A new political Haiku published

Steel Moon Publishing, the e-zine, was kind enough to accept a new political Haiku from me. It is in their December issue now:

http://www.steelmoonpublishing.us/POLITICAL.html

My real world job... the current one at least.

For those that are curious, my real world source of income is in the concert business. I sell whatever the band brings for merchandise when they come to the venues I work at, which include The Fillmore and The Warfield in San Francisco; Shoreline in Mt View; Oracle Arena, McAfee Coliseum and The Paramount in Oakland.

I have a very terse blog about the shows at myspace, specifically:

http://www.myspace.com/fillmorejohn

I have a ton of weird concert junk, and it seems almost every group on tour comes through San Francisco eventually.

John

Two Haikus reprinted

www.steelmoonpublishing.us/EZINE.html is worth a look. It is a successor ezine to Ragged Edge Publishing, which was on a really good roll until the guiding hand, W.G. Marsh, ran into some health problems. They are not all behind him, but WGM is back with all the best ideas from his previous effort and some new things as well.

He has even resurrected a couple of 2005 era political haikus I had published at the earlier site. For those that are interested, please see:

www.steelmoonpublishing.us/politicalhaiku.html

Sudoku Excel solver

I am a numbers kind of guy; and I have enjoyed the Sudoku craze. But I am also an Excel spreadsheet kind of guy, and have often boasted that I can make Excel do anything I want. Then I began to wonder if I could make an Excel work book that can solve Soduko puzzles. Yes I can!

I created a sheet that has a grid for the puzzle you are trying to solve, and then another grid next to it that shows recommended moves. As you enter the recommended moves into the puzzle grid, other recommended moves are generated. The recommendations come from four different sources. One is that the particular move is the only place in that column where that number can go, another is the only place in that row for that number to go, and another is the only place in that 3 by 3 big square for that number to go. The fourth source of recommendations is that that small square cannot hold any of the other eight numbers, and therefore must be the recommended number.

The Excel spreadsheet NEVER misses seeing any easy, available move. It is amazing how many moves it points out to me, that I did not see when looking at the same puzzle.

What the spreadsheet still cannot do, is realize that when a pair of numbers must both go into a pair of spaces, those spaces would be off limits for any other number. And it does not have the ability to realize that when a number is going to be forced into two or three spots all inside the same big square, it will make it impossible for that number to go into any other square in that big square. But those situations do not come up as often, when you never miss an "obvious" move.

The most amazing part for me, is that I was able to do this using Excel - which is not even a regular programming language!

Story published at Static Movement

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Combat with a computer virus!

So my computer came down with a virus. Terrible news. What this one SEEMS to do is spam Google with requests for data. I think someone is just trying to make their website look popular, and maybe raise up its Google ranking. That is conjecture. What I noticed, is that every time I turned on my computer it would tell me:

You (or a program) have requested information from www.google.com

Searching on the internet told me two files named fmideploy.exe and flsmontr.exe might be involved, although nobody really seemed to know what they did. I looked in my system folder and found both of those files, with very recent creation dates - very suspicious indeed. So I took a chance, and deleted them both. And then I continued to examine the System folder, sorting the names by file extension, and then by creation date. And then I again saw, that I had newly created versions of fmideploy.exe and flsmontr.exe! The files I had JUST deleted had been recreated 20 seconds later. So I got off the internet, and again deleted them. And 20 seconds later they had again recreated themselves.

I didn't like that - there is something else on my machine that is amiss. But I can't find what it is. So I tried another option. I deleted the two bad files, jumped immediately into notepad, and SAVED empty documents with those two file names. And that seems to have fooled the piece of the virus that I cannot find - it is happy to see that the two files exist, and does not recreate the troublesome versions of them. Now when I boot up my computer, both of my empty documents briefly open and then close - but no program is asking to connect to the internet anymore.

To be Green, or not to be Green...

My electric razor has become dull. Usually I seem to lose them or break them before this can happen, but in my older years I am in more of a steady rut, as far as shaving goes. So then the question is - what to do next? I can buy an entirely new razor for under $50, and it will have everything in new condition - power cord, battery pack, etc etc. Or I can try and be Green.

Going online, I find I CAN reorder just the rotary head that I need, and the cost will be $40. Great, I just saved a couple of bucks - right? But what if my battery poops out in the next few months, or my cord gets a short? And there is also a nagging uncertainty. My razor says (right on it) that it needs an "HQ55+" head. And the Norelco website wants to sell me an "HQ55 Plus" head. Is + the same as Plus? Probably, right??

Well, since I am doing such a great job of not losing or breaking this razor, I decide to see how far I can go with it. An HQ55 Plus head is even now waiting to be sent to me, just as soon as the Norelco people process my order. Hopefully I can be Green AND well groomed too.