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  • 2008
    • May
      • The Studio
        05/30/08
        I work for a hospital, adding to and supporting a medical documentation system which records everything from patient age and weight to heart rate during an operation. A lot of what my team does is support various kinds of hardware and software breakdowns, and with a thousand users and a body of soft

  • 2007
    • October
      • The Dark Side
        10/28/07
        I’ve been an IBM/Windows user my whole life, but back in January, when I needed a new laptop, I bought a Macintosh. This was simply the next step in a gradual withdrawal from Vader’s realm; I had switched from Explorer and Outlook a year earlier. Part of this was practical -- we used Macs at the sch

    • September
      • Stealing
        09/23/07
        September 23, 2007: Stealing

        In 1987, the SkillsBank software occupied about 45 floppy disks, and our customers could either buy a single user license (you can’t copy the disks) or a site license (make as many copies as you need). At first we managed the license on trust, but when we lear

      • Problem of the Week
        09/06/07
        If two chickens lay a total of two eggs in two days, how long will it take 100 chickens to lay 100 eggs?

        In ten years of teaching, I have given this problem to every class on our first meeting, and something like eight students have ever gotten it right. If you solve it (answer next week

    • August
      • Lord Google
        08/27/07
        A little over a decade ago, in Dave Barry in Cyberspace, Dave wrote, "THERE IS NO PERSONAL FINANCE PROGRAM OTHER THAN QUICKEN. THERE IS ONLY QUICKEN. YOU LOVE QUICKEN. QUICKEN IS GOD. YOU WILL BUY QUICKEN." This was accurate enough at the time, but if he were writing today, he would replac

      • Overdrive
        08/17/07
        In The World of Mathematics, James Newman writes about Truman Henry Safford, who, at the age of ten, was able to square an 18-digit number in his head in less than a minute. While he was performing this incredible feat, however, he “flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the top