Shirt and Tie

I wore a shirt and tie, dress pants and nice shoes into work today. My reason? To mess with people's heads for fun. ;-) All morning has been "where's the interview?" When I tell people that there is no interview and I just did it randomly just for fun, no one believes me. They go "sure you are... *wink*"

Ya, I find it funny. Yes, today is a good day: the elevator was empty going into work today... god, I love messing with people's heads sometimes. And no, I am not going to explain that last comment. :-D

525 600 minutes...

365 days is 525 600 minutes. But google says 1 year is 525 948.766 minutes. Humm... who's right? Probably google. ;-)

Pigs Pens and Ball Bearings

A math teacher friend gave me a puzzle the other day. I'll post her's and one that I heard too. In a couple of days I'll post the answers if no one has gotten it.

First Problem:
You have 27 pigs that you must place in 4 pens. Each pen must contain an odd number of pigs (zero is not an odd number). You can't have 1/2 pigs or anything like that.

Second Problem:
You have 7 ball bearings and an equal arm balance. One ball is slightly heavier than the others. What is the fewest number of weighings that you will need to find the heavy ball?

Java Puzzlers

If you're doing something in Java, you might be interested to check out Joshua Bloch's new book Java Puzzlers. I checked out the interview and free chapter and it was an interesting. A lot of the problems seem a bit obscure, but that's why they made a book! ;-)

It's a good place to see how not to do things. Some of the problems would have been solved by either following the "things to do" outlined in Effective Java or not doing weird byte operations.

It brings up a point in my mind how KISS is such a good design concept and how "being clever" causes more problems than it solves most of the time. When someone describes their architecture as being "neat" and how they'll have to explain it sometime sets a red flag in my head: if you have to set aside time to explain the architecture then it's probably more complex than you need it.

Using that edumacation

One of the things that has struck me lately is just how much I use what I learned at school every day, just about. My degree just didn't "teach me how to learn" crap that you tell the arts students, but so much more. I find that I am able to use material from 1st year all the way to 4th. It's awesome. Some people are like "wow, that's a great idea! I won't have thought of that." to which I usually reply something like "Ya, I wish I had been the guy to think of it too... that's what they taught us in school".

I'm not trying to promote UofO or anything. I'm just so happy that whoever worked on planning the courses we took (which I grumbled about at the time with the best of them) did a good job. Yes, there were gaps which I believe they have been working on to fix since we left, but I'm still happy with the result.

What percentage of people actually apply and use what they were taught in school? Probably pretty low for most programs. We're the lucky ones.

For the children of the 80's

This one is for you. ;-)

Gross

Do you have those automatic doors on the bathroom at your work? I do. I guess it makes them wheelchair accessable and all that. Some people perfer to hit the button with their hip so they don't actually have to touch the door.

Okay, I'm cool with that. You don't want to touch the "dirty" door handle. I'm cool with that, I can relate.

What I don't get is that a lot of time the people who use the button are the same who don't wash their hands. YUCK! So, you're a dirty SOB and don't want to get germs from other dirty SOB's? Gross. I really wish that there was some kind of electric shock for not washing your hands when leaving the bathroom...

</rant>