In honor of the upcoming Mother's Day...

Visit LadyHawke's personal Mother's Day greeting is at
Happy Mother's Day!

LadyHawke
*~*~*~*~*~*

Is Mom a Computer?

For years I badgered my mother with questions about 
whether Santa Claus is a real person or not. Her answer was 
always "Well, you asked for the presents, and they came, 
didn't they?"

I finally understood the full meaning of her reply when I 
heard the definition of a virtual device: "A software or 
hardware entity which responds to commands in a manner 
indistinguishable from the real device."

Mother was telling me that Santa Claus is a virtual person 
(simulated by loving parents) who responds to requests 
from children in a manner indistinguishable from the real saint.

Mother also taught the IF ... THEN ... ELSE structure: "If it's 
snowing, then put your boots on before you go to school; 
otherwise just wear your shoes."

Mother explained the difference between batch and 
transaction processing: "We'll wash the white clothes when 
we get enough of them to make a load, but we'll wash these 
socks out right now by hand because you'll need them this 
afternoon."

Mother taught me about linked lists. Once, for a birthday 
party, she laid out a treasure hunt of ten hidden clues, with 
each clue telling where to find the next one, and the last one 
leading to the treasure. She then gave us the first clue.

Mother understood about parity errors. When she counted 
socks after doing the laundry, she expected to find an even 
number and groaned when only one sock of a pair emerged 
from the washing machine. Later she applied the principles 
of redundancy engineering to this problem by buying our 
socks three identical pairs at a time. This greatly increased the 
odds of being able to come up with at least one matching pair.

Mother had all of us children write our Christmas thank you 
notes to Grandmother, one after another, on a single large 
sheet of paper which was then mailed in a single envelope 
with a single stamp. This was obviously an instance of 
blocking records in order to save money by reducing the 
number of physical I/O operations.

Mother used flags to help her manage the housework. 
Whenever she turned on the stove, she put a potholder 
on top of her purse to reminder herself to turn it off again 
before leaving the house.

Mother knew about devices which raise an interrupt signal 
to be serviced when they have completed any operation. 
She had a whistling teakettle.

Mother understood about LIFO ordering. In my lunch bag 
she put the dessert on the bottom, the sandwich in the 
middle, and the napkin on top so that things would come 
out in the right order at lunch time. Was it dear ol' Mom or 
was it Santa Klaus?

There is an old story that G-d knew He couldn't be physically 
present everywhere at once, to show His love for His people, 
and so He created mothers. That is the difference between 
centralized and distributed processing. As any kid who's ever 
misbehaved at a neighbor's house finds out, all the mothers 
in the neighborhood talk to each other. That's a local area 
network of distributed processors that can't be beat. 

Mom, you were the best computer teacher I ever had.