All Good Men

I was hired by a psychologist to fix a program that seemed to have "strange output" written by one of his ex-grad students. It was a program that reads a data file, asks about 50 questions, does some calculations, and comes up with some score based on this PhD's research. It's on a research 3B2 at the university. He demonstrates the program and sure enough there seemed to be strange flashing words on the screen when it moves from question to question, and they don't seem nice. I agree to do it, should be pretty straightforward, so he'll pay me by the hour to determine how big the fix is and then we'll agree to a fee. Day 1 I sit down at the 3B2 and login to the ex-grad student's account that has been given to me. This is where the code resides. I examine the C code. It is written to be hard to read. All the code is squished on one line. It's spread over 15 files with about 3 functions per file -- all on one line. All variable names are just th

At the end of every summer  I come to a place where I don’t want to be The years move by faster  the summers move quicker than they ever have before  and the time we had slips quickly   through our hands But every once and a while you find a second and you grab that time and you hold onto it for all its worth Because those few moments are like gold  And though everyone knows it in that moment  its impossible to speak it out loud Because knowing that its short lived  would break the magic of it And the Jericho walls would fall down and the real world would come rushing back in  to drag you back to the hum drum days  of work and family And even though you love them your family, the time in those moments when you finally wrestle it to the ground  and force it to stay awhile slows down  and you soak up every second of it You can feel the warmth of it in your back in the spot between your shoulder blades The spot that tingles