Lutfey.com

  • In a recent interview on Fox News Sunday the Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney placed the blame for not winning the election squarely on his campaign’s failure to connect with minority voters.  His wife, however, was quick to place blame on the fourth estate.  “And just to be clear about this, when I say ‘fourth estate’ I am referring to the media, and not our actual fourth estate we purchased to be closer to Rafalca, our professionally trained dance horse which recently competed in the 2012 Olympics.”

  • In an effort to make our schools safer from violence, action movie star Steven Seagal is training 40 volunteers in Forrest Hills, Arizona to become armed guards in public schools. In other news, H&R Block is offering to let customers have their tax returns prepared by Wesley Snipes.

  • So I was thinking about trigonometry the other day after I had been tutoring someone about to take a mathematics placement course focusing on the wide net of mathematical animals known a “pre-calculus.” Basically it covers everything from “Explain how many fingers you think you have, and don’t worry, there are no wrong answers, including leaving it blank.” to “Find a polynomial time algorithm for the traveling salesman problem and have it submitted for peer review for the past five years.”

    One of my favorite mathematical topics to explain to people is geometry.  I suspect this is because I am a very visual person and I have almost no ability to draw.  Good thing I hardly ever help people with their zoology placement tests.  “OK, let me draw you two slightly different bird species and explain how different evolutionary patters in their lower beak have allowed them to both cooperate and thrive together for thousands of years.”

    Right triangles are one of the most talked about objects in geometry.  This, of course, explains why trapizoids are so bitter and jealous.  Take the following triangle. (But remember I “borrowed” it from the wikipedia website, so put it back when you are finished.)

    So questions often arise here such as: How do you “know” that the long side of the triangle has the length of the square root of two?  Why not make it something easier like 1 1/2?  And why does it matter anyways? When am I ever going to need a right triangle at a job interview?

    Suppose you have a right triangle which has two sides of length 1 and you want to find the length of the unknown side:

    My favorite way to prove this is to start by finding the area of this triangle.  (And yes, there are more ways to prove this than there are incorrect proofs about squaring the circle.)  Singe the area is 1/2bh we know the area of this triangle is 1/2.  Now imagine we have four of these triangles:

    These triangles together have an area of 2.  Now suppose the triangles get rearranged as follows:

    So now you have a square with an area of 2.  This means that each side of the square must have the length of the square root of two.  I like this approach because it uses the least number of tools to get the job done. Also, this is the philosophy I use to build my kinetics crafts, but with mixed results.

    Then I started thinking of a different approach using a concept called limits.  Suppose we started building a staircase along the unknown length of the triangle.  As we use smaller and smaller steps it starts to look more like a straight line.  We can use limits to see what this would look like as we approach an infinite number of smaller and smaller steps.

    Each time the steps get smaller, but the total length of the blue line is always two.  Now the big question is: What happens when we use a limit to see what happens as we approach an infinite number of steps?  I’m warning you– this is where some weird shit is going to go down.  If you are standing up, I suggest sitting down. If you are on public transportation, please activate the emergency stop mechanism.  If you are sitting on the toilet, I think you should be OK.

    So as we approach the limit of this exercise, the length stays the same at 2, but all the points of the staircase line up exactly with the diagonal line. But at the beginning I told everyone the length was the square root of two, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.4.  So where did the extra 0.6 go?  Rounding error?  Did the dog run off with it?

    Honestly, I’m not sure.  First of all, I’ve been a UPS driver for the past 10 years.  My number skills aren’t quite what they used to be. Eigthly, I hope this goes on to be one of the most discussed mathematical oddities of this generation– somewhere between the “Let’s Make a Deal” dilemma (people have literally written entire books on the subject) and understanding how Leonard is dating Penny on “The Big Bang Theory.”

  • My ongoing quest to get our DVD collection onto a network drive took a big step forward last night.  I found a gizmo on Amazon that lets me turn an old USB drive into a network drive.  Now I have someplace to download all of our movies that the Playstation 3 can recognize.  This means the hardware configuration section of the project is 100% complete.  The overall project is 43% finished in terms of the projected time commitments. Stay tuned for for my next post entitled “37 unnecessarily confusing steps to follow so you don’t have to search through all your DVDs when you child needs to watch Toy Story ASAP.”

  • If you are dating a woman and are considering “taking things to the next level” (such as spending the rest of your lives together or lending her your spare grocery store rewards card) I would highly recommend that you do a little bit of research on the Internet and check out how she fares in the “88 Lines About 44 Women” song. When Katherine and I started dating I discovered the following about her:

    Well, Rhonda had a house in Venice, lived on brown rice and cocaine.
    Patty had a house in Houston, shot cough syrup in her veins.
    Linda thought her life was empty, filled it up with alcohol.
    Katherine was much too pretty, she didn’t do that shit at all.
    Uh uh, not Katherine.

    Given that very positive review we ended up getting married and having two wonderful kids together.  So make sure to do your homework before taking the plunge. That, and make sure to stay away from Dinah– I’m pretty sure she isn’t anyone’s type.

  • Photograph sharing website Instagram created an uproar after announcing sweeping changes to their terms of service.  The wave of negative publicity has forced the company to change their plans, with one high ranking company official stating off the record that “this ranks up there with one of the most blatant abuses of technology since CBS started broadcasting ’60 Minutes’ in high definition.”

  • The clock on my computer says 7:18 p.m. and I am either A) putting on my tuxedo getting ready to go to a high-society masquerade party or B) watching Team Unizoomi in my pajamas with my children reading my WordPress year in review web statistics email.  I spent countless weekends perfecting my Odo mask for the Northern Colorado Trekkies Association’s annual masquerade party only to be un-invited after making an ill-received joke at their Christmas party that Scott Backula was doing great as the star of “American Restoration.”  Needless to say, 2012 turned out to be yet another year I didn’t get invited to a masquerade party.

    For those readers who prefer visual references, here is Odo, the security chief in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:

    Scott Backlua in Star Trek: Enterprise:

    And Rick Dale from the History Channel’s “American Restoration.”

    So, getting back to my web stats for my newfunny.com website, I am happy to report my blog received roughly 17,000 page views this year.  If you don’t believe me, anyone can check out my stats page at:

    http://jetpack.me/annual-report/13586333/2012/

    While I’m very happy with the results, there are a few situations that seem to have inflated these numbers a bit.  One of the biggest reasons people come to my website is because if you are looking on Google for images of The Dukes of Hazzard one of the images from my website shows up on the first page of the search.  I don’t know how many people that click on the image actually stay to read the story, but it is one of my favorite stories that uses a popular television show to demonstrate the abuse of power from the war on drugs.  I know, it sounds really serious, but it is funny too.

    Another reason I’m getting more page views is because I wrote about the movies “Zach and Miri Make a Porno” and “Orgazmo” and now people who search for porn movies get sent to my website instead.  I’m sure I’m only getting 0.000000001% of the porn traffic, so I don’t think the porn industry really needs to view me as a threat.

    Rounding out the top five stories on my website are my Sci-fi themed wedding invitations (which we did actually send out to everyone) and my Sci-fi themed thank you letters (which Katherine wouldn’t let me send out).

    While I didn’t make any big changes to the layout of the website this year, I did find a nice plug-in that shows a list of the most popular stories on the upper right hand side of the page.  I’m still disappointed that my Iron Chef Amsterdam story and the UPS/Lord of the Rings story aren’t at the top of the list.  If I was a little more motivated I would go into the WordPress database and rig it so they showed up higher.  But I guess the public has spoken.

    So that about wraps it up for this year.  And my resolution for 2013 is to finally get invited to a masquerade party. Sci-fi themed or otherwise.

  • The days are getting shorter, the kiddos are getting taller, and I finally found a few minutes to stop all of my other important business to get around to writing my Christmas Letter for the year.

    Speaking of the days getting shorter, one of my new ideas is to get the whole country to stay on daylight savings time all year round.  Being a package car driver at United Parcel Service I start driving at 8:30 in the morning.  In the winter time during standard time the sun starts to rise around 7:30 and sets at 4:30.  During the busy Christmas season this means I deliver packages for several hours in the dark.  If we stayed on daylight savings time, I would be able to start working right when it gets light and be out in the dark an hour less each night.  So I’m starting a word of mouth campaign to get this changed.  If that doesn’t work out I’m going to try and get transferred to a UPS center in Australia where they get the benefit of having their longest days of the year coincide with their busy holiday shopping season.  I’m not sure what my wife and kids would think of that, but now that I think of it Isabel has a severe Vegemite allergy and Samantha has an unexplained fear of marsupials.  And Katherine’s Australian accent is just horrible.

    If I was going to describe my two children in just one word, it would be “growing.”  But I don’t see the point in being so terse, so I will elaborate.  Isabel is turning three years old two days before Christmas.  Fortunately she isn’t quite old enough to realize the negative consequences of having her birthday so close to Christmas.  Read my 2016 Christmas Letter for more information on that topic.  Also, any potential parents should take this into consideration when getting busy in February.  Some of Isabel’s favorite activities are quite typical for a girl her age and include suddenly laying down in the middle of the aisle at Walmart for no apparent reason, insisting on playing on all the playground equipment within sight, and asking why the car is stopped at every red light.

    Samantha is 17 months behind her sister and is just chugging right along.  Her favorite activities include going around on the Sit and Spin until I get dizzy just watching her.  Then she goes the other direction to unwind.  Then, usually, she falls over sideways and starts laughing.  Her second favorite activity is waiting until we aren’t watching her for more than five seconds, walking into the kitchen, quietly opening up the dishwasher, and sitting on the front edge of the dishwasher door.  I’ve never designed a dishwasher, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t designed for those types of weight distributions.  Check my 2013 Christmas letter to see if it includes any kitchen appliance repair.  She also has taken a liking to anything her older sister is doing at the moment.

    This summer the whole family competed in the annual kinetics race in Longmont.  We were called “The Busy Bees” and I was the queen bee.  Just about everyone at the race was both mildly intrigued and slightly disturbed by my outfit that included a tiara, yellow wig, black lipstick, a tight yellow tank top, black bra, a black and yellow tutu, black fishnet stockings, and black boots with yellow laces.  My wife and kids’ outfits were more gender appropriate and received much more positive feedback.

    Once the race started my craft went about ten feet into the water at which point something happened that could best be described as “sudden massive critical widespread structural failures.”  So despite our great costumes our team came in, rounded to the nearest integer, last place.  Some people may view this as a failure, but I had a great time.  And the crowd loves seeing someone crash and burn more than the same teams that have great crafts that finish in first place year after year.  Anyone who has spent their childhood playing countless hours of the board game “Risk” knows what I’m talking about.  If everyone plays conservatively and just builds up their armies the game isn’t going to be any fun and the game is going to last for eleven hours instead of the usual five.  I’m the one who commits all of his forces to invading Russia on my third turn.  I know it isn’t the best strategy for winning the game.  Sure, that short bald guy from “The Princess Bride” will be best known for saying, “Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’”, but in the case of Kinetics having the most radical and untested device makes for the most entertaining race.

    So I had a few extra minutes to contemplate the meaning of life the other day when I was taking a break at work.  The weather was pleasant and I had a picturesque view of the Rocky Mountains while I sat in the driver’s seat and ate my lunch.  I came to the conclusion that everything we do, in some way or other, serves two goals of humanity.  The first is to use supercomputers to completely understand how we are built to reverse engineer every species on the planet and use this information to make new things like women who can fly like birds and men who can lick their parts like a dog.  The second is to take all the molecules on the planet and rearrange them into a completely self contained spaceship to depart the vicinity before the sun runs out of fuel, collapses on itself, and explodes into half the size of the solar system.  Please refer to my 2074 Christmas Letter to see if the first goal has been realized.  Once we find a cure for cancer we will be halfway there.  I suspect the second goal might be considered more “long term” given the estimate that we have a few billion years before that whole “sun” thing becomes a pressing issue.  I hope this document will be around long enough so that scholars in the future can look through all the historical documents and say, “boy, that Omar guy really knew how things were going to play out.”

    So that about finishes things up around here.  I’ve made it through another year, which was one of my goals.  My goal of creating a tuba/baritone/trumpet comedy street performing troupe has been put on hold and my “Latin for Dummies” book has collected another year’s worth of dust.  And maybe next year I’ll get around to purchasing the newly released Lego “Firefly/Serenity” set before uptight conservative groups get it pulled from the shelves just because one of the characters is a licensed companion (future speak for “prostitute”). But don’t forget to refer to my 2013 Christmas Letter for documentation of my near future accomplishments.  I’ll end things here with one of many great lines from the movie “Serenity.”

    Inara Serra: Mal, what are you doing here?
    Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: You invited me.
    Inara Serra: I never thought for a second you’d be stupid enough to come!
    Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Well that makes you a tease.

  • This is really more of a problem with Netflix than my kids. While I go off to work my kids like to watch stuff like “The Cat in the Hat” and “The Mickey Mouse Fun House.” Which is fine, but then we put the kids to bed, come downstairs, and fire up Netflix only to have it recommend movies that only a three year old would enjoy. I’m not sure exactly how their search engine can find valid recommendations when the last two shows watched were “Team Unizoomi” and “Battlestar Gallactica.” So if anyone at Netflix is reading this, maybe you should figure how to deal with kids and adults watching content from the same account. Heck, it might even help your stock price.

  • Newt Gingrich slammed Mitt Romney’s assertion last week that he lost the 2012 presidential election because of “gifts” President Barack Obama gave to blacks, Hispanics and younger voters during his first term in the White House.  “It’s nuts,” Gingrich explained. “The job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. If we can’t offer a better future that is believable to more people, we’re not going to win.”  Gingrich paused for a moment and then added, “If I was nominated by the Republican Party, my sole focus of the campaign would have been topics that resonate with the American population such as building moon colonies, encouraging all males to have up to seven wives in their lifetimes, and promoting the emerging Republican platform that nobody has been raped, ever.”

  • “Mi-partison”, “My-partison”, and/or “Mypartison” are my submissions for the next word in Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report.”  I’m not sure exactly how to spell it since I just made up the word, but that is besides the point.  For those who aren’t up on Comedy Central’s talk shows, every now and then a new phrase is put on the screen right as Colbert grabs the American flag and starts falling into the giant letter C.  A few of my favorite past words have been:  Smartyr, Freedominant, Uptrodden, WinLaden, Downtrickler, and Fundit.

  • I’m pretty sure that I’m not giving away any sensitive UPS intelligence when I say that my employer saves money by purchasing the cheapest coffee that doesn’t violate any Federal laws.  So the other day I took a small sample of coffee to a lab for analysis. It turns out that each packet of coffee contains 53% fine sawdust, 40% recycled toner cartridge ink, and three coffee beans.  I’m not sure I even want to know what is in the powdered creamer.