Point 1: programming

Programming is lowkey so annoying. I installed a virtual machine the other night, and it took literal hours. Thankfully, my sister and I were watching a movie, so I was kinda able to do it during that, so it effectively took less time.

Tonight, I was trying to use the virtual machine, and it keeps running into all these issues. “Oh, there isn’t enough space.” “Oh, you know how you enabled file drag-and-drop between the virtual machine and your desktop? You actually didn’t, even though the box for it being enabled is checked.”

So much of programming is debugging, and sometimes I can’t stand it. TCS is tough – problems can be super, super hard – but at least the stupidest operator when doing TCS is me. Too often, when I’m programming, the stupidest operator is the computer. I know exactly what I want to do, and I think I know how to tell the computer to do it. In some cases (see “drag-and-drop mode is checked”), I have told the computer exactly what to do, and it still fails to do it.

I’m not sure that I like math so much as that I abhor the debugging, bang-my-head-against-the-wall aspects of programming.

Point 2: horrible refs

The vicarious athletics I mentioned in yesterday’s post happened, and we lost in a shootout – but only because the ref was irredeemably horrible. He had no idea what the rules were, and he was on a vicious power trip (directed against my team) the whole game.

I (proudly) led some booing against him after an especially egregious call. His worst call, though, was a non-call, when an opposing player kicked our goalie in the box. Our goalie was injured such that he needed to leave the game (he left until PKs, where – through no fault of his but perhaps some fault of the injury – all of the opposing players’ PKs went through), but was there a call? Nope. My theory: the ref was salty because we smoked his team in the semis. What I’m saying is that there may have been some conflict of interest.

I was very proud of both our players and their attitudes: they realized that, though the game had high stakes in our hearts, it was actually a very low-stakes affair. I think they enjoyed the game which, in all honesty, is most important in games like this.

On the positive side: we had a beautiful cross that became a goal fairly early in the game. We did a great job contesting those 50-50 balls. Our defense was lock-down. And the other team had some terrific players. We were the better team, but it was a tight match. Also, I truly believe we “left it all on the pitch”, even if we maybe should’ve taken more shots.

I’m fine with a hands-off ref, and I’m fine with a hands-on ref who’s largely accurate. What I can’t stand is a hands-on ref who’s always wrong and seems to relish in his own perceived moral superiority. But I truly am happy with the game: we played well, we had good spirit, and we’ll have fun in the future.

Conclusion: a relatively solid day

To be fair, today was solid. I’m looking pretty good with my assignments, and I was a panelist for that discussion (mentioned in yesterday’s post) and I felt that I contributed meaningfully – there was one response I gave where an audience member said something like, “that makes me feel much better”, which was very exciting to hear. And we had a terrific game of which we can all be proud.