10-15-06

C++ does not have any built-in way to determine the size of an array.

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Jim's alarms never stop ringing, and he often isn't there to turn them off. One of them was buzzing at 9:30 this morning and I grumblingly got out of bed to go deal with it. Jim wasn't in his room, so I spent several moments stabbing at the buttons of his alarm until I realized it wasn't the one ringing.

I pushed the Off button of its neighbor and that also didn't stop the buzzing. I prodded Jim's third and final alarm and that wasn't it, either. I held all three alarms to my ear and, indeed, none of them were responsible for the ringing.

I looked on the floor by Jim's drawers and found, amidst the clutter, several other alarms. I picked them up one at a time, pushed their buttons, held them to my ear, and still the buzzing persisted -- I could not find the alarm that was going off! Baaaap, Baaaap, Baaaap, Baaaap. And so I continued, frustrated and furious, searching without end for the cause of that deplorable squawking, alarm after alarm, trying desperately to quelch the noise so I could finally go back to sleep.

Through no action of my own, the ringing stopped. Just then, I woke up.

Jim must have woken up and taken care of it, or perhaps the alarm stopped on its own. But either way, if it had kept going, I wonder how long I would have been trapped in my sleep, clawing madly at alarms that never rung.