Grand Tour puzzles

For some reason, I love this type of puzzle from the Brainteasers Page-A-Day calendar. It has a deceptively simple premise, but is diabolically tough to solve. And once completed, they appear simple again, even beautiful. You'll need to print them out, and use a pencil AND eraser.

GRAND TOUR
Draw a closed path, following the grid lines, that goes through everydot and includes every black line. Here are two sample solved puzzles:

The trick is "closed path". Every point must have exactly 2 lines connected to it. Here are the puzzles, I found the square one tougher than the triangular one.

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Another calculator story (aka another old draft 07-28-05)

This little relic I've had since high school and is my still trusty checkbook calculator at home (I actually use the HP RPN at work). It's also the calculator I used throughout MIT, as I had not been indoctrinated into the HP cult then. Here is the "other calculator" story that I'm so proud of (shh, don't tell the HP).

It's my last semester at MIT, and for some reason, I decided to take a management course at the Sloan School, 15.001 Managerial Economics (not offered anymore, it was basically a course for non-management majors). I pretty much ignored the class and barely made it to lectures since it was at 9am and a 20 minute walk to get there. By the end, I crammed for the final in order to get a decent grade. The day of the final, I overslept and had to rush to get to the exam. My dorm neighbor was taking the class with me and we were both running out the door to get there.

As we ran across Massachusetts Avenue through a yellow light, my calculator fell on the street. The cars at the traffic light were already starting to go, so we had to wait on the other side for the light to turn red to retrieve it. And then, a car ran over it. I screamed and pointed, OMG! OMG! My calculator, I have a final, what am I going to do!?!

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the light turned red and we ran to pick up the calculator. The display had all the LCDs lit up black, and I instinctively hit Clear a few times. And it was perfectly fine! Then we both screamed and jumped for joy, as you can imagine two crazy Asian co-eds in the middle of the street. We thought it would make a great commercial like the old Timex watch ones, but probably no one would believe it. We were giggling in disbelief the rest of the way to the exam. I kept testing it by adding and multiplying numbers together, after all, I needed to use it during the final, and wanted correct results. I was so excited about my calculator surviving, that I spent way too much time reliving the moment during the exam. Checking my transcript, I got a B, thanks to this calculator.

Puzzles and Pianos (Day 7 of vacation)

I'm a month behind as day 7 of vacation occurred on August 25, 2006. This was a rainy day and we mostly spent time finishing the Statue of Liberty puzzle that Adam got just 2 days before. Everyone was quite impressed that Adam had the perseverance to finish a 500 piece puzzle. He did almost all the buildings and Lady Liberty and I helped with the words, sky and blue parts.

Here is a blurb about "saving puzzles" that I wrote up in the Flickr Jigsaw group: My parents were big fans of gluing all the puzzles I did, so they are glued, framed and displayed all over their house. Throughout college, I did the same in my dorm room. When I got older, I met friends that never heard of such a thing and always put them back in the box, so I started doing that. Now that I have children, they love to take the puzzles apart (part of that destructive phase), so I never even think to glue them anymore. Now that my son is old enough to do 500 piece puzzles (at age 5!), Grandma was so proud that she said she would glue and frame them. Now he's expecting me to do so as well! Full circle.

Unfortunately, this puzzle had all sorts of oddly-shaped loosely locking pieces (which I personally love to work with), which simply didn't hold together. I promised Adam that I would help him glue it again when he got home. Hopefully doing it on my felt puzzle pad will allow it to stay together for the final "flip". We haven't even tried yet, as Dova the great destructor is a constant threat.

Later that day, Grandma took Adam and me to a piano store to check out some used pianos she saw on eBay. She had gotten the idea that she wanted to learn to play after she retires. Of course, when she got into the store, she was more interested in how the piano looked as opposed to how it played or sounded. I would sit at each piano and play her favorite piece, About Strange Lands and People from Schumann's Kinderszenen (need IE and the Sibelius Scorch plug-in to see the sheet music). She didn't much like the shiny clean lines of the ebony Yamaha's and Kawai's and preferred the more furniture-looking Story & Clark's. I told her flat out not to even consider Story & Clark, and tried to steer her towards Kawai, which is what I have. But this one 1985 Yamaha U1, suddenly caught our ear. This sound from this instrument was truly beautiful and singing and it had wonderful action with no mechanical clunkiness. At 48", it wasn't as big as some other uprights, but it clearly had a strong, warm sound. At this point, I was sold and told her to haggle the price down a bit. Even as we closed the deal, she kept trying to get me to play more pianos including a white (eeks!) Young Chang grand. I refused to even touch it, being the piano snob that I am (no Liberace PLEASE!). I even tried their prized $30k Steinway grand and didn't much like it because it had an older style keyboard where the black keys were wider than I am used to. It took quite a while to iron out all the details of price, delivery, bench, etc, but Adam was pretty well behaved for a boy cooped up in a piano store on a rainy day. When we got back, I was all fired up telling Doug about the new piano. He was surprised that I would be so excited, and he finally likened it to the thrill of buying a new car. But how often do you get to buy a piano in your lifetime? I can't wait to go back and try it.

Crazy Eights and the Origins of "moonfever0"

Just recently, Adam has become obsessed with playing cards. Of course, this only proves to delight his mom, who can be quite obsessed herself (Doug would tend to say that is an understatement). His favorite game is Crazy Eights, which of course was my favorite game as a child as well. While perusing for a cool crazy eights cards (left), I saw these cool crazy faces cards from Saxton Freymann (right). Dova would love them, although I am not willing to fork over $7 for something that she will instantly lose. 

So for those of you who don't know the story behind the name, moonfever0, here it is. In the  not so distant past, I was part of a lunchtime card playing group at my last company. We started by playing cribbage, then moved on to hearts, solo whist and spades. It sounds like a friendly civilized affair but in reality it was often not. We were completely engrossed in our role playing: gloating, laughing, taunting, card throwing, name calling, yelling, cutthroat, hysteria, etc. After the games, we had play-by-play coverage and a running spreadsheet with standings and 3-D charts. Here is one that I randomly pulled up on a (rather benign) hearts game:

A thoughtful 11 hands this lunchtime (in an all but deserted kitchen) with Angela, John and The New Claire as the three players.

The first hand saw TNC (for short) amusing herself at our expense by not mooning with the A, K, Q and J of hearts and The Queen. Having forced all the hearts, she played The Queen knowing that one of us would have to take it to save the day. I graciously obliged to the, now expected, waves of laughter and hilarity.

In the third hand, TNC showed another new obnoxious trait, i.e. holding onto The Queen and choosing who to dump it on (in this case me). After throwing junk on several of Angela's tricks, she was forced to concede I was not going to eat it, and reluctantly gave it to Angela (less laughter, but still some).

In the fourth, Angela got The Fever, and aimed for the prize of first-to-moon-this-season. But TNC held onto a high diamond, taking the trick and a heart discard from me for a 25:1 split
(gloating laughter).

In the next hand I got 18 points, which prompted the Quote of the Game "Oh, look! You got 18 points and I've got 18 points." from TNC (who had 18 in total, laugh, laugh, laugh).

In the next hand, TNC got 4 points, "the highest I've got so far!" (laugh, gloat, laugh, laugh and more gloat). Which was true, as she had 3, 0, 1, 1, and 4 so far. The score was a miserable 57, 77, 22.

Things perked up towards the end of the game, though, with TNC picking up 20 and 16 points in quick succession (not so much laughter) to bring her score up to 58. But then Angela ate 23 points twice with appalling hands to put her way out in front.

TNC took 23 points in the last hand (a little laughter) to approach the middle, but still ending negative on average.

The scoreboard shows Angela taking the lead, with TNC falling back into second, and John heading on further down into the negative numbers.

No moons to anyone yet.

A final thank-you is due to Doug who, against great odds and many setbacks, keeps us going with pizza and calzones. Without his support, we would go hungry.

Hey, that's my Doug!! Thanks for the pizza (I probably didn't thank him at the time because I was too engrossed). Notice that he was NOT playing in our group. That's probably why we're still married. So notice in the blue text, I got "the fever", as in the rush to shoot the moon. When you shoot the moon, you can either go back 26 points or take zero and give the rest of the players 26 points, depending on where you are in the game. So my name is simply a conglomeration of moon fever and 0 points. Besides, being a software engineer, everything must be zero-based as well. Here is one of our spreadsheets where I finally made second place in Solo Whist (John basically lorded over us, the bum, plus he was my boss to boot).



The card playing days ended after Adam was born and I would go nurse him at lunch instead of playing. It had been going downhill before that because I suffered from "pregnancy brain" and could not count cards for the life of me. Nowadays, I get a game of cribbage once in a while, but it has been ages since I've had a good game of hearts (did I mention late night games until 5am?). Adam is dying to play cribbage, but he can't quite add well enough, being in kindergarten!

Atlantis Marine World (Day 6 of vacation)

Grandma took us to the aquarium on Thursday, where Dova the fish lover (Nemo lover) was thrilled. It was a hot sunny day, and here are some highlights:

• Sharks! - Adam loved them
• Sea lions - too hot to sit for the show
• Poison Dart Frogs - I took about 50 pictures before I got a few decent shots
• Piranhas - Floating in place and not moving!! Totally creepy.
• Ice cream - No trip would be complete without it

Here are some hands on things that we did:

Dova makes fish lips:

Adam laid down and this monkey came over to look at him. After that, another mom asked her son to lie in the same spot but the monkey wouldn't come by. Adam is such a special boy!!

The Champion

I never thought that I would become so engrossed in my domesticity to blog about a toilet. But then again a product this impressive requires some sort of attention, right? Besides, how often do you buy a toilet? If you have a toilet that functions perfectly well, it seems like a frivolous expense. It all depends on you define "functions". Our old toilet was 30 years old, and had brown mineral deposits on the bottom that have made it completely uncleanable. It sort of flushes, where the water swirls and swirls around for a full minute and sometimes never actually gurgles down at the end. Once, we had the same piece of paper floating on the top for a whole week. And most of all, we have a son that expertly clogs it every couple weeks. Last year a friend mentioned that he got a new toilet which he loved. As soon as I heard the words "It doesn't clog", I was all ears. He has 5 kids so that is a great feat. Being a physicist, he went on to explain about the shape of the bowl and head pressure of the water when it flushed. It was a regular low flow American Standard toilet.

So after Doug cursed for the nth time about how Adam clogged the toilet, I went to Home Depot the next day to seek out this magical toilet. There were many American Standard toilets ranging from a $100 model, to this $200 Champion toilet. I didn't recall my friend mentioning that it was this special model, and wondered if I really needed to spend the big bucks. As I stood looking at the display explaining that it could flush 2 dozen golf balls in a single flush and the slogan "Throw away your plunger", the toilet representative approached me. He asked whether I had kids. Yes. He asked whether I had boys. Yes again. He perked up, "Well, you know when boys are 14 to 16, they really know how to plug up a toilet." I thought, my boy is 5, it gets worse? It could be that he has a special talent, he also plugs the little kiddie toilet at school all the time. Grandma was so impressed when he plugged up her toilet once. It could be that he eats absolutely no fruit. Anyway, I figured if I'm going to buy a new toilet, it better be a good one, so I took it. And don't forget the wax donut, he reminds me.

Here are the kids playing with new toilet while Doug wrestled the old one out. After it was in, we flushed it for the first time. Whoosh, it flushed in 2 seconds. That's it? How unimpressive, is that really going to flush 2 dozen golf balls? We had to wait a couple weeks for Adam to produce an elephant poop, and yes indeed, it flushed with no problem. I'm mostly impressed by the low flow, although all new toilets have that feature. I also love that it is finally clean and quite beautiful as well. Yes, I'm most impressed by this porcelain god.

I love shiny things - iTunes 7.0

Being in the GUI business, I have to say I LOVE the new iTunes album display. Yes, I can be quite the superficial glitzy girl. I know they already have those flipping windows in the Mac OS, but I thought I had to wait until Windows Vista to enjoy them. No longer, here they are in iTunes. Flipping through these albums in iTunes is better than doing it in real life where all the albums would be falling out of your hands. I also exercised Get Album Artwork, and got some of the artwork, albeit not all correct. The Extreme Pr0nografitti was replaced by the magna-eye girl above, and I got a German Sound of Music below. (Yes, I took me forever to find some interesting screen shots that didn't totally embarass me...)


Here's the other cool thing... Look at all that free space! I'm slacking off.

New York City, here we come! (Day 5 of vacation)

Day 4 was simply, or not so simply, packing and driving down to visit my mom in NY. On day 5, Grandma, Adam and I drove into NY to see Tarzan on Broadway. This was his first trip to Manhattan and he just took it all in. So much so, that he was very quiet most of the time and just kept looking around.  We first stopped at the box office to buy some "obstructed seats" tickets which were the only ones available. I had guessed they would be OK, but in reality, productions nowadays (especially ones with swinging apes), take up the WHOLE stage top to bottom.

We went to Planet Hollywood after being handed some $10 coupons on the street. Adam was quite impressed with this restaurant as well and we spent lots of time perusing the exhibits especially the Star Wars ones. I was somehow really drawn to the 12 Monkeys exhibits.  We got him a cool T-shirt and a little planet keychain to take home. We stopped in at another souvenir shop and picked up a snow globe of NY for Dova.  Adam also picked out a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle of the NY skyline with the Statue of Liberty at night.  Alas, it was a recent picture without the World Trade Center.  Lastly, we stopped at the Hershey's Times Square store and got goodies for Dad and Dova back at Grandma's house.

Tarzan was great of course and had touching moments when both Grandma and I were crying like babies.  During intermission, Adam said, "I don't want to watch this movie anymore."  I think he was getting a bit of sensory overload at this point.  I walked him all over the theater to look at the orchestra section and stage and then up to the balcony so see all the lights.

Lucky for us, we hit rush hour traffic trying to get back through the midtown tunnel, but the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lane saved us on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).

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Adam and Dova's Book Recommendations

I've signed up for Amazon associates, so send some business my way (I mean their way).

Adam recommends:

This is a classic I Spy book with all sorts of pirate treasure which is great to pore over.

Dova recommends:


Food for Thought is a fantastic creation using fruits and vegetables, based on:


I don't much care for Blue Sea, but she loves it. Could be her Nemo obsession kicking in. I much prefer this Donald Crews book:

I love this book also because it reminds me of when Adam was 2 and he memorized it and could "read" it to everyone.