Infinite State Automaton

Every night before I go to bed, I have a number of things that I do. One of these things is make sure that there are no monsters under my bed. My plan as a child was always to have so much garbage under there, that it was impossible for any monster to fit. When I was in China, a street merchant sold me a tai-chi sword for the princely sum of 20 yuan. It converted out to about four American dollars. This epic weapon travelled wrapped up in a newspaper with me for one month across all of China, from the beautiful majestic cliffs of the Three Gorges river, through the perilous mountain tops and bamboo forests, on the tightly packed train for three days. Where I went, it went, where I slept, it rested, always by my side, together to victory.

On my return to Australia, a terrible thing happened. The air crew wouldn't allow me to take the sword on to the plane. It had to go on as stowage. I wept as the sword was taken away because I feared for its safety, and my fears were founded. When I next saw it, the haft of the weapon had been severed from the blade - cut clean so that it couldn't be used to strike someone.

And so it was for years, merely a costume prop for various exhibitions, sometimes held together by as little as masking tape or even super glue.

Until one day, deep in the bowels in the Womens and Children's Hospital, an ancient dwarf weaponsmith took the fractured parts of this courageous sword, and mended them together once more. As I lifted the completed weapon to test its cut against the rays of light that streamed in through the dust covered windowsill, the smith said to me, "The spirit of the sword lives strong, but the body is broken. Never more can it strike mortal flesh or a solid thing." I knew then on this day that the weapon had been transformed from a common thing, a mere trinket, in to a legendary force of destruction; a demon killing sword, the bane of evil.

To this day, the sword rests by my bed, ever vigilant to smite the darkest creatures that dare try to take place under my bed. That is, if there was room for them...

After I make sure my base is safe, I check my e-mails, visit the various web sites, and then drink half a glass of rum to help me sleep. Well, no, not really. Rum doesn't help me sleep. It helps me find the floor, yes, and what a comfortable floor it is, but sleep isn't necessarily what I do there. In fact it's a good day if I don't drown on my own saliva. If you find Sky passed out on the ground, please be kind and roll him on his side. Thank you.

Well it's almost one am and I am getting up at 7:30 am. Why? Well, that's a good question. I don't know why. So, I'll set my alarm to 8. That's a much better idea.

Tomorrow my dad is getting out of hospital after having had surgery on his spine. I don't know the exact details, mum who is a nurse and knows important medical words like 'morphine;' could probably clarify. Actually, that reminds me.

Mum said something like, "Actually I worked on a career to be an IT professional." HOW DID YOU WIND UP AS A MIDWIFE? Can I look forward to it? Oh, here is an awkward story to share with you all. It starts well: My mother graduated from Nursing, and then went back and did another year (right?) to become a Midwife. So we went to attend the midwife graduation ceremony. As you probably know, different faculties have different colored robes and stuff. An odd thing, only women had become midwifes this year. This minor detail isn't important right now.

After the ceremony, we took lots of pictures of mum in her flash Graduate Midwife robes. Maybe she has some online? You can put them up here if you like. Well, I had to return the robes and hat and colors to the University office. It seemed like a good idea to wear it, after all, since everyone else was walking around in their Graduate gear and it would be fun to see what I would look like when I, too, am a graduate one day.

So imagine the looks of horror on the faces of the people who knew what the colours for the midwife graduate robes were when they saw a boy walking around in the same colours. Yes. So, I, ah, took the robes off. Mmmm. Awkward? Yes. Awkward is a very good word.

Fortunately my younger brother Matthew was present and I was able to make him wear/carry them and he was blissfully unaware of what I had done to him.

So, please give details for dads situation...?

Well, as far as I understand it, he's doing well but the next couple of weeks will be frustrating because he has very limited mobility. For a person who always seems to be working on a project and is very active, I think it will be very frustrating for him. Although I can easily spend all day reading a book or playing a game or...ah...just laying in bed sleeping, I guess...I don't think that is the kind of thing dad can do. I think this will be the hardest thing for him, actually relaxing and being patient enough to let the treatment work. I hope it will be ok.

Dani pointed out correctly that I had left 'Baker' in my profile when I am, in fact, not a baker! I still don't have a proper job description. On my pay form it says 'Software Developer: Professional.' Apparently they had to hire me as a professional (and not academic staff) because otherwise I would have to submit academic papers. They don't want me to write papers because I'm not a qualified professional. I think you can see where this is going. I thought it would be easy to say, 'Well, I am a computer scientist' but the rest of the faculty say 'No, you are an engineer'.

SO...

On Friday I demonstrated my program to the DSTO.

I have been afraid for the last four, five years, that I wasn't good enough. I found programming hard. Nothing worked like I wanted it to. I had found myself wondering, "Is this the right career for me?" Whenever I was in a conversation about computers with just about anyone, I felt entirely out of my area. I have been really quite scared of this jump from being a student to being a person who writes programs that are, well, paid for instead of being marked. I was afraid I would make a mistake, that they would discover how little I really knew about it, and they would get rid of me. I expected a long path of repeated failure while I slowly learned more about it until some day in my mid 30's I'd land a job good enough to get me through life.

So I didn't expect people to look at my program on Friday and go "OH MY GOD! THAT IS INCREDIBLE! YOU DID ALL OF THIS IN TWO WEEKS?". To say it was a good response is an understatement. All day long I had been wringing my hands nervously and unable to sit still because I was frightened about what would happen. What if the program crashed? What if the user didn't like it? What if the program somehow dialled into a foreign country and started downloading confidential data to them? All manner of things could have gone wrong. I was really nervous about it. Well, I worked hard on the program. I stayed late quite a few nights of the week to make sure it got done properly, and I was still putting polish on it half an hour before we sent it out. The system I wrote...ah...here is the thing about computer programming. There are bugs. A bug is a logical error, when a human says to a computer, "OK, please put a sign up on the wall to say "No trespassing" and the computer does this, but the sign is upside down. The job is done but it's not done right. You find bugs by deliberately trying to break your program, making it 'bulletproof'. You test it again and again and again to make sure it does the right thing.

My program isn't bulletproof. I pulled it entirely apart Wednesday night and wrote it again from scratch, using the algorithms I had written, and reassembling it all day Thursday, and adding 50% extra functionality Friday morning. It's not tested. It's not tested. I know my program logic. I know there are errors in it. Big errors. Really big errors. Things like...if you press the buttons in a certain sequence, the computer says "Yup! I'm going to eat all of your memory now" and the only way out is to wait for the blue screen to come up and go 'zomg u broke me'.

Well, anyway.

I know what I wrote isn't particularly special or amazing. My algorithms that I wrote in a few hours are not scientific breakthroughs. But the people who saw the program reacted like it was. It was a really good feeling for me. As I was driving home I was thinking about the events of the day and realising, "I know how to do this." Yeah. I know how to do it.

So, I am a computer scientist now.

In other big news, Taren learned how to make arcanite bars and Malachiel bought his first piece of pvp gear, the Grand Marshall's Scaled Gauntlets. He can't actually wear them for another two levels, but I reached 100 Alterac Valley tokens so I had to spend them on something (because it doesn't go over 100 and otherwise it is a waste).

I ate a whole 250g of Roses chocolates today.