I finished my C program for C/C++ programming course last night at about 8pm, fully intending to transer it to the school of computing machines, submit it online and get off to Sarann’s house for a few drinks and a laugh with everyone who was already there. Sadly as everyone who left Sarann’s at 2am or whatever will note, I never showed up. The reason for this was quite possibly the most depressing of all; while my program was a stroke of genius on my laptop, it refused to compile on the school machines. What is worse, the code it showed as being erronous was in fact correct (according to accepted C in a number of loactions including 2 books), and indeed when taken out of context compiled fine.

The headache that ensued getting this sodding piece of code working took forever, literally. This was hampered by the fact I was shattered and had only had 4 hours sleep the night before. Normally resolving compiler errors takes a matter of minutes, but because the code it picked up was correct, it was nearly impossible. I ended up taking the whole function from the program, storing it in an external file and linking it in at compile-time with extern. Thankfully this worked, and after some jiggery pokery I got it all to work on both the school machines and my laptop in this way. Not being one to give up on the original solution however, I had spent a good few hours trying to fix it before capitulating and using the separate file. This all ended in me leaving the lab at midnight.

All I can say is sorry to those who expected me to turn up at Sarann’s, but you can be safe in blaming the differences between the GNU C 3.4.4 compiler and the GNU C 4.0.0 compiler. Stupid version differences.

I figured things would look up today as going to York and then to a gig is usually a good thing. This hasn’t gone to plan either though. The guy who was coming to the gig with me has decided to go home for Fathers day (why not just send a card!) and only decided to tell me by text this morning. Nothing like getting your hopes up is there. Then, the old friend I was supposed to be meeting up with during the day didn’t tell me she was in London organising a birthday party with family until I called her this morning to check about meeting up.

The net result is that I’m not going anywhere today (as of yet anyway), and the last 24 hours has been an unmitigated disaster in general, at least in terms of wasted time. I just hope I can persuade some people to go to the Llama for lunch; that usually solves the majority of problems

Failing that a large mug of tea and a long since tinkered with dev project I guess