I’m really disappointed in myself in terms of Scholastic Bowl. At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t John Nash, but I was formidable in math. Now my algebra skills have atrophied and slowed. I wish I’d kept my skills sharp. I coulda had a math class. I coulda been somebody. I coulda been a contender, instead of a bum, which I am. Actually, I’m still the science guy, and possess a decent iota of dearly departed Sam’s cinematic knowledge.
At least I got lucky yesterday. The question was:
Name the following Unix commands.
1. The two-letter command that displays the contents of the current folder
2. The two-letter command that copies the specified file
3. The five-letter command that creates a directory
4. The two-letter command that deletes a file
Luck. That’s all there was. All that caused me to boot up my laptop (running Ubuntu linux) and obsessively attempting to delete the album art scattered in a music folder all Wednesday morning; causing me to go hunting down Unix commands for hours before finally giving up and asking Schmitz. That’s all that stood between me and these answers.
1. ls
2. cp
3. mkdir
4. rm
(“How do you live with yourself?!”, demanded Patrick.)
That still wasn’t enough, though. We got beat in both matches. Sometimes, it just comes down to luck. Like when we were asked about an obscure short story about a gem being dropped to the bottom of the ocean. Neal guessed, “The Gem” just so we could say we said something. The captain of BG’s team rang in and guessed “The Pearl” which turned out to be the right answer.
Why, Dame Fortune?! What must we do to win your favor?
From now on the Scholastic Bowl Team has to eat more Lucky Charms, snort more 4-leafed clovers and drink more leprechaun blood. If we have to, we’ll round up some virgins to sacrifice. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.
