Thought of the Day #1

Do you waste more entropy deciding if you are wasting entropy than if you just waste it?

I hate ticks

Two weeks ago I had a close call with a tick, I found one crawling on my neck.

Today in class, WITH ONE HOUR TO GO, I found a tick in the crack of my knee. It didn't remove itself easily in class, so I resolved to get it after class. I couldn't get it out and tried many things, dry erase cleaner, pulling slowly, etc. I finally had to go to the machine shop downstairs and borrow some pilers that came to a tweezer like tip.

I hate ticks.

Summer 08 Stats
Ticks - 1
Joe - 0
Tie - 1

Future paper ideas

If I ever decide that I can't find something to write a paper about, I might decide to write a paper entitled: "Queuing Method Utilization for Communion Within Multiple Denominations".

I would need to do more research, but I was surprised at the difference between how different Christian denominations do queuing for communion. It might be on a church by church basis, who knows.

Greenery and the sea

I decided to start planting stuff again. I started out with some flowers, but they never could grow, squirrels would eat them as soon as they sprouted. I have been hitting them with the bb gun set to "bruise". If they eat a radish of mine, it will be set to "stun" and then "kill".

As alluded to, I have also planted some radishes. I have been planting 3-5 per week for three weeks now, so I should have 3-5 radishes every week. I'll plant more this weekend.



As you can see, one radish sprout is missing a leaf, and another is 'bent'. The bent one happened today while something was digging. I need to get some chicken wire or be more vigilant. I am hoping to plant some beans, who knows? Sara wants some tomatoes, but I might be late on starting a tomato plant.


I have some sea monkeys growing, and also have included a pic of them. The circle shows what I believe to be a sea monkey.

Running

I ran a 5k today, and didn't realize it this morning.

Hopefully I will be ready for the 10k on July 4th.

Moped Stolen

My moped was stolen yesterday between 4:30 pm and 10:30 pm.

Tracking Fidel: Or how I wasted my Saturday morning/afternoon

I made a comment on Friday about how Fidel Castro hasn't posted to his blog for a while (since May 4th). It was a bit weird, so I wanted to see how weird it was.

I created a small python program to parse his blog listing, extract the dates, and create three plots.



The first one is just a raw plot of when he posted. When it is darker he posted more often. It isn't the longest time since he has posted, but it looks like the last time it was longer was when he was sick.





To get an idea of how long it normally takes since his last post, I made the last chart. He has taken over a month only once before. Over 3 weeks,twice and over two weeks,three times. Over one week, only 14 out of 109 posts (12.8%).

In conclusion, Fidel Castro hasn't posted for 13 days as of this post (May 17th, 2008). Only about 2.8% of the time has he ever taken that long. I am going to estimate that he is of worse health than he has been.

Will we see an article about his hospitalization within a month? Post your predictions!

If anyone wants to get a copy of the code, just ask me. I'll add it to the post if there is interest.

UPDATE:
He posted on May 18th.

bare metal

I write my programs on bare metal by flipping switches in time to the processor's 100MHz bus clock.

So you know.

Magazine Subscriptions

I subscribe to a commonly read magazine in my field. It comes out weekly, and I enjoy reading them to keep up to date.

Every 6 months or so I get a mailing asking about if I want to renew my subscription. I kept throwing them away and I kept getting magazines so I didn't really look into it. This time, I called them and asked two questions:
Q1) When did I last pay you guys?
Q2) How long till my subscription runs out?

Turns out the answers were:
A1) July 2006
A2) July 2009

I have nothing to worry about for a while.

I was about to send in the money for the subscription, not remembering when I last paid. I wonder how many people are paid on that magazine until 2020.

Mouse warping

My mouse "warps" with the new mouse pad that I am using. Sometimes it goes waaaaay left, or waaaaaay right.