Month: December 2008

I actually used the phrase “ja mon” in conversation today. It just kind of popped into my head, and I channeled some weird Jamaican accent.

Researchers at a European research facility called the Nanoscience and Picotechnology Group are working on computing at a molecular level. We’re talking a handful of atoms here– way, way smaller than even nanotechnology.

A snippet from the article I just read:

Holy cow. Amazing stuff. The research is pretty fundamental right now– nothing that’s going to become a commercial product for several years at least– but just the fact that they can potentially build CPUs a millionth (or less) the size of current semiconductor chips could mean that in a decade we may literally have computers more powerful than today’s supercomputers in a box the size of, say, a grain of sand.

So much for the table on our patio.

We just heard a crash outside, and it was the table blowing over and smashing into a gazillion pieces of glass on the concrete. According to NOAA, the wind is blowing at 46 miles an hour in Longmont right now. We can hear it howling around the house, rattling windows and so forth. It’s nights like this that make me happy to have a nice safe secure warm bed.

Mom gave me and Laralee a brain-teaser sort of puzzle book for Christmas, and we’ve been going through it tackling the various crosswords, word searches, logic puzzles, sudokus, and other miscellany. They’re great “brain exercises” and give one a real sense of accomplishment when you finally figure out, for example, what fifteen national capitals are listed in the letter grid.

Every page has a little two-line puzzle at the bottom, so after you finish the big crossword or whatever you can take a moment to do a “quickie”. Of course these aren’t always quick, and I’ve found that many of them are actually harder than the “main” puzzle that fills the rest of the page.

Take, for example, the one we were staring at today: what’s the shortest English word that includes the letters APB in a row? The book even gave the helpful hint that it’s seven letters long.

So we puzzled for three hours, until our puzzlers were sore (heh, subtle Dr. Seuss reference there) but couldn’t figure it out. The problem is that puzzles like this– unlike crosswords or sudoku– are completely open-ended. There’s a huge solution space that’s difficult to traverse. Like a riddle, you think and think and either never get it, or suddenly figure it out in a flash and, looking back, realize it was completely obvious.

Being the brilliant and terrifically clever computer geek I am, I figured out that I could dump the contents of my laptop’s spell-checker dictionary and scan for words containing APB. After a few minutes of toying with the software I came up with the command to do what I needed. And I turned up words like clapboard, chapbook (huh?), and scrapbook. And there, at the bottom of the list, was the answer I sought.

soapbox

Hah! One more puzzle down (with some help from my trusty laptop)…

It’s amazing how quickly the human body (well, my body at least) gets out of shape. Today it’s about 45 degrees and sunny, and most of the snow has melted off the roads and sidewalks, so I decided to hop on my bike for a little ride. But I quickly discovered that the same route I took a month ago without much effort has become a bit tougher. My initial theory– that a mysterious inertial force had made the sidewalk more difficult to traverse– was thrown out in favor of the slightly more plausible theory that I haven’t been on my bike in a few weeks and I’ve lost whatever magic juice powers those muscles.

Still, it was good to get out and bike a bit. Hopefully the weather will hold and I’ll be able to do it throughout the week, and maybe even get in a game of ultimate…

Merry Christmas to all.

Brian, Tony, and I just got back from lunch and two guys in trenchcoats followed us into the office. They immediately introduced themselves as Walter and Tyler and asked what we do here at Zing. This seems to happen about once a month: despite the big “NO SOLICITING” sign beside the door, people like this seem to think it applies to everyone but themselves. Go figure.

Anyway, as soon as they asked what we did, Tony launched into a monologue about how we build online poker systems and run the money through the Netherlands to avoid prosecution under U.S. law. He was absolutely brilliant. He did all of this with a completely straight face while Brian and I bit our tongues trying not to laugh. Tony continued by explaining how we can accept hard cash, or World of Warcraft currency that’s traded on eBay. He then asked Walter and Tyler if they’d like to sign up for an account with us right now.

The best part was that these guys were completely at a loss about what to say. As Tony continued to regale them with stories about how we use our Comcast connection to manage all of our poker systems, and how when the connection goes down we’re still liable for bets in the pot, and all kinds of other technical-sounding things, they just stood there listening like deer in headlights.

In the end they managed to toss in a few words about what they were selling (T1 lines for a vendor I’ve worked with and despise), but they beat a hasty retreat before Tony could get them to ante up some cash for an online account.

Sweet. Two gold stars for Tony.

Interesting thing I learned today:

There are five tastes. Everyone’s familiar with bitter, sweet, salty, and sour… those were identified back around 400BC. But it wasn’t until the early 20th Century that a Japanese chemist identified a fifth taste, called umami (Japanese for “delicious”).

Oddly enough, monosodium glutamate (generally known as MSG) triggers umami pretty strongly, which is why MSG makes things so darn tasty.

Now if I can only work that into a dinner conversation somehow: “Mmm, these ramen noodles are really umami!”

I’m signing up for an online bank account and I’m faced with the inevitable Stupid Security Questions, where I have to select from a list of questions and provide answers that “only I would know”. The problem is that all of the standard questions have already been abused:

* What’s your mother’s maiden name?
* What are the last four digits of your Social Security Number?
* Where were you born?

So now they have to resort to things like:

Come on– even I don’t know the answers to some of these! I have no idea what high school Laralee attended, nor do I know my father’s mother’s middle name. And if I choose something like “What was your favorite college year” it’s not like I have a particular year that was so rockin’ awesome that I would always remember, “Oh yeah, 1993 was my best year in college ever!”

So instead I just pick various questions and always answer them with the same thing: “Steve”.

* Note that I don’t actually put “Steve”, but you get the idea. The real word I use is much more secret than that, and certainly I can’t publish it here where the Identity Thieves’ Guild would find it.

Today, to celebrate the impending holiday, we decided to goof off all afternoon at the office. So Rob brought in his Wii and Xbox and we jacked them into our projector and some speakers. Then we cranked Rock Band and played some Mario Kart, interspersed with the usual games of foosball and liberal helpings of Cheetos and Double Stuf Oreos.

Brian jams on guitar:

Rob accompanies on bass:

And Tony provides drums:

Good times, good times.