Christ was an engineer
Posted: 2003-02-26 10:25am
Hmmmm, there was some doubt in my mind should I or should I not post this, but I decided that you're all big boys and girls and so I would. This is the start of an erotic story...except I have cut it off before the long winded and the whole sex thing starts so as not to upset anyone. It's well...slightly wierd to say the least combining religion, a horse riding girlfriend, computer engineers and WWII refrences to it, in just this clip. Just interested to see what you guys make of it.
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Christ was an Engineer
CS 502 was ``The Class to End All Classes'' just as WW I was ``The War to End All Wars.'' Both were a brutal, unrelenting slaughter only surpassed in sadistic cruelty by the food served by the university's dining commons. Men and women alike were left empty shells, their bodies sapped of life and strewn about in a haphazard stream of F's, D's and perpetual incompletes. And I chose to do battle with that demon. No, I was not a grad student learned, overconfident with a degree under my belt. No, I was not a senior who was forced to take the class in order to get that trivial piece of paper known as a diploma. I was a junior, brash, outrageous and daring.
The list of merciless tyrants -- Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and my old piano teacher -- seems incomplete without the name of CS 502's creator, Professor Robert Graham. He wrote the text, he designed the curriculum, and, most importantly, he sadistically masterminded the programming assignments. During the Middle Ages, if a man was accused of a crime, he could chose to be tested by fire. He was given a bar of red hot metal, forced to hold it and walk the length of the room. If God chose to protect his flesh from the searing hot metal, he was innocent of the crime. The Puritans of Colonial Massachusetts had a similar test for witches. They'd throw an accused witch into a pond and if she floated, she was a witch and burned at the stake. If she sank and drowned to death, she was proved not to be a witch. Such were Bob Graham's programming assignments.
God, or Allah as the case may be, chose to protect me by granting me a programming partner named Eman Hashem. She was Palestinian and what Palestinians typically are to terrorism, Eman was to computer engineering. Her grade point: 4.0 out of 4.0. We're not talking a 4.0 with an art class, ``clay for an A'', or geology for the criminally stupid, ``rocks for jocks.'' We're talking a flawless 4.0 with 3 semesters of calculus, chemistry, physics and a whole slew of courses schools form press gangs in order to fill. There is but one God and his name is Allah. I was truly blessed and two weeks into the course, Eman chose to drop.
I was not disheartened. My faith in God strong, he chose to bless me again, this time in a Protestant form. Don Joy opted to take over as my programming partner on the first assignment. He was a graduate student, the man who taught me my first programming class and, before returning to school, a Methodist minister. It was not that strange of a combination if you considered that after having three children, Don realized that he could be a minister with no money or leave God's service and be able to send his children to college. Hence, Don came to grad school, for blessed are those who walk in the way of the computer engineer.
But I was not David, chosen to slay the Philistine giant, CS 502. I was not Noah whose raw faith would allow me to weather the storm and save a subset of all living creatures. No, I was Job, the one God chose to test. Three weeks into the semester, Don decided not to take the class. Poland, little Poland. Home of my ancestors. Conquered and divided in the fifteenth century by the combined might of Prussia, Russia and Lithuania. Poland, born again after ``The War to End All Wars.'' Poland, who stood alone as Germany invaded from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. Gallant cavaliers whose lances charged against Hitler's tanks. I was Poland: heroic, noble and, at times, just plain stupid. What the hell's a horse, rider and lance supposed to do against a tank? Every other student in CS 502 had a programming partner for the first assignment. I stood alone against Bob Graham, Nazi, Marquis de Sade and dining commons chef.
God did grant his prodigal small comforts. I maintained a computer room's printers and hence had a key. At 17:00 hours each day by my military time watch, the room closed to the public and I began my pilgrimage of redemption. I'd sit at a highly coveted graphics terminal and begin composing my coding symphony. At 19:00 hours each day, there was a knock at the door. It was my girlfriend, Jennifer. The scenario repeated itself daily until the assignment was due. ``I brought you dinner,'' she said, as she pulled out fruit and sandwiches wrapped in napkins, all commandeered from the dining commons.
``Grrr,'' was my response, because I was no longer fully human. Instead, I was a CS 502 barbarian warrior and I ate with a corresponding level of etiquette. Sandwiches disappeared in a single bite. With each hunk of food devastated, I'd respond with grunts of satisfaction. ``Grrr, grrr.'' My hunger satiated, my grunts became, ``GRRR! GRRR!'' as Jennifer stood before me and undressed.
``I brought you food,'' she said with a bare-all-smile. ``Now, service me.'' And I would, either standing up or on the study table in the middle of the room. My fly zipped and Jennifer beaming, the time was only 19:30. We'd sit together and talk. We'd laugh and joke like normal boyfriends do with their girlfriends. We held hands, we kissed and we talked about the weather, her classes, politics and the lingerie Jennifer should buy for my upcoming birthday. Fifteen to thirty minutes later it would begin. If it were a full moon and the computer room had been located in downtown Transylvania, I'd have sprouted long nails, fangs and grown hair all over my body. I'd have been a computer engineering werewolf. No, this was America. First a twitch in the left side of my face. Then I'd blink uncontrollably, my eyes not used to normal light, not used to staring at anything but the computer screen. I'd be mid-sentence -- ``Yeah, I miss you too...'' -- and I'd lose my ability to speak coherently. ``Grrr, grrr, CS 502.'' Jennifer would smile, kiss my forehead, get dressed and leave. My last non-missing-link thought was always, ``She gud woman.''
And I fulfilled the first of Hercules' impossible seven labors -- the first programming assignment. But I'd passed my tokens as an array, rather than retrieving them individually. It cost me ten points. I received a ninety, one of the highest grades in the class, but still I found myself on the balcony of my dorm growling and howling at the moon for a good two hours. Once my soul was sufficiently cleansed, Jennifer would come out and say, ``It won't change your grade dear. Come. It's time for bed.'' She'd take me by the hand and lead me to her warmth.
And the sun and moon exchanged positions in the sky several times before the first exam. It was open notes and open book. I was ready, I was psyched and I was wired from the combined sugar and caffeine of two liters of Coke. The only way I could have been more pscyhed would be if I'd taken the Coke intravenously rather than ingesting it orally and don't think I didn't ponder an I.V. drip. It was Jennifer who talked me out of it. ``Bad boy! Don't contemplate foolish things! Service me.'' Gud woman. The blue books were handed out. My two mechanical pencils were filled to the brim with HP hardness lead and my eraser, what else, a Staedler. With my notes, homework solutions and text surrounding me, I was ready. The combined sugar and caffeine did the trick. I wrote furiously. I'd skim a question, consult my notes or the text and immediately synthesize an answer. I stood before the walls of Jericho, blew my horn and down came walls of the first exam. I was done. The weekend was here and I had neither a CS 502 exam nor programming assignment to worry about. Back at the dorm, Jennifer sat me on the bed and said, ``I have a surprise for you.'' Trusting her, I naively let her take my wrist and promptly let her handcuff me to the bed. And their I remained from Friday night until Monday morning. Bad, bad computer engineer, ignoring your girlfriend. Jennifer was on the riding team. She had these tight riding pants, knee high boots, spurs and a three foot whip. Combine that with her infatuation for Victoria's Secret and Fredrick's of Hollywood and you you can guess the rest.
I found it uncomfortable to sit on Monday during class when the graded exam was handed back. This had nothing to do with the fifty-six I received on the exam and was solely a by product of my relationship with ``faster horsey, faster'' Jennifer. I sat there in a latent sugar coma and pondered. The mean was fifty-eight. I'd nailed a solid C. The high was a seventy-three. And so I read my answers and saw a glaring minus twenty. I'd skipped question two, a simple tree construction of an expression evaluation. A six year old with a masters in computer science could have answered it. Actually, a non-caffeine hyped junior in computer engineering could have answered it since the exam was open-notes/open-book. I could easily have received full credit for the question. This would have given me a seventy-six, the highest grade in the class by three full points. Bad, bad computer engineer....
- - -
Christ was an Engineer
CS 502 was ``The Class to End All Classes'' just as WW I was ``The War to End All Wars.'' Both were a brutal, unrelenting slaughter only surpassed in sadistic cruelty by the food served by the university's dining commons. Men and women alike were left empty shells, their bodies sapped of life and strewn about in a haphazard stream of F's, D's and perpetual incompletes. And I chose to do battle with that demon. No, I was not a grad student learned, overconfident with a degree under my belt. No, I was not a senior who was forced to take the class in order to get that trivial piece of paper known as a diploma. I was a junior, brash, outrageous and daring.
The list of merciless tyrants -- Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun and my old piano teacher -- seems incomplete without the name of CS 502's creator, Professor Robert Graham. He wrote the text, he designed the curriculum, and, most importantly, he sadistically masterminded the programming assignments. During the Middle Ages, if a man was accused of a crime, he could chose to be tested by fire. He was given a bar of red hot metal, forced to hold it and walk the length of the room. If God chose to protect his flesh from the searing hot metal, he was innocent of the crime. The Puritans of Colonial Massachusetts had a similar test for witches. They'd throw an accused witch into a pond and if she floated, she was a witch and burned at the stake. If she sank and drowned to death, she was proved not to be a witch. Such were Bob Graham's programming assignments.
God, or Allah as the case may be, chose to protect me by granting me a programming partner named Eman Hashem. She was Palestinian and what Palestinians typically are to terrorism, Eman was to computer engineering. Her grade point: 4.0 out of 4.0. We're not talking a 4.0 with an art class, ``clay for an A'', or geology for the criminally stupid, ``rocks for jocks.'' We're talking a flawless 4.0 with 3 semesters of calculus, chemistry, physics and a whole slew of courses schools form press gangs in order to fill. There is but one God and his name is Allah. I was truly blessed and two weeks into the course, Eman chose to drop.
I was not disheartened. My faith in God strong, he chose to bless me again, this time in a Protestant form. Don Joy opted to take over as my programming partner on the first assignment. He was a graduate student, the man who taught me my first programming class and, before returning to school, a Methodist minister. It was not that strange of a combination if you considered that after having three children, Don realized that he could be a minister with no money or leave God's service and be able to send his children to college. Hence, Don came to grad school, for blessed are those who walk in the way of the computer engineer.
But I was not David, chosen to slay the Philistine giant, CS 502. I was not Noah whose raw faith would allow me to weather the storm and save a subset of all living creatures. No, I was Job, the one God chose to test. Three weeks into the semester, Don decided not to take the class. Poland, little Poland. Home of my ancestors. Conquered and divided in the fifteenth century by the combined might of Prussia, Russia and Lithuania. Poland, born again after ``The War to End All Wars.'' Poland, who stood alone as Germany invaded from the west and the Soviet Union from the east. Gallant cavaliers whose lances charged against Hitler's tanks. I was Poland: heroic, noble and, at times, just plain stupid. What the hell's a horse, rider and lance supposed to do against a tank? Every other student in CS 502 had a programming partner for the first assignment. I stood alone against Bob Graham, Nazi, Marquis de Sade and dining commons chef.
God did grant his prodigal small comforts. I maintained a computer room's printers and hence had a key. At 17:00 hours each day by my military time watch, the room closed to the public and I began my pilgrimage of redemption. I'd sit at a highly coveted graphics terminal and begin composing my coding symphony. At 19:00 hours each day, there was a knock at the door. It was my girlfriend, Jennifer. The scenario repeated itself daily until the assignment was due. ``I brought you dinner,'' she said, as she pulled out fruit and sandwiches wrapped in napkins, all commandeered from the dining commons.
``Grrr,'' was my response, because I was no longer fully human. Instead, I was a CS 502 barbarian warrior and I ate with a corresponding level of etiquette. Sandwiches disappeared in a single bite. With each hunk of food devastated, I'd respond with grunts of satisfaction. ``Grrr, grrr.'' My hunger satiated, my grunts became, ``GRRR! GRRR!'' as Jennifer stood before me and undressed.
``I brought you food,'' she said with a bare-all-smile. ``Now, service me.'' And I would, either standing up or on the study table in the middle of the room. My fly zipped and Jennifer beaming, the time was only 19:30. We'd sit together and talk. We'd laugh and joke like normal boyfriends do with their girlfriends. We held hands, we kissed and we talked about the weather, her classes, politics and the lingerie Jennifer should buy for my upcoming birthday. Fifteen to thirty minutes later it would begin. If it were a full moon and the computer room had been located in downtown Transylvania, I'd have sprouted long nails, fangs and grown hair all over my body. I'd have been a computer engineering werewolf. No, this was America. First a twitch in the left side of my face. Then I'd blink uncontrollably, my eyes not used to normal light, not used to staring at anything but the computer screen. I'd be mid-sentence -- ``Yeah, I miss you too...'' -- and I'd lose my ability to speak coherently. ``Grrr, grrr, CS 502.'' Jennifer would smile, kiss my forehead, get dressed and leave. My last non-missing-link thought was always, ``She gud woman.''
And I fulfilled the first of Hercules' impossible seven labors -- the first programming assignment. But I'd passed my tokens as an array, rather than retrieving them individually. It cost me ten points. I received a ninety, one of the highest grades in the class, but still I found myself on the balcony of my dorm growling and howling at the moon for a good two hours. Once my soul was sufficiently cleansed, Jennifer would come out and say, ``It won't change your grade dear. Come. It's time for bed.'' She'd take me by the hand and lead me to her warmth.
And the sun and moon exchanged positions in the sky several times before the first exam. It was open notes and open book. I was ready, I was psyched and I was wired from the combined sugar and caffeine of two liters of Coke. The only way I could have been more pscyhed would be if I'd taken the Coke intravenously rather than ingesting it orally and don't think I didn't ponder an I.V. drip. It was Jennifer who talked me out of it. ``Bad boy! Don't contemplate foolish things! Service me.'' Gud woman. The blue books were handed out. My two mechanical pencils were filled to the brim with HP hardness lead and my eraser, what else, a Staedler. With my notes, homework solutions and text surrounding me, I was ready. The combined sugar and caffeine did the trick. I wrote furiously. I'd skim a question, consult my notes or the text and immediately synthesize an answer. I stood before the walls of Jericho, blew my horn and down came walls of the first exam. I was done. The weekend was here and I had neither a CS 502 exam nor programming assignment to worry about. Back at the dorm, Jennifer sat me on the bed and said, ``I have a surprise for you.'' Trusting her, I naively let her take my wrist and promptly let her handcuff me to the bed. And their I remained from Friday night until Monday morning. Bad, bad computer engineer, ignoring your girlfriend. Jennifer was on the riding team. She had these tight riding pants, knee high boots, spurs and a three foot whip. Combine that with her infatuation for Victoria's Secret and Fredrick's of Hollywood and you you can guess the rest.
I found it uncomfortable to sit on Monday during class when the graded exam was handed back. This had nothing to do with the fifty-six I received on the exam and was solely a by product of my relationship with ``faster horsey, faster'' Jennifer. I sat there in a latent sugar coma and pondered. The mean was fifty-eight. I'd nailed a solid C. The high was a seventy-three. And so I read my answers and saw a glaring minus twenty. I'd skipped question two, a simple tree construction of an expression evaluation. A six year old with a masters in computer science could have answered it. Actually, a non-caffeine hyped junior in computer engineering could have answered it since the exam was open-notes/open-book. I could easily have received full credit for the question. This would have given me a seventy-six, the highest grade in the class by three full points. Bad, bad computer engineer....
