The Seanachai

I've been listening to podcasts since they came out. At first, i'd download them, cut them to CDs, and listen to them on my way to work and back. Since that was 2+ hours of driving a day (37,000 miles a year), i could listen to quite a bit. Much better than listening to the traffic report - which mostly told me that my last half hour was due to an accident that happened yesterday. But now i have an mp3 player. Or maybe three of them. And i wear headphones 24/7.

Patrick E. McLean's shows started out as bite sized 5-7 minute stories with extraordinarily great production values. Not just a good script. Not just a good mike. Not just good sound effects. But the whole thing just sort of sucks you in.

Now, i just put

http://www.theseanachai.com/feed/podcast/

into my long list of stuff to download. And every now and then, there's this totally off the wall incredible show. It's like Christmas.

I'm not the only one who likes it. Someone out at Bitstrips likes it too.

But the best is yet to come. You really have to check out SucceedInEvil.com. Patrick's novel is fabulous. I'm getting it daily at podiobooks. You can get it slower if you want.

But you should hop on over to the store and drop $12 for a subscription. I have no idea what you'll get. But it's worth it if you get nothing extra. In fact, it's too cheap by half.

Job Interviews

I recently wrote an extraordinarily brief summary of why i think job interviews are uniformly awful. I do computer programming, but it applies elsewhere. Here it is.

Programming is not a real time task or performance art. It's not a closed book test. Expect any such tests in interviews to fail. Worse, expect to miss great candidates because you've pissed them off, or they appeared less qualified.

Programmers need to have unusual skills. They often don't need to have common skills - such as being able to conduct themselves in an interview and sell themselves. Focus on what skills you need, and be prepared to accept that skills you don't need suck. Failure to follow this rule will prevent you from hiring the best talent.

Non technical managers have no way to evaluate technical candidates. IMO, they shouldn't be invited to interviews. In my experience, non-technical managers also have no way to evaluate productivity after hire. You can't do it on hours worked. And the non-technical manager doesn't have a clue how long a task should take, nor can they recognize quality (or lack of it).

The right way to hire a competent technical person is to have a competent technical person interview them. And that person much conduct the Turing Test. The Turing Test was devised as a test of artificial intelligence. The idea is that you can't define or describe intelligence, but if you are intelligent, you can recognize it in a machine. It sounds silly, but it's the best we have. And it works. Where i went to school (an engineering school) only one in four entering freshmen (all totally brilliant) graduated. And there didn't seem to be any way to tell who would make it. But of the 22 guys i hung out with starting in my freshman year, one transferred to another school and got his degree there, one had to do a summer session to get his degree, and one failed to graduate when his financial aid ran out. Four went on to get masters, and two got PhDs. And it's starting to become clear that some companies end up with uniformly high quality staff, and others don't. It's the conversation that does it.

Here's a sample poor conversation:

Q: Why did you leave your last position?
A: I was a contractor. The contract ended.
Q: How about before that?
A: I've been a contractor for twenty years. But in 1991, the company I was working for went out of business. It wasn't my fault.
(At this point I'm already thinking about my next interview. The question shouldn't have been why i had a run of short contracts, but rather why i worked one for six years. They assume it's due to not getting along with someone - typically a manager. But i could already tell that working for this guy wasn't going to be easy.)

When i was at Chrysler (and they were attempting to reduce staff), they sent out email with a list of questions you might be asked on your next interview, you know, to help you prepare. It was pages and pages of questions that you should never ask as an interviewer.

I have lots more on this topic. Perhaps i'll write a book.

Abiogenesis

We're just a little closer to figuring out how life got started. It could be wrong, but it appears we're on the right track. This could be big.

Have you run without being chased?

The craziest questions get asked on Yahoo! Answers. I've no idea where this one was leading. But here's where i took it.

Oh sure.

In Jr. High, cross country races were a mile and a half, so practices were 5 miles, every day. And they introduced the idea of "wind sprints". You'd run all out from one telephone pole to the next. Then you'd jog to the pole after that before running all out again. This jogging was described as "rest by jogging".

In High School, the races were 2.5 to 3.0 miles. My own school's course was 2.7 miles, went through the woods, and over the only hill around. Practices were 10 miles every day. It takes over 500 miles of running a summer to be at all competitive. More is better.

In college, the races were 5.0 miles. I was very slow. Clearly, no one was chasing me. I took nearly 25 minutes to run 5 miles. Barely under five minutes a mile. Practices were fifteen (15) miles, twice a day. That's right. 30 miles of running a day, every day. Except race days. On race days, you got to sprint for just five miles. My estimate is that i ran 2100 miles in ten weeks. That's about the distance from New York City to Salt Lake, Utah.

Kite

About a fifteen years ago, Dawn and i were driving from Tucson to LA. We'd just crossed the mountains. There was a wide open and fairly level prairie. Just this one huge tree. A simple fence ran along the road. There was a Bluebird on a fence post. I pulled over, went to the trunk, pulled out the 22x60 spotting scope and set it up. The Bluebird waited patiently for all this. And for maybe a minute sat there to let us get a look.

While Dawn was looking through the scope, the Bluebird took off and flew to the tree. In the mean time, i saw what looked like a gull flying down the mountain into the field. I said out loud, "What's a gull doing out here?" Dawn stood there unable to speak, and barely able to get binoculars up. It was a Swallow-tailed Kite.

The kite circled the tree once, then landed in it. Apparently, it didn't see the Blue bird. Apparently, being bright blue doesn't mean that you get eaten whenever a hungry kite comes by. The Bluebird didn't move. After a bit, the kite took to the air and decided to hunt for something on the ground. This was done by flying to what appeared to be an arbitrary spot to hover. And by hover, i mean that it appeared that it's head was somehow locked in an invisible vice maybe 40 feet in the air. The wings moved, other things moved, but the head did not. You could point the scope at the head. The tripod didn't move, and neither did the head. And after a bit, the kite would suddenly make a dramatic turn, and maybe 50 feet over, it would lock it's head there. What a show. Magnificent. After maybe twenty minutes, the kite went over the field, harassed a flock of Starlings, then flew back up and over the mountain.

Screwed

My wife teaches violin. This becomes important to this story later. She asked me if it was possible to make longer screws into shorter screws. "Sure", i said. But later it wasn't so clear.

In the mean time, the head board on the bed had come unglued, and the wood screws were stripped. Apparently, it had come apart before, stripping at least two of the screws, and it was put back together with glue and screws. One of the four didn't match the others. Clearly a substitution had been made. Now, two were stripped, and one of those two was bent. I did what i always do. I looked around the house for something that might work. In this case, it was a scrounge through my old wood screw collection. I found two screws that were slightly larger diameter. One was too long, and would poke through the other side of the head board. So i got out a hack saw and unceremoniously cut it shorter. With four screws that should work, i put it back together. It held for a couple days.



Clearly, what was needed was some sort of positive structure. Countersunk wood screws weren't going to do it. I went to the hardware store, bought four 2 inch 1/4-20 carriage bolts with nuts, for about $5. Now, 2 inch bolts are way too long. But the hardware store doesn't sell bolts exactly the length i need. So, i rummaged around the house for a way to cut them to length. I don't have a vice that will do it for me. I have a vice, but i don't really have a work bench. So i cobbled together this contraption. The idea is to cut them with the hack saw. There's a little overhang on the kitchen counter. A scrap 2x4 that i use as a back for drilling was clamped to it to keep the saw away from the counter. Vice grips could hold the screw. A big C clamp i use to fix wooden chairs holds this stack together.

I'm pictured here sawing with my left hand, and holding the end of the screw with my right. I'm right handed, so this doesn't really work. But what did work is to start sawing with my right hand on the saw, and as the screw is nearly cut through, i reach around with my left hand to keep the remaining bit of the screw straight. There's no way to get a picture of this. I should also note that the vice grip is clamped onto the little bit of the screw that i'm throwing out. The vice grip totally mashes the threads. It's very important that the final threads aren't mashed. And that's why my right hand had to do the saw. It's not that my right hand is oh-so-much better coordinated. It's that despite pushups and curls carefully matched for both arms for years, my right arm is stronger. When the saw catches, my right arm keeps moving, where my left doesn't.



After the screw is cut, there's a jagged end to it. I'm holding a file on the block of wood so it won't move, and moving the screw up and down the file. This de-burrs the screw, but also makes it so a nut can thread onto the end. And the result for the head board is that on the outside, the metal caps show. On the inside, the bolts barely stick out from the nuts. They have no way of sticking into the mattress.



Now, you might think that all this cutting and filing will heat up the screw, and possibly even burn your hand. Iron conducts heat quickly, right? But stainless steel does not. And oddly, i didn't learn this in Materials Science in school. I learned it from my brother the welder.



Back to the violin teacher. She gave me a bag of screws, with one dark one. "Could you cut these screws down to the length of the dark one?" So i used the contraption from the head board job. And now there's a bag of smaller screws. But an hour's worth of work was able to take a cheap bag of screws and make them into the custom screws that were desired. They're low quality because they're not very uniform. The heads are a little different than the master. The lengths are a little shorter or a little longer. But they may be good enough. And who knows where one might get the real McCoy?



But good enough for what? These are tuning screws. You screw them down, and they push a lever, which pulls on the violin string. There are tuning pegs that hold the other end of each string. And you use them to get the pitch of the string close. But they're not good enough to get the vibration frequency close enough. The tuning screws are what you use to get the frequency to that last few cents (hundredths of a half tone). And this exercise is all about having the sense to save a few cents.

Downy

I was sitting in my living room, and happened to see a bird that wasn't one i see every day out the window. I've not done much birding of late, but i picked up a handy pair of binoculars and looked. It's clearly a female Downy Woodpecker. And she went up and down the two crab apple trees in the median that divides my street. I went back upstairs and got the tripod. Then i went back up and got the camera. I took 187 pictures by holding the point and shoot camera to one eyepiece of the 10x50 binoculars, while sitting in my living room. So, i'm taking shots through the window glass. Usually, that's such a bad idea. Window glass is not what opticians call optic quality. There are all sorts of defects, which give you distortion. And you can get glare. And, the camera may attempt to focus on it. But the camera usually focused on branches if the shot was out of focus. Here's one of them.
You can tell that she's a female. The male has this unmistakable red spot on the back of his head. The view directly through the binoculars is much better than this picture. The detail is better. The color depth is better. The focus is way better. You're seeing the bird in this shot, dot for dot, cropped from the much bigger original image. All other shots are cropped and scaled smaller. This blog is only 400 pixels wide. You might think this shot was taken in the woods. But the background is in fact the neighbor's house. This is clear in the uncropped original shot. So you think you can't get wilderness shots here, but apparently, you can. She put on a great show, and i got this other shot.

This is at the top of the tree, with the gray sky behind her. She paused a bit, then flew to the other tree, where she then continued to put on a great show. Of course, that's my perspective. She was just looking for things to eat. She kept poking at the tree, though never seemed to do it any damage. It was an hour. She left after combing both trees. I hope she got something out of it. Maybe she'll come back. But she wasn't interested in the leftover fruit still hanging from the tree. The cardinals and squirrels eat it, and when there's snow on the ground, so do the robins. And there was a robin out too.

You can tell he's a male American Robin. His head is darker than the back and wings. The female would have the head the same shade as the back and wings. And he was digging in the dirt under this bush. He came out into the sunshine only a couple times. He'd hop up completely into the bush when someone would walk by, especially with a dog. Often the robins are wary but hang out in the middle of the lawn. The snow was melting, but the ground was probably still frozen. Robins around here migrate south if they can't find anything to eat. Many stay all year round.

I'm guessing that this is a female House Sparrow. I didn't snap this shot of her, per se. She appeared in this shot with the robin. I didn't see her through the binoculars with my eyeballs at all. Examination of all these shots reveals a bird nest i'd never noticed as well. European House Sparrows are not sparrows at all. Genetically, they're finches. They have that short finch like beak. But it's too late to rename it a House Finch. We already have a bird called a House Finch. House Sparrows are incredibly common around here. This one also seemed to be uncharacteristically shy. Didn't care one way or the other about the robin. Just unusually skittish. She didn't stay long.

Sign this form

Instead of fax, a recruiter sent me a Word doc form to print, sign, scan and send. Easy. The way it should have been decades ago. I've been waiting a long time for this. Oh, sure, MS Word isn't an open standard, but OpenOffice reads it just fine.

But first, my printer's black ink sprays everywhere. The company logo was blue. It came out fine. So, blue works fine. So i set the font to blue, to get clean output. Printed it and signed it.

My scanner wasn't working. It's not new, i've had it for a decade or so. It's a UMAX Astra 1200S. I had to clear junk off of it, plug it in (the wall wart died years ago, so it gets very clean 12 volt DC power from the computer, so it's been on all this time. I needed to plug it into the SCSI interface), install a driver (well, user level scanning software), reboot, and tell my scripts where it is.

Then, after the scan, i converted it to black & white, increased the contrast to darken it, then converted it to jpeg for email. Piece of cake.

So, now i have a working scanner, right? Well, after i find a place for all that junk. I can't just throw it all out. Some of it is stuff i'm supposed to scan.

Valentine's day

The official joke for February is as follows:

Two antenna met on a roof top. (That's where they hang out.)

And they fell in love.

And they got married!

...Well, the wedding, frankly, wasn't very good.

But the reception was excellent!

Plugs

I changed the plugs and wires on this 1999 Subaru Forester. These are the tools i needed for this delicate job. Yes, that's a hammer next to the very long scissors on the right. The box in the middle had the new wires. The new wires are now on the car. The old wires are to the right of the box. The new spark plug boxes are red, and are to the upper right by the white phone. The bright orange handle belongs to my newest favorite tool. It's got a flexible shaft, and a very strong magnet at the end. My previous big job, changing the battery in my 2000 Saturn (pictured to the left), netted me some very expensive metric ratchets. One ratchet covers 8, 9, 10 and 12 mm bolts. And it came in handy for this job on the battery and the windshield washer reservoir. Very slick. I have an engineering degree. I would not have signed off on this design. These are spark plugs.



This is the passenger side of the engine. The thing with the robot arm is a spark plug wire. There are two on each side. So the other one on this side is behind, and difficult to spot. And they come directly out of the side of the engine. In fact, this 4 cylinder engine has the cylinders horizontal, facing away from each other. I'd call it a "flat four". It sounds good, but nobody seems to know if it's a real name or not.

It's hard to see in the picture, but the robot arm ends in this big black knob. If you pull on the knob, this long tube thing comes out of the engine. It's flexible and comes right out. It's maybe 6 or 7 inches long. No plug. Where's the spark plug? There's no room to put anything else into the hole.

That thing to the left marked "Subaru" is the air filter. To get at the plugs on this side, you have to remove the air filter. No problem. Two clips and it's off. Well, the cover is off. You remove the filter, which is brand new. Then you can see the two bolts that hold it down. I used a socket wrench and the 3/8" socket. Why it has an English bolt is pretty much beyond me. Most everything else is metric. Pop these two bolts out, and the whole air filter is out. Then you can get at the plugs, right?

So you put your 3/8" spark plug socket into the hole... where it disappears forever. You can't get your finger into the hole to get it out. So you run to the internet for instructions. You discover that you need some long needle nose pliers with a bend, you need a strong magnet on a stick, you need a 3" socket extender (have one), you need a 1 1/2" socket extender (never heard of one), you need a ratchet wrench that has a hinge by the head so it can flop around, and so on. The guys at the auto parts stores have never heard of a 1 1/2" socket extender. So you go to a dedicated tool store, and pick up a set of extenders, that happens to include one. It also has a 3". It turns out you need two 3" extenders and the 1 1/2" extender. The magnet on the flexible arm has the bright orange handle. Very cool. Dropped tools and bolts can be fished out without having to duck under the car, and without having to see where they fell. Even the heaviest of tools can be picked up off the driveway without bending over. The bright orange handle is hard to miss in the clutter of the engine. Amazing. I'll be using it again.

So, you fish out the socket. When it's most of the way into the hole, you add a 3" extender to it. You fish that most of the way into the hole and add the 1 1/2" extender. You fish that almost all the way into the hole and add your new flexible ratchet wrench. And you feel the socket latch onto something. You assume it's a spark plug, and unscrew it. It comes out. And you disassemble the train of extenders and stuff as you remove it. Use the nifty magnet to pull out a spark plug if you need to.

The driver's side plugs required that you first remove the battery and the windshield washer reservoir. The batter is two small corroded bolts on the hold down clamp, and each terminal had a bolt to remove. The plus (+) side has so much corrosion that you wonder why it still works. But there's a bolt a bit away that's easy to remove, and disconnects everything. And the windshiled washer reservoir comes off with two easy bolts. Don't have to disconnect the tubes and wires, just set it out of the way. Then the two spark plugs come out as before, only you use a second 3" extender instead of the 1 1/2". It has to do with how much room you have.

It may be hard to see, but there's a hammer, and a large pair of scissors. I used them both. The robot cover on the new spark plug wires was longer than the original, and needed to be cut. The hammer was needed for some chiseling near one of the battery terminals to see the nut that you don't need to remove. That's corrosion you're chiseling.

The car has 173,000 miles, and belongs to my wife. The plugs were not corroded. They were not fouled with oil. They were not covered in carbon. They were just worn down. Instead of a 0.045 gap, they had twice that. The center stub was nearly gone. Every evidence is that they'd never been changed before. The car was running rough, especially at highway speed, and now purrs like a kitten. Well, a kitten that can cruise at 70 MPH down the highway for hours.

My wife's mechanic quoted $383. $93 of that was plugs and wires. The plugs and wires i bought totaled $41. I also bought $10 of transmission fluid. So, we saved about $330. Or we would have, except that the plugs were very difficult to get to, and i end up buying $50 in tools. Now the mechanic's quote also included a fuel filter and a pcv valve, and of course, labor for all of the above. The car didn't turn out to need a fuel filter or pcv, so those expenses were not required.

It was roughly five hours of labor, including trips to stores, internet searches and such. It was 22 degrees out when i started, and 30 degrees when i finished. The weather was clear, except that as i finished, it started snowing. Was it worth it? I think it was. And not just for the sense of accomplishment. And not just for the savings. The savings were around $300. And for five hours of work, that's $60 per hour - tax free. But one of the things you don't get when you have the mechanic work on it is what the diagnosis was. It might have been the PCV or the fuel filter, and you'll never know. All you know is all this stuff got replaced, and it works now. You've no idea which part, if any, did it. It was, in fact, the 2nd spark plug. That's the one for cylinder number 3. And the plugs themselves don't show this. They're all very similar. So you'd want to replace them all at the same time, because this job would just come up for each of the others in turn real soon. And you replace the wires because you already bought them, and it was such a pain to get at them, you might as well do it. And, these wires have an active component. Right down there where they connect to the spark plug is a coil. That's right, a coil right on the spark plug wire. Never heard of such a thing. I'd be fascinated to learn what problem it solves.

How to stop procrastinating for tests??????

On Yahoo Answers (Y!A) the questioner asks for Real world, tried and true solutions please!!! My answer follows.

I was going to join the Entire World Procrastinator's Society (EWPS - pronounced "oops"), but haven't gotten around to it.

About studying and homework. Convince yourself that it's stuff you like, and it's exciting, and you can't wait to do it. Lie if you have to. Humans have amazing powers of self deception. After no time at all, you'll believe it. You can do this socially too. Get a bunch of your friends, as a running joke, or whatever, to talk about your classes and exams especially as being so much fun. Rowlings has some great ideas that she uses with Hermione in her books, if you need them.

I find that it's not the work, which i enjoy, but starting it that's painful. Once i get going, i don't want to stop. Part of that is fear of not finishing. So again, you can lie to yourself. In homework you can tell yourself that "I'll just do one problem". Or, "There's lots to study for this test, but just now, I'll tackle orbital mechanics in two dimensions". Then add scope (more stuff) as you get into it. Do one more thing.

A spoon full of sugar doesn't seem to work for me. It just makes me fatter. Julie Andrews is clearly responsible for the fattening of America, herself being so thin and all, could afford it. And i don't recall her taking any herself, now that i think of it. Evil, evil, evil.

What part of computer science is easiest?

Some of computer science is pure math. I took a masters level operating systems course from a prominent professor. He'd done some great theoretical work involving page replacement, and gained a great reputation. But it wasn't at all obvious that he'd ever written anything, much less an operating system. The course was a disaster. But my point is that there are many things that are sort of part of computer science that have little to do with computers, and you can make a living at the highest levels of computer science without knowing a heck of a lot about computers.

I'd say of the bits of computer science i've done for a living, like building computers from parts, hardware troubleshooting, programming, requirements gathering, estimating, software architecture, software maintenance, testing, documentation, systems administration, teaching, database administration, network administration, web server administration, posting web content, and software repository administration that building computers from parts is easiest. Software maintenance is probably hardest, especially if you didn't write it.

I'm often asked what i do for a living. I answer "something with computers". I get blank stares. I like to be understood, and don't care for blank stares. But sometimes, i get the followup question: "What, specifically, do you do?". And i answer "Something. Anything. I do whatever they want me to do." If they continue again, i spit out a dozen unrelated industry keywords and ask if they know what they mean. If the answer is "yes", then i say that i do those things. My motto seems to be that my job is so secret, not even i know what i'm doing.

Snow

I'm considerably less enamored with winter today than i was yesterday. But while i was out there shoveling, one of my neighbors down the street got stuck with her car inches from freedom. Her front wheels were caught in the hard packed snow that the plow had left at the end of her driveway. So despite having 90% of the car in the road, the car refused to go anywhere. She's a good deal older than i am, so i walked over, cleared out the snow behind both front wheels, and then another neighbor and i pushed the car into the street while she drove.

She was grateful, but i really hope she doesn't get me something for Christmas.

Me? I'm nearly 50. I hope to shovel snow for another 30 or 40 years. If i don't, i hope it's because Global Climate Change has made it moot. It's not that i'm rooting for it to get warmer. That's a disaster i seriously don't wish for. It's that the alternative explanation is that my health won't allow it. And i'd rather live to be a healthy old bastard who shovels his own snow, helping out the younger 70 year old women down the street as needed, thank you very much.

I got to listen to quite a few podcasts while waiting for the driveway and walk to become cleared. For example, a recent study showed that humor is contagious, out to the third degree of separation. IMO, that's much better than passing around the flu. And, i've managed to do better than usual in that regard this season, so far. That tidbit is from Scientific American. This is a show that doesn't insult my intelligence, always has something interesting to say, and does it with a bit of humor. And, it's free for download. What more could you possibly want?

My biggest problem wasn't a sore back or arms. It was 20 degrees F (-6 degrees C). My biggest problem was overheating. My feet were hot in my new boots and wool knee sox. My thighs were a bit chilly, because jeans aren't so hot after all, my head was warm with hat over hood. But i probably shouldn't have also had the sweater on. My solution was to take my gloves off. I didn't just do that for the picture. Nothing wrong with my circulation.

Less Filling

Went to the dentist first thing this morning and got a filling. As first appointment of the day, there was no waiting. My tongue is about the size of New Jersey now. When i need to do something, i now have to check if it can be done while having a tongue that big. I can type, apparently.

After he took the needle out, i said with enthusiasm, "I like needles!". Then i added that i just wanted to say something he hadn't heard before. He said he doesn't hear it often.

I probably should have had breakfast first. But i was in such a hurry to get there on time. Can't eat now. Hey - it's a new diet! Weight loss is guaranteed! Or is it wait loss?

I woke this morning with sore neck muscles. I was reminded of the Steve Wright line.

When I woke up this morning, my girl friend asked me, "Did you sleep well?" I said, "No. I made some mistakes."

Science Fair Projects

Got a science fair coming up? Need ideas? Try these sites:

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/

http://www.cool-science-projects.com/

http://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral/

http://scienceclub.org/scifair.html

http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/category0.html

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/index.html

http://www.freesciencefairproject.com/

http://www.ipl.org/div/projectguide/

http://www.isd77.k12.mn.us/resources/cf/SciProjIntro.html

http://www.picadome.fcps.net/lab/sci_fair/science_fair.htm

http://www.sciencebuddies.org

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/

http://www.sciencefair-projects.org/

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/

http://www.scienceproject.com/

http://www.super-science-fair-projects.com/



This just in:

How to make a telescope!

What spider is this?

This spider is prowling my basement. Any ideas what it might be?

I don't have arachnophobia. These things eat other things that would otherwise bug me.

Darn - the image is clipped. Use your browser to "view image" to see more of it, like the whole quarter.



Best guess so far - a Dark Fishing Spider.

Spaced Out

This question was posted to the Astronomy and Space section of Yahoo! Answers. I've copied the question verbatim. There were several replies complaining about spelling and that it was the wrong category. Such a wasted opportunity for "Best Answer" of an easy question. Then, i've copied my reply, verbatim.

I juz need sum help!! sumone??

okaii so ive been wiv my bf for ova 2 yrs now nd hes been acting wired l8ly so i asked him wat was up i ended up geting out of him that he doesnt feel the same neymore hes realli confused bout it all i dunno nd he says he doesnt wanna brake up yet.. were giving this week end ago 2 c wat happends but im so confused i juz love him so much i dun wanna loose him plz advice sum1 plz!!

This is Astronomy and Space, so expect some weird, even hostile answers.

We'll approach this as an engineering problem. What are the requirements? Clearly, you want to attract and keep your boyfriend. There are three things you'll likely want to do.

First, you want to be good looking. An attractive appearance is a proxy for health. You want him to think that you are healthy. Cut to the chase - ask him to start exercising with you. It could be walking, biking, running, swimming, whatever. And it would get you both off your butts doing nothing. Just making out isn't going to firm up your relationship.

Second, you want to appear smart. To do that, you have to pass some good ideas by him. This is hard, so one way to do that is to ask lots of people for advice. Yahoo! Answers isn't bad for this. You'll have to decide what is good, however. And, as has been mentioned, you might want to invest some time in spelling and grammar. You may have great spelling and grammar and are just doing this for style. How would i know?

Third, you want to appear happy. It can be such a drag to be with someone who is cranky or demanding. Be happy and and avoid being a nag. Learn some jokes. More than half of all jokes fail miserably, so you need a bunch of them. Learn what kinds of jokes he likes. But if you become a nag, your relationship is destined to the death spiral. He'll withdraw, you'll want more, and nag more.

Best of luck, and clear skies.

Is it right time now to start to bicycle on the road?

No. It was time at least three decades ago.

When i lived in Boston, the bicycle was by far the fastest way to get around town. When i lived in Philadelphia, the bicycle was by far the fastest way to get around town. Philadelphia police had several officers patrol by bike. I would say it's quickest in Detroit, but Detroit has nowhere that i want to go.

But if you haven't started biking around town, it's a good time to start. If everyone biked or walked places, there would also be health benefits - reduced diabetes, heart disease, better sex lives, and so on.

(more Yahoo! Answers).

Yahoo Answers

I've been goofing around with Yahoo! Answers of late. This is a sort of general forum where people can ask questions, and other people can answer them. I already have a Yahoo! email account, so it was totally painless to start.

I've no idea why i started. It's not like Yahoo! Answers is new. Nor is that i'd never heard of it before.

There's a section under Science and Math called Astronomy and Space. I do astronomy. Some of the questions looked easy. For example, every few minutes, someone asks if the world is going to end in 2012. The Mayan calendar flips over then - sort of like we did going from 1999 to 2000. Did we survive? There are no Mayans left to flip the calendar over. And someone has been saying that there is a planet out there, Planet X, that is going to strike the Earth in 2012. (We'd have seen it by now.) There's some other nonsense too. After typing in my answer for this a half dozen times, i started a file for frequently asked questions. Someone even asked people not to ask this question. That held the flow back for... less than 20 minutes.

When you ask a question, Yahoo! Answers generates links to similar questions. It's hard to imagine that you wouldn't notice that your exact question was already asked - and has answers - well before you get through the asking process. These people just want to ask for whatever reason. They aren't going to be deterred.

So, one day, i ran out of questions i could answer. It's not that somehow the river ran dry. It's just that Yahoo! doesn't let people answer an infinite number of questions. Once you start answering questions and they get picked or voted as the best, then Yahoo! Answers lets you answer more per day.

So what kinds of questions do i ask? Well, there are two kinds. First, i ask questions for which i think there isn't an answer. Second, i ask questions that will evoke some humor. Third, i ask questions for which i already know the answers. Despite these strategies, i've managed to learn something. Highly unexpected, but welcome.

Here's an example question - though i posted it under mathematics.

Why is the line at the bank that i pick always the longest?

There are five lines at the bank. They're more or less the same length. I do my best to pick the shortest one. I note who is at the end of each of the other lines. All four are served before i am. Should i apologize to the people in front of me for picking their line - thus slowing their service?

I'm hoping it's funny because it's common experience. After all, you only have a 20% chance of picking the fastest lane, so most of the time at least one other line is faster. You feel that despite your best efforts, there is no justice in the Universe - someone got ahead of you that shouldn't have. Everyone feels like that. But i've added another twist. The other four end-of-line people get served first. Is that fair? Am i such an intrinsically unlucky person that i should apologize to the rest of my line for slowing them down?

Of course the four other end of line people really were in front of you. They should be served before you. It's the people behind them that are in any way behind you. So, the answer is "no". The Universe works the way it should up to this point.

Yahoo! Answers are nearly a complete waste of time. It's the blind following the blind. Neither the questioners nor the answerers have much in the way of a clue what they're saying. And i'm not just talking about the ones who can't type. Is the best answer from the novices any good?

And what if you really know what you're talking about? What good does it do to say that the Earth won't be destroyed? The only help you can give seems to be when the student has copied the question verbatim from their homework. (I've asked people to tell me where they're going to school - but no responses yet.) And if you know the answer and bother to give it, aren't you bursting with pride?

Perhaps the right thing to do is to write a Yahoo! Answers bot. This bot will have the answers to a bunch of questions, and when one of them gets posted, it will spit out the canned answer. The trick here is to recognize that the question matches an answer. Step two would be to let the bot scan all the questions and answers, figure out what the best answers were, and feed those as canned answers in the future. It might be fun.

Just three more days to answer my question on Yahoo! Answers. Feel free to copy and paste from this blog entry.

New car

In 1986, i was working for Harvard University. I took the subway (the T) to work.

One night, i had a dream. I dreamed that instead of taking the T home, i got on a bus instead. There's a bus station right there at Harvard Station. No purpose in mind, just a whim. And instead of going South, i went North up Massachusetts Ave. The bus made many stops and people got on and off as one might expect. At one of these stops, i got off. Again, no purpose in mind, just a whim.

I walked further North down the sidewalk. There were lots of businesses on both sides of the street, but nothing of interest. This didn't bother me.

Then i came across a Chevy dealership. For no apparent reason, i walked into the showroom. A salesman walked up to me and asked me if he could help. I said, "No, i'm just looking around." He dangled some keys and asked me if i wanted to test drive a corvette. "It's free", he said. I said, "Sure", and drove the bright red car around the block and back to the showroom.

I got out, and he said, "I can let you have this car for no money down." I thought "no way", but signed the papers on a whim.

The drive home included a really fun bit on the Jamaica Way. It has all these small hills and turns. All dreams should be this much fun. The trip ends coming down my street. There's a parking spot that's very close to my house, and just after a driveway, so it's a smooth shot to park.

The car comes to a stop. I pulled out the key and looked forward. Right there is my 1978 Dodge Omni. I think, "That's right. I already have a car!".

That's when i woke up. No alarm. It was daylight. My bedroom was on the first floor, facing the front of the house. I got up and looked out the window. My Omni was exactly where it was in the dream. And behind the Omni was an empty parking space. It was a very vivid dream. I had the distinct notion that my brand new corvette had been stolen.