How to eat half an ice cream sandwich

I told someone I’d just eaten half an ice cream sandwich and they said they were impressed. 🤔

It wasn’t trivial, because I do enjoy sweets, but wasn’t that difficult.

Here’s how to successfully eat half an ice cream sandwich (or anything else your body craves), from easy to difficult:

1) [Easy] Take an ice cream sandwich out of the package and cut it in half. Hand half to your wife/kid/friend/neighbor/etc and then pick up your half and enjoy it.

2) [Not difficult] Store your ice cream sandwiches in a freezer in the basement/garage. Go get one and bring it to the kitchen. Open one end of the package and slide the ice cream sandwich out of the package and put it on a plate. Cut it in half and put half back into the package. Take that half an ice cream sandwich in a package back to the freezer in the basement/garage and put it away. Only then do you pick up the half you’re going to eat and enjoy it.

3) [Medium] Same as above but don’t bother taking the half you’re saving back to the basement until after you eat the half you’re going to eat.

4 [Difficult] Open the package and start eating the ice cream sandwich. When you’ve eaten half of it, stop eating it, close up the package, and put it back into the freezer.

So, I wouldn’t be impressed that you ate only half an ice cream sandwich unless you did number 4 on this list 🙂

* I did (2) on the list, fwtw 😉

Blast from the past: “Bedtime conversations tend to be a little goofy when Dad’s doing lights out….”

Cleaning up an old family website (pre blog) for sharing stories with out-of-town family and found this bit of goofy-dad nonsense that made me laugh so I thought I’d share it:

—-

Bedtime conversations tend to be a little goofy when dad’s doing lights out….

A discussion of wavelengths of energy and radio astronomy leads to the following:

Geek: How do you see things with xrays and radio waves?

Dad: Well you could look at the signals bouncing back. Where there is nothing you get no bounce-back, and where there’s a planets or moon or something you get a bounce back. How long it takes to bounce back tells you how far away it is. Longer wave lenghts show less detail than shorter wave lengths (long discussion of why).

One time there were these astronomers trying to discover new planets and they decided to create a gamma-wave telescope.

Geek: Did they find any?

Dad: Well, they thought they had, but things were kind of strange….

So then they sent gamma rays towards this one spot and they got ultraviolet waves back!

“That’s funny” the astronomers said to each other, “let’s try xrays.”

So they shot some xrays towards the same location… this time they got back radio waves!

Geek: “They did?!”

Dad: “Yep!”

After trying to understand what kind of astronomical body could turn their xrays into radio waves of the frequency and waveforms they’d received back, someone got the idea to play the radio waves through a speaker. Boy were they surprised to hear “HEY! No Peeking!” coming out of the speaker!

(Geek breaks out in laughing!)

“WHAT!??? said the astronomers.

They sent back a radio signal on the same frequency saying, “Sorry, we didn’t know anyone was there!”

They got a message back saying, “You didn’t? Didn’t you see my sign?”.

“What sign?” the astronomers sent back.

“Check the ultraviolet signal we returned when you sent all those gamma rays,” was the reply.

So the astronomers took the ultraviolet signal they’d gotten back and figured out it was a sign saying “Bob’s Spaceship Repair Shop.”

—-

The next several nights we’d hear “HEY! No Peeking!” coming from Geek’s room followed by lots of laughter so I guess it was a lasting laughable ™. 🙂

Aug. 2004. (Geek was 8)

“I want my CFT”

I want my CFT

(sung to the tune of “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits ⁽¹⁾)

Now look at them LIGOs that’s the way you do it
Correct the errors on the CFT
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Photons for nothin’ and your phase for free

Now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya them bits won’t flip
Maybe trap an ion in a planar crystal
Maybe trap an ion on a chip

We gotta install microwave lasers
Custom qubit deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these Ising machines

I shoulda learned semiconductors
I shoulda learned them fermions
Look at those ions, they can’t find them on the camera
Man, we could have some fun

And he’s up there, what’s that? Rad-pressure noises?
Squeezin’ on the vacuum like a chimpanzee
Oh, that ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Get your photons for nothin’ get your phase for free

We gotta install microwave lasers
Custom qubit deliveries
We gotta move these refrigerators
We gotta move these Ising machines

Listen here, now that ain’t workin’ that’s the way to do it
Correct the errors on the CFT
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Photons for nothin’ and your phase for free
Photons for nothin’ and the phase for free
Get your photons for nothin’ and phase for free
Photons for nothin’ and the phase for free (I want my, AdS/CFT)
Photons for nothin’ and the phase for free (I want my, AdS/CFT)

Geek is in a Quantum Physics PhD program at University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and his department organized this 21st annual workshop during February 2019 in Albuquerque: http://physics.unm.edu/SQuInT/2019/index.php

Geek attended parts of the event in-between his classes and job teaching undergraduate physics labs. He sent dad this humorous song summary of the workshop along the lines of others we’ve done on the blog. 🙂

1. Money for Nothing (wikipedia)

Found a file named “Silly Verse for James Dempsey”

awash in the miasma
of async blocks on dispatch_queues
bad data flyin’ like kids from pews
(when church lets out and they go free)
and to the console logging spews
apocalyptic, no good news
mood turning into plasma

Dad’s dad just recalled a prank I (apparently) did at a young age…

Funny to have Dad’s dad talk about stepping on Legos and then recall this other event which I swear I don’t remember doing, but I would have been younger than 7 when this is purported to have happened:

Then there was the Sat morning when I heard massive giggles from the hall,
went out to see and slipped on the Crisco-greased floor one (or both) of you
had so much fun creating… 🙂

It is amazing I survived you kids!

Gladdens my heart to hear I (with help & encouragement from my nearest sister I’m sure) was keeping him on is toes* at such a young age… 😛

Geek was so much more well behaved than I, sadly. I have no recollection of him playing such pranks (though the empty milk carton put back into the fridge was pretty funny).

*or perhaps “off his toes” would be more accurate…

10 year old Geek explains why he does what his parents ask…

Posted this on Twitter but then realized that goes away and this is funny enough I wanted to keep it around.

In case his 10-year-old writing is hard to read,

“I have to do what my parents tell me because they are insane and their doctor told me to humor them.”

😛

None of us remembered this but it was found during our move and gave us all a laugh. Creative rationalization.

A Conversation with our Cat

On a cold snowy day in Corbett…

Me: walking by cat on way to the house for lunch…

Cat: “Meow. Meow, Meow. Meow! MEOW!”

Me: “What?”

Cat: “Brrrr. Inside cat?”

Me: “no”

Cat: “29 degrees!”

Me: “Fur!”

Cat: “SNOW + 29 degrees!”

Me: “5x pissing on bed == OUTSIDE CAT!”

Cat: “Surgery! Ow!”

Me: “Let you back in 2 years later & you beeline for a bed. No!”

Cat: “meanie…”

Me: walks away to write guilty blog post

😀

Geek Song #3: The Eye of the Kernel

The Eye of the Kernel

( Based on The Eye of the Tiger)

Risin’ up, back with the 1337
Played with time, took my chances
Gamed the system, now I’m back on my feet
Just a geek and his will to survive

So many times, it happens too fast
You trade your “indie” for money
Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must code just to keep them alive

It’s the eye of the kernel, it’s the code that we write
Risin’ up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known debugger stalks its prey in the night
And it’s watchin’ us all with the eye of the kernel…

Face to screen, code to the beat
Hackin’ lean, hackin’ dirty
The stack is odd still we’re scripting our deeds
Making code as a way to survive

Risin’ up, straight to the top
Had the scripts, got the glory
Wrote the software, now I’m not gonna stop
Just a geek and his will to survive

The eye of the kernel…

(With apologies to Survivor)

Geek Art: Geek & Dad Engine Room

G&D Engine Room — Geek & Dad’s engine room.

This is the engine room here at Geek & Dad corporate headquarters…

Okay, just kidding, this is a picture I made with Bryce, a 3D modeling program which is currently free. This is the fictional engine room here at Geek & Dad corporate headquarters. Game engine room, that is. This is where we keep the game engines we’re experimenting with. Here you can see cocos2d-iphone, cocos2d-x, and Unity3D, which we’ve been considering for one of our projects.

Geek Song #2: Taking Care of Business, geek style

You get up every morning
From your alarm clock’s warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There’s a whistle up above
And people pushin’, people shovin’
And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train’s on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I’m self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day

And I’ll be…
[Refrain]
Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I’ve been taking care of business, it’s all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime
Work out!

If it was simple as a hammer
You could be a programmer
If you can juggle ones and zeroes
Get a second-hand laptop
You could make it to the top
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows

People see you having fun
Just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It’s the work that we avoid
And we’re all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day

And we be…
[Refrain]

[Spoken] Take good care of my business
When I’m away, every day whoo!

[Repeat first 2 verses]

[Refrain]

Takin’ care of business [4x]

[Refrain]

Takin’ care of business [repeat, fade]

(with apologies to BTO)