BlueWolf's Howl

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July 19, 2002

Some People's Children...

When I first moved back to the New England area, I stayed with my mom until I found a job and an apartment. It was a very stressful time for me, since we have often had strained relations. Even after I moved into my own apartment, there were times when we had strong differences of opinion. But in between those differences, we began meeting at our similarities. We both love books.

Over the past few months, we�ve developed a habit of getting together on Friday nights for dinner and a trip to Borders. It�s our common bond.

We met at her place tonight and went to dinner. After dinner, we chatted outside while I smoked. I try my best to tell her about my life and my interests so she gets to know me better. After 20 years of living so far away, there�s quite a bit of catching up to do.

I told her about some T-shirts I had run across online that I liked. One had the saying: �There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary and those who don�t.� *blink, blink*

Then I explained that 10 is 2 in binary. *blink, blink*

So what�s one? One is 01. And what was two? Two is 10. And what about three? Three is 11. And four? Well, four is 100.

I further explained that just like the 1�s, 10�s and 100�s - the binary system has 1�s, 2�s, 4�s, 8�s, 16�s, 32�s, and so on� And that as a Network Engineer, I need to be able to translate IP addresses (like 207.158.38.15) and subnet masks (like 255.255.255.0) into 1�s and 0�s � binary.

255 is 8 1�s all in a row. How is that? Well, you add up 128 + 64 + 32 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 and you get 255. I watch her eyes and can see she�s adding the numbers together as I�m calling them out. I�m right. It does add up to 255. Her brows are now knotted like pretzels.

She takes a deep breath and un-knots her brows. She glances sideways at me. You�re scary.

*shrug* I guess we�re just 10 different people. We laughed and went to Borders.

Posted by BlueWolf on July 19, 2002 11:13 PM