He was the genetically perfect specimen of a computer geek.He was the genetically perfect specimen of a computer geek. My second partner introduced himself as Mo Naveeb. His was short, thick of body and had black hair swept back without a part. The front stuck up despite his efforts to comb it down. It turned the Mo was short for Mohammed, again a Palestinian from Jordan. His place of origin was boon as far as I was concerned. Firstly, I wasn't one of the three synonyms disliked by Palestinians: Israeli, Jewish or New Yorker. Secondly, he was from the same country as Eman of the 4.0. If he'd inherited even a fraction of her talent, I was in for an easy time in CS 502, but `easy time' and `CS 502' are oxymorons and a moron without the `oxy' is what Mo, turned out to be. The three of us made our way to an empty conference room. With a piece of chalk in hand, Jeff divided the project into three parts, lexical/parsing unit, first pass assembler and second pass assembler. As he wrote he leaned on his cane and Mo and I were both awed by his knowledge and ability to organize. I was given the lexical/parsing unit, Jeff would take the first pass of the assembler and Mo the second. It was done. I was excited when I returned to the dorm and waylaid Jennifer into my room. ``You wouldn't believe my luck! I have not one but two programming partners. One is from the same country as Eman, so he's got to be a genius, and the other one was born sitting at a computer terminal.'' Jennifer just smiled. She'd had her fill of CS 502 and was only content to be `waylaid', so long as I dropped the first syllable of the word. My euphoria was temporarily stifled by the threat another week of not being able to sit during class. Soon the sins of the flesh took a back burner to the piety of the second programming assignment. Robinson Crusoe set a precedence by being marooned on a desert island. |