Buzz off, Charlotte

Omigod. I just made up that title because of the subject of this post and not five minutes ago I ended up daydreaming about a girlfriend I had back in college named Charlotte and as you will see there is no connection. Scary.

Anyway, it is 2:38 am and I am in the middle of a trivial but unwelcome re-de-refactoring with a scant few days to go before a self-imposed but jeez I gotta get this frickin thing out the door it is the middle of July deadline and it is an educational app  and how far is it from the middle of July to frickin September?!!!!!!! I digress. 

It is 2:38 am and a spider I swear to god no more than 2mm across is dangling in front of my flat planel trying to figure out this code (the last bit of the last line, to be precise):

(defun alert (s oks)

      (tk-format-now (conc$ "tk_dialog .oops {} {"

                   (format nil "I thought you were solving for \"~c\"? I do not see it."

                            (key-char sfvar))

                   (format nil "} {} {~s} {~s}" oks oks))))

Charlotte (look it up furriners, E B White) is freaking out over the double occurrence of the variable OKS. I know because the little hussy has lowered herself I swear to God ten feet from the A-frame ceiling of my ranch rental all the way down to within a foot of my desktop and stopped. How still is the air in here? She was swaying no more than another 2mm.  I digress. But how does a 2mm spider pack ten feet of gossamer into its, well, gossamer pack?! I don't care how thin it is, it is stll ten feet!

Charlotte was both deeply concerned and a sufferer of tunnel vision. She ascended to the top of the flat panel (I have it angled down to my slouched position a few inches above desktop), gained a foothold or five, and then inched...no, mmed over and redescended to get a better look at the first occurrence of OKS, just to be sure. It is possible she then pirouetted on her thread to ask why I did not check the CLHS on FORMAT to find out how to back up one argument and re-use it, but I cannot be sure. If my eyes were better, I could tell you. 

Well, I am in a hurry dammit and you know what I think I have the strength to type oks a second time and no I do not think the redundancy will lead to the loss of a satellite but if a damn spider complains I know enough to listen... ah, there it is ~:*, back up one arg.

Now buzz off, Ch... hey, where'd she go?