Random Thought

You know how there are triskaidekaphobes who scared of the number 13? What if they work on computers a lot? Would they then be scared of the letter ‘D’? Or would they be scared of hex 13 and thus scared of decimal 19? That would be silly.

15 Comments

  1. With the miracle of Boolean Algebra I’m sure we could reduce the number of gates used ergo….altering the need of “13”.
    Besides…..everyone knows that computers only see 1’s and 0’s …..it doesn’t know “13” just the ‘arrangement’ of 1’s and 0’s

    1101

  2. The ASCII representation of 13 is a carriage return. Those are scary too.

    [That must be an old feature. Barely anyone today even owns carriages — certainly not enough to devote an entire button on the computer to returning them. -Ed.]

  3. OK, we now know what the carriage return does. But what the bloody heck does the Scroll Lock button do? Is it so wizards can secure their ancient documents?

    [Years and years ago, I remember playing a computer version of Risk on my uncles laptop and it used the scroll lock button to switch between the arrow keys moving the cursor and moving the map around (this was before laptop’s had touchpads or other mouse like features). That’s the only time I remember scroll lock functionality. -Ed.]

  4. Scroll lock also has functionality in Excel. If you’re ever trying to use the arrow keys to move from cell to cell, and instead the whole fricking screen shifts, you need to press scroll lock. Then the arrow keys will revert to the normal functionality of moving from cell to cell. I’m not sure how long it took me to figure that out, but I know it involved lots of swearing at my computer.

  5. Re: #8

    No it doesn’t. OCT 31 = DEC 25
    You know, Halloween = Christmas and it’s a conspiracy, and early Christians stole ancient pagan holidays and the illuminati really control the stock market, and black helicopters and RON PAUL RON PAUL RON PAUL RON PAUL!!!!

  6. Back in school, we had to program a bare motherboard/PC using hexadecimal to do something for a project. Our instructor was southern, and said we would get an ‘A’ if we programmed it to play ‘Dixie’. I used two bare motherboard/PCs and programmed Dixie in two part harmony. I let my mental midget lab partners do the signs and writeup….. The made a large sign saying ‘Whistling Dixie’, and then put a sign by each motherboard/PC. One said ‘Master’, the other said ‘Slave’. You can imagine how happy the Systems Engineering Department Head was when he saw our project. Did I mention he was a black Air Force colonel? Oops.

  7. Dear J and M,
    I apologize for the mental midget comment. But seriously, you guys could have at least tried to figure out the programming. Can you believe I am still whining about it 20+ years later? Sorry I missed the reunion. I was in China (Beijing, Zhou Qing and Hong Kong).
    Sibi Aequum
    Jamie

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