What you see here is the values of the six counters flipping across the screen. Ignore the top line which says roll the die 25,000 times. I added an extra line of code to test the system to the limit of around 2 billion throws. Guessing by the time so far, the test will probably take overnight. Later, I will display a timer and some diagnostics. If you are really nice, I’ll publish the code maybe tomorrow. Warning, I said I’d use simple statements so the sorting process is done by nested if-then-else statements. After a couple layers deep, these get hard to follow.
It is next to useless to program anything but graphics these days. Computers are actually fairly restricted in what they can do and most of the easy stuff has been done. So there. Graphics means games. There are about seven different types. All computer games are one of those, such as a maze, a guessing game, a logic, gambling, or multiple choice. But getting one’s first program working in a new language is always a boost. So you’ll know, I made every dumb programming mistake all over again like I was eighteen. But this time around, I recognized the mistakes. Most common error? An initialization command accidentally inside a loop. Least made error is number type declarations. Is it a short integer or double precision? I have never (in my life yet) made a mistake over that. Oh, but lots of typos. You can’t program at 65 wpm.
It’s looking more like I should take a trip to Belize and see the situation for myself. I would be upper middle-class there, and the law permits retirees to pay the entrance fees to work. That could be important the way the US government is going broke every few months now. The relevance here is that if I go into save money lockdown, there will be very little to write about. In that mode, my budget, including food, drops to $20 per day. I’m not complaining but don't expect an epic season, for interesting blog topics tend to cost money. One has to get out there to rustle up the good stuff.
Like this morning, I went to the Hallandale library. Don’t go there for fun, you won’t find any. They removed the card catalog so people have to ask at the information desk which means standing in line. Now, they insist to see your library card. They want to see it if you want to log onto the catalog computer. And they are obstinate about it, if they can’t get you on file, you are on your own. The good news is their library non-fiction section is the smallest in town. Get it? Good news, ha ha. Maybe thirty books on computers, none on QBASIC. Beyond that, you got some do-it-yourself books and some weird atlases. Mind you, if you need a ton of books on what to name your child or how to cook pasta, that place can totally come to your rescue.
They had a few books on air-conditioning, but none that tell how to refurbish or recharge your home unit. Agt. M knows how but says they get antsy selling the refrigerant gas to the unlicensed. Odd, it is just a gas nipple and the pressure is self-regulating. Miguelito’s son is a repairman. I’ve never met him but rumor is he’s making $100,000 per year on it. That is not surprising, though I see the prices of new units doing the same thing as computers. At some point it is cheaper to replace than repair.
That’s it for today. Hope you had more fun than I did. What, you want some trivia? Okay, that 1984 rule that you have to fill out a government form whenever a business transaction involves more than $10,000 in cash payment. It has since been lowered to $5,000 and widened to all transactions. It was to track drug money. Guess who the biggest opponents of the law have been? Lawyers. They claim it violates lawyer-client confidentiality. Hmmm, what kind of client pays a lawyer that much in cash? We don’t know, but there are approximately 30,000 lawyers in the American Bar Association who refuse to provide the required information.
That’s a lot of money being laundered through the legal system.
As I shut down for the evening at 10:49 PM, the die counter is at 25,700,000. It has been running almost an hour.
