By The Numbers

Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned I was having difficulties with my computer keyboard? Well, my new keyboard came in the mail today and I just installed it. Yay! Not only does this one actually work 100% of the time, but it also matches the rest of the computer; it's black! And anyone who knows me knows how I feel about matching. Plus, the buttons on Christina here press oh so smoothly, reminiscent of the HCHPAC, a reference which exactly one of my readers will understand. I'll explain that in a minute.

Az in an effort to break in Christina, I went to latimes.com to do a Su Doku. Now, for those of you who think that people who are good with numbers are better at Su Doku than other random folks, you're wrong. All those numbers in that big square (that guy. Unsettling! See SB e-mail #114, "The Facts") might as well be letters because you don't need to perform any operations on them. You just need to use each number between one and nine once in each row and column. Another words, they might as well be the letters between A and I, or for that matter the letters between K and S, or for that matter, the symbols: !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, and (.

Anyway, while I was doing that Su Doku, I was using the new number pad on my keyboard, and it occurred to me that number pads on keyboards are different that number pads on touch-tone telephones and on Automatic Teller Machines. On keyboards the 1, 2, and 3 buttons are on the bottom while the 7, 8, and 9 are on the top. But on telephones it's the exact opposite. If anyone has any idea why that is, please run it through my idiot filter "Edga Jr." (See SB e-mail #127, "Long Pants") before submitting it in any comments, and certainly if you wish to share your thoughts with me in person.

Okay fine, I'll tell the HCHPAC story, not like it'll improve anyone's opinion of me. Back when I was at CTY (The Center for Talented Youth. Yes, I'm a bloomin' genius. I know.) the summer after 10th grade, I took a three week course in high school level Number Theory. Now my professors, Timmer and Quimby, were pretty crazy guys, and they realized that we were studying Mathematics over the summer instead of playing sports like normal children, az they tried to keep class exciting by doing various skits and making lots of jokes. Anyway, my roommate loves to shower. Anyway, they liked to have each student come up to the blackboard to solve problems all the time, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE wanted to go up to solve the problem when the rights to the HCHPAC were at stake. Nothing draws on the blackboard as smoothly as the Highly Coveted Hot Pink Artist's Chalk. So smooth...
There, happy now? That's all it is with you people; take take take. Ah well, I couldn't resist.