Pipelining, out-of-order execution, cache misses... all this shit I never
bothered to learn is haunting me now as I attempt to catch up with the 1990s
reality of microprocessing. Just like chess in the late 1960s, early 1970s... as soon as my friend Bob
Patterson started studying books on the subject, and I refused to, my game was
no longer a match for his. And as soon as tricks like AAM 10 were
not sufficient to speed up assembly language programs -- in fact, adding instructions sometimes work wonders -- I was out of my league in that field.
Now I've got about 15 years of catch-up to do before I can seriously compete
with the C++ crowd. Not to mention all the algorithm improvements that have come
out since Knuth and Sedgewick.
Bought a whole case of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale at Costco. I hate the shit. Way too hoppy for my taste, and I vaguely remembered that when I bought it, but that wasn't one of the things they let you sample at the store. So I'm stuck with it. Had 3 pints of Moylan's Irish Red before I came home from the gym tonight, though, so I'm already way ahead of the crowd.
I'm starting to get some upper-body muscle. And other weight that can't all be attributable to muscle: I weighed in at 154 at 24 Hour Fitness tonight, up from about 130 when I arrived here on my bicycle. Beer and holiday sweets are adding on the pounds. Thankfully my toothache hasn't yet resurfaced.
This coming year ought to be interesting. The anarchic streak among Americans is starting to show strongly, just as the federal government is getting all the more obnoxious and overbearing. The public is armed and dangerous, and it seems fewer and fewer people are allowing themselves to be brainwashed by the media. I seriously doubt that someone can come up with a workable method of governing the 6.5+ billion people on earth, but a return to tribes as a system of governance on the local level has to be a serious contender for a post-civilization world. I finally read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash a couple of weeks or so ago, and while it was underwhelming as science fiction goes, it shows a workable concept of postarchy. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.
last updated 2010-01-02 03:29:06. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com