The hands on the clock slowly crept around as I struggled to figure out why my Huffman compression routines ran 50% slower than those in a competitor's product.The hands on the clock slowly crept around as I struggled to figure out why my Huffman compression routines ran 50% slower than those in a competitor's product. My eyes were ready to glaze over as I stared at my code, trying to find the inefficiencies which had to be there, and then I glanced up at the clock, and it was 5:50. Yay! The traffic crawled slowly north on the 55, and it seemed to become slower in proportion to the remaining distance to my home. It was 6:30 when I pulled into my driveway and parked my Stanza next to Teri's new 240SX. I lugged the big box from my back seat to the front porch and set it down there, went back to my car and shut the door, returned to the front door, opened it, and hauled the box inside. My wife emerged from the hallway as I closed the door behind me with my foot. She looked at the big box on the floor and her eyes widened. "Oh Robert, you bought me a diamond!" She grinned as she put her arms around me. We hugged and kissed. There's no place like home. "Really, what did you get?" she asked after our lips disengaged. I reached down and spun the box around so the other end was visible. It showed a picture of the camera, along with a list of features in English and French. "I've been telling you that I was gonna get one some day, and today I finally broke down and did it. |