finding.my.name

The title’s just for you, Mike.

Prepare for another “Epic” musing from yours truly, randomly enumerated, randomly constructed, from random thoughts. A rogue neuron was struck by an inspiron, which caused me to write this.

e) So yes, I have been dragged into this whole World of Warcraft thing. And, as of yet, it has not consumed my life. In fact, I haven’t played it today, and I probably won’t, as it’s already pretty late. I am excited that the Mohawk Grenades are making a comeback, though–you can bet my paladin will be sporting the Mr. T look in the near future! I have not begun to pay for the game, but I’ll probably do that before too long. At the same time as I suspend my Netflix account (not cancel, just suspend, and not because of WoW, because I’m busy).

π) A note for the Blizzard fans, though they probably know already–Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty comes out on July 27.

φ) Well, hate to have to say it, but another fish died. A suggestion was made that I get sinking shrimp pellets for them…I’ll give it a shot. I need to stop by the pet store and get a new filter anyway. My green cory certainly doesn’t need any more food–it eats much more, it might explode–but the albino and pandas could probably stand a bit more. I will also take in a water sample. Most parameters are right where they’re supposed to be, but the water’s a bit hard, and a bit alkaline. Not in the danger zone, but could use some adjustment.

ζ(3)) I spent $500 at Lowe’s today. $350+tax was on a battery-powered electric lawnmower. Only an 18″ cut, but I have limited use for it. It will do a good chunk of the finer work that my riding lawnmower won’t be able to handle–even a ZTR mower can’t go everywhere. I also bought a 50′ hose and a hose reel that is supposed to be able to hold 225′–that’ll cover the 200′ that I now have. But I forgot the essential 5′ length that goes between the spigot and the hose reel! But Lowe’s didn’t have any hoses shorter than 50′, so I’m going to investigate The Home Depot. I also got a spreader, which I’ll be using before the week is up to apply 50 lbs of grass seed to my backyard. Again. Which also tells me that I’m going to have to read my sprinkler system manual to figure out the advanced programming stuff.

i) I was talking to the neighbor when she got back from her run about the seeming interminableness (yes, it is a word) of yard work. I told her (while trying to convince myself) that it will eventually pay off.

γ) I finally have deck plans! While there are no dimensions shown, the final size will be approximately 16′x26′, with an 8′x22′ area covered. Roughly 384 sq. ft., plus stairs. Not sure I’ll be hand-digging 14 post holes, but I’m very eager to get started on this! This project is the primary reason for suspending my Netflix account. I haven’t watched Bad Boys II in the month that I’ve had it already, and I certainly won’t have time over the next three. But yes, I’ll probably squeeze in an hour or two of WoW every couple of days.

N_A) Next thing on the docket, I’ll mention because for some reason I feel compelled to, but I’ll keep it cryptic. I believe I am developing a crush. This time I won’t even provide initials, because someone might figure it out. While my feelings are, shall we say, in their infancy, who knows? The one advantage I have in that is that, compared to other situations I am in (eHarmony, RB), she is at least aware of my existence. I would still like to meet RB, though. She seems like a nice girl, and who knows where that might lead as well? Of course, it’s all in God’s hands, even if I’m not currently happy with the timing He seems to have for me.

δ) Last, a mathematics puzzler. Between two adjacent points on an infinite grid (no, we’re not talking resistors this time), what is the number of unique paths of length n between them? It’s easy to show that there are no paths with an even length. I put forth the conjecture that the odd-length paths follow sequence <a href=”http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A134094″>A134094</a>, but I have no hard evidence for this. Only manual counting got me the first five numbers in the sequence, which is at least unique in the OEIS. The formula used to derive it seems ungainly, however. If a sequence exists for two adjacent points on the grid, is there a similar sequence for other sets of points? Can these sequences be mathematically defined based on the coordinates of the second point with respect to the first? I make no claims to this problem’s difficulty, whether P=NP, if it’s NP-Hard or NP-complete (I don’t even understand those bits). I don’t believe it is equivalent to the traveling salesman problem or the knapsack problem, but I did have those in mind (along with, of course, the infinite grid of 1Ω resistors problem) when I came up with this one.

This post brought to you by Euler’s number (Napier’s constant), Pi (Archimedes’ constant), the golden ratio, Apéry’s constant, the square root of negative one, the Euler-Mascheroni constant, Avagardo’s number (Claire, for some reason I thought of you on that one), and one of the Feigenbaum constants.

Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they’re doing. Do things without always knowing how they’ll turn out. You’re curious and smart and bored, and all you see is the choice between working hard and slacking off. There are so many adventures that you miss because you’re waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go. – xkcd

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each. – Plato

I hope I can remember these. They’re important!

I finally beat the original Diablo. Yes, it’s been 13 years since the game was released, and I didn’t really start playing it until a couple of years ago, but these things take time. Now, I did attempt to cheat to get through it faster this last time around, but few of the cheats I attempted actually worked. And I wound up using items that weren’t modified, anyway. Next up is, of course, Diablo II. I don’t have Hellfire, or I might play that one in between. No word yet, I don’t think, on when Diablo III is supposed to come out, but I’m kinda hoping (but expecting to be disappointed) that the “click-until-your-finger-falls-off” game play style goes away.

Another note about the original, and probably Diablo II (though I haven’t yet confirmed this): now that my monitor has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a native resolution of 1920×1080, the 4:3 aspect ratio and 640×480 resolution of the game (with an 8-bit color depth) is a tad…well, unsightly. I wonder if Blizzard will re-release these games for newer hardware and platforms…

I made myself a list of things I need to do, when I need to do them, etc., and so far today I’ve done pretty well. Not that doing laundry and feeding the fish counts for a lot, but I bought groceries and went for a walk (another 2k for now), and I intend to do the dishes after dinner. I know–amazing, isn’t it? And, if I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll put labels on the file folders in my office!

Oh, and if you weren’t already aware of this, Mel Brooks is a genius.

Fireworks? Tonight? *checks watch* Yeah, it’s April 24th…and there seems to be a substantial fireworks show between here and Benton. For no reason that I’m aware of. I can see light and hear the reports…I guess it could be artillery fire instead, but why would anyone be conducting a battle over farmland in this day and age?

Ah, well. Back to watching “Get Smart” (the TV show)…

Saturday night/Sunday morning, I slept for 19 hours. I did get up around 1:30pm, but couldn’t stay awake, so I went back to bed until 9ish. Having destroyed my sleep schedule, I decided to stay up through work on Monday, which I did. It wasn’t so bad, actually. So Monday night I went to bed early (as you might guess), just 24 hours after I had gotten up. I awoke at 4:15. Deciding that I could afford to sleep a tad longer (my alarm is supposed to go off at 6), I lay my head back on the pillow, to be awakened by a phone call: “Are you coming in today?” “Yes, I’ll be there.” I rolled out of bed and went to work. No, I wasn’t late, I still got there at 8.

On Monday, I finally completed the official V&V test for the CXHSTAECMM. It went off mostly without a hitch. I had to restart the setup twice during the test to make the thing behave, but even if that was a failure condition, it would be a safe failure condition. In reality, it’s just a finicky emulator.

After work Monday I went to the tire store to get a slow leak fixed in my right rear tire. I bought these less than a year ago. “$15 to fix the leak,” they said. “Great!” I thought. But it was not to be. I had acquired a screw on the inside of my treads (wouldn’t have been visible unless I took the wheel off), and it had been there long enough that the rubber had begun to delaminate, or something. It didn’t look good, and I don’t know anything about tires, so I said, well, get me a new one, then. I left $100 poorer than when I had arrived.

I haven’t gotten around to posting pictures yet, but mom, I have my first rose blossom. The hosta aren’t looking so good, though.

My fancy little pedometer that I picked up over the weekend counted 2615 steps around the block. That’s 2.118km (or 1.316mi), and 243.7 Calories burned. According to whatever formula it uses, at least. I had to have lost a decent amount of water through sweat, and even a little skin–I need something that’s somehow more comfortable than jeans for walking/jogging that doesn’t make me look silly.

I also met the neighbors over the weekend. Gabe and /[KC]h?rist(?=i|ee)na?/ (I probably missed the proper spelling of her name even in that regex). They’re going to have quite the garden, but they may be more dedicated to caring for it than I. Who knows. But there’s a female living there, so I’m sure that has something to do with it. The neighbors on the other side were also out in force. I’m sure most were relatives, though they weren’t as talkative. They have a limestone border around their garden. Neither neighbor has grass yet, though, or trees. The two bits where I’m ahead of the curve. But I’ve been here 6 months longer than either one also.

Okay. Movies (still) coming out this year that I have to see: Iron Man 2, The A-Team, Jonah Hex, Despicable Me, The Expendables, Resident Evil: Afterlife, and Tron: Legacy. Movies that I might see: Robin Hood, Shrek Forever After, The Karate Kid, Toy Story 3, The Last Airbender, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Movies that I refuse to see: Cheech & Chong’s Hey Watch This, Sex and the City 2, Marmaduke, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Jackass 3-D, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, and Yogi Bear.

I decided that I’ll be on the lookout for a fractal in the shape of a lowercase letter “r”, and I’m wondering exactly what’s required to publish a book. Not mine, but a book in general. With all that ISBN number stuff, and get it bound and printed and distributed, and deal with royalties, yada yada. Just a thought I had…

Wow, this thing is huge! I have a computer monitor again, so I’m not using squint-o-vision for anything anymore. At 23″ wide it’s plenty. For some odd reason, auto-image adjustment is “not available”. I can’t tell for sure, but I think I’m missing a pixel or two off the left side of the screen. Another downside, and this is a bit more of an issue, is that the stand has absolutely zero tilt adjustment. It’s fortunate that my typical posture puts me in perfect position to view the monitor, but if I correct it, I’ll need to stick a phone book or something underneath it.

And since I got a nice little nVidia 8400 for my HP, my KVM switch is working quite nicely. I’ll still have to reinstall Windows on the other box, but I’ve been meaning to do that anyway. I should be able to get around to that next week.

I have a bunch of bills to pay, but it’s nice to know that I can not only afford to pay them, but that I won’t be strained to do so. One of these bills is my trash bill. The City of Andover just sent me a statement indicating that curbside single-stream recycling will be mandatory beginning June 1st (yet they won’t deliver us carts until June 21st, not sure how that’s supposed to work) at $4.50/month. If I add trash to that, though, it’s a total of $13.95/month, which winds up being about $3.72/month less than what I’m currently paying. Not much, but hey, it’d be on the same bill as my sewer and recycling.

The folks are coming tomorrow; I expect they’ll arrive in about 12 hours. Fortunately, the maids were here on Wednesday, so what little mess there is is my own fault, and easily rectified. I intend to empty the dishwasher and clean the fish tank before bed this evening, plus perhaps a load of laundry

Lastly, what gives my post it’s subject line: cubing. I discovered a nifty algorithm that cuts down my solve time a bit on any cube larger than 3×3x3. If only I could remember the parity switch algorithm, I’d be golden. But r2 B2 U2 l U2 r’ U2 r U2 F2 r F2 l’ B2 R2 isn’t exactly easy to remember. There’s probably an easier way, but I haven’t found it.

My automatic fish feeder stopped working. Not a huge deal, because I’m home most days and can feed the little guys, but I’m going to have to find a fish-sitter come June.

My computer monitor stopped working. This is a bigger deal, because I can’t use either of my main computers without being able to see what’s going on. And since I changed the port that remote desktop works on, and forgot to open the firewall to that port, I can’t even remote in to see what’s going on. So until I get a new monitor, I’m stuck with my netbook. Tiny screen, tiny keyboard, little power, but so long as I’m not doing anything complicated, it works. Another ~$250 gone, I expect. And I have yet to receive my $8000 tax credit.

I took another Sunday afternoon nap. Sleep is a wonderful thing, but I’m going to have to start setting my alarm for those things, because I slept for 5.5 hours this time. Getting to sleep tonight and waking up for work tomorrow isn’t going to be easy. Plus, I slept long enough that the pharmacy is closed, and I’m out of pills. I’ll have to go to one of the 24-hour ones, halfway across town.

On the upside, my web server seems a heck of a lot more responsive than usual…hope it stays this way!

I need 95 more untraceable cell phones and 39 more computer setups. Then I’ll be…a Master Underboss of crime in New York. I’m being quite methodical about this, and won’t move to Cuba until I’m done with the Big Apple. Meanwhile, my businesses in Moscow are flourishing. I can do no better than I’m doing right now with my unlicensed taxi stand, cigarette smuggling ring, and black market car lot; the munitions trading camp and trafficking operation are making money hand over fist as well. Now if only I could track down this Dublin Stallion…actually, I’m not sure what I get if/when I bag the horse, but I’ve been trying for days…

Enough about Mafia Wars. It’s 10:30–bedtime, and I haven’t even had dinner yet! Sounds like PB&J…no, wait! Scrambled eggs! I can do that quick!

Another weekend down…back to work in the morning. But I’m taking some or most or all of Friday off. Additionally, I’m meeting a girl from eHarmony for lunch on Friday. She lives in Iowa, but is down visiting family over Spring Break. So that’s good. K-State made it to the Sweet Sixteen; they play Xavier in Salt Lake City on Thursday at 8:37 CDT. I was kind of hoping for another re-match with KU in the Final Four, but no such luck, as the Jayhawks were knocked out in the second round by UNI. Still can’t figure out why my mail server isn’t delivering mail. Even when amavis is running, nothing happens, and I know there’s mail waiting to be delivered. Perhaps something’s wrong with Courier or Postfix. I upgraded Apache today, but that’s not going to do anything for it. I’m seriously thinking of moving my mail to Rackspace. I reinstalled the LJ crossposter, but it’s two years old, and may not work with this version of WordPress. Well, I’ve got some laundry to do, and the TV’s not going to watch itself.