Taco Bell - New Item

I reaLLy like the new smothered shredded chicken burrito at Taco Bell. I omit the sour cream.

Update: When I got my third sample (of three days) at around 11 PM it seemed like they forgot to put chicken through the entire length of the burrito, and it seemed like there was less chicken. So it was more of a buritto instead of a burrito. (ha_ha^haha) 

ActuaLLy, there seemed to be some dried out food (crunchy) as weLL, probably the rice. I am thinking that they may lower their quality standards later at night.

Ground Control To .... Baby Still

I instaLL the latest update to Google Earth on my iPhone, but a few seconds into playing with it I am suddenly 33 miles above the earth's surface. "Hellooooo, helppppppppp"

-----

I was reading CNN this morning and found out that the name of the royal baby in the UK is Still Unnamed. I thought that Still is a terrible first name but I found the middle name Unnamed an interesting choice. I am pronouncing it with a long U sound and the accent on the na, so it is You-NAH-Med, very similar to Muhhamed. I checked and there are no previous British monarchy with this name.

I asked my wife if she had heard what the royal baby's middle name was. She said, "No" - so I told her the You-NAH-Med, and her response was, "Oh My!!!" - so I am waiting now to see if she teLLs anyone.

I have decided that the first name Still should be pronounced Steel.

My wife's response a few minutes later to the complete name was, "That's terrible!"

I told her that it must be a British thing. 

I caLLed my mother to teLL her, but she just laughed. I told her those two words were actuaLLy in the CNN headline.

Dogs See Sharks In Color In Tornado

My younger son was acting goofy and so I joined in the fun. We were typing siLLy things for Google to search, and this one brought up an article about the Kennedy family, the infamous Massachusetts one. It seems they got in trouble with the Federal government for trying to save a sea turtle. THAT was the ONLY thing that Google returned in the search. BUT the neXt day when I tried it, it returned nothing. This proves that a Kennedy can deny the Internet. I have been trying my whole life (without knowing it) to find something to kinda rhyme with Kennedy and finaLLy found it, can deny, so YEA!!!) 

I found this link to the Kennedy's latest legal troubles: Free Sea Turtles 

I didn't get around to finding anything about dogs seeing in color.

I also noticed that Massachusetts is a state that sounds plural even though I am pretty sure its an old Indian name. So it made me want to check the other 49 states to see if they are plural-ish. Then I thought of Rhode Island's full legal name: 

     State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

So there is a plural. I didn't find any other states with pluralisms, but then I thought that maybe the state's name could mean something in another language that might be plural. For instance several states are Indian phrases. So I wiLL have to investigate that. Oh, I did find some plural territories:

     Northern Mariana Islands
     U.S. Virgin Islands

States:

Texas - Caddo Indian word for "friends or allies"

(I haven't finished checking aLL the states yet)

I Think I Have An Obsessive Compulsive Stalker

Someone "J" used to be my best friend for about 5 years from about 1995 to 2000, but then she moved away and we've had limited infrequent contact. While she lived two houses down the street we talked a bunch, cooked, shared stories, and baked bread. She was a front porch person. Her sister from far away asked to be my friend in Facebook. I met the sister of my BF and felt she was veRy opinionated and bossy. After a while on Facebook it seemed she started to fail in her ability to communicate, and I grew weary of seemingly somewhat artificial turmoil. So in rare form, I dropped her as a friend in Facebook, something I rarely do.

I have many names based on my legal name of Ernest. My names range from Ernest, Ernie, Ern and then from my friend J I received the name "E". Soon everyone who passed through her veRy public house caLLed me E.

So imagine my surprise a few nights ago when I received a Facebook message from my former best friend that says:

Hi Ernie, how are you doing? question. always wanted to know why you stopped e-mailing my sister. did she offend you?

I thought it was a strange request coming at around 2:30 AM, but I started a detailed reply that basicaLLy said her sister was insane ...BUT... I suddenly noticed that the message didn't begin with "Hi E" - it said "Hi Ernie" - so I erased my original reply after noticing that sure enough every former message from J had caLLed me "E".

So I responded briefly AND received no reply:

   Hi J-----!

   First of all, is this reaLLy J-----? J----- always called me E.

After two days I stiLL had not received a reply, so it made me think the crazy sister of J had hijacked J's FB account.

So I stopped by J's daughter's house right around the corner from me and got J's phone number. I caLLed her this afternoon and she was surprised that someone had used her FB messaging disguised as her trying to trick me.

The Half Hot Chicken Sandwich Was Not Obtained Bra-less-ly

"If I didn't have to put my bra on, I'd go to McDonald's."

Now that is a great advertising slogan. It made me laugh.

ActuaLLy, by the time I got those sentences typed into my iPad she had got out of her pajamas and put on her bra, and was soon on her way across town to get our 11:00 PM snacks, for man, woman and dog.

I wasn't the hungry one who started this. But as soon as she mentioned being hungry, I became hungry.

Soon I wiLL have a chocolate milkshake, fries, and chicken sandwich. Mmmmmm.....

I have a Half Hot Chicken Sandwich.

What is that?

It is my invention. I get two chicken sandwiches, one hot & spicy, the other one regular. Then I take the meat off one sandwich and put on the other, add BBQ sauce, and eat just one bun. MmmMmm...

Food has now arrived, I must stop typing now ... Pressing Publish

UPDATE:

My wife ordered two chocolate milkshakes. Her's wound up being a vanilla shake. As she was getting the chocolate syrup out of the frig to repair the damage, I said, "Well, there's only 12 ways to fix it."

She asked, "How?"

I answered, "Buy a case of 12 bottles of that chocolate syrup."

My Half Hot Sandwich was eXtremely spicy - it was as if the one hot & spicy meat pattie had so much spice that it would probably glow radioactive orange in the dark.

The large $1.89 order of french fries were absolutely horribly cold and icky.

There is currently a Monopoly Prize game playing at McDonald's for cash, food and prizes. I told my wife that it would be ironic if we got a game piece for free french fries.

She began ripping the game pieces off the packaging to check them for fries. She laughed - sure enough, the last one she pulled off revealed "Medium Fries".

Counting Backwards By Seven

I was at the doctor's office having some memory and cognitive reasoning checks.

I was doing remarkably well.

We got to this test where the doc asked me to count backwards from 100 in steps of 7, and his last part was, "... and see how far you can go."

Well, 14 x 7 = 98, and 100 - 98 = 2 .... so when I got to 2 the doc said, "That's great, now lets go on to ..."

But I ignored him and went into negative numbers

"-5"
"-12"


And the doc rudely interrupted trying to make me stop. But I remembered having to wait in the Waiting Room for an extra hour and a half beyond my scheduled appointment, and I decided it was time to waste a little of the doctor's time.

"-19"
"-26"

"Really, umm, Mr. Boston we really need to ..

"-33"


".. move on to the next tests .."

"-40"


In a quiet voice he told his nurse to get a needle filled with something .... I figured probably for me.

I pulled out a .45 automatic model 1911, and laid it on the counter and told the surprised doc that this caliber of handgun isn't divisible by seven but I did have seven shells in the magazine while loading the eighth shell into the firing chamber. But the model number 1911 is divisible by seven.

"Doc, your instructions were to count backwards from 100 by seven and see how far I could go. So we are going to be here a while. The nurse can leave."

"-47" ... ... ...

I got out my calculator to see how fast I needed to go to reach -600 in an hour and a half, and then paced myself. I thought a nice even group of 100 subtractions would suffice and be agonizingly slow.

I didn't tell him I planned to stop at -600.

It turns out that an hour and a half listening to a person count backwards by seven irritates a SWAT team, too.

So now you know why I will be gone for a long time to a special hospital with bars on the windows for the criminally insane.

(None of this story is true, but I did create the story plot with the negative numbers idea while talking to my mother about her recent doctor visit, so, special thanks to her.)

100 Years of Sentence-tude en Español

I have decided to improve my Spanish skills by reading "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez in Spanish. I am translating it one sentence at a time then reading it out loud. I think I have 99.97 years to go.

So far Cooper has not objected.

-----

I went to the hardware store today and there was a pickup truck with a man sitting in the driver's seat. The name of the company printed on the door was: 

"Texas Bearing Company"

I went up to his window to ask him a question and he roLLed down the window. I asked, "With a name like 'Texas Bearing Company', do you ever get a request for a polar bear?"

He looked 15% startled, laughed lightly, and said, "No, no one has ever asked for a polar bear."

-----

I am now the proud owner of better electricity. How do I know that? 

Because I paid someone a bucket load of money to instaLL higher amperage service and there are new shiny boxes for the juice to wiggle through. Plus I had to destroy one tree in order to get the e lec trick instaLLed. That required an additioal third of a bucket of money.

(The reason I used the word 'bucket' twice is because the electric company and the tree trimming company both used a bucket truck to lift their humans high in the air.)

Tree huggers do not be alarmed, as that space wiLL be replaced by more grapevines soon. Cooper may be perplexed by the missing tree. I hope he was not emotionaLLy attached to the tree. I know he enjoys our early mornings in the vineyard.

-----

You would think that after the amount of Evian water that I have drank that learning to speak and read French would be veRy easy, but you would be wrong. Since the body is such a huge percentage water I should automaticaLLy be a French citizen. It varies by the amount of coffee I drink, as that is local water.

-----

I don't read a lot of news lately, but I have read some about Mr. Snowden. I wish to thank him veRy much for showing how much our federal government is out of control and slowly (?) becoming pre-1989 East Germany. I am thinking that maybe they could rename the place the United Stasi of America.

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization." - Agnes Repplier

-----

I just received a text message from Verizon warning me that I had just used 50 percent of my normal data allocation. But my month resets on the 8th day and "today" is the 3rd. So I have consumed 50 percent of the allocation but a higher percentage of the time period has concluded, approximately 25 days out of 30. So I would have to drastically increase my usage in order to be charged eXtra, so their usage warning seems silly to me. I wonder if I am missing something important in their logic (?).

-----

While I was carefuLLy putting my hands in a grapevine inspecting its wonderfulness, a bug landed on my hand and I instinctively shook it off, knowing there spiders in there. But immediately after the shake I saw what looked like a praying mantis faLLing to its doom with an accompanying inaudible tiny scream, "N0o00oooooo0oo....!!!".

I initiated a search and rescue process in the grass below to try to help the insectus neighborus nano-ite get back to the Land of Grape Leaves but he/she could not be found, so the S&R was caLLed off after 5 minutes. I avoided walking in the area for the rest of the morning.

-----

I saw in the news that the U.S. unemployment rate is holding at a steady 7.6 percent. The last time I checked my personal ME unemployment rate its also steady, a quiet unwavering 100 percent. Oh weLL, I wiLL just keep on studying Java programming and networking ... Perhaps I should study Java the country, repairing fish nets and go find work in a seaside village half way around the world.

-----

I purchased the movie Despicable Me. My friend Candra told me a long time ago that I would enjoy it, and it is delightfuLLy funny. I am going to see the sequel tomorrow as my wife is forcing me to see White House Down today.

-----

R.I.P. Douglas Engelbart - I think it is cool that your set of organizing principles for your computer science lab, termed "bootstrapping strategy", has the word ping in the middle, and the letters s,t,r,a & t on each side, although not in the same order. (To outsiders, there is a piece of computer networking humor there.)

-----

Last night my wife said this sentence and I understood her completely:

   "That didn't start doing that until I didn't do that"

Such a beautiful Word Sandwich of That, Didn't and Do

Also, an unusual high density of D's in a sentence with no E's.

-----

For some reason that I can not figure out, the tethering of my iPhone to my iPad for use as an Internet source is unreliable at times. It seems strange to me that I have to keep manuaLLy re-selecting my iPhone as a "Wi-Fi" source if the two objects are separated by a great distance and then brought back in proximity. These two devices are designed by the same company and running the latest versions of their operating systems. I don't see any optional network settings to fine tune the tethering process.

-----

Today's Dumb Cannibal Joke:

Why do cannibals prefer people named 'Fred'?

Answer: Because they prefer to have the Fred-shest ingredients.

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(Spoiler Alert for Despicable Me 2)

Near the end of the movie four of the Minion characters were singing the song "I Swear". My son had gone to the movie with me and a little later at the supper table we were teLLing my wife about that song plus their version of YMCA. I told my son, "That's like Boyz II Minion."

-----

In my dream last night I was eXplaining the ideal gas law PV=nRT to someone that I am pretty sure was my wife. I was also eXplaining the relationship of the molecules moving faster to an increase in temperature.

While my wife was having coffee this morning I told her about the dream, and asked her if she would like me to eXplain PV=nRT again while she was awake.

She answered with a simple, "No"

I told her, "Good, I was hoping you would say no because you did such a wonderful job of understanding it in my dream and I didn't want to be disappointed by reality."

Her reply was a sarcastic staccato slow, "Ha ha"

-----

I kiLLed a scorpian yesterday that I found in my laundry room. It was about the same color as my plaid long sleeve shirt and surprised me. I am sure that scorpians are kiLLed by humans with a wide variety of objects used as weapons. This one was probably a rare choice, I used a snow shovel.

You are probably wondering why I have a snow shovel in my laundry room. Answer is, I don't.

I carefuLLy carried the shirt outside to my backyard.

You are probably wondering why I would have a snow shovel in my backyard in the month of July in the Northern Hemisphere. Answer is, I am sometimes slow about putting things away in their proper place. I obviously needed a snow shovel scorpian kiLLing machine, so maybe it was in the right place after aLL. 

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Today I am sitting outside in a veRy light rain. I think the number of drops hitting me is about 5-10 per second.

-----

Today's breakfast was buffalo steak, then I took the drippings from that fry process and made a delicious onion soup. This was my second time to try this and I improved it by adding less Tabasco Sauce on the steak cooking step.

-----

In the state of Texas you have to show that you have proof of liability insurance before you can get an annual safety inspection.

My son went to two different safety inspection stations and was refused service because the 6 month card I gave him doesn't go into effect for 9 days. The old current one in his mother's SUV was missing. The inspector demanded a current card.

BUT ... the future card has the eXact same information as the current card eXcept for the 6 month time frame Start and End dates. AND we wouldn't have a future card if we didn't already have insurance currently, plus we have old out-of-date cards that show an even longer spectrum of being a policy holder through the same company.

AND ... the state office for getting car license plates s'pposedly has the same proof of insurance requirement BUT the last time I was doing business with them the public servant pulled up the insurance confirmation on her computer screen and she didn't even look at my card.

-----

I came across this quote while doing cryptograms:

"A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one." - Dmitri Shostakovich

I guess my mind doesn't work that way. I seem to almost always know eXactly when I am finished with a piece of art work, and get great satisfaction when I reach that point. My finished pieces then inspire me to push onward to create something different but maybe similar to the current form.

But I also like to move on to completely different kinds of eXpression. I cartooned for about one and a half years, then moved onto completely different things. PeriodicaLLy I may stiLL think of a cartoon, but it doesn't get entered into my old cartoon catalogue system. I also don't seem to have a desire to do abstract computer drawings any more. So my interests slowly evolve as an artist. But I've always liked to write, record and cook - Sharing! I don't see those going away anytime soon.

Learning To Be A Waiter Includes The Word Wait and Error

I was forced to go to a restaurant last night that I hate. I don't dislike the food but there are a few people there I would prefer to not spend any more of my short time on earth.

Our meals arrived by someone who didn't take our orders. Sure enough, my salad and salad dressing weren't on the tray. I let the waiter distribute the meal plates before I attempted to ask about my greenery. But just as I started to open my mouth to speak the waiter turned and was dashing off through the crowded room without asking us if we needed anything else or to check the completeness of service.

I said, "Sir" in a normal tone but he kept moving.

He took another step and I gave an ever so slightly louder "Sir!" but no response from him, just his back going away from me. My wife looked at me with wide eyes.

He took another step and I gave a loud enough "Sir" that he stopped dead in his tracks and the room hushed and 80 some eyebaLLs were looking at me, including the veRy wide eyes from both my wife and son.

He looked at me with instant anger. In a normal voice in the hushed room I asked about my salad and ranch dressing. He said he would get it. The 80 some eyebaLLs stopped watching me and the normal noise level resumed and I couldn't teLL for sure what my wife was thinking and I didn't care.

-----

A friend of mine from Borger currently lives near the Gulf Coast and so her dog has mainly had a humid hot climate. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the cool dry night air of our northern end of Texas. I told my friend:

"The only thing better than living at 3100 ft is maybe 3150."

-----

Okay, it is time for someone to build an NSA proof Internet and phone system.

-----

My main mission in life at this moment: Determine the insulation R-Value of a sheet of Bounty paper towel, and then determine the R-Value of my homemade coffee cup insulator. (Thanks go to my friend Jeri M. for the quest-yun ...) Google hasn't been as helpful as I had hoped.

Later: Perhaps I should change that to "quest-I-on".

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I noticed the fruit is wrong on the McDonald's giant window poster for their Blueberry-Pomegranate Smoothie. They got the blueberry part correct but they put raspberries in the picture, no pom-Grntt which I am neVer sure if I am speLLing correctly.

-----

Comedy Central: Stop lying to us, its now "The Daily Show withOUT Jon Stewart", at least for the summer.

-----

I am veRy sad that Scottish author Iain M. Banks has passed away. His last book, that I pre-ordered, arrives in three days. I wiLL miss him veRy much.

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.

-----

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.

-----

(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 ....

-----

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!