19 September 2013

Pink Shirt Guy!!

Last evening, I was a speaker at an event – I know, I can fool some people some time 🙂 . In any case, I reached there a little early to avoid traffic and settled down at a nearby bar with a glass of wine to work the pitch out in my mind.
This was a bar where the servers did not wear name tags. Which was a bummer since I like to address a person by his or her name to say thanks when leaving.
So, to be smart, I tried to quickly glance at the receipt to see the name of this elderly lady who was serving me. It was Anne. But I was struck by what name she had given me without asking my name 🙂
I did get her to take a picture of me – so I could put this post together !!
So after all the Starbucks names, I have a new name – The Pink Shirt Guy!!

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Category: Humor | 25 Comments on Pink Shirt Guy!!
17 September 2013

Puzzle time

Returning home from New York. Ergo puzzle time. Today’s is a simple yet challenging problem.

Think of the various pairs of two numbers you can make using the digits 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 (each used only once) e.g. (2345, 16789) or (743, 821569) and so on.

Which is the pair (of two numbers) has the maximum product value (compared to other pairs)?

Category: Puzzles | 15 Comments on Puzzle time
14 September 2013

Knee How? :-)

Trying to heal my left knee, I have been alternating between the Merrel barefoot shoes and the Nike Frees. To test the knee, put in a non-stop 10 mile (16K) run in 95 minutes. 17,500 steps and 1550 calories later, the knee is holding up strong. The lungs, on the other hand, are not amused 🙂
After the run, made friends with a fellow runner, Karen – who is training for her half marathon. She took this picture of me taking rest after the run.
There is a Bengali word to describe my condition – “biddhhosto” 🙂

(The title of this blog was inspired by a terrible cross-language pun by my friend Narayan – who co-authored the Wall Street Journal crossword thus Friday)

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Category: Running | 6 Comments on Knee How? :-)
14 September 2013

Teenage-speak

Last night, I volunteered to take my teenager daughter to the football game in her old high school. On the way there, I made an attempt to see if I could wean her away from the constant earbuds-in-her-ears mode and have an actual conversation with her.
First I got the car radio on her favorite channel and then started talking about shoes, hairstyles, her girlfriends etc. Things picked up surprisingly well. They were going well enough that at one point of time I decided to start teasing her about boys.
So I went “how about ”
She: “Yeah, what about him”?
Me: “I thought you thought he looked cute”
She: “He did”
Me: “And….. What happened?”
She: “Puberty happened. That messed up everything”
Me: AWKWARD SILENCE for a long time.

She went back to her earbuds-in-her-ears 🙂 🙂

Sometimes, I think she does this purposely to shut me up. If that is true, she is spending waaaay too much time with her mother 🙂 🙂

Category: Humor | 18 Comments on Teenage-speak
13 September 2013

Chessboard puzzle

Send a personal message on FB- not comments if you are sending an answer. All smart Alec comments can come in the comments section though 🙂

Imagine a chessboard – with your usual 8 by 8 = 64 squares. Say the squares are one inch by one inch each. Now imagine rectangular blocks that are one inch by two inches each. So, any rectangular block can cover 2 adjacent squares on the chessboard.
You have to fill up the chessboard with the rectangular blocks without any rectangle spilling outside the board. They are allowed to overlap on each other though.

What is the minimum number of rectangular blocks required to fill up the whole chessboard? That is 32 of course.

Okay, now imagine that I tore off one of the corner squares on that chessboard. And I went ahead and tore off the corner square that is diagonally on the other end of the board. So, now I have a chessboard with two farthest corner squares missing.

Now, tell me how many minimum rectangular blocks are required to cover the whole board (that has only 62 squares now). You are allowed to overlap but cannot spill outside the board.

Even trickier – what is the minimum number of blocks required if you CANNOT overlap or spill outside either?

Category: Puzzles | 8 Comments on Chessboard puzzle
12 September 2013

Puzzle – GPS

Headed to Raleigh. My flight back is tomorrow at a very early hour. So, I am going to send the puzzle today…
Remember the rules – message me on Facebook with your answer. Do not write on the comments section so as to give others a chance to solve it without peeking into possibly right answers.
This happened to me on Tuesday night. I was coming back from a customer dinner at night headed home. I never use the car GPS since I know I know my way around in Atlanta. However, midway thru my drive back, I noticed something interesting on the GPS.
The display on “Distance left to Destination” would count down as you would expect every mile but ever so often, it would jump up to a higher number. So it would read 16… then go down to 15 … then go down to 14 … and then jump to 20!!! It would again start counting down for a few miles and then jump up again!!!
Can you explain what was happening?
Here is a hint: Every time it would jump back up to a higher number, it would jump to a number higher than the previous high number.

Category: Puzzles | 22 Comments on Puzzle – GPS
12 September 2013

Intersection point. Revisited!

The nagging sense of a missed opportunity to smile at a kid was powerful enough that I went back to the same running route this morning. Figured I might be able to see the kid on his way to school – if that is where he was heading the previous day.
On my way forward, I did not see him.
On my way back, I went past the school again and still did not see him.
Just as I was going to turn into the road back to Starbucks, I spotted him at a distance – with his mom. This time I was determined.
Changed my route, ran towards them and then slowed down. Smiling ear to ear, I took my cap off and told the kid that the previous day he had waved at me. I felt very special and that nobody usually does that. (Completely skipped the smiling part 🙂 ). He gave that same awesome smile and looked up to his mom.
His mom and I exchanged pleasantries (he is a kindergartner and goes to the school that I ran past). Then we fist bumped each other (I mean the kid and I – not his mom and I :-)) and proceeded on our own “lines”.
Now that is an intersection point I can live with!!!

Category: Intersection Points, Running | 21 Comments on Intersection point. Revisited!