dreaming in Python

[mensanator at aol.com]

The Eternal Squire wrote:
> All,
>
> I have to tell all of you this, at least for some laughs.  Honestly, I
> had the silliest dream involving the language last night.  I dreamt
> that it was a decade into the future and that Grand Central Station in
> NYC was installing a cement and steel "computer core" for directing its
> trains and station elevators... and for some reason I was supervising a
> technician on the project.  I asked the technician, what version of
> Python was being used, and he said 2.1... I said better install 2.4!
> So he loaded a chip into the 15 ton cylindrical core, then the core was
> lowered by winch into a manhole cover.  The lights in the station lit,
> and I shouted:  One Python to Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind
> Them!   Then I took an elevator downstairs to log into the terminal.
> Who did I meet on a neighboring terminal other than the BDFL?  He was
> doing something esoteric and strange on the terminal but I was just
> having trouble logging in.  End of dream.
>
> Anyone ever have a wierd engineering dream sometime in thier career?

Yeah, although I'm not sure how much was dream and how
much was conscience invention while waking up. Anyway...

In this future, every computer in the world is networked
together and all I/O devices have been replaced by the
MOUSE (Micro Optical Universal Sensing Element) by which
you control the computer just by looking at it.

I find myself in a control room overlooking a vast sea of
CRT screens (something like a NASA control center) when a
crisis occurs: somehow, every bit of every memory chip in
every computer in the entire world has become a 0
simultaneously locking up every computer with no way to
reset them.

I thought "if only I had a keyboard" but keyboards had
been obsoleted by the MOUSE. Suddenly, I get a thought,
open a drawer, and pull out the original MOUSE engineering
prototype wired to a pocket calculator. With the calculator
display showing 0, I press the 1/x key, which causes ERROR
to be displayed. But the prototype MOUSE is networked to
every other computer in the world, and I look out over the
room to see all the CRT screens light up as 1 bits propagate
across the world.

> 
> The Eternal Squire