Random blog time! And today it’s about my dad.
Well, he’s in an interesting position at work. I don’t know if this is classified or not, but economically, Sun Microsystems is SUCKING. My dad, having worked at the company for 13 years, has had nothing to do for almost a year now. His project, Trusted Solaris, has been put on hold by the company, while in the meantime, governments from around the world want him to teach them how to use it. It’s rather screwed up. But my dad’s not depressed, he has more fun stuff to do with his time.
First of all is his new Palm Pilot. It’s a Samsung phone/palm hybrid, with a color screen and other assorted goodies. He’s bought lots of shareware and spiffied it up to perfection. So I can often see him playing a rousing game of Vexed, or Bejeweled, or whatnot.
But when he’s on his BIG computer, he’s having fun making a Java program for his friend, Dan Gilbert (whose site I helped design). Dan is the creator of Triazzle, a puzzle in the shape of a triangle, with triangular pieces. The object is to fit each piece, which has a half of an image on each side, in the correct spot at the correct angle. Maybe you should just visit his site to see exactly what I’m talking about. Well, Dan’s been content with having just one solution for each of his puzzles, but recently, he’s been wondering if there could be any puzzles with more than one. So he’s asked my dad to create a Java program that would run in an infinite loop until it found a combination of 16 pieces that could be rearranged in more than one way. So far, the computer’s been running for an hour, and it hasn’t found anything. Wish it luck.
Also, what I find the most touching: my dad’s in love. Even though he’s married and everything, he’s been recently reunited over email with his first girlfriend, who he hasn’t talked to for almost 30 years. I can barely imagine how amazing and emotional it is to talk to a loved one you haven’t heard from in 30 years. It’s rather touching. I heard that my dad cried, hee heh. But the best thing about it is that my stepmom doesn’t care at all… she also feels that it’s rather amazing… but the other woman’s husband probably would have a fit. Unhappy marriage on her part, I guess. That’s too bad.
Well, back to “studying Chemistry!”