As some of you know I'm taking an online class in algorithm analysis, it's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun and last night I had to turn in one assignment. Of course I waited until the last second to start it so I had to work on it until late at night.
Also I'm competing against chino (one of my friends from high school) and the one does best gets a 3/4 pound burger from El Corral in colombia...delicious.
At some point I thought I had the program right but when I ran it it told me that the program had exceeded the maximum amount of memory that these programs are allowed to use. Chino had told me this would happen and how to fix it. Good. Then some other problems came up, i fixed those. But then something weird started happening the program would stop running in the middle of the execution, and it didn't tell me anything about what caused it to stop!
Not having any clue how to fix this i went to bed with a program that in theory worked, but could not finish executing for some mysterious reason. I stayed up until 5:30 working on a program so I could turn it in before midnight (US time) but it just wasn't ready. All that work for nothing...but oh well you know me, it was fun working on it.
Went to bed slept my 3.5 hours woke up at 9 to go to class. Chino got online while I was getting ready and asked me "did you finish it?"
"no it was running and it stopped for no reason, i have no idea what is causing it blablabla"
"it's not your code, you just need to increase the memory"
"i already did when it told me 'i'm out memory' but now it's not telling me that"
"shhhh...just do it"
"ok..."
I increased the memory of the program to 1gb, which basically tells my computer i know you're doing a shit ton of stuff, running mac os, making sure the battery is charging checking for wi-fi...all the stuff that a computer usually does, BUT i'm going to need you to devote a fourth of your workspace to this ONE task. (i had the max set at one eight of the workspace before)
well...i don't think i can express how i felt when i saw this so i'll just say what happened. The program started running (and i'm not exaggerating i thought for a long time about which number needs to go here, and i can almost prove that it did) FIFTY times faster.
50!
and most importantly it got way past the point where it got stuck last night. But oh well, too late now, I'll just finish it tonight or tomorrow and get half the points.
Now i needed to go to class, it was 9:40 so I paused the program, put the laptop in my bag and went to take the bus.
On the bus I was thinking dang it...i was so close, now i'm only going to half the points even though the program is right....WAIT! the deadline is midnight PACIFIC time! that means...(counts) 10 am! (counts again) yeah! (can't believe it, counts one more time) HOLY SHIT! i can do this!
So I opened the laptop in the crowded bus, finished running the program, it finished in like 10 seconds, and gave me and answer that looked really good.
Ok, now how do i turn this in...normally this bus will get me to the central station at 9:56 if i run inside i have time to get online, and turn it in.
Then traffic happened, the bus was stopping a lot and for long periods of time, dang it!
wait! some buses have internet...check...this one doesn't, but wait there's an open wifi network! connect! bus starts moving, lose signal. this was followed by about 10 minutes of get signal connect lose signal. It was the perfect go/stop ratio so that I wouldn't make it to the station on time but also I didn't stay in one spot long enough to connect.
Got to the station, 9:58! come on come on! i can make it! run. connect. can't find the network i ALWAYS find, try on my phone,
there's the network,
there's the website,
login,
put in answer
it's right!
check time!
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| Last attempted 12:07:03 ... 1 day late |
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