It’s nice to have an adult son who, not only shares my love of coding, but also has inherited a practical sense of humor. Iteration #1: (my son) Person jack = new Person(’jack’); Person jill = new Person(’jill’);   if (jack.isGoingUphill() == true && jill.isGoingUphill() == true) { try { WaterWell well = new WaterWell(); […]

Back in 1999, the Y2K panic was reaching its peak.  Sadly, it was even starting to consume a few noted national Christian leaders (James Dobson included), which was a little disheartening.  And every church I knew had appointed some person within the congregation as the church’s Y2K representative, whether that person had any real knowledge […]

I am a linguist who takes grammar and language use very seriously. This is one of the few times I will stand on my pet-peeve soap box.  What caused this? <rant> It was a blurb of text in a document on the Free Software Foundation’s site.  “…as long as the user is able to authorize […]

The leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is currently on a South American tour and getting a lot of support from the socialist/communist Central American leaders there. Not really a surprise. His choice of destinations (Cuba, Venezuela) are well know adversaries of the United States, making him very welcome. There was one interesting comment during the […]

I received a wonderful email a few weeks ago about the Shakespeare Million Monkeys problem.  This problem is actually a statistical challenge embraced by the computing community, and solved with advanced computing techniques like parallelism.  The problem is described well in this Wikipedia article: Infinite Monkey Theorem (Wikipedia), Weasel Program, a similar concept (Wikipedia) There is also […]

Recently, I found myself mourning the loss of Steve Jobs, as millions of other people were. Unquestionably, he is one of the greatest influential business leaders of all time. He’s in a class with such influential leaders as Henry Ford (automobile), J. Paul Getty (oil), Cyrus Vanderbilt (railroads), J. P. Morgan (Steel), and others who […]

Recently, I needed to get my motorcycle license endorsement in Florida.  In the process, I learned some things about how states are handling driver’s licenses and records which are worth passing on. The state of Florida changed its laws in 2010 to require a beginner’s motorcycle safety course for anyone who wants to have a […]

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy. – Proverbs 11:10 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. – Acts 1:7 As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death spread across […]

I was using Google Maps to derive some lat/longs to show my son some examples of the results for a distance formula, and I noticed something odd. If you enter the address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC (the White House), it will display the location on the map ( link to results ). If you […]

I enjoyed watching a few games in the FIFA World Cup this year, but it was the final game between Spain and the Netherlands that reminded me of why soccer is not my favorite game to watch.  I personally see the game as a microcosm of a communist system, and here is why. It’s like […]