Viewing profile — R_Edward

I'm exactly the same way. I have a weekly gig that occasionally gets recorded and thrown up on the web. I hate watching the video, because whenever I do, all I hear are my own mist…

It may or may not have been in customary informal usage for that long [citation needed], but it is still considered incorrect in strict, rigorous, formal usage. (Yes, this is on th…

I was wondering: if it starves the fuel of oxygen, it stops the fuel from burning, even if it's still hot, yes? So if it could scale from frying-pan-level to house-level, at the ve…

17 years ago, I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The common terms in use there were BTE and ITE, for "behind the ear" and "in the ear." Frankly, I thought the initialisms wer…

I didn't realize there were non-outlets there. The prices are strange--I've bought a handful of items, and they were all stickered at or below nearby retail, but when they rang the…

My town just built a "Premium Outlet Mall." I was dubious of the wisdom of that plan, but I just visited it last weekend, and it seems to be pretty popular, even with the Mall of A…

Fascinating. I had known for some time that oak trees will commingle their roots, forming an oak internet. In good times, this helps smaller trees become better established through…

On my first day at one job, HR called me into a conference room to review my compensation package and everything. The HR rep wrote a number on a Post-It and handed it to me, saying…

The stuff that means the most to me would look like junk to anyone else: an origami crane, inexpertly folded; a used sock with buttons sewn on it; a styrofoam heart with tissue pap…

>Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately, they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross without one. The bridge is only strong enough…

Although, if one's interest level were continuously poked into a particular memory location every time it changed, you might find that if you peeked when it piqued you would find t…

Plus, do those 50% of the people tend to get lost going from place to place in their daily lives? And do members of the other 50% have a need to be able to precisely locate any of …

Do you mean to tell me that those crates of my dad's 78 rpm records sitting in my basement might actually be worth something? I was thinking about playing them on a 33.3 rpm turnta…

Or at least Dr. Emmet Brown.

Hmmmmm... I have a knee-jerk reaction to initiatives with names like "Everyone can ." Everyone may benefit from being exposed to the rudiments of whatever activity you're promoting…

When I'm grinding out Cobol or Algol code (yes, I am a dinosaur), I stick with 80 columns per line. Because, for better or worse, that's all my compiler sees. One compiler squawks …

I looked at the nightly order-processing workflow for the regional retailer I worked for one time. I was gobsmacked to find that one section of it consisted of launching the same s…

I would further refine this to, "Learning to code is like learning to write prose: Easy to learn, and easy to do, but not so easy to do well. Especially since 'well' is at least a …

I found doing tech support for my software to be a very valuable experience. It wasn't nearly as disruptive to my coding process as some of my brethren seem to find it; perhaps bec…

I make extensive use of e-books and audio books. I especially like audio books because they make my commute bearable. But some books, which may be great stories in the dead-tree ed…

Gonna encourage one of the kids to name their firstborn L'eaughanne! (Don't worry--they don't do any of the things I tell 'em to do, no matter much amusement it would give me.)

I share a first name with my father, so to save confusion, they called me by my middle name. If it were strictly a matter of social convenience, that would be fine. But you can't d…

There'll be plenty of time for doin' physics and livin' in a van down by the river, when you're doin' physics and livin' in a van down by the river.

It's kind of a neat thing, for sure, but what are we thinking are its practical applications? Possible use as an assistive device for the disabled, perhaps?

I'm not sure we do our students any favors by suggesting that math is "magical."