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Ploddingly Slow, But Thorough
I cracked open one of my C++ programming books recently and started leafing through it in the hope of stirring up some warm memories of my use of the language to wrestle embedded systems problems into submission. Instead, I immediately experienced a moment of existential horror! My cherished language of choice all of a sudden looked like an intimidating, unfathomable, encrypted mess. I thought for a moment that I was having my second stroke.
It’s scary at how one can forget so much so fast unless one arduously burns calories to maintain a high level of competence in an area crucial for putting food on the table.
After regaining my bearings, I realized that most programmers who know other languages but don’t know C++ experience an instance of the same abject terror when they scrutinize C++ code for the first time. It’s too bad, but it is what it is.
Before my life was abruptly upended by the Emperor, I used to be a ploddingly slow, but thorough, C++ programmer. But as anyone who has read this blog quickly discovered, I ain’t never been no genius. I had to work much harder and longer than most to become a C++ craftsman. Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours to become a subject matter expert” threshold to prosperity is too low of a bar to apply to dumschitts like me. I needed 2X the time to become internally confident that I was an excellent C++ programmer. It was a difficult but satisfying road to travel because my mind was richly rewarded with the excitement of learning something new whenever I danced with C++’s exquisitely rich feature set and its “std::” (affectionately pronounced as “stood” 🙂 ) libraries in my head.
While coding away on problems, I was always thinking in the background about what I could do to help future maintainers understand the code ASAP so they could get something done without getting frustratingly stuck. I’m embarrassed and sad to admit it, but it was more of a classic, fear-based, ego-driven mission than an altruistic one. I was afraid of feeling like schitt whenever I envisioned colleagues reading my code. I yearned for everyone who read the code to say “Wow, I wish I knew this maestro!“, instead of “WTF!” after every few lines.
To drill deeper into what I’m exposing here about my dark passenger, I was firmly in the clutches of the “impostor syndrome” for most of my undecorated career. But hey, despite the fact that Stroustrup, Sutter, Meyers, Josuttis, Kalb, Lavavej, Lakos, Williams, Carruth, Niebler, Boehm, Alexandrescu, Gregory, Davidson caused my cancer ( <– just joking), it was a fun, multi-decade, journey down the C++ rabbit hole. I’m extremely gratefuI that all of those wonderful teachers took me along for the adventure.
In closing out this post, I remembered the need to blatantly include some Bitcoin propaganda in it. So, say ‘ello to my leetle friend…
I wish the tat was orange instead of black, but the artist didn’t have any orange ink in her pallet. I’ll make sure my upcoming neck tat is full Satoshi orange though.
HODL In Hell!
While posing for my future wake, I sensed the ice cold presence of the dastardly Emperor Of All Maladies in the room. The repugnant monster has a dilemma on his creaky, boney hands when it comes to BD00. He doesn’t want to drag BD00 off to hell until he gets those claws on his Bitcoin private keys. But BD00 will never give them up. They’re gonna burn with him in hell.
BTW, does anyone know where I can get a Bitcoin couch to add to my swag collection? I checked on Wayfair, Ikea, and Etsy, but alas, it’s a no go.
Update: 1 Hour After Publishing
My good friend Jeff just sent me the link to this beauty…
It’s on order!
The Badger And The Reaper
As Elton John and Bernie Taupin bring beauty and grace to music, the Bitcoin badger and reaper bring beauty and grace to hard money. The fiat-based, QE-crazed, financial systems of the world don’t stand a chance against the Bitcoin badger and reaper. The badger relentlessly rips ’em up, and the reaper slowly drags ’em away.
Zapped By Xapo
The very first Bitcoin book I read in 2015 when I discovered and started grokking Bitcoin was Nathaniel Popper’s prophetic “Digital Gold“. One of the heroes in the riveting read is wealthy Argentinian entrepreneur Wences Casares. Wences is the CEO of Xapo Inc, a Bitcoin wallet startup. Xapo is believed to hold as much as $10 billion of Bitcoin in underground vaults on five continents, including a former Swiss military bunker.
Since Argentina’s government was/is quite corrupt and poorly managed, Wences’ family lost all their savings not once, not twice, but three freakin’ times due to the hyperinflation-driven collapse of Argentina’s fiat currency, the shitzo, uh, I mean the peso.
While reading the book, I went to Xapo’s web site and created an account to further develop my understanding of the emerging “Bitcoin ponzi scheme“. During account signup, I was awarded 100 microbits (aka 1000 sats) as a signing bonus. After I learned that the only way to buy Bitcoin via Xapo at the time was by international wire transfer, I said fuck it, no way I’m gonna jump through hoops to get some bitcoin.
So here we are 5 years later and I get the following letter from Xapo…
LOL! Big brother is always quietly surveilling its citizenry in the background searching for new ways to confiscate its wealth in the name of “we’re only here to help you“. With my deteriorating mental and physical health, I am now in fear of being transformed into a paranoid, batshit crazy, dumbass, conspiracy-believing, Qwacko. If I rebrand myself as BDQQ, then you’ll know the rebirth is complete. If so, please help!!!!
Bitcoin Karen Dole Pants
Before reading further, please consider that a dastardly potion of klonopin, opdivo, gabapentin, and cannabis chemicals are partially responsible for the inane content of the following post. Add in a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, Howard Stern, and Charles Bukowski, and you may get a glimpse into the awful nature of the force that poked at the keyboard during the construction of this post. The rest of the writing (dis)credit goes to BD00’s formally documented propensity for behaving like a total asshole and to his tightly-coupled co-author, the ever present Emperor Of All Maladies. The ever omniscient and omnipresent EOAM has been a constant co-author to BD00’s verbal spewings for what seems like forever now. Come to think of it, it feels like the EOAM has been dwelling in his head waaaay before the big C diagnosis.
While listening to another wise but whacky Herbert and Keiser Orange Pill Podcast, bitcoiner Mad Max brought up the name of one of the most annoying Bitcoin Karens on record, economist Nouriel Roubini. When Max launched into his Roubini rant, an image of Roubini in Bob Dole pants immediately came to mind, followed by a few other Bitcoin Karens outfitted in Dole pants. It was an uncontrollable, free association event that led to the creation of this NFT worthy graphic.
So that’s it. That’s the post. Pretty immature and cray cray, no? Why would anyone expect anything different from an insane Bitcoin Q. Maximalist like BD00?
The Bitcoin Cancel Culture
BD00 thinks all this fussin’ ’bout “cancel culture” is much ado ’bout nuthin’. But wait! There’s one humongous, earth-shattering, cancellation looming on the horizon. It’s the impending global cancellation of untrustworthy, government-controlled, fiat by the sovereign-individual controlled Bitcoin.
But alas my friends and enemas, the odds are bigly strong that BD00 will not experience one of the greatest resets in human history before the Emperor Of All Maladies cancels him. 😦
Put another way….
Yellin’ At Yellen!!!
In order to get his fine art creations onto the blockchain before the NFT crypto fad is over, mentally disturbed Jackson “BD00” Pollack is frantically throwing shite on a visio canvas again. lol
After yellin’ at Yellen, BDOO then tried to haplessly troll the Emperor.
The Cryptosphere
There are thousands of shitcoins polluting the cryptosphere. I chose a few of the most well known stinkers along with the immortal king of crypto to produce the following work of art…
How the hell do I get an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) for this brilliant work of divine art and who the hell wants to bid on it? lol
How about this piece of work? lol
The Bitcoin Smiley Model
Before writing about the intended content of this post, I felt compelled to whine and complain about my physical status in the moment. So, here goes.
My feet are vibrating and numb from the ankles down, my toes are involuntarily curled up, my ears are ringing, my right leg feels like it’s loosely coupled to my hip with badly frayed strings, my right leg muscles are fatigued and crampy from an unrelenting tightness, the arthritis in my right shoulder is inflamed to the point where it painfully limits my arm motion, my sense of balance is quite wobbly due to a low level of continuous dizziness, and my mind is in a Schoedinger’s cat superposition of both a dunkin’ “explorer batch” coffee high and a cannabis brownie high.
Since I think my Opdivo-juiced immune system T-cells are on another impromptu, instantaneous rampage searching for more poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma cancer cells to annihilate, I think the swarm is once again responsible for the above-mentioned collateral damage. The tradeoff is surely worth it, but the next time I see my oncologist after my upcoming CT scan I’m going to discuss the possibility of taking what we in the community call a “chemo holiday“.
Now that I got the poor-me cancer complaint off my chest, it’s time to talk about Bitcoin yet again. At some unknown point in time, the Bitcoin Smiley Model (BSM) crossed the chasm in my mind from formless energy to a formed thought. The BSM is a simplified abstraction of the following bitcoin price chart from Bitcoin advocate Dan “HODL” Held. And yes, his real last name is “Held”. Thus, he was destined to be a Bitcoiner at birth.
As I studied the chart of successive parabolas, it looked as though it was smiling at me. Hence, after an uncontrollable but innate urge to create consumed me and directed my attention away from my physical distress, I iteratively doodled in visio in a high speed mode where thoughts for improvements raced through my mind faster than I could capture and draw them. When I felt satisfied with the look and feel of the “done done” product, I stopped and reveled in the sacred moment of communication between the creator and the created. With that said, I share with you my masterpiece, the BSM…
The model suggests that the price of Bitcoin may bump up against a ceiling sometime in the future. The value of the ceiling is a newly discovered universal constant, kBDOO , named after its discoverer, me, BD00. Since our lord Satoshi, the god of money, is the only other person on earth to know what the value of kBDOO is, BD00 has made a pact with Satoshi to keep it secret for the good of all mankind. But once again, don’t forget…
But wait! I don’t make any of the cancer shit up. It’s the real deal. It’s the non-cancer stuff that I make up.
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
My BTC Address
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