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Correspondence lag time........

Rich Z

Rich Z

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
It's that time of year again.

I have SO many snakes hatching out and needing care that my emails are about to come to a grinding halt. Not incoming, outgoing. Plus I will only be dropping in here for a minute or two every once in a while when I just need to sit down for a few minutes. Standing up for 12 to 16 hours per day is killing my back.

Just letting you all know that I will be mostly incommunicato for a while. Like perhaps into October. We have eight shows scheduled between mid August and the first weekend in November. Some of them are back-to-back weekends, which is going to be nuts trying to get everything fed in the few days between.

Please bear with me. I have orders that I need to get out, but there is no way I will be able to get most of them out before Expo, weekend after next. The number of snakes I have to put into deli cups to offer feed, much less sex and label them is enough to make my brain pop.

Now, back to work at the salt mines...........
 
One last email before you shut all the emails down....
I will be emailing you either tonight or tomorrow for the payments of the corns that I am getting from you.
Please check the email tonight or tomorrow night as I need the shippment on Monday. Thanks!

The shutting down of the email things is absolutely understandable. We all know the amount of work that you have and it's really hard for you to do all these things all at once.....
don't worry we all understand!
 
Hey!

I'm not shutting down my email, just my attempts to respond to them all!!

I'm just asking you all to be understanding when I don't get out a reply to you as quickly as you would like. I get emails stacking up on me every day, from people asking me about ordering animals to people asking me really basic stuff, like how to hold a snake.

Of course, I do have priorities on the ones I take the time to answer.

Anyway, back to the salt mines.......
 
Ya know, somebody who has alot of time on their hands ought to put together a list of newbie questions and their answers, and make a Cornsnake FAQ...

By newbie questions, I mean the ones which people ask over and over and/or panic about which are baseless...

Stuff like:

My snake ate his mouse backwards! Help!
(Ok, I admit that when I first started out, I asked a varient of this one...)

-or-

My snake is hiding and won't come out! Is he sick?



You could also throw in questions which get asked over and over again so much that they're annoying to have to answer...

Stuff like:

My snake won't eat! What do I do?

-or-

How do I tell if my snake is a boy or a girl?


Although that stuff is mostly covered by the CSM... I think if those questions were included in an FAQ, you'd want to put just enough information in the FAQ to tell the person if there's actually a problem, how to tell if there's actually a problem, what to do if there actually IS a problem, and where they need to back off and pass the job on to a professional reptile vet (as well as when they can relax and assume everything's normal).


Of course, whoever puts this thing together is going to need lots of free time to go a) hunt down the questions, and b) write up all the answers... so unless you have enough experience and enough free time, I wouldn't recommend anyone taking up this project.
 
More qood questions would be...

What does 7.2.3 mean?
How do I attach a picture?
When can my snake breed?

ect ect

I nominate Kat heehee :)
 
Hey! Waitaminute here...

Actually, I've been thinking about doing something like that for a while now... the only problem is I'm horrible at finishing projects I start. I need someone else to work with (that's got a drive to keep the project going) else I tend to slack off... :)

I'm gonna start a thread under Miscellaneous about this, though, since the SerpenCo business
forum isn't the best place to discuss this stuff.. :)
 
There are 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary, and those that don't.
Click to expand...

Kat - shouldn't that be '01' types of people? ;)


There are only three types of people in the world: Those that can count, and those that can't.
 
counting in binary...

1 ...10 ...11 ...100 ...101 ...110 ...111 ...1000 ...1001 ...1010 ...1011 ...etc.
 
No, Rich... 10. See.. 01 is still 1 reguardless of whether you're in base 2, base 10, base 8, base 16... whatever.

Since you're a computer geek as well, here's another one for you...

Why do programmers like Halloween?

Because OCT 31 = DEC 25


:D


BTW, Rich... you may want to read through this thread started by Serpwidgets...

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=2111
 
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wow, I am learning so much here!! all about binary, and programming. What a great place, thanks for letting us use it RICH!!!
 
What?

Lisa, I'm 22... I don't know where you got the idea I was only 15...



(Although, not to brag, but I could do this sort of thing when I was 15 too... just wasn't into snakes yet then. ;)
 
No, Rich... 10. See.. 01 is still 1 reguardless of whether you're in base 2, base 10, base 8, base 16... whatever.
Click to expand...

Aha! Gotcha!

In binary, '0' is a true state. So a single bit can hold two conditions, ON and OFF. Using a two digit binary number, 00 = 1, 01 = 2. To continue that along to the maximum state values a two digit binary number can hold, 10 = 3 and 11 = 4. Do you see now the curve I threw at you?

In programming this can trip up many people when arrays are initialized and referenced incorrectly. In many cases, you want to reference the first element in an array as ARRAY(0), and NOT ARRAY(1). In such a case, ARRAY(1) actually points to the second element in the array. If the language you are working in allows binary values in the variable being used as the array index, this can be substantially faster than using an integer index. Since computers 'think' in binary', there is no delay in a conversion from integer to binary. In tight loops, this can make a big difference.

Hey, my brain actually does work at 5am after cleaning and feeding baby snakes for 16 hours! But time for lights out for me............ Got to start all over again in a few more hours.....
 
Funny, I was under the impression that 0=0. Or were we assuming that zero is cannot be represented as a valid binary number?

If you want to get technical, too, 01 signifies a positive binary number equivalent to 1 in decimal. It depends on just what version of binary numbers you're using.

After all, 10 can mean two different negative numbers if we assume a signed two-bit integer, depending on whether we're talking one's compliment or two's compliment.


Reguardless... when I said 10 = 2, I meant that 0 was a valid number in the domain I was using, and that 0=0. Now if you want to go through and argue what other things 10 can represent in binary, up to you. :)


Besides, what language are you used to programming in that hides the zero-based array implementation from the coder? I'm sure I've run into only one language like that, but I forget exactly which one it was... PASCAL maybe? I forget. I'm so used to C and C++...
 
Besides, what language are you used to programming in that hides the zero-based array implementation from the coder? I'm sure I've run into only one language like that, but I forget exactly which one it was... PASCAL maybe? I forget. I'm so used to C and C++...
Click to expand...

Who said anything about hiding? Many beginning coders assume that the array index reference begins with one, not realizing that in, for instance, a five element array, the elements are referenced 0 thru 4. And as you program in C, I am sure you realize this is the case in the C language as well as many others.

No sense boring you with a list of languages I have dabbled in. Suffice it to say that I bought my first computer in 1978 and cut my teeth on Z80 assembler. Most recently I was getting paid for Visual FoxPro and Perl programming and there were a lot of other jobs and tasks inbetween that required me to learn the lingo needed.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to dabble with coding lately, as I really do enjoy that kind of pasttime.

I'm not arguing with you. This was done playfully. I can't see why you got so defensive about something like this. This was just an exercise in computer geek definitions that I thought you would find amusing. My mistake.
 
The part of your post that bothered me is that you seemed to assume that I was a beginner programmer and did not know the first thing about array indices. I suppose that is more a reflection on some of the programmers you must have been used to dealing with (or perhaps you were attempting to define it for the layperson?), but I did feel slighted on that implication. Aaaaanyway...
 
Kewl, geek wars. :)

Hey Rich, you only have 3 years up on me. I started in '81 on a 4Kbyte TRS-80 CoCo, and moved up to a C=64 and learned assembly on that. (I believe that was also a Z80 chip. :) )

You lost me somewhere with saying that binary 00 = decimal 1. I not only did programming, but also have formal training and about 5 years experience as an electronics technician (both military and civilian) and I've never seen anything like what you mentioned ("00" = 1, "01"=2, etc.)

I assume that was some method you were taught that helped people look at numbers in a way which made addressing arrays easier, since that way you wouldn't have to go against the mind's grain to start an array with 0. (?)

The only thing I do recognize is your statement that zero is a true state. Although AFAIK that depends on the specifications of the CPU, as that would depend how the comparison for "true" is done by any particular language. (e.g. are you subtracting and branching based on the state of the zero flag?) In assembly, this is all dependent on the programmer's personal preference, as there is no actual "true" or "false" at all... if you designate some memory location as a flag and then check to see if it's true, you can subtract 1 from it and branch on the zero flag, or you could subtract 0 from it and branch on the zero flag... which one is "true" is 100% dependent upon the person who wrote the program, and it could even be different for different flags/comparisons. ;)

If the language you are working in allows binary values in the variable being used as the array index, this can be substantially faster than using an integer index.
Click to expand...
This would only be true in a language that is interpreted OTF. Any precompiled language wouldn't have that concern. :) (I think Perl is OTF, but I dunno the first thing about FoxPro.)
 
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