Light Dawns on Marble Head

For those who missed it, the title is a quote from 1988’s Cocktail starring Tom Cruise. His character falls asleep in a college business class and the professor shouts “You, fifth row, blue shirt, WAKE UP!” to startle the sleeping student awake followed by “Ahh Light dawns on marble head.” as he finally stirs from his slumber.


So after three late nights in a row spent slaving over this weeks Java code, and eventually giving up in the final hours before it was due to turn in something that at least would compile thought not run properly, I hit the wall of defeat. I staggered off to bed around midnight and quickly drifted off to sleep once I managed to find a comfortable position next to Jen. Unfortunately, that was not the end of my Java nightmare as I spend the night dreaming in code, Java code. I awoke the next morning wondering if I had gotten any sleep at all and managed to wake up enough to dress, grab a bottle of Mountain Dew from the fridge, and drive myself to work. While sipping down some cold caffeine and flipping through one radio station after another searching for something to keep me awake on the drive, I had an epiphany! Somewhere in between listening to 96.3 WDVD and 89X’s morning shows, the solution to my Java woes was crystal clear.

I arrived at work on time, no small feat given how tired I was and the traffic I had to drive through to get to the office, and worked through my morning routine of checking voice mail, e-mail, and server status. Then I booted up my virtual machine and plugged in the thumb drive containing my homework for Java. In ten minutes or less I managed to tweak the code based on the idea that came to me on my way to the office, compile it, and … It WORKED! I might be a programmer after all.

Still on my high from resolving the problem I zipped up the working code and shot off an e-mail to my instructor telling him I had resolved the issues I had with the assignment I had already turned in and the working code was attached. Now I just have to wait till Monday to see if I get full credit for the assignment or if in my excitement that it all worked I missed some small detail in the code conventions that will not affect its performance but will affect the grade based on neatness and documentation of the code.