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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 11/07/2007 How you write your grocery list
may determine your computer programming ability .... I have
created hundreds of grocery lists, which make sense to me, but its other people's
lists that drive me crazy. I start
on the right, and finish on the left. My list shows the exact item I need, by
location, in logical location sequence. I had shopped at the same grocery
store for decades, and knew the location of everything in stock. Sometimes
they’d call ME up and say “Frank, where’s the pickled
Herring ... “ My
grocery lists make perfect sense to me, and I think they’re very logical
and sequential. It's other people lists that drive me nuts. Take for example - my Mom's
grocery lists,
who I shopped for until she passed, because she was in her 80’s. She was an old
Alaskan, born in Ruby on the Yukon river, and she called it her “Git list” My mom
would give me a grocery list based on no logic at all. I would even try to
sort it mentally into some logical order and fail. First item was on the
extreme left, next item was 100 yards over to the right. 75 yards back to the
cookies, then 1/4 mile back over to ice cream. Then maybe a mile back to tomatoes.
Then, of course, 2 miles across store to kleenex. By now
I'm looking for a place to camp for the night, and continue on the next day
after I'm rested. But then came the worst par of her
list , which read "Those doohinkies I like
...". At this
point if I were a computer, I would either have a hard disk crash, or display
the message "that does not compute!". Doohinkies
are not on the brief listing of food categories on the little chart on my
shopping cart, nor are they anywhere in the big generic store published list
of available groceries and products. I, a grown
man, am not going to ask a clerk “where the doohinkies are. “ And I
will absolutely, positively not ask a stranger in a grocery store if they
happened to pass the doohinkies somewhere in their travels. Instead,
I will stand here next to the kleenex, the last known logical item on the
list, and try to determine exactly what a doohinkey is. I might be here for a long time..... I also
found out an interesting thing in this process – I can’t shop
from the left !
I have to start shopping at the far right side of the grocery store
... or I crash just like a computer. Computers are so logical and
unemotional, and it’s nice to be able to recall a computer related
story which has a heart warming human element to it. I wrote this show for my Mother in
1999 which aired on Raw Bytes on KPBX back then - she really enjoyed it, and I hope you do too. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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