Big Thanksgiving holiday coming up here in the U.S. tomorrow.
This is where Americans get together with their family and friends and eat a lot.
(I know what you're thinking. Ha-Ha. very funny.)
So Thanksgiving is super important to me because:
1. The day after Thanksgiving is a huge big shopping day. It's all about shopping. Private aside to the ladies: I know you want to have this picture-perfect family. I totally get that. But when the Hanna Anderson catalog shows up in your mailbox...
... don't even for a minute entertain the idea. There is absolutely no way you're going to get your husband to wear these pajamas. Trust me, you don't even want to go there.
2. Thanksgiving is when I get a jumpstart on my New Year's resolutions. See, if you start your New Year's resolutions on Thanksgiving you get 6-week lead and a ton of momentum going into January 1. Let me hook you up, people. Are you resolving to start treating availability as a given, not a problem? Are you resolving to getting comprehensive real-time system diagnostic engine built to run on your production systems? Are you resolving to run the most advanced operating system ever built on your platform of choice. (Pick a platform, any platform.) This one is so easy, people. It's so easy. If only my personal resolutions had such straightforward approaches. Private aside to a specific individual: I am very proud of myself for keeping a certain resolution and I need a little more positive reinforcement from the person who asked me to do this for him. Because it's super hard.
3. Everybody is out shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving. That means parks and museums are empty. Which means my kids have the run of the place(s). Which translates into a huge release of kid energy in a physical venue that is not my home (always a good thing). The result: they fall asleep in the car on the way home, creating all kinds of possibilities for afternoon fun for the adults in my household. Hey, maybe I'll use that time to play with the source code for J2SE 6 (codename Project Mustang) and catch up on reading Mark Reinhold's Blog, which is a serious contender for my new favorite blog.
4. It's my birthday! Well, not technically. My birthday is the day after Thanksgiving. But close enough. Here is what I have on my wish list, in case you want to get me a present:
- Trees for the yard. I would like a dogwood, a red maple and two
willow oaks. I prefer if your gift includes somebody who'll come and
plant them but I'm willing to dig the hole(s) myself if I have to.
- A wireless Sun Ray (Tadpole)
laptop that gives me secure, authenticated access to my company's
network so that I can work from anywhere in my house and I'm not
chained to my office. Nothing would delight Sun
Ray Girl more than to wake up on her birthday and see a wireless Sun
Ray laptop. Except maybe the trees.
- I could seriously use more hours in the day. Could you just give
me two extra hours? That's all I need. Two hours.
Friday Free Stuff!
I know. It's only Wednesday. But tomorrow is a holiday. And I'm taking Friday off. So you get Friday Free Stuff early this week.
No puzzler.
Which always causes me great anxiety frankly, as it means that I've got to come up with something. And I'm not as smart as Click and Hack.
Don't worry. We're not going back to formulas.
This week's prize:
We've got:
- A messenger bag from this year's JavaOne Coding Challenge. (Sun
Java Studio Creator... Drag-and-Drop Java Development... makes it
possible for a marketing girl like me to masquerade as a Java
developer. Oh, and that minor issue with Sun employees not being
eligible... let's just say I know how to work it.)
- Three pens (one of them actually illuminates but you can't really tell from the picture)
- A Java pin (or two or three; i'll throw in some extra)
- A Java everywhere button (ditto)
- A Java.com mobile phone holder (phone not included).
I know, slim pickings. Truth is supply is running low on the free stuff. I'm working it. I just hope you people appreciate the fact that I suck up to the girls in Events...
... to score free stuff for you. Do you even appreciate the fact that I debase myself for swag that I turn around and give to you? Please put that on your list of things to be thankful.
We digress.
Here's what you have to do to win* this week's prize*.
So I'm reading this book... Fermat's Last Theorem.... (I got all excited when Carl Friedrich Gauss found out that the amateur mathematician with whom he'd been corresponding -- Monsieur Leblanc -- was actually a woman: Sophie Germain. I was hoping they were going to hook up, you know. (i'm just such a romantic). No such luck)... anyway... we digress again... so I'm reading this book.... and I've got a question that I'm hoping you guys can help me answer...
How is it that the Ancient Greeks were able to write mathematic equations when roman numerals -- much less arabic -- had not yet been "invented?" I don't understand how they were able to annotate the concepts.
The person who most insightfully, amusingly or in some other arbitrary way answers my question gets this week's prize package shipped directly to you free of charge. Sun employees ARE eligible this week. Enter* by posting your response as a comment to this week's blog entry.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Don't forget to get started on your New Year's resolutions, people. Time to move ahead.
mary
p.s. how's this for a plan... I'll ask Click and Hack to tell me who the winner of last week's puzzler is. and then we can publish winners for last week and this week early next week. make sense?
*Friday Free Stuff is not a contest. It's me giving away stuff that I personally own to somebody I choose. I pay for shipping with stamps that I buy at the post office.