The Underwear Boycott of Facebook

I have become irritated with Facebook. They keep putting underwear ads on my page in Facebook. I asked them to stop, but they keep appearing. So I am going to stop using Facebook until they change their evil ways.

Update: Now the same ads are showing up at my favorite kakuro game website! The pirate in me goes, "Argh!!!"

Price-A-Dent Obama Imitating Louis The Fifteenth: A Vacation Cost Analysis

At 60 to 100 million for a journey to Africa, we need a president that knows how to stay home. New Mexico is much cheaper, especiaLLy if we can get him to drive his own vehicle. Chevy Chase managed to take a vacation and only occasionaLLy did people die. Typing 'Wallyworld' into my GPS app .... ooooh, got a place in Australia:

    Jans Wallyworld

    People Mova

    9,133 miles away

    Wallaroo South Australia

(Apple Maps unable to give me directions)

.... this could get expen$ive

[Thought Bubbly: Try Hotels.Com]

I found several package deals for around $10,000 for two adults and two children. I am not sure how many rooms and airline seats are needed for Secret Service people, plus rental cars are not factored in. 

Further investigation reveals that Jans Wallyworld is a taxi service. No need for rental cars.

"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny." - Napoleon I

"What suns!" said Watson and The Invisible Bisons

I am sitting on the couch reading a wikipedia article about author Mickey Spillane. Cooper wants to sit beside me, so I move a pillow out of his way. When I look back at the screen of my iPad it has changed to the Russian version, Мікі Спіллейн. I think, there must be sum+thin special goin' on (and off).

----

Today I went buffalo hunting.

From outerspace.

I know where buffalo live inside Amarillo, so I used Google Earth to search for them.

I was not successful.

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I have moved on to 6.1 sigma.

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Cooper slipped on something coming in the back door, and in his scramble to regain his footing his left front claws landed on top of my bare right foot, big ouch! No pineapple plants were seriously injured in the ruckus, just slightly tilted.

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New Toys: DB'ing in Java with NetBeans

(no, that has nothing to do with grinding coffee beans or brewing a cup.)

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I wrote something here but then erased it. Sorry. Maybe it wiLL return in an altered acceptable formation. ActuaLLy I didn't erase it, I cut it then pasted it somewhere else. So that word 'erased' in the first sentence is wrong but now I can't erase that erased without erasing aLL this. I should quit and make soup ... At least I removed the eXtra s from the word ssomewhere, you can find it somewhere else earlier in this status.

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(From two days ago)

I just woke up a few minutes ago after falling asleep on the couch. I yelled reaLLy loud because I wasn't eXpecting Cooper to be standing there with his nose almost touching mine! My loud burst of noise didn't seem to phase him and I think he actuaLLy smiled. I think he was afraid of the thunder outside .... I am off to see if it actuaLLy rained. Silly dog.

No.

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(From three days ago)

After trying to not watch "Chopped" ...(the Food Channel)... ...(against my wiLL)... I am headed to the kitchen to make chili cheese hot dogs ...

Ha! - A new episode started just as I was getting my stuff out of the frig, and what were they cooking on Chopped? Hot Dogs! Firemen cooking hot dogs ...

Next round ... Now they are cooking bison! I am jealous ....

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I slightly modified this reaLLy good joke:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson were going camping. They pitched their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes woke Watson up and said: "Watson, look up at the sky, and tell me what you see."

Watson replied: "I see millions and millions of stars."

Holmes said: "And what do you deduce from that?"

Watson replied: "Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth out there. And if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life. AND that life might have advanced enough so that its creatures go camping and they might be looking back at us asking the same questions!!!"

And Holmes said: "No, Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent."

----

My wife was teLLing me a story from her business.

My response was, "baby, we belong in a world that must be strong, that's what dreams are made of." She responded with some short positive agreement, not realizing that I had given her a Van Halen lyric.

Do Not Use

If you would like my recommendation based on my dealings with a company, do NOT use Leal's Asphalt Repair of Amarillo TX.

Things To Do On A Vacation to Albuquerque NM

Tour all the filming sites for the teleBision series Breaking Bad.

Buy a Make Your Own Blue Meth Kit at a convenience store.

Join the search for comedic actor Andy Kaufmann in hiding, who most likely died 29 years ago. (Its an Elvis conspiracy theory kinda thing.)

Eat!!!

Explore the mystery of why the first R was dropped from the original speLLing 'Alburquerque'. Notice the wonderful symmetry of the repeated 'rque', which could easily be pronounced 'ark', which could lead to a whole new combined word of "Al buh ark ark", which reaLLy sounds more like how Cooper might pronounce it.

Go to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Learn that Albuquerque means White+Oak in Spanish, and then begin to only use the word 'Whiteoak' and correct people AND road signs with stencils and spray paint when they try to say the Albu word. Make fun of anyone who tries to teLL you the name is derived from the Arabic word for The Plum.

Drink!!!

Visit the hospital to view new borns, to see New New Mexicans.

Visit the zoo to view African antelope, to see gnu New Mexicans. (Hahahahaha - I thought of you, Rob, when I wrote this pair.)

Discover that there is a job opening for a high school chemistry teacher and apply. (Yes, I accidentaLLy discovered this last week while looking for chemist jobs in New Mexico)

Learn to breathe at 10,300 ft elevation. Then make bragging comments like, "This isn't even as high as La Paz Bolivia" and demand coca leaves for elevation sickness relief. (Oh, wait, this is the elevation for nearby Sandia Peak. Albuquerque is about half that elevation at 5300)

Watch your kids play mud volleyball.

Be merry!!

Try to meet at least one person from each of Albuquerque's 46 zip codes. Put them on your Christmas card list.

When people ask, teLL them your name is Walter White or Jesse Pinkman or better yet, mix those first and last names.

Reenact the 1862 Civil War battle of Albuquerque, which involves retreating to Texas, which fits perfectly into my plans for going home.

A Dragon and Water and ... Cocoa

I just realized somethinkg: If two people co-composed (music), then that is veRy close to posing as cocoa. "Cocoa, I'm Posed" It could also mean if you had a photographer named Cocoa, you could be teLLing her that you are ready to be shot.

I blame this thought on the piece of French glacier I am drinking. I have not drank a French glacier in quite a while. I fixed several things today, but not eveRything. The last thing was too dan ger ous and lacked instructions and labeling.

I have made some headway on my Perl programming for playing cryptograms.

Yesterday was a good day. I made my friend Jesus a German Chocolate Cake for his birthday. I was a "bit" late, as his birthday was several weeks ago. WeLL, I also baked him a loaf of bread that he got much closer to his birthday. I think I fixed my truck yesterday, going to the mechanic's shop to have them verify the weLLness of something tomorrow.

While groc shopping today I realized that the candy named Hot Tamales is a veRy weLL defined product, you know eXactly what you are getting. But if someone comes out with Not Tamales, then that would be quite a product, it could be anything eXcept tamales. You open it up, "A Dragon!!!", you open it up again, "Water!!!" - I didn't imagine opening it up a third time, I wiLL leave that up to you. It could even be ONE single tamale, as that would not be a tamales plural.

I understand that it is veRy close to Cooper's birthday. He was born eXactly (Private NUMBER Goes Here) weeks before my niece's son 8 years ago. But I just found out about the FWTD (five week time delta) a few days ago. He enjoyed his cheeseburger this evening. I cut it up into 8 pie shaped pieces, repositioned it like a crown, then doused it with dry dog food.

I am veRy disappointed with our lack of spring time and its effect on my grapevines. There are veRy few leaves. No sign of any praying mantis yet.

The fourth word of the blog post "somethinkg" was not a typo.

I recently changed my blog profile after nearly six years. It used to begin saying something about my main goal is to try to be the nicest person in the universe. I felt the was too much pressure. I have changed it to say 3rd nicest person in the universe.

A Fistful of Eight Letter Words

One of my favorite things in life is playing cryptograms at cryptogramcorner.org

I found the cryptogram puzzle for May 2nd, 2013 especiaLLy challenging. It is shorter than most of the puzzles presented by cryptogramcorner.org and I worked on it for more than six hours without seeming to get close to the correct answer. I normaLLy solve these puzzles in five to fifteen minutes, but my usual techniques didn't seem to work.

I noticed an interesting pattern with the author's name on the bottom line. Each name is six letters long, and there are close ties between the names and two of the words from the quotation (first line). The single letter word U appears most likely to be the word "a" because it is also the last letter of the first name. I believe there are far more names that end with A rather than I.

The name connections: 6th letter of the last name equals the 1st and 4th letter of the first name, and the 3rd and 4th letters of the last equal the 2nd and 3rd of the first and the 2nd letter of the last name, most likely A, equals the 6th letter of the first name. THEN ... letters 5-2-3-4 of the last name equal letters 1-2-3-4 out of the 5 letters of the 4th word of the quotation.

I originally thought, "this one might be easy." - Wrong

So I asked Google for a list of the common last names and searched for names that had a 2nd letter A where none of the letters are repeated. I tried several names but nothing seemed to match.

I neXt tried going through my local telephone book looking for last names with the same criteria. Nothing seemed to work.

Then I noticed a pattern in the 7th word of the quotation: VXTJVNTQ

There is translational symmetry in the odd numbered letters. The V is the same for the 1st and 5th letters, and the T is the same for the 3rd and 7th letters, and then aLL the even numbered letters X-J-N-Q are unique. 

V X T J V N T Q

It was time to apply more brute computer force.

I asked Google for aLL the 8 letter words of the English language. 

It gave me 29,766 words.

I puLLed them into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I wrote an IF statement in the adjacent column that looked for a match of 1st and 5th AND 3rd and 7th, and display TRUE or FALSE. Then I built another IF statement in the next column to display the number 1 in the middle of the column when the TRUE was found, otherwise leave a blank. This technique allows you to visually inspect thousands of things very fast by paging up & down. I found 112 eight letter words that matched my criteria. I was successful at that level of search and didn't bother adding the more complicated logic of checking the even numbered letters for uniqueness. I figured I could just eyeball for now.

So I paged through all 29,766 words in several minutes trying to find what I thought might be good, better and best candidates for the word in the quotation. I made an ordered list of the good better best in Notepad. I also felt that with the word order meant it might be an adjective, being the second to the last word of the quotation, plus it followed the word "a".

Out of the 112 words, I had floated the word "epidemic" as my top favorite, and "clenched" as my second. But then I remembered that the last word of the puzzle was a four letter word, and I suddenly thought of the very common word that goes with clenched: FIST

So, I tried clenched in the puzzle and the suddenly I could read almost the entire puzzle without the other letters even being in place! I could see how the I of FIST was going to give the name INDIRA GANDHI - the only word I didn't get immediately was the very first word of the quote, it took a few minutes to get "you". 

.... and finaLLy ....

 

Fifteen Isn't New Unless You Are A Tortoise Or A Rock

The FFA ordered service on a potential defective part on some Boeing 737's, horizontal stabilizer pins. Here is the last line of the news article:

The aircraft included in the directive are relatively new, entering service in 1998 or later.

Hold it, 1998? "New"? "Relatively"? I would never think of a 15 year old plane, that flys almost every day, as any kind of new.

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Plato Missouri is the Mean Center of Population for the United States of America. Does that mean that the farther you are away from there the nicer you are?

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I am glad they changed how you play the Texas Lotto. Starting tomorrow they have new options. Now I wiLL be able to play eXactly how I currently played.

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One of my favorite math problems that I have wrote about has almost a thousand hits, which is alot for my blog. It had quite a few yesterday so I figure it might go past 1,000 today. My Solutions to the Seven Bridges of Königsberg Math Problem

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What kind of idiot sets off bombs at a marathon race? There are people there from aLL over the world; there is nothing political or religious about running - who are you targeting? And of aLL places, Boston, you even picked a place with my name. You kiLLed an 8 year old little boy. This is a stupid kind of evil.

A Little Piece of Evil at the Wall Street Journal

I caLLed the Wall Street Journal yesterday to cancel my subscription, and they told me it was set to eXpire in one month. And I thought that was great, I was going to wind up paying one more month than what I had even wanted, that I didn't catch it in time.

Just as soon as I got off the phone talking to the customer support person I heard my e-mail system get a message. Sure enough, it was a confirmation from the WSJ teLLing me that my subscription was canceLLed.

BUT ... then this morning, the VERY NEXT day I got an e-mail around 3 AM from the WSJ teLLing me that the credit card that is tied to my account no longer works - so they were trying to grab one more month. Evil.

UPDATE: 2013.04.26  It has been two weeks, and the stupidity continues ... The Wall Street Journal obviously doesn't know how to turn something OFF ... I just got another e-mail saying that my credit card didn't work for making a payment. I accidentally hit the WSJ icon on my iPad yesterday and sure enough it opened up just like normal. 

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Don't Eat Doritos !!!

I learned today that eating Doritos wiLL make you want to steal sports cars, be a bad influence to Law Enforcement Ossifers, and pick up hitchhikers.

I saw it on a veRy short documentary on teleBision, so it must be true. You may have thought it was a commercial since it was only 30 seconds long, but it wasn't, it was a documentary.

Remember! Don't Eat Doritos !!!

I may not even shop on that aisle at the groc store just to avoid the Doritos. WeLL, I guess I could venture part way down the aisle just far enough to get my chips to go with my salsa. I just don't need a bad influence like Doritos in my life making me commit crimes. Whispering to me, just eat a few Doritos and you wiLL be brave enough to steal a car. Oh, the Whispering Doritos, how terrible. Then I realized how cannibalistic Doritos sounds, it has "door", "eat" and "toes" in it. Terrible, just terrible.

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Cable Company Math

I got an e-mail from the cable company saying that we had already used up 75% of our monthly allocation of data transfer - ??? - wow - and to think the e-mail arrived on the 10th of the month, and I think we started on the 5th with brand new internet service. 5 to 6 days and we are already at 75 percent?!?!?

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I am making gumbo, wish me luck ...

A Free All First Story

Look carefuLLy at the first picture. The words on the crooked window sticker are: 

"Cell Phone Free Vehicle"

I tried to adjust the color and contrast so you could read the words but that is about the best I could get my computer to do without my fancier software from my previous computer.

Several minutes ago I was at the intersection of 10th and Cedar at the stoplight facing south when I was directly behind this vehicle and I thought, "What does this little square sign mean on this window of this tiny little truck?"

So I took my ceLL phone out of my pocket and quickly took the first picture while we were motionless at the red light.

Then I thought, focusing on the second line Free Vehicle, "I wiLL follow her and get this vehicle and it can be mine until the neXt person who sees the vehicle's Free sign and rightly claims it as their vehicle ..... then my second thought: I realize I should make up a rule that says you can only "own" this magicaLLy free vehicle once."

So I foLLow the magicaLLy free truck to Wal-Mart a few miles away and wait for the driver to go into the store. Then I go over to the free truck to rightly claim "It's My Turn" - but she didn't leave the keys in the ignition! I thought, "Hmm, she obviously is not playing the free vehicle game correctly." So I foLLow her into the store and got the keys.

Now, I am not going to say eXactly how I got the keys. I might have reached in her pocket and got them. I might have borrowed a frying pan from the kitchen supplies and used that. The keys might have simply faLLen out of her pocket after there was a cutting action by a borrowed large hunting knife from the sporting goods section. Perhaps pharmaceutical chemicals were involved. It wiLL just have to be a mysterious part of this store story.

So anyway, I drive the tiny truck of Free to my house. I am sitting on my lawn admiring it wondering how long it wiLL be mine until the neXt person figures out that it is free and takes it.

15 Minutes

That is how long it took about fifteen cops to show up at my house with guns drawn, and pointed at me while I just sat there on my lawn, admiring my free truck. 

I just waved, "hi" and smiled. 

One of them approached me veRy cautiously with his pistol drawn wearing SWAT gear and began asking, "Mr. Boston, we have you on video surveillance stealing this vehicle and assaulting the owner. Why did you take this vehicle, considering you already had a much larger truck that you left behind at the store?!?!? ... and what was the deal with the frying pan and duct tape?"

Oh, I forgot to mention the duct tape a couple paragraphs ago, sorry.

I was confused. Stolen?!?!? I told the SWAT Gear Guy that the vehicle wasn't stolen, it was Free. And then I showed him the sticker on the back window. Then he started to argue with me that was ridiculous! Something about how the sign meant that cell phones couldn't be in the vehicle. And I said, no, that was physicaLLy impossible and took out my ceLL phone and threw it into the cab of the truck through the open passenger side window. Some idiot cop yeLLed out, "He's got a GUN!" and fired off a couple rounds but luckily missed both of us but nicked the free truck on the back right side. The spokescop, Mister SWAT Gear Guy, yelled for them to hold their fire and the other 13 slightly smarter cops subdued the one idiot cop who shot at us. There was some momentary wrestling and yeLLing out in the street.

I told the spokescop my story about seeing the free vehicle sticker at 10th and Cedar, and this time he said, "Oh, I understand now, so just anyone who sees the vehicle can claim it and get the keys and drive off in it?" and I reply Yes, its that simple. Then I eXplained the new rule about how the vehicle could only be claimed once by each human. Then I told him about how he could make up a new rule to add to the previous set of rules for how the Free game is played.

Suddenly another cop car stopped in front of my house and a woman jumps out with a bandage on her head and a pants pocket cut by what was most likely a large borrowed hunting knife, just speculation on my part, came running towards us screaming, "Thats him, that's the guy who stole my truck and keys! And he hit ..." but then the spokescop told her, "No! Its now MY vehicle, I've always wanted a little truck just like this ... NEW RULE: Only cops can have this FREE vehicle." and he jumps in the vehicle and throws my ceLL phone back to me (otherwise how would I have got my picture for this blog post?) and he drove off escaping through hole in the perimeter of cop cars. They obviously didn't realize just how smaLL the free vehicle was. Every cop car takes off in pursuit after the Free Vehicle hoping it wiLL be their turn neXt ...

So I am left standing in my empty driveway with the woman with the bandage and then we both notice there is the trigger happy cop in handcuffs just sitting alone in the middle of the street. He smiles and tries to wave and says something I don't understand. The woman with the head bandage turns to me and asks, "Tell me, ... what just happened here?"

I respond, "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you. It's an April 1st kind of story."

Disclaimer: ActuaLLy I took this picture several days ago and wrote the story then, too, but later decided to wait until the perfect day in the future, April 1st, to publish it. You can teLL that I didn't take the picture today because it is much cloudier today and it was veRy dark and early when I first started actuaLLy typing this into blogger. It may be April 2nd right this veRy minute but it was stiLL April 1st somewhere on the globe when I started the actual typing process, so it stiLL qualifies as an April First joke. hahahahahhaahhaahhaahahahaha .. I am just old and slow ... now clicking the Publish button

My Arduino on The Net

I got an Ethernet shield (Arduino talk for "eXpansion card") for my Arduino Uno microcontroller yesterday. 

Today I hooked a temperature probe and LED (light) to the Arduino and played with setting it up as a web server. Yes, that's right, setting it up to deliver content on the Internet and to practice having remote access and control of things. I was able to get a web page that shows the inputs from the Arduino analog channels, and it keeps track of how many times the value randomly exceeds or equals 300 since it was turned on or reset. If a value eXceeds or equals 300 then it momentarily turns bold as weLL.

The temperature probe is tied to analog input 0, so that is why A0 is significantly lower than the others A1-A5 that are just floating with nothing attached.  The web page refreshes automaticaLLy every 50 seconds. In the time I have taken to write this blog post the number analog values eXceeding or equaling 300 has been 21, so it happens occasionaLLy. Again, this doesn't reaLLy mean anything significant, I'm just measuring something that happens occasionaLLy in the real world and reporting it and giving slightly different visualizations during events.

It displays the room temperature in F by default, but if you feed it a message of "esbbC" at the end of my regular URL, it wiLL put up a first line that says "hi esby!" - I used fmcgmccllc's nickname for me (she has the blog Detroit Automotive Meltdown) AND then it displays the temperature in Centigrade. My picture below actuaLLy has "esbbF". The temperature choice of F or C determines whether the LED on my circuit board turns ON or OFF. I tied a picture of a spinning Carbon Nanotube from wikipedia next, then there is a form for entering a first and last name. The form doesn't reaLLy do anything with the names just yet, I am just playing around.

Later this afternoon I tied my Arduino to the Internet by using a DDNS service, so people around the world can see what the temperature is in my living room.

This is the link to my Arduino: http://esbboston.is-a-geek.com 

This picture shows the web app running on my iPad from a different network.

Arduino Experiment with Apple TV Remote & IR Receiver

I was 95% successful in getting my Arduino Uno microcontroller to read the keypressing of an Apple TV remote control. I say only 95% instead of 100% because it reads all the buttons, but only works reliably from a distance of a couple inches, so not so much "remote", more like only "mote".

I purchased a Radio Shack item 276-0142, a two piece container with an Infra Red Detector and Emitter. I have only played with the detector so far.

I had read about other people doing Arduino experiments with an infrared receiver, but when I got home from the Radio Shack store I discovered that their IR detector had two leads, and while the one in the online example had three. I couldn't find any Arduino plans online for a two lead IR detector so I had to kinda wander through several web sites to get where I am so far with the wiring and design. I did find plenty of user comments at the Radio Shack website about how this particular product was a piece of junk and didn't work at all. So I wasn't hopeful. But I finally made it function. I am not exactly sure if this is an optimal design, so any comments from other people would be welcome.

I got the basic Arduino code from www.instructables.com web site, particularly this one for the detector, and then modified it for interpreting Apple TV remote patterns of information.

http://www.instructables.com/files/orig/FJ8/0ZF4/GVQHPZ4H/FJ80ZF4GVQHPZ4H.pde

This is my wiring diagram

I noticed the pattern for an Apple TV's buttons had a bunch of values near 500-600 microseconds and another bunch around 1600, or about a 1:3 size ratio. These are for the off and on times in microseconds. I noticed there were 32 cycles of data between what appeared to be a much longer start and stop signals.

"usec" stands for microseconds

For the Middle Button of the remote
Received:
OFF ON
0 usec, 6380 usec
8900 usec, 4360 usec
560 usec, 540 usec  
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec 
540 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 540 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1600 usec
580 usec, 1600 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1600 usec
560 usec, 540 usec
560 usec, 540 usec
560 usec, 520 usec
580 usec, 520 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 540 usec
540 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 520 usec
580 usec, 1600 usec
560 usec, 540 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
540 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1620 usec
540 usec, 1620 usec
560 usec, 1640 usec
560 usec, 31000 usec 

I noticed each button had a common start and ending, but then different in the middle of the data (the 3rd of 4 parts)

Menu Button:   32 560Wave: 1316411168
Play Pause:    32 560Wave: 131641141118
Left:          32 560Wave: 1316413148
Middle Button: 32 560Wave: 131642131118
Right Button:  32 560Wave: 13164458
Top Button:    32 560Wave: 1316431148
Bottom:        32 560Wave: 1316421248  

So I recorded the incoming stream as a pattern of 32 bits of high and low ON, and examined the 8 bits starting with the 17th bit

The Play Pause button pattern 131641141118 translates to a signal pattern of:

    0111011111100001 01111010 11111111 

Example "If statement" (The array is zero based, so the 17th bit is in array pointer 16)

          if (sigpattern[16] == 0 && \
              sigpattern[17] == 1 && \
              sigpattern[18] == 1 && \
              sigpattern[19] == 1 && \
              sigpattern[20] == 1 && \
              sigpattern[21] == 0 && \
              sigpattern[22] == 1 && \
              sigpattern[23] == 0)
              {
               Serial.println("Play Pause Button");
              }

Here is a screen shot from the Arduino - PC serial link showing the results as each button is pushed on the Apple TV remote control while pointed at the top of the IR detector on the Arduino breadboard:

So if someone could help me understand why it only works for a distance of a couple inches I would appreciate it. If I am veRy careful and move the remote perpendicular away from the detector I can get about six inches away, but I have to be veRy careful.

Special thanks to Wally_Z at instructables, see his web site: How To Control Your TV with an Arduino!

Lost and Ground

While shopping I found this nearly mint condition Crayola Crayon on the parking lot. If you would like it back please leave a comment with the eXact color name and I wiLL send it to you. You must cover the shipping and "handling" fee, and teLL me the approximate date when it was lost.

The longitude and latitude of the site where it was lost:

35.66027 N 101.41003 W

When I looked at the photograph of the crayon I thought there was a hair underneath it! But it turns out that someone simply ruined a tiny piece of my kitchen counter top with a knife.

(There is also a secret contest.)

Arduino Experiment for Dog Food Choice

I am testing my dog's ability for abstract reasoning, language, and communication skills.

I made a random light generator with my Arduino microcontroller. When I push a button it randomly sets the light to ON or OFF, and then I use that in an eXperiment with my dog Cooper.

I feed him either deli chicken or turkey mixed in with his dry dog food, and I ask him this meat choice question using my hands as the placeholders for chicken or turkey. I momentarily wiggle each hand with fingers spread apart as I say each word 'Turkey' and 'Chicken'. Random light ON determines Turkey = Right, OFF means Chicken = Right. And then whichever hand he points at first is the meat choice he gets.

I wiLL report back later on the test results (Cooper's choices).

The little blue round switch near the bottom of the red breadboard is a potentiometer that adjusts the contrast of the LCD

The yellow light toggles ON/OFF with each push of the Push Button, but the red light is randomly ON or OFF. The randomness is especially good because the random number generator seed value is generated by a floating Analog Pin input with nothing hooked to it.

I highly recommend NOT getting red colored breadboards. They are very difficult to see the wire connections compared to a white breadboard. The red one just came with the kit.

The Arduino is currently hooked to the PC in these pictures but just for downloading programs. It can be disconnected and powered by batteries or an AC adapter. 

I realize it looks like a jumbled up mess of wires, but the LCD Display takes alot of connections. At least I made the 4 data lines a rainbow pattern of red yellow green blue. I used an old hard drive ribbon cable from a PC to connect the display to the Arduino.

I am having fun !

Left-Right	Cooper's	Hand Chosen	Date AM PM
Random	Choice	by Cooper
Right	Turkey	Right	19-Mar	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	20-Mar	AM
Right	Turkey	Right	20-Mar	PM
Right	Chicken	Left	21-Mar	PM
Right	Turkey	Right	26-Mar	AM
Right	Turkey	Right	27-Mar	PM
Right	Turkey	Right	28-Mar	AM
Left	Chicken	Right	30-Mar	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	31-Mar	AM
Right	Turkey	Right	31-Mar	PM
Left	Turkey	Left	02-Apr	AM
Left	Chicken	Right	04-Apr	AM
Right	Turkey	Right	10-Apr	AM
Left	Chicken	Right	11-Apr	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	19-Apr	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	20-Apr	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	22-Apr	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	25-Apr	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	26-Apr	PM
Right	Turkey	Right	30-Apr	PM
Right	Chicken	Left	01-May	AM
Right	Turkey	Right	04-May	PM
Right	Chicken	Left	07-May	PM
Left	Chicken	Right	08-May	AM
Right	Chicken	Left	13-May	AM
Right	Chicken	Left	14-May	PM

Can You Compare Delaware Air?

Here is a conversation between my wife and I veRy early this morning in the darkness:

 T: "Ah ... these clean sheets feel so wonderful!"
 E: "You should remind me more often to wash them ... (Pause)"
 E: "I'm not saying that I wiLL do it, but you should remind me anyway."

I know one person in Delaware and she responds: Fresh bedding is the bomb! Especially if it's been air dryed outside!

My response to my friend from Delaware: I used inside air but sent that air immediately outside, the net effect is that some outside air immediately replaced it, so depending on where it leaks back into my house, mixing etc, I am not eXactly sure what percentage of the air that passes through my dryer has veRy recently been outside. That would probably be an interesting calculus or differential equations story problem. Using science instead of math I think I could measure the situation by doping the inside air with an inert chemical at a low concentration, say helium, and then use a gas chromatograph to sample the air during the process of running the dryer. I would just have to find out the sensitivity of the GC to the right parts per million level in order for it to be statisticaLLy meaningful.

I could also measure the amount of air leaving the vent pipe during the process and measure the static volume of the house. They make that sort of device for HVAC system evaluations of air handling systems.

But there is water in the clothing being dryed that contributes to the volume of air measured plus the air is heated during the process. I suppose you could run the dryer in an empty mode with no heat to determine a "just air" amount, but then there is also the case of the lint build-up during the process which probably restricts dynamicaLLy the amount of air comparing the begin point versus the end point of the process, complicating the math.

In the end, it probably has nothing to do with the outside air and more to do with the effect of sunshine chemicaLLy reacting. You could compare this by doing identical type loads, drying during the nighttime and daytime using the same set of odor judges blindfolded so they don't know whether it is daytime or night. Then repeat the process several times for accuracy.

Miss Delaware Air responds: All I know is that the outdoor smell lasts forever - even if you pack them away in the fall and take them out in the spring. Sleep so good on air dried sheets!

My response: I wish you would bottle up, or even better yet, build a pipeline to send some of your Delaware delightful air here, with the pipeline terminal exiting in my house. They have been making sulfur petrochemicals and carbon black in Borger for not quite a century.

Miss Delaware Air responds about how her air isn't so nice aLL the time, especiaLLy when they fertilize the local fields with naturaLLy produced chicken made chemicals.

My response: I guess that is the similarity between air sickened by petrochemicals and your chicken pet's [odorous] chemicals. 


My friend from Delaware (DE) has a first name that starts with De and a last name that starts with Da and the Spanish word for "of" is "de", so aLL together, my nickname for her is: DeDadeDE 

DeDadeDE is fun to try to speLL reaLLy reaLLy fast repeatably. I think they could use that as a roadside sobriety test.

If Roy Bought A Robot Dog From Robert Who Robbed It From Robin

At a little after one AM my Cooper asks me for a dog biscuit. I teLL that I am completely out and that Ernie is going to go to Wal-Mart tomorrow and, (-here-) you can have a handful of dry dog food. He neVer eats dry dog food by itself. He indicates that he wants to go outside.

Twenty minutes later he comes back inside WITH a dog biscuit from his secret eXternal stash. He is proud of himself (finding it in the dark) as I crack up laughing. He eats it in the bedroom then crunch crunch crunch he is back in the kitchen eating that first handful of dry dog food. First? He asks for more. I give him a second handful. He crunches through that and asks for a third. But I stop after three and let him outside when he asks for the fourth serving of something he neVer eats. I teLL him to go find another biscuit outside. But aLL he does is bark at some-thing-or-one in the darkness.

I know he had supper and this is a little early for breakfast. We wiLL caLL it brupper or supfast, either one sounds Scooby-Doo-ish.

Pi e Day

Several people, mainly numerical geeks, celebrate today March 14th as Pi day because of the first significant digits of the number pi being 3.14, matching the day and month.

But I thought of another number in math called e, the mathematical constant that is the base of the natural logarithm which has an approximate value

2.71828182845904523536028747135266249775724709369995... out to fifty places.

So combining pi & e gives you pie, a most delicious treat. I plan to eat pie today at sometime after 2 PM using the whole number part of e. For the eXact minutes I used the fractional part 0.71828 times 60 minutes per hour, which gives me 43 minutes plus 6 seconds.

So at eXacty 2:43:06 PM is when I plan to take the veRy first bite. Now, for the fruit fiLLing, do I choose appl-e or ch-e-rry? Ch-e-rry is my favorite between the two, but the 'pl-e' of appl-e looks so close to 'pi-e' ..... When I work on memorizing pi I only go out to 200 places, because anything beyond that is ridiculous.

UPDATE:

The I-Paw-d

Inventing an Apple device for my dog: i-Paw-d

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Candy Caution: I noticed that the tips of Hershey's Kisses break off veRy easily when unwrapping the candy. It appears that the size is approximately 0.01 grams or less, which is a smaLL portion of the 4.6 gram candy, but it may cause tiny chocolate stains on your clothing, skin, or leave unsuspecting treats for rodentia.

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I ordered a new toy today. It is an Arduino microcomputer with sensors caLLed the Sparkfun Inventors Kit. It looks like great fun and I might learn a new thing or two about programming, robotics, and electronics.

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I am off to a great day in the outdoors: painting

Excess Duckage

I have an excess of ducks.

A semi-long time ago (around Christmas) I watched the first season of Duck Dynasty on a DVD that was my son's Christmas present. I enjoyed it so much that I pre-ordered the second season. But then I forgot about this pre-order. Since that time I upgraded my cable teleBision and the second season has been playing several times. Then yesterday I got an email teLLing me that my second season DVD is coming.

What makes this so terrible is that I think the first season was wonderful, but the second season seems a little more fake and contrived. I have enjoyed Uncle Si, though, he is delightfuLLy insane. I know someone in real life who is almost just like him. I won't mention any names, but I wiLL say he is a goat rancher.

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You know it is going to be an interesting day when you mess up counting to five. And the game isn't reaLLy that hard ....

I love it when something that accidentaLLy looks like a plan comes together.

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Another Five: I saw a picture where someone had constructed two large human shaped feet out of snow, maybe a couple meters taLL. There was a caption on the photo: "Another Two Feet of Snow"

INVENTION: So we should start measuring in Toes as a unit of length. Look how easily it allows us to convert to the metric system - 10 toes equals two feet. I suggest TZ for the unit abbreviation. 5x5280 = 26,400 TZ per mile. So the distance to the sun would be 2.455 trillion TZ, and if the number of people on earth is 7 billion times 10 toes, that would be 70 billion toes.

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Good-Bye Mr. Hugo Chávez. It is probably a quite siLLy thing to blame your death on a secret US government plot to kiLL you with cancer. If the White House would have tried you would have been gone a long time ago. Maybe the people of your country can be free soon.

Soon There Will Be Less Then More Then Less Then More ...

Watching Bolt (Walt Disney 2008) What a movie! Its plot reminds me of The Truman Show, so "The Tru-Dog Show" ? Hahahahaha

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Marrying a princess is reaLLy a two part deal. You have to figure out how to marry them, then after that you have to figure out how to merry them.

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So ... I haven't been asleep hardly at aLL and I have a stupid dream: my cow is stuck on top of a mesa in the far distance.

There is not much light.

Perhaps it has long horns or big ears, I can't teLL for sure, maybe both, or it has a hat on, or ear muffs, I don't know.

It is a long ways away and it is cold and it is winter-fering with my sleep.

I have no cows in real life.

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I am canoeing up life fixing to possibly make a veRy big choice of which tributary to take, that changes 87 percent of everything. Wish me luck.

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My child is suddenly 16 times farther away for most likely several years or in my case, forever. Sad. At least there is Skype and Skype equivalencies.

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Our microwave oven has been broke for several days, but it is not my duty to replace it because my wife wanted to buy the same model that she has at our store AND ... this is the important part ... she is the one assigned (by her) to get it.

So last night she gets a cinnamon roLL out of the refrigerator and asks me this question: How I am to heat this cinnamon roLL?

My answer: Hold it between your hands

She is tired and responds with 10 percent anger-confusion, "What does that mean?!?!?"

I laughed and said, "You asked me how to heat up a cold object and I gave you a technicaLLy correct method for warming it up to maybe 98.6 degrees."

I paused and thought of an improvement, "OR ... you could put it under your arm, that might work faster." Then I said something about moisture content, I forget the eXact wording.

My close way offering is not quite a microwave oven.

Much later I realized that if she simply eats the cold cinnamon roLL it wiLL heat up to her body temperature while also converting its chemicals as fuel heating up the body ... so in effect, a self warming cinnamon roLL. 

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My wife has stolen my iPad most of the time because her new game crashes on her iPad. Her iPad is older and doesn't run the same operating system version. Both operating systems are the latest versions possible for their particular hardware. Strange.
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I left out a veRy good story from Saturday evening simply because I wiLL have to see a particular teleBision commercial again before I can teLL you the tale. Sorry. But I have most of it wrote, just waiting on some details.

An Egyptian Cat Walks Into A Bar

So I sit down at the counter of the diner and Jesus told me a half story of the Internet, saying that his girlfriend said something about Egypt, the Internet and cats. He couldn't remember that entire saying, so I used the Internet on my phone to google 'Egypt Internet Cat' - and the veRy first item had the saying that Jesus had tried to teLL me.

Saying: The Internet is just like ancient Egypt with people writing on walls and worshiping cats

Jesus got a kick out of me using the Internet to find a saying about the Internet, within about 15 seconds after he told me half the story.

I even risked my sandwich getting cold in order to find him the info. No, that isn't right, I don't think I had even ordered yet, hmmm, confusion.

I asked Jesus if I could blog this cat-Egypt-internet story and he said I could if I used his fake name of Don Juan Santiago de Sebastian ... I think I got most of that right but now it seems like I am missing one more name and now ever so slightly later it seems like I have the order slightly wrong.

I told him that I would give him a pseudonym of ... (and then I semi-randomly picked names using JESUS as an acronym), so his acropseudonym is

   James    (E name that I forgot)    Samuel    Ulysses    Saul

And then after aLL that creative effort he told me that I could use his real name.

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Why am I eXtremely sad today? I went to the McRib location service and there does not appear to be a single McD restaurant in the entire lower 48 that has the sandwich for sale.

Apocalypse Confirmation.

On a brighter note I was able to upgrade the firmware in my TI-89 calculator so that it wiLL properly chat with my PC.

I need coffee.

And Spring.

Spring, where are you?

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I just remembered something about math. I know how to do fractions using Egyptian Hieroglyphs. I should put that on my resume ...

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UPDATE: I just got back from McD for breakfast. Guess what was on the tray liner paper .... that's right, a flow diagram for McRib. Talk about adding insult to injury!

pope adod ...&... YES!!! - I am old enough

I spent several frustrating hours spread out over a couple days dealing with my Internet provider, even wasting $80 for a new router, and they finaLLy appear to have their system working again. SO ... the very neXt day I get a robotic phone survey asking me (with a kind feminine voice) to rate their quality using a 0-9 scale by the keypad of my phone. BUT ... their system fails to accept the keypad entry ... I am not sure I have ever had this happen before.

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My wife picks me up at the entrance of the maLL. I teLL her that I think I got my eXercise in for the whole month. She replies, "A whole month's worth in one day?!?!?" I teLL her, "weLL, February is a short month."

T-"Did you want to go to Wal-Mart before we leave town?"

E-"No, because we would interfere with eXercise scheduled for the month of March"

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This Is Cool: Use google search engine to balance chemical equations!

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I have a new name for the neXt pope.

pope adod

What is cool about that name is that it is the same when viewed upside down.

This is useful if the pope puts his name tag on upside down.

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Waste what little time I have left on earth.

That's what some people do. I stop at a convenience store on the way home to get a six pack for a get together at my house. I am not actuaLLy drinking this but getting it for others.

The C-store clerk asks me for my ID. I crack up laughing because I am not even close to the legal age limit. I am old enough that when I was 18 that was the age limit, and now I am over THREE times that number! But then I notice that she isn't ringing up my purchase and find out she seriously wants to see my ID. She actuaLLy reads my ID.

I am not sure if I have ever been carded in my entire life. She told me that they card everyone.

I can't wait to turn 18 x 4 = 72 to see if I continue to get carded. ... or 90 ... but hopefuLLy I am no longer driving by then.