Something for the geek inside us all

I got this from a friend recently. She had issues with it because she felt that "and" implied addition rather than multiplication. I pointed out to her that in binary mathematics, the "and" operation was equivalent to multiplication. She accused me of being a bigger geek than her.

What can I say? It's an occupational hazard of designing digital logic for a living for the past 20 years.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And thanks to foorider for explaining to me how to post an image. (Hey, I design hardware, not software!)

A Fish by Any Other Name...

Naming a pet can be difficult. The name has to fit: you can't call a solid-colored dog "Spot", and you can't name a Japanese fighting fish "Wimpy". When my then 6-year-old daughter wanted to get a fish like her grandma's betta two years ago, we dragged out the fish bowl and supplies and headed down to the pet store to find a suitable specimen. Bettas are nice because they are very hardy and nearly impossible to kill. Ours was dead within a week. We froze the carcass and returned it to the pet store, which promptly replaced it. Two weeks later, the replacement had gone belly-up as well. This continued for 6 more fish from at least two different shops. The shopkeepers couldn't explain it. We tried all sorts of different water treatments and such. Nothing helped. What was worse, we were quickly running out of names.

When the next potential fish-sicle came home from the pet store, my wife decided enough was enough with this naming business. What was the point of coming up with a name for a fish that was just going to die within a week? So she christened it "Nine" (re-read the previous paragraph and do the math).

Maybe it was the names that killed the other fish. Nine lasted a good nine months. He died a couple days after we left him with my in-laws while we went on vacation. When we got back, we gave his bowl a thorough cleaning, put in some fresh water, and got a new fish. Of course, we called him "Ten".

I have no doubt that he'll make it at least until we leave for vacation this year.

An Introduction

Okay, so this is my first attempt at a blog. I can't promise that it will be interesting, or that I'll even be able to keep it up on a regular basis, but we'll see what happens.

Some random info about myself that doesn't currently appear in my profile:

• I am married with two children.
• I am an ASIC designer with Cisco Systems in Akron, Ohio.
• We have two cats (Merlyn and Boo Boo) and a fish (Ten).
• I play guitar reasonably well, piano poorly, trumpet, baritone horn, and recorder as needed.
• I like to build model cars.
• I like to bicycle, but I don't do nearly as much of it as I did when I was single.
  
• I go to Weight Watchers.

As I wrote those items, it occurred to me that there are at least a couple of (semi) interesting stories behind them. I guess I know what I can write about over the next week or so.