You know, for me there are time that I can get fairly obsessive. OK, it can happen a lot of the time. But usually it only happens when I have a puzzle to solve. And so I have not been blogging much because I have been obsessing over a piece of programming.

I can’t help it. When I get a puzzle in my head, especially one that I have the answer to (but just can’t see) I get obsessed with finishing the task. I hate it.

In this case I am writing a plugin for this website, one that will list the categories to the right better and with more flexibility. I have all the data, done all the calculations, but I can’t seem to get the hierarchical ordering to work. I know if I was doing this in PERL I would be done. Not a problem. I would run it through sort-tree or something and done. Or I would write a simple sub routine that does this. But PHP has neither a sort-tree function (believe it or not) nor does it have subroutines. It does have functions, but they do not work the same way. So, I am at a loss.

Recursive functions, I have always hated them. Understand them, just hate them.

So I obsess until I have it done.

••••

OK, is it a mental flaw? Do I have OCD or some such? I don’t know. I don’t care, I just want to have it finished. It is literaly costing me sleep. It is invading my thoughts. I am daydreaming about the problem, then I am dreaming about it at nigh. Hell, I have figured out at least three ways of solving the problem, but I am not finding the programming language to do it.  I can probably brute force the problem, and I may have to, but I want an elegant solution.

Yes, it is not good enough for me to solve the problem, it has to be an elegant solution along with the getting the job done. I think of it like an art form, just with computer code. I guess I really am crazy.