound, causing them to buy the stock, just in case, causing the price to go up, causing people to buy it because it's going up, etc..

But,if they sell the wrong chunk, I could be out of a job. I don't want to go to another network tech job if I could go to a programming job. So, I'm *REALLY* hoping this breakthrough I think I sense is really a breakthrough....

Comments

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

I have a story to write. It requires an upper class British accent for no particular reason. It just so happens that one of the characters that lives in my brain has just such an accent... Oh, Charleston!

(Explanations given on request)

This is a request for explanation - and by way of small bribe, if you do it, I can maybe check the accent/vocabulary of your character, if you would like me to do so.

Persimmon

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

>I have a story to write. It requires an upper class British accent for no
>particular reason. It just so happens that one of the characters that lives in
>my brain has just such an accent... Oh, Charleston!

>(Explanations given on request)

This is a request for explanation - and by way of small bribe, if you do it, I can maybe check the accent/vocabulary of your character, if you would like me to do so.

Well, I'm afraid the explanation isn't too interesting. But, one of my first 'real' roleplaying characters (and I've played a lot of them) was Charleston Vanderbilt. He wasn't one of "those" Vanderbilts, but his family had large quantities of money. He was educated in Europe, which gave him exposure to the accent, but there were a few folks who took such an accent as a sign of good breeding... and he was essentially addicted to it by the time he fought in "The Great War" (WWI). After returning from the war, he started to work in the family business in Arkham, MA... and if you know HP Lovecraft, you probably know where this is going :-).

After stopping a major summoning, he fell through a gateway, and ended up on a strange world. He is now a sort of multiversal Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap), finding himself in one heroic situation after another.

His main weapon is his walking stick, and he's obscenely good with it. He learned a bit about how to use it growing up (a perfect tool for the defense of a young gentleman), but mastered it in his world-hopping, both because it was something familiar to stay with, and because it's nearly the easiest weapon to find or make.

I don't attempt to write the accent as such... I merely mention it in the storyline and try to 'listen' to his voice and see if I could picture one of the hollywood folks doing British saying that. If I can avoid "Yondah is da castle of my faddah", I'm satisfied.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

If you really want to get into this, love, remind me to lend you some plays next time I see you. Certain playwrights (Noel Coward, for one; Oscar Wilde, for another) capture upper-crust British dialogue perfectly without "writing an accent." It's all in the diction and word choice.