Posts in 'blog'

President Trump's Appointees

From Twitter:

@Matthops82: Donald Trump's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be Cap'n Crunch

@JamieKrock: Trump's Secretary of Education will be Mr. Ed.

I chimed in with:

Donald Trump's Surgeon General will be Doctor Who

Then I got to thinking, "Why should we leave it there?" So here's …

Bitmap from Geometry

Someone posted a challenge at the Programming Puzzles and Code Golf Stack Exchange site and I decided to take a crack at it. My first approach was to break the image down into 24 bitplanes and scan each of those for solid rectangular regions that could then be drawn to …

Messing with Scammers: The Next Generation

Back in October I posted about having fun with fake Microsoft support technicians making unsolicited calls to fix my poor broken computer.

Apparently they never learn. They called my house yesterday while I was at work, and then they called again today while I was home. So I decided to …

Pudding and Mouse

My wife shared with me a link to Amazon for a silicone petite loaf baking pan in which she was interested.

Product listing for a silicone petite loaf pan.

The most notable part is the brief description text to the right of the product picture:

Product description text.

Please note: "Can also be used for cold treats like pudding, *mouse*, or …

Preserving PHP Variables

I was working on a little PHP script for a web site I'm developing. I wanted to briefly use a global variable, but I didn't want to risk overwriting any existing value in that variable. Normally one mitigates this problem by picking an obscure variable name that is unlikely to …

Minimum Wage and Unemployment

First, the summary of my analysis of the minimum wage on unemployment: You are 12.4% more likely to be unemployed if you live in a state that has a minimum wage above the federal minimum wage. That includes 19 states and the District of Columbia.

By considering states that …

Replacement to System("color")

Some time ago I wrote a little code example as an answer to a question at the Stack Overflow website. The original question and answers can be found at the following link: Replacement to System("color")

In short, the person wanted a simple function that would change the entire background …

Evil Rich Corporations and Poverty Stricken Employees Part 2

I came across a story today of a woman who works at a McDonald's restaurant (I don't know if it is a corporate owned store or a franchised location). In any case, she makes somewhere around $9 per hour and is having a hard time supporting herself and her daughter …

Age of Majority

A question was asked on Facebook about whether the law in Utah should be changed to prohibit tobacco purchases until age 21. It is currently 19 in Utah. One person brought up it'll never work, underage smoking will still take place. Another chimed in with the old "if they're old …

Laundry

Fairly soon after my wife and I were married, I resumed doing my own laundry. I don't do my wife's because she's really picky about how things are done. I'm not nearly as picky for the most part, but I do have one thing I'm picky about: I prefer not …