Elegance and the Paper Cup Solution
Elegance, not just another word to describe opulence, but, rather, a compliment, which, in the computer science world means: that something is "simple and precise and lucid." In short, to call a solution "elegant" is to pay it high praise. Not something just thrown around lightly.
Last week I bought a pair of headphones because my old ones had been shocking me for months. No, no, literally, months. I just hadn't bothered to replace them. When I was at Target, however, opportunity struck, and I made the extravagant purchase. When I took the to the office, however, I was sad to discover that the cord was three inches shorter than my previous headphones. Why is this a problem? Allow me to answer that by first telling you my previous set up. the headphone cord connected to my laptop, said cord then ran under my (separate) keyboard, then up to my ears. The 3 inches allowed for a lot of movement, and kept the cord out of my way. The new, shorter, cord was, simply put, too short to go under the keyboard. It also restricts my movement. This left me no choice, the cord had to go over my keyboard. A new problem now arose: the stupid cord kept getting in the way of my typing. Enter the paper cup mentioned in the title, stage right. I had a paper cup sitting on my desk, and decided to rest the cord on said cup to keep it elevated off of my keyboard. It worked. It worked so well, in fact, that I cut a couple of holes through the cup to keep the cord in place.
Yesterday one of my coworkers was chatting with me and noticed the headphone/paper cup sculpture. "Why," he asked, "is there a paper cup attached to the cord of your headphones?"
I explained my logic to him to which he replied: "That's a very elegant solution."
Yea! What a nice compliment!
By the by, I related this story to Lurch. His reaction? "You can tell you're an engineer. You think like one!" I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I'm going to take that as a compliment, too.
Last week I bought a pair of headphones because my old ones had been shocking me for months. No, no, literally, months. I just hadn't bothered to replace them. When I was at Target, however, opportunity struck, and I made the extravagant purchase. When I took the to the office, however, I was sad to discover that the cord was three inches shorter than my previous headphones. Why is this a problem? Allow me to answer that by first telling you my previous set up. the headphone cord connected to my laptop, said cord then ran under my (separate) keyboard, then up to my ears. The 3 inches allowed for a lot of movement, and kept the cord out of my way. The new, shorter, cord was, simply put, too short to go under the keyboard. It also restricts my movement. This left me no choice, the cord had to go over my keyboard. A new problem now arose: the stupid cord kept getting in the way of my typing. Enter the paper cup mentioned in the title, stage right. I had a paper cup sitting on my desk, and decided to rest the cord on said cup to keep it elevated off of my keyboard. It worked. It worked so well, in fact, that I cut a couple of holes through the cup to keep the cord in place.
Yesterday one of my coworkers was chatting with me and noticed the headphone/paper cup sculpture. "Why," he asked, "is there a paper cup attached to the cord of your headphones?"
I explained my logic to him to which he replied: "That's a very elegant solution."
Yea! What a nice compliment!
By the by, I related this story to Lurch. His reaction? "You can tell you're an engineer. You think like one!" I'm not sure what he meant by that, but I'm going to take that as a compliment, too.
posted by granola girl at 12:39 am
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