The Budget of Paradox

Sophia,
Over e-mail, your mom agreed to share some information with you. I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I seriously doubt she’s telling the truth. If you ever see this, I’m wondering: did she really tell you?

If you think this is all ridiculous drama, I agree. I don’t know why she can’t simply let me be your father. I guess she thinks you don’t deserve one.

Yours, always,
Dad

Sophia,
I get e-mails and updates from your school. I saw this morning that your school is letting out two hours early because of weather. I’d love to call you at home when you’re there. I hope you’re not home alone and bored. I’d love to talk to you.
Love,
Dad

Sophia,
Happy New Year. I hope 2024 is the year you and I reconnect. I hope so. Your mother wrote to me recently to say that you don’t want to talk to me at all anymore. But, of course, I can’t hear it directly from you. I guess I have to take her word on that. She also said that you got the birthday present that I sent. But I’m not sure I believe her.

Have you ever written any software? Total change of subject, I know. Does your high school require any technology classes? Do they even teach programming anymore? Just curious. Your dad is a software engineer. But you already knew that, right? When I was in high school, I took classes in Pascal and COBOL. Pascal was good for teaching procedural programming. It’s static, strong and safe (I’ll explain what that means if you really want to know). But COBOL was already ancient when I learned it. It’s way beyond ancient now. But you’d be shocked to know how much of the world still runs on COBOL.

I’m working on a big project now. That’s why I was thinking about it. The code I’m writing now has lots of math. In fact, I was researching some math stuff and came across the word heteroskedasticity today. No kidding. It’s when a function’s standard deviation grows without bound instead of settling down. Anyway… I learned some fancy new word today.

What did you do for New Year’s Eve? I did nothing. Stayed inside.

I hope to talk to you soon,
Love, Dad