Steve McCoy
1220 N 164th St
Omaha, NE 68118
Mobile tel: +1(402)598-5153
email:
trmccoyx@cox.net
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specials
- "stuff" from Steve McCoy
I have been in the technology
business too long to not know how important some distractions & amusements
are to keeping our sanity. This page will be dedicated to
finding some of those things and sharing them with others.
Feel free to email me additional items that you might find to be
dedicated to helping us all keep the right things in the right
perspectives. An example to the right reflects that I've been
lucky and climbed to most of the highest points in the continental
U.S. It's a great reminder to "stop" and look around.
You don't want to miss anything in the short time that we are all
here.
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I really am a pragmatist when it
comes technology. I strongly believe that you should
always pursue the "best" overall solution that fits your
needs and "architecture principles" (more on that later).
There have always been debates over what the best desktop
solution is, but you cannot hide from Microsoft Windows
being the overall "winner" for most folks in the world.
If you're a Windows user and haven't already moved to
Windows 7, I would have to recommend that you give it some
thought. After having installed it on numerous
systems, I can say with confidence that it is the most
stable, cleanest Windows that I've ever had. Its'
error handling and stability make it a much more pleasant
world to operate in even with downward compatibility for
many older programs.
That said, if you are running completely clean all the time
with Vista, you probably don't have a good reason to update,
but I'm simply saying, "Don't be afraid!". In the past
you probably have had some awful experiences with upgrading
Windows and you probably won't with this.
Do your research, check your system recommendations and
drivers and "go for it". |
Here's a "classic"
for you.. The Eight Queens Problem:
The premise here is that you have a chess board, and you
have 8 "queens" that normally can attack other chess pieces
in any direction on the board (horizontal, vertical, or
either diagonal direction) and no other pieces. Here is the
"given"....... There are 92 possible
ways to put the queens on the board such that none of
them could attack each other. How do you figure out all 92
positions?
If you're a programmer; how would you write a piece of code
to produce the answers? If you're not a programmer,
just give it some thought.
This was one of my greatest lessons in
how to write efficient programs. When given this
challenge in a college programming class, I spent 2 weeks
drawing checkerboards and formulas and then wrote my program
in 2 hours. When turning it in I sat in class next to
another student and we compared solutions. We both had
the same answers. I wrote 58 lines of code and my
program executed in 16 seconds. The other solution was
over 700 lines of code and took the computer 12 minutes to
produce the same answers. From that point on, system
and program performance have always been critically
important to me. |
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As a starting point.......... Here's Me!
Some time ago I decided that I needed to "personalize some
documents, emails, etc......so.......... I caricatured me.
Don't be alarmed if I occasionally show up on your desktop!!! |
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Hot topics and reading recommendations regarding-technology. (News
"tidbits") |
...Wondering what this is??? Click to take a look. (specials)
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