Hey, Scripting Guy! Australian Dispatch #2: A Metric Ton of Scripting

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After nearly 20 hours in airports and planes, the giant Boeing 747 aircraft touched down on the runway at Sydney International airport-my scripting eyes were glued to the insides of my eye lids. It is rather evil the way they give you a test to see if you are qualified to enter the country…not Australia, all countries do this. Why are you here, where are you going, how long will you be here, do you remember packing any nuts in your bag three days ago? Dude, I can barely remember my name, and I am not so sure I would recognize myself in that little picture in my passport. Luckily I passed the test, and I am in.

Cabbies are always fun at the airport, and more so in Sydney. What passes for conversation quickly turns into a monologue as my efforts at intelligible human speech patterns rapidly degenerates to various guttural grunts, ughs, and various click sounds forced through my freeze dried mouth, throat and parched skin that only a few days ago were a pair of lips.

“Ah, good day to ya Mate,” chirped the cabbie.

“Ur mumph gorble a,” garbled the scripting guy.

“So where ya off ta taday?” asked the cabbie.

“Ahr grumbie click tau mph,” said the scripting guy.

“Right gov. Be about 20 kilometers to town,” offered the cabbie.

And so we were off. Obviously this was a well schooled cabbie that was used to interpreting the distinctive fly all week dialect of English. But what is 20 kilometers anyway. My brain fogged, and it seemed my battery was weak. Somehow I had forgotten to switch my brain from power saver. I struggled, flipped out my ScriptTop computer and wrote this function:

Function ConvertToMiles($kilometer)
{
  "$kilometer kilometers equals $( ($kilometer *.6211) ) miles"
} #end convertToMiles

So my brain is not completely dead. Now, let’s run the function and get the answer:

PowerShell C:\> ConvertToMiles(20)
20 kilometers equals 12.422 miles

Ah, so far, so good—I can still think.

After arriving at the hotel, taking a scripting shower, and unpacking, it was time to head out into the city. The helpful concierge at the hotel told me it was about two miles to the Opera house. Armed with my ScriptTop computer, I quickly came up with this function because all the signs are in kilometers!

Function ConvertToKilometers($miles)
{
  "$miles miles equals $( ($miles * 1.61) ) kilometers"
} #end convertToKilometers
PowerShell C:\> ConvertToKilometers(2)
2 miles equals 3.22 kilometers

No problem. A brisk walk indeed, which was most welcome after a couple days of flying. Here is a picture I took on my metric walk to the Opera House:

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