Pirate Lab

Many, many years ago.  Many.  When I was in college, I had to take a lot of math for a guy getting a degree centered around the idea of spending a lot of time walking around naked, hitting rocks with hammers, or licking them.  This is what I wanted to do, drunk , or sober-get naked and hit rocks, or lick them, depending on what I wanted to know about said rocks.  I used to write the word "rocks" so often it was abbreviated "rx", by the way.  I remember energy was a capital E, circled and delta, or a triangle meant change and well, I digress...

So, I was a drunken rock jock with a big hammer, which was never called a rock hammer, but an Estwing, because chances are your rock hammer wasn't worth a shit if it wasn't an Estwing.  And they made me take enough mathematics courses that I could've obtained a mathematics degree at any other university in the country.  I couldn't spell "Budweiser", but I had to pass differential equations.  Not right. 

I spent the majority of my nights in college at the math lab, begging for help and sucking my thumb in the corner.  At least every night I wasn't at the physics lab, or the chemistry, thermodynamics,or english labs.  Never needed help from the geology lab, at least.  Which is a good thing, since we didn't have one...

So yeah, the math lab.  I think the prof who ran it named his kid after me since I was paying for the little fucker's future college tuition, under the table, for all the extra help.  That lab got me through a lot of ugly times filled with violent and unpredictable variables and algorithms that would bite you in the ass if you turned your back.

Here I am tonight, 15,000 miles and many years away from that math lab and my job rams me in the rear a really long, complicated  expression that uses that f*ing modulus crap.  I ask around the crew for help.  Blank stares.  Deer in the headlights-type stuff.  I'm on my own, but today, if you want anything, don't know anything, or even if you can't spell something, you Google it, if you have access to the Interwebs.  Google is the God of the New Millennium.  God is Google, Google is Good.  If that offends your religious side, I'm sorry, but God has a sense of humor. (ever see a platypus?)

Google "bad-ass math expression and WTF is modulus?" and you know what comes up as the first hit and has the information I need?  My old math lab:)  That kid's tuition was worth it.