Your Best Cocktail Party Stories

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Tdarcos
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Post by Tdarcos »

Continuing with the Checking Account program, it allowed you to sort the records but the sort was terrible, it would take about two minutes per record.

I check out the program, and its sort is horrible, it basically compares the first record to every other and the lowest one gets moved to the top, then repeat. So I'm not even that good and I do a bubble sort and cut the sort time in half. A sort of about 100 records drops to 20 minutes. Yeah, it was still slow but it was a big improvement.

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After a year or so of using the Apple II to balance her books Mrs. Rice decides to buy an IBM PC Clone. I, of course, being a regular visitor to the University I had a copy of practically every piece of software I could pirate, so I had Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.

Whereas the memory on the Apple II was so small we could only do one month at a time the IBM could handle a whole year all at once. In fact, she originally bought only 256K of memory but I was getting so much done I maxed it out within a week after she bought it and so she bought more memory to boost it to 640K

I discovered how much faster it was when I did a sort in Lotus 1-2-3. I had written a program to convert the data and we used a serial connection to transfer data from the Apple II to the PC since they can't read each others floppies.

So I load up a month's worth of data, which takes 20 minutes to sort on the Apple, and ask Lotus 1-2-3 to sort it. Hit the last key, and about a second later it just comes back, not having done anything. Do it again, same thing. So I do a descending search, and Boom!

I go back into her office. "You know how it takes about 20-25 minutes to sort a month's checks on the Apple?"
"Yeah."
"I just ran a sort on the PC with a month's records loaded into 1-2-3. You know how long it took?"
"No."
"About two seconds."

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Later on I have to tell this story, in which I spent $20 to find 1c, my boss knew in advance I was going to have to spend $20 or more to find it, and to top it off, we didn't even care about the 1c.
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

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pinback
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Post by pinback »

How's that assignment coming along?
I don't have to say anything. I'm a doctor, too.

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Tdarcos
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Post by Tdarcos »

pinback wrote:How's that assignment coming along?
What assignment? As far as I know I have nothing I had promised to do for a specific person that I was behind on or had failed to do.
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

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pinback
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Post by pinback »

Tdarcos wrote:
pinback wrote:How's that assignment coming along?
What assignment? As far as I know I have nothing I had promised to do for a specific person that I was behind on or had failed to do.
Flack wrote:One of my assignments for school is to come up with a list of 5-10 "cocktail party" stories.
That assignment. You know, the one that was the whole point of this thread.
I don't have to say anything. I'm a doctor, too.

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loafergirl
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Post by loafergirl »

I know not what would pass as an acceptable cocktail party story. But I've got everything from the trip to NYC at 16 going to sleep with 5 people in the room and waking up with about 25 to 30...

to... co workers trying to retain customers cancelling cable because it "was going to cause the apocalypse" how does one retain against the apocalypse? Good question.

To Scaring the bejesus out of grown men when I worked at Halloween Express for my 6 month stint in Ohio.

To the Den of Teenage sin...

To getting stranded in airports with 3 kids/overnight in DC missing the cruise but continuing on to enjoy NOLA for a week or so.

To arguing with a judge in their own courtroom.

To describing the REM concert in June 1995 in Toronto when the moon rose full and red and turned purple and blue as it was in across the sky, and Michael Stipe pointing us out for being the only people standing in our section...

To the penis bonus challenge

to accidentally crossing the border into Canada

to some of the crazy f*cked up things my family members have done, like the hitchhiker my dad picked up on the way back from Disney, to having us stay in hotels in Toronto where hookers hung out in the lobby

Or the time my brother kneed a state trooper in a drunken stupor and got away with it

to all the adorable stories about my kids saying things like "mommy don't forget your mepod" or those horrifying moments in parenting when you think "there can't be anymore vomit" but then there is more vomit...
1, 2, 5!
3 sir...
3!

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