The Coffee House

[Gary A.]

Salud!

 

[snowbear121 52]

Grades are calculated and entered. DONE!!!

Most semesters, a few students will email and ask me to explain their grade. For the most part, the answer is, "You got a C because I gave you a gift, so you might not want to question this further." Hopefully this nonsense will be kept to a minimum this semester and they'll leave me alone until next semester.

Oh how I love being done with a semester!

so . . . what grade did I get?

 

[limr35 4]

You got an A, baby, thanks to those extra-credit cinnamon buns

 

[Rick58]

Most semesters, a few students will email and ask me to explain their grade. For the most part, the answer is, "You got a C because I gave you a gift, so you might not want to question this further."

But, but, but...

 

[snowbear121 52]

You got an A, baby, thanks to those extra-credit cinnamon buns

 

[Designer]

Mug of coffee. I usually drink tea, but today after lunch, wifey had made coffee, and it smelled good, so I'm having one too. Green Mountain Dark Magic.

 

[limr35 4]

Ooh, I like that mug! Do you like to listen to those stories?

 

[Designer]

I listen sporadically.

 

[Designer]

My son is going to cook sauerbraten. He gave me his shopping list. I will begin brining on Monday.

 

[Gary A.]

The pond is finished!!! (... more or less.) The skimmer has been fully installed and working, the waterfall thingie has been install, both filters are pumping to the waterfall. And I am an exhausted, muddy, mess. But at least I hit my goal on my activity tracker. I'm also pretty cold, so I've off to the shower.

 

[Gary A.]

Out of the shower. Still filling up the pond. The waterfall is very nice, Doubling the volume of water has make a significant difference. Just finished some pasta and drinking tea, 'Darleeling The Second Flush' ... it's okay, not nearly as good as that Sencha Matsuri I had the other day.

 

[Designer]

Your pond/waterfall reminds me of a time when I worked for a fellow who designed the large end at the top and the small end at the bottom.

I asked him; "what happens when the pump shuts off?"

He said: "It never shuts off."

So then I asked him: "What about a power failure?"

He had nothing to say, but continued with his stupid design.

About a month after I quit working there, he told me that they had to rebuild the pond/waterfall system to make the lower end larger than the top end.

I don't think he ever understood why.

 

[pgriz]

Ah yes, the pouring of 1 gallon of liquid into one quart of volume trick. Just a matter of a little visualization and positive thinking. Right?

 

[Designer]

You got it.

 

[pgriz]

You got it.

Early in my career, I was hired as a Software QA manager for a large multinational, the third QA manager they hired to try and get a showcase project delivered (it was a year behind schedule and something like 20M$ over budget (on an original budget of $30M). Over a hundred Ph.D level developers working on it. After a while I realized what the problem was - the chip design they were using (this was in the 1980's) had a limited memory space, and they were swapping out memory in segments. The problem was, after looking at all the data and code allocation, they were trying to get 5 memory slots into a design that could only accomodate 2. Just could not be done. But for some reason, until I came along, no-one worked through exactly how the memory allocation and swapping would work. The company ended up writing off all the development costs on that project, AND paying penalties to the customers to whom they presold the technology.