Nov.01.2007had a strange interview yesterday. the electrical & mechanical department asked me to come in and give them a demo of how i teach, so maybe they want me to teach Statics in the spring. this was strange because i have taught Statics several times already for the "other" department. so i did a 30 minute mock lecture for them, acting as if they were 19 year old students. .... too strange i thought, but i did well. then the department head starts yakking with me on and on.... asks me what i am doing these days.... i say i'm retired.... he smiles and nods. i start to pack up and he says.... "how would you feel if we offered you a one year contract to teach full time in 2008 Spring and Fall". i smiled ..... he seemed pretty happy.... said he'd run it by the acredidation board (i don't have a PhD, but maybe 2 MS's, a PE license and 40 years out in the real world might be equivalent to 3 years in grad school)..... they need a week or two to decide. |
Nov.02.2007on the TV news .... a laptop was stolen in Boston. it belonged to a PhD candidate who was working on her project for 4 years, and it was on her laptop. well .... okay, the laptop's a loss.... get another one, load your project files from your backup CD's and move on with life ..... right? uhmmm ....she said.... backup CD's ? .... uhmmmm.... backup CD's ? |
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new saw....  |
Nov.04.2007in the diagram below, i show 2 people carrying a (very heavy) washing machine up a flight of steep basement stairs..... with vectors indicating the downward force of the weight plus the overturning moment tending to rotate the washer clockwise in the plane of the diagram. based on the forces shown ....and treating this as a simple STATICS problem..... which lifter would you say is closer to death ? follow up question: as the washer yields to the forces shown and begins to rotate clockwise, the lifter on the top side grabs the top of the washer and tries to stop it, but this is physically impossible (for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion). at that point, the topside lifter joins with the washer and both of them begin tumbling down the stairs, and the problem moves from Statics into the realm of DYNAMICS. calculate the time (in micro-seconds) that the lower person has to live.  |
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The 5th of November
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the roses don't get it ..... it's November... but they are still popping up. the other bushes are turning color and making berries for the birds, but the roses won't quit. but i still buried their bases today to survive the coming cold weather.  |
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i couldn't help myself.... Amazon made me do it....
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This old photograph shows Godzilla's first attack on Tokyo (1954). Clearly it proves that Godzilla cannot possibly be an actor in a costume. The tower on the right is 450 feet tall, so Godzilla is about 350 feet tall ... much taller than any actor. |
i had no idea what DRM is.... but unfortunately now i am beginning to understand..... see mike's explanation.
all the stuff that used to be science fiction ... about the big powers crushing the rights of people.... is sadly the reality of today.
Nov.11.2007did a major behind-the-scenes hack of tikmark awkscripts page which was a secret disaster..... setting up to load up a bunch of scripts. figured out how to lock up a page very nicely using javascript ... it can be beaten, but not by a novice..... will use it to semi-secure pages and keep the amateurs out. the stumbling block was how to write a secure javascript when the reader has scripts turned off.... a puzzlement that kept me busy for a few hours. my brother cracked my first lock-up attempt in 2 seconds .... however his solution was unacceptably simplistic and doesn't count because he is not a computer wiz. mike and chris were at a funeral this weekend .... a friend's dad died in a hunting accident ... word is he fell out of a tree-stand... yet another reminder that we are all mortal.... very sad.... he was pretty young too. Nov.12.2007 spent the day re-hashing tikmark website for awk and tcl ... glad it's over ... i ended up bored.... hoping to look at it tomorrow and say "wow that's cool !". cold and lonely day today.... deb's working .... so i'm cooking bread and potatoes and soup tonight... that should help. started to write my memoirs..... but i can't remember what happened .... [/joke] mike, chris and andrea are coming for thanksgiving dinner .... that is perfect, and i am looking forward to it.... try to get at least one exotic food thing on the table.... we'll see.. |
from the new yorker .....
....sigh .....
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keeping in mind that i retired from GE 9 years ago, i still get e-mails from them reminding me of various behavioral (sp?) issues .... i got this one today, explaining how i should record my time next week... Due to the Thanksgiving holidays next week, all EED Kronos timecards for FW 46 are required to be approved by this Friday afternoon, Nov. 16th, 2007 @ 6:00 p.m. unless employees are required to work during the weekend. If you are required to work over the weekend, you should make prior arrangements with your manager to have your timecard approved no later than Sunday afternoon, Nov 18, 2007 @ 5:00 P.M.... EED time and attendance files are due to Corp Payroll earlier than our normal schedule due to the holidays. Thank you very much for your attention and cooperation... |
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Nov.16.2007finished rework of tikmark website. cleaned up all the Tcl/awk pages and sent request to the open directory project to catalog the site..... let's see if they do that. this project will go on forever, but thats good. then spent hours preparing a radiation and free convection lecture for tomorrow's class .... too boring realized that i have 2 godzilla movies i havent watched yet!!! how did that happen?  |
The n-puzzle is a classical problem for modelling algorithms involving heuristics. Commonly used heuristics for this problem include counting the number of misplaced tiles and finding the sum of the Manhattan distances between each block and its position in the goal configuration. Note that both are admissible, i.e., they never overestimate the number of moves left, which ensures optimality for certain search algorithms such as A*.
