R_Edward
- Karma
- 263
- Created
- January 31, 2012 (14y ago)
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Senior Technical Analyst at Viking Electric Supply in Minneapolis. BSCS from University of Michigan, MSSE from University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN). 25 years experience in the IT industry, including 6 years in formal management.
It may or may not have been in customary informal usage for that long [citation needed], but it is still considered incorrect in strict, rigorous, formal usage. (Yes, this is on the cusp of changing, but for now, it's…
I was wondering: if it starves the fuel of oxygen, it stops the fuel from burning, even if it's still hot, yes? So if it could scale from frying-pan-level to house-level, at the very least, couldn't it be used to…
17 years ago, I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The common terms in use there were BTE and ITE, for "behind the ear" and "in the ear." Frankly, I thought the initialisms were poorly conceived. ITE is three…
I didn't realize there were non-outlets there. The prices are strange--I've bought a handful of items, and they were all stickered at or below nearby retail, but when they rang them up, the actual price was even lower.…
Fascinating. I had known for some time that oak trees will commingle their roots, forming an oak internet. In good times, this helps smaller trees become better established through resource-sharing with mature trees.…
The stuff that means the most to me would look like junk to anyone else: an origami crane, inexpertly folded; a used sock with buttons sewn on it; a styrofoam heart with tissue paper and googly eyes glued to it; a few…
>Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two people at a time. Not…
Although, if one's interest level were continuously poked into a particular memory location every time it changed, you might find that if you peeked when it piqued you would find that it also peaked. On an unrelated…
Plus, do those 50% of the people tend to get lost going from place to place in their daily lives? And do members of the other 50% have a need to be able to precisely locate any of those people without maps, addresses,…
Do you mean to tell me that those crates of my dad's 78 rpm records sitting in my basement might actually be worth something? I was thinking about playing them on a 33.3 rpm turntable into my PC, then using Audacity to…
Or at least Dr. Emmet Brown.
Hmmmmm... I have a knee-jerk reaction to initiatives with names like "Everyone can <fill in the blank>." Everyone may benefit from being exposed to the rudiments of whatever activity you're promoting, but it is clearly,…
When I'm grinding out Cobol or Algol code (yes, I am a dinosaur), I stick with 80 columns per line. Because, for better or worse, that's all my compiler sees. One compiler squawks when a line extends beyond Col 80,…
I looked at the nightly order-processing workflow for the regional retailer I worked for one time. I was gobsmacked to find that one section of it consisted of launching the same suite of 5-6 programs one time for each…
I would further refine this to, "Learning to code is like learning to write prose: Easy to learn, and easy to do, but not so easy to do well. Especially since 'well' is at least a little bit subjective." There are…
I share a first name with my father, so to save confusion, they called me by my middle name. If it were strictly a matter of social convenience, that would be fine. But you can't do anything in the modern world without…
I'm not sure we do our students any favors by suggesting that math is "magical."
First thought is that the link to "See how Dragdis works" takes you to a youtube video that shows pretty much the same thing as what plays in the page background. I don't think you need both. I like the concept, though…
I have a clipping from a small regional daily newspaper from the 60s. The headline reads, "U.S., Canada Rear Warning Staveal Sites of Radtions" which sounds ominous indeed. It took me several tries to realize that…
Aw, dangit! That right there is why I should always double-check my mental math with a calculator. I should have said 20.45 minutes, not 1.## seconds. Mea culpa. It's still not a huge savings, comparatively.
The fellow across the street from me saw the gutters going up on my house, and decided he just had to have gutters too. The contractor he called did a sales job on him, and he sprang for the so-called gutter helmets in…
Lastpass used to work like that for me. Now it causes me about as much hassle as it saves me. It does not do a wonderful job of handling multiple accounts on single sites; I frequently find multiple entries in the vault…
What it is, versus what it does?
Now that dimmable 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs have dropped into the sub-sawbuck range, I was examining the packaging at my local Home Despot store. I remarked to the salesman who asked to help me how the iconography on…
Some useful tips, yes, and some not-so-useful. The Unicode trick isn't exactly a Microsoft Word trick--it's more a Windows thing. The Hidden Calculator left me flat; I'd rather use the Windows Calculator, but YMMV. My…