The Blogannath Rolls On . . .

Why Can't An Employee Be An Employer?

2013-01-19T16:10:00.001-06:00

One of the popular stories making the rounds in the past week is about a computer programmer at an unnamed American company. It turns out that this programmer found a simpler way to get his work done than doing it himself: he outsourced his work to other programmers in China. And he managed it all well enough to get excellent annual reviews from his own employer. If you missed it, you can

The Republican Vision For America

2013-01-06T13:15:00.000-06:00

With the Republican party moving more and more to the right of the political spectrum, and the rise of the Tea Party movement pushing it along in that direction forcefully, one has to wonder what the ultimate Republican agenda for America is. If one analyzes their policy positions and priorities, I think their vision for America becomes quite clear. Without going into great detail, here are the

Digital Roots Revisited: When Not To Get Carried Away With Them

2012-10-13T20:25:00.000-05:00

In this earlier post, I talked about three properties of digital roots. In simple mathematical terms, if the digital root of a number a with respect to base n is expressed as Dn(a), I provided a proof of the following properties of digital roots: Dn(a + b) = Dn(Dn(a) + Dn(b)) Dn(a - b) = Dn(Dn(a) - Dn(b)) Dn(a * b) = Dn(Dn(a) * Dn(b)) While working with my children on some brain-teasers, I

Microsoft Access Tips & Tricks: Fun With Crosstab Queries

2012-06-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

In this earlier post on crosstab queries, I explained the basic syntax of crosstab queries in Access. I also provided several examples to illustrate how to use crosstab queries for the purpose it is commonly used for: create summary tables of data on two dimensions at row and column intersections. However, crosstab queries can also be used for some unconventional and downright fun purposes.

Why The US Should Spend Its Way Out Of This Recession . . . And Why It Won't

2012-06-19T21:38:00.000-05:00

So, the US Congress and the President are locked in a battle over the budget priorities that should take precedence right now. President Obama and the Democrats want to stimulate the economy with more government spending to create more growth and jobs so that the economy can grow vigorously and unemployment can be brought down. The Republicans want to hold the line on spending, and rein it in

Unclear On The Concept

2012-06-11T11:46:00.001-05:00

I was reading a news article over the weekend about how nutritionists are changing the popular view that you might suffer gross bodily harm if you don't drink 2 liters of water a day every day of your life. I was reading it primarily because I have never followed what seemed like bad advice from the beginning. I was a strong believer in responding to signals that a healthy body produces, such

Microsoft Access Tips & Tricks: Identify Runs Of Data

2012-03-09T21:21:00.006-06:00

In this post, I am going to develop an SQL query that will help you identify runs of data in your data tables. What do I mean by a "run of data"? Suppose you have a database in which you enter details of your child's little league soccer team. And each game has a game number, and an indication of whether your child's team won, tied or lost. A "run" in this case can be a set of consecutive

It Is Time For A Numerical Puzzler This Time!

2012-02-04T19:38:00.002-06:00

It is another week, so it must be time for another puzzler! I have gotten into this habit of getting stumped on a pretty regular basis by mathematical puzzles that my children bring home from school. And this time, it was a numerical puzzler brought home by my younger daughter. Let me share the puzzle with you first, and then I will tell you where I am having a problem with solving it.A list

I Have An Answer To My Question And A Solution To My Puzzle!

2012-01-20T17:31:00.006-06:00

In my previous post, I talked about a puzzle that was triggered by a geometry problem that my daughter brought home from school. The puzzle is quite simple, and involves midpoint polygons. These are inscribed polygons that are derived by joining the midpoints of the sides of the exterior polygons. The puzzle was to find the ratio of the perimeter of the midpoint polygon to the perimeter of the

An Interesting Geometrical Puzzle

2012-01-12T22:57:00.001-06:00

My daughter recently brought home a puzzle that had me scratching my head for a while before being able to solve it. Actually, the solution was quite simple once I figured it out, but it spawned off a different puzzle in my head that may be a little trickier. In any case, I have not figured out a solution to the spawned-off puzzle yet, but let me not get ahead of myself. Let me first tell you

Anti-Reflective Coatings Have Come A Long Way

2012-01-11T22:33:00.003-06:00

Anti-reflective coatings are used on optical lenses to increase the collecting of light, and to prevent stray light from bouncing around inside systems with multiple lenses. They have been around for a while now, having been invented in Germany in the 1930's. Anti-reflective coatings on corrective glasses make them look better, and also reduce glare, especially in high-contrast situations like

Quick Review Of The GE Disposall GFC720T 3/4 HP Garbage Disposer

2011-12-18T10:20:00.003-06:00

Last week, after a long and laborious struggle, my old garbage disposer finally died. It was an Insinkerator Badger model which had a 1/2 HP motor. It was installed about 5 or 6 years back, and it was never a great disposer. It worked OK, but it was loud, and got stuck quite frequently. It required my wife and I to unclog it pretty regularly with a plunger.Eventually, one fine day last week,

More Online Shopping Could Mean More Christmas Day Disappointments

2011-12-15T19:29:00.002-06:00

The Christmas shopping season is in full swing. Malls are full, and even worse, many mall parking lots are full too. I recently had a coupon to a store inside the mall, and I think spent more money on gas circling the parking lot for a spot than I saved by using the coupon! It is quite insane, without even taking into account the long lines in front of checkout counters and the mad rush of

My Daughter Gets Her Second Pair Of Glasses

2011-12-06T19:25:00.004-06:00

It has been almost 2 years since my daughter started wearing spectacles to correct her nearsightedness in one eye. As I wrote in an earlier post, I was able to cut the cost of getting her her first pair of glasses by ordering cheap eyeglasses from Zenni Optical.Zenni Optical sells directly to customers without using retail outlets or middlemen. There are minimal overheads because of this method

Beginner's Method For Solving A 3x3 Rubik's Cube (Part 2)

2011-12-03T08:53:00.008-06:00

You can find Part 1 of this guide here.Now onto step 4.Step 4: In this step, your aim is to solve the upper face (the green face in my case) to a cross. That is, I want to align the edges that involve green such that the green side is on the upper face of the cube. At the end of this step, you may not have those edge pieces placed correctly, but at least all their green faces will be on the

Beginner's Method For Solving A 3x3 Rubik's Cube (Part 1)

2011-12-03T08:50:00.002-06:00

The past couple of weeks, I have been doing research into methods for solving the Rubik's Cube. According to wikipedia, the Rubik's Cube is by far the world's best-selling toy ever. How such a cerebral toy became so popular is quite surprising to me. More than 30 years after the introduction of the first 3x3 cube, we now have cubes in several different dimensions from 2x2 all the way to 7x7.

Practice Makes Perfect

2011-11-26T14:56:00.004-06:00

Last week I wrote about how I learned how to solve the Rubik's Cube, and how I have been able to solve the cube in between 5 and 10 minutes. Well, I have been practicing more and more, and this has made it easier for me to solve the cube because the procedures have become more and more memorized. In addition, my times have improved considerably also.After all the practice of the past week, my

The Conquest Of The Rubik's Cube

2011-11-19T17:58:00.007-06:00

My daughter goes to school in a school bus. One day, she came back from school and told me that another student on her bus works on a Rubik's cube on the bus. She watches him solve the cube quite often, and her interest was piqued enough that she wanted to play around with a Rubik's cube herself.So, I took her to a store and got her a new Rubik's cube. I also sat with her and taught her the

Divisibility Rules For Powers Of 2 Redux

2011-11-12T14:48:00.006-06:00

In my previous post, I had come up with some simple divisibility rules for 16 and 32 (at least, simpler than simply checking divisibility by doing actual division on the last 4 or 5 digits of the number we need to check for divisibility). The rules involved splitting the last few digits of the number into chunks of various lengths, multiplying the chunks by different powers of 2, and then adding

Divisibility Rules For Powers Of 2

2011-11-05T18:07:00.003-05:00

In this earlier post, I wrote about some divisibility rules for various numbers. In that post, I mentioned that it is easy to derive divisibility rules for composite numbers by breaking them down into co-prime products, and then checking divisibility by each of those prime numbers.One problem that has been bothering me since that time is the problem of finding divisibility rules for powers of 2

I Have An Answer To My Question, But Not A Solution To My Puzzle

2011-10-26T20:27:00.009-05:00

Last week, I wrote up a blog post about starting with 7 sets of 11 numbers each (multiples of 10 from 0 through 100), and trying to find the number of ways to choose one number from each set such that the sum of the numbers is 100. I have spent time thinking about this problem, and doing some research on it on and off for the past week or so.Based on what I have seen so far, and what I have been

Update On My Bosch SHE33M02UC Dishwasher

2011-10-21T09:23:00.006-05:00

I wrote in an update last year about having second thoughts about my Bosch SHE33M02UC dishwasher. One of the problems I mentioned in that update was the fact that soap residue was building up in the dishwasher, and causing all kinds of problems. The finish of the inside walls was completely obscured by a thick layer of white soap scum, and the sprinkler arms were getting clogged with bits of

A Puzzle I Can't Get My Head Around

2011-10-15T14:25:00.002-05:00

I was working with a colleague of mine on a simple SQL query to create all combinations of values from 7 tables. This is a standard cartesian join between the tables, and it was taken care of relatively quickly. But this led to a puzzling situation the solution to which I still don't have.Let me set up the problem first. There are seven buckets of numbers. Each bucket has 11 numbers in it.

A Dozen Observations From My Job Search Experience

2011-07-04T17:11:00.004-05:00

In my previous post, I talked about my recently concluded job search, and how I found my new job through a strange combination of circumstances. I have not done a real job search since I finished graduate school more than 15 years back. In those days, the internet was still knee-high to a grasshopper, and snailmail ruled! Now, things have changed. Here are some observations from my first job

The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction!

2011-06-27T20:12:00.003-05:00

I have been silent for a long time now. I was involved in a challenging exercise that took me through a gamut of emotions over time, and I just did not feel like writing during that time. That exercise was a job search that has ended up with me acquiring a new job now. As they say, all is well that ends well, but until it was over, it was quite a roller-coaster ride.All of this started at