(no subject)

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....

(no subject)

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....