Math

I think I may have a new direction for this blog and I have Where’s George to thank for it. I was thinking about how the currency circulates and the exact nature of getting change. For those that don’t know, Where’s George is a Web site where people enter dollar bills that they get. The idea is to hope that someone else gets the same bill and enters it into the site, thus allowing both users to see where the bill has been and how far it has traveled.

I began thinking about how I have so many bills and how easy it really is to accumulate bills. Take, for instance, a $20 bill. If I enter that on the site, I have $20 listed. Now, take that twenty and use it to buy a lottery ticket for $1. That gives me $19 in change. Most likely, I’ll get a $10 bill, a $5 bill and four $1 bills. If I add those to the original $20, I get $39. The cumulative dollar value of what I have entered has almost doubled.

At this point, the $1 bills are useless in terms of my demonstration. The $10 and $5 bills, however, will get me another $5 bill and eight more $1 bills. (The ten is broken into a five and four ones and the five is simply broken into four ones.) That’s another $13. Added to the running total, that’s $52. After spending the remaining five on another lottery ticket, I get another $4, bringing me up to $56 off of the original twenty. Assuming I withdraw only twenties, my potential is almost three times whatever I withdraw.

This got me thinking. What if I were to do some sort of math-related blog? I suppose I could think up some strange mathematical curiosity to work out or something. It’s better than just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Comments? Suggestions?

Another post

I know that I said that I was going to post something by my birthday, but I’m lazy. Besides, I’ve been busy writing for a contest on Epinions. I’m working hard to get to 2,000, which is a long way off considering that I’ve written only 18 reviews this calendar year and that I hit 1,000 reviews on December 11th of last year. (I now have 1,022 reviews.)


The construction is still going on. There are few major problems aside from still not having a working clothes washer. One is that the phone seems to go out every so often. This has to do with the fact that the wire going out has fallen down. We can get it back after messing with it a little, but it’s still an inconvenience. I guess it could have been worse. At first, I was expecting it to be hell with all of the noise and dust. I’ve been out of the house during most of the construction and the dust has been contained to the kitchen, leaving a small area to be cleaned up.


I’m posting two pictures of the construction. One is from the inside showing a window looking out of what will become my room. The other is on the outside looking at that same window. The windows were put in a few days ago. However, as you can see from the interior shot, a lot still has to be done. I knew that it was going to take a long time, but I had no idea that it was going to take this long.

Part of it is that we’re still ordering stuff, like locks, and we’re waiting on things, like tiles and stuff. There are also a lot of schedules to coordinate and many changes to the plans have to be reflected on the permits. I’m eager for it to be over just so I can get back to a normal routine.

Speaking of a normal routine, I’m still getting over a reformat that I did to my computer several months ago. I jut got around to putting GTA 2 back on my computer. I had lost the saved game I had, which means that I’ll have to beat the first level over again. I’ll probably do a lot of side missions and stuff just to get to the $1,000,000 necessary to get to the second area.

I’ve been looking for some other games to buy. I don’t really need anything fancy. I just want something to pass the time. Some of the games that I’ve found are too much for my computer. Others don’t look that involved. I may end up buying one just to get a review out of it. Worst-case scenario, I could bring it in to EB Games or something.

I suppose that’s all for now. I really will try to keep up.