Recently I came under the “and duties as assigned” codicil of my job description.

I’ve been asked to write a “script” using a piece of software I’ve only been vaguely aware of for several years.

The following is the conversation I’ve had with this software for 8 stinking hours a day, every day now for a week:

Me: Ok! Excited to learn something new! Dr. Sanjay Gupta says its good for me! Lets look up some tutorials to get started!

Software Blarg: Hello world!

Me: SWEET! I’m programming already!

Me: Blarg.version

Blarg: Blarg version 0.2.11

Me: man, they’re gonna pay me some BIG MONEY!

Me: var = input.something + concatenate (endswith.”nards”) tuple tuple loo

Blarg: invalid syntax

Me: invalid syntax? what means, “invalid syntax?” I’m pretty sure I know what .object// return def means

Blarg: yeah, no.

Me: well, I’m just gonna head on over to The Googles and figure out where I went wrong

Blarg: you do that -snicker-

Me: Dear The Googles, Blarg syntax for tuple tuple loo indexed by int64

Googles: 1.5 million references to query, 1.499 million from this one particular site in which only Blarg uber nerds respond, generally berating and failing newbies to Blarg

Me: Yeah! thats the one!

http://www.blargnet-easyanswersfornewbs.org: newbie asks: “How do I get Table A to index to List B over dataset X

blargnet: @ThorsCodPiece responds: Which table are you trying to index?

Me: Table A

blargnet: @ThorsCodPiece: To what are you trying to index from?

blargnet: @FurriesFTW: you no use lists w/b, why you use list when all you have to do is index.T(‘,’).farfegnugen[x]?

blargnet: @poodles: dupe

blargnet: @ThorsCodPiece: fairly simple, actually. Try this: for i in while teepee.OverNight = if then else.[ ]*N

Me: for i in while teepee.OverNight = if then else.[ ]*N

Blarg: Nope.

Me: for i in while teepee.OverNight = if then else.[ ]*N

Blarg: Nope*2

Me: blargnet, no worky

blargnet: @JJJameson: what  version of blarg are you using?

Me: blarg.version

Blarg: Hello world!

Me: Thats it. Margaritas for lunch. I’m out.

This evening I’m looking into moving to Costa Rica and living off the land.

*-  liquid lunches were not consumed during the workweek. reference merely for effect