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* You are viewing the archive for November, 2005
Funny joke/urban legend
Check out all the identical stories on google.
Now that’s time management
“I decided to challenge myself by setting a goal to see if I could graduate [from college] in only three semesters.” His techniques are like speed reading, except they’re for “speed life.”
His secret? Amphetamines. Also, he is vegan.
Google Hiring Practices
The book “Good to Great” profiles several companies that consistently earned several times what the market for their type of product was over a period of at least something like 14 years.
One of the practices they found was that companies would hire for the people, rather than for the job. For example, rather than WFU hiring a system administrator, we would hire a good analytical person. That person can then transition jobs easily.
Furthermore, they found many companies that just hired whenever found someone good, regardless of whether they needed someone. Some “great” companies hired a ton of … Continue Reading
Exercise and Exploitation
I have been jogging for the last week or so, at Wake Forest. No one else uses the work-out room I’m in.
Geeky me, I decided to watch Univision while I jog, so I can learn Spanish. Well, so far I have basically watched four programs: “¡Qué Locura!”, a candid-camera show that comes on at 6 PM between two different news shows, “Rebelde”, a soap opera where women pretending to be high school girls dress up in no clothes, “Vida TV” a reality contest show where men who answer questions incorrectly make their wives’ hair get cut off, and … Continue Reading
Bowling
Jeff Backus, his brother Tim Backus, Chad Bell, Rob West, and I have been bowling.
I bowled over 100 yesterday, two games in a row: 104 and 101. I bowled the 101 because I hit a “X9/” in the last frame (a 20).
The previous week, I was trailing Rob by 15 points at the end of the ninth frame but bowled a “XX8″ (28) in the last frame. It was nutty.
The Prisoner to be remade
See Slashdot. They’re going to make a new TV series out of The Prisoner!
Snowflakes III
Professor Libbrecht from Caltech was kind enough to explain the snowflake problem to me, and to give me permission to quote him.
Let’s make the numbers a bit smaller to make things clearer. Say a snowflake contains just 10,000 molecules, and these lined up in a straight line. Most of these are ordinary water molecules, but let’s say 100 are heavier isotopes.
Then the question is, how many ways can you arrange these 100 heavier molecules in this linear crystal? Well, the first heavy molecule could go at position 1, or 2, or any position up to number … Continue Reading
Battle for Wesnoth
I have been playing Battle for Wesnoth all this week. I’m not very good at strategy games, but I’ve been playing the same levels several times with different tactics to see what works.
Well, tonight I did what I do with every computer game that haunts me: I cheated on it and won. Now that I know the whole story I’m not really going to be interested in learning the strategy, which is really actually what I want. I don’t like getting addicted to games.