Let's take a look inside of Daniel's mind for a moment. Let's picture his thoughts best we can as an instant message conversation between him and his Conscience. The scene starts with Daniel rediscovering his instant message account.

Conscience	:	Ooo
Daniel	:	do you have any idea why it disconnects sporadically?
Conscience	:	hrm... dunno
Conscience	:	could be the firewall doing something weird
Conscience	:	the Java one is a bit flaky sometimes
Daniel	:	perhaps; but previously this hardly worked; at least its functioning
Conscience	:	that's good
Conscience	:	for some reason this seems much more natural than calling you...
Daniel	:	I was culling some old login info not yet in my palm and I found this login all over again;
Daniel	:	yeah, the phone sucks
Conscience	:	good... frustrating when you forget passwords and stuff
Daniel	:	yup; well I'm going to get back to doing stuff
Conscience	:	good idea
Daniel	:	if you didn't noticed I had popped out to check my battery at the K-mart auto thingy they claimed it was the battery's fault
Conscience	:	did they test anything?
Daniel	:	well yeah... but I don't know whether they did everything right
Conscience	:	did they try to sell you a battery?
Daniel	:	none the less my battery was apparently 6 years old
Daniel	:	yeah; I ended up getting one... for now it works; they said if it turns out thats not the case later, they'll take it back and refund me... though that wouldn't solve much
Conscience	:	well, if its not the battery its most likely the alternator
Conscience	:	but I would have made the trip to Sears for a nice Die Hard
Daniel	:	seems like it; since with a freshly charged battery there's no other trouble.
Daniel	:	why Die Hard?
Conscience	:	good battery, good warranty
Daniel	:	oh. I got a 7 year warranty; is that comparable?
Conscience	:	and even if the problem is the alternator a fresh battery will supply the power for a while... it'll take some time for you to find out for sure
Conscience	:	7 years sounds dandy
Conscience	:	Sears has just done a wonderful job of branding Die Hard... car battery = Die Hard for me... I'm such a tool sometimes
Conscience	:	and there are Sears stores everywhere so if anything goes wrong its easy to take care of...
Conscience	:	I suppose it doesn't really matter
Daniel	:	okay; I didn't know but it sounded good to me. Yeah At first I asked if it was a Die Hard, but obviously thats a Sears thing
Daniel	:	that is a plus though with Sears being everywhere
Conscience	:	but isn't it fun for me to ramble on about it?
Daniel	:	sure; which reminds me, this pager could use some color coding
Conscience	:	?
Conscience	:	pager?
Daniel	:	oh I meant Yahoo Messenger
Conscience	:	oh... weird, mine's in color
Conscience	:	stupid Java developers
Conscience	:	hrm... that would work really well for discouraging use of a language... write a bunch of apps that really suck and blame the language
Daniel	:	yeah it would; must be that lots of people into Java are overall inexperienced in design; too bad really
Conscience	:	yup
Conscience	:	they should be beaten with wet dogs
Daniel	:	or managers think Java makes things so easy they can rush the developers; who end up leaving out the niceties
Conscience	:	they should be beaten with wet cats
Daniel	:	wet dogs? cats? its not raining is it?
Conscience	:	not that I know of
Conscience	:	wet dogs and cats are like wet noodles but much worse
Daniel	:	yeah... noodles don't have claws OR teeth
Conscience	:	yup
Conscience	:	and wet dogs smell really bad
Conscience	:	but cats are worse cause they stick
Daniel	:	I'm so glad it rarely rained in Dubai. That way our collie never got soaked.
Conscience	:	wasn't it always dusty though?
Conscience	:	and isn't it mean to have a collie in a desert climate?
Conscience	:	you cruel bastard!
Daniel	:	yeah it was, but cats are cleansly, and the collie can be dealt with using a brush.
Daniel	:	yeah it was mean; but it was an abandoned stray collie we took it.
Daniel	:	er in
Conscience	:	Kindest sort of cruel
Daniel	:	I guess. we did shear it once for a month, but it looked so sad sometimes with only a mane of hair around its neck.
Conscience	:	you are a sick bunch of people
Daniel	:	and the cats suddenly didn't recognize it.
Daniel	:	Hey it did act more comfortable with only short fuzz
Conscience	:	if I ever get a dog and if it has hair, you just leave it alone
Daniel	:	alrighty; besides some Australian dude actually sheared it; he ran a sheep farm and was on vacation.
Conscience	:	jeesh, you invite your neighbors in on the fun, heh?
Daniel	:	I don't know... it was a while ago; I think our vet recommended shearing
Conscience	:	never trust those desert vets
Daniel	:	weren't we talking about batteries?
Conscience	:	yup
Daniel	:	how'd this come up then?
Conscience	:	I dunno, let me peek back in time for a sec...
Conscience	:	wet dogs and cats
Daniel	:	oh yeah
Conscience	:	yup... its really your fault for complaining about the lack of color
Conscience	:	in the Java version of Yahoo Messenger
Daniel	:	But I really wish they'd put in at least something to differentiate my name and yours
Conscience	:	yup, you are blue here and I am black
Conscience	:	makes things pretty damn easy
Conscience	:	hey, what does this line look like?
Daniel	:	damn. everything is just black 10pt Helvetica font kinda hard to follow
Conscience	:	sorry, I tried to make it red for ya
Daniel	:	nope its ignoring coloring it seems; must be using a preset text scrolling window thingy
Conscience	:	yup
Daniel	:	well, I'm going to try and code now
Conscience	:	yeah, sure ya are
Daniel	:	I am. I'm going to close the window
Conscience	:	night nite

So, what can we learn from this?

1. Don't let Daniel near your pets when there's an Australian sheep farmer around.
   
   
2. We should come up with a good way for Daniel to differentiate the voices in his head.

-2001-09-29