eep?

I just wrote a few lines of Perl for the first time in over a year. (I have a tiny script that, given an unsorted text file, sorts it alphabetically. I needed to sort a list of the form number: thing, but first I needed to add leading zeros to the numbers so it would stop sorting 256 before 13312.)

I am by no stretch of imagination a good programmer. It took me about an hour to figure out how to do this (split, sprintf, join, if you care) and work out the syntax. My recollection is that it then usually takes anywhere from five to thirty minutes to debug the obvious syntax errors and less obvious 'it did what' errors before a script will do what I expect it to.

It ran right the first time.

I am equal parts exuberant and terrified.

satyrday nite's alright

There are a couple of malls in downtown but the local Big Mall is Metrotown, about a fifteen-minute Skytrain ride away. (Whistling "Funkytown" as the Skytrain passes the Metrotown stop is a good way to get uilos to bodily assault you.) Or, if you turn right when you get off the Skytrain instead of left, you come to Station Square Mall, a sad half-abandoned indoor shopping center whose main attractions consist of a Save-On Foods, a dilapidated movie theatre where we finally saw The Pirates! in non-3D a couple of weeks ago, and a bar.

I've been to the bar a few times with semilocal J--. I wouldn't exactly call it a dive but I wouldn't correct you if you did. The food is edible, the music's neither too loud nor unlistenable, and they carry Strongbow. It provides a place to hang out that's neither so classy I feel out of place nor so rundown as to make me feel unwelcome.

Last night several of us ended up there after gaming, for dancin' and drinkin' and shootin' pool (poorly). It made for a not too bad evening, all in all. Against all expectation I'm developing something of a social circle. Maybe next time I'll partake of the dancin' part.

---

THINGS WHAT I HAVE DONE LAST WEEK:

• Emailed SW and contemplated ways of becoming more sociable.
  
• Sorted out the Technoir game's plot. I now understand everything that was going on in my game up until we broke for May, and have a good idea of which way the rest of it is tending.
  
• Wrote about Burn Notice.
  
• Resubmitted Bookwyrms, though without further revision.
  
• Made a dentist appointment. Also made a doctor's appointment. OVERACHIEVERS R US.
  
• Emailed the good K--. And heard back, even.

Plus working 40 hours, attending a dentist appointment, and generally not being asocial. Reasonable.

THINGS WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE THE BACK OF THIS COMING WEEK: still a nonexhaustive list.

• Write JSL back
  
• Gather the easy immigration stuff for the immigration lawyer
  
• Get clarification from the immigration lawyer on assorted immigration stuff
  
• Other assorted email, some of which dates back six months or more
  
• Finish writing a review of Rolling Freight (currently ~1/2 done)
  
• Develop a large-scale outline or plan for getting the space story done in the next 3.5 weeks

Seems reasonable.