Missing Two

Usually my youngest son calls on his way to work. Is almost 10:00 AM and have not heard from him. I work from home so I am able to receive his calls pretty much any time. I do not like to call him because he works out in the mornings and has to go home, get ready and drive to work. His time varies from day to day. We have this unspoken arrangement that if he does not have a chance to call we will do so the next day.

The arrangement is exactly the opposite on weekends. I tend to call him as soon as my wife and I head out for the first activity of the day. Typically is on our way to or from shopping for groceries or running any other morning errand. Continue reading “Missing Two”

The Masseuse

!!! UPDATED !!!

Updated the screen capture of the output for the code. The previous one was not displaying correctly.

This past weekend my youngest son and family who live in Madison, WI stopped by for a visit. They used the opportunity to drive to St. Cloud to visit my granddaughter and my older son and family who live in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It is always good to spend time with family. They left for home yesterday afternoon. My wife and I made enough food to feed a lot more people so we will be having leftovers for a few days.

I gave a try to problem 17.16 in the Cracking the Coding Interview book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. The problem is about a masseuse who has a set of consecutive appointments and wishes to optimize her time by taking care of as many customers as possible with the only caveat that she needs to take a break of 15 minutes within appointments. Continue reading “The Masseuse”

Re-Space

UPDATE – The format for the code for the class TrieNode has been addressed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

It is Friday and my youngest and family will be arriving this afternoon for a weekend long visit. My wife and I are getting ready for their arrival later today. We all enjoy good food so we have an extensive menu planned which includes fugazza, pasta carbonara with lots of pancetta, beef roast with a homemade tomato sauce, limoncello cake and different alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

Let’s get to the main subject of this post. I tackled problem 17.13 from the Cracking the Coding Interview book. The problem is name Re-Space. Continue reading “Re-Space”

Majority Element

Last weekend my wife and I stopped to visit our son who also lives in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. On our last trip to Europe, our granddaughters asked us if we could get for their dad a bottle of flavored vodka in the duty free store in the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. At the time looked like a good idea. He seems to enjoy vodka. When we returned home the girls gave their dad the bottle. Continue reading “Majority Element”

Baby Names

Currently we live in a world of deception. The overflow of data that we are exposed to every day via news channels, companies and social media streams does not allow us to easily distinguish what is true, what is somewhat true and what are just plain lies.

I am not a political fanatic. Last week president Trump paid a visit to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. He had a presentation at Target Center in downtown. My only thoughts were not to be in or around that area the day of the event. What was interesting is that some Tweets showed pictures of the event before it started while people were starting to arrive. The Tweets stated that very few people attended the event. This is a premeditated lie. I happen to know a couple people who attended the event and had pictures and videos. Target Center was packed. Continue reading “Baby Names”

Missing Number

It is Friday and it has been a long week and I am feeling somewhat tired. My wife and I have been invited for dinner at one of her brother’s house. I am looking forward to decompress later today.

In this post I tackled problem 17.4 from the Cracking the Coding Interview book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. As usual I read the problem a few times to get a good understanding of what is required. Given that I have to generate the test scaffolding I try to be even more careful not to waste time. Continue reading “Missing Number”

Add without Plus

It is Thursday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and the sun is shining. Later this afternoon my wife and I will go walking for an hour. Not too many days left before it gets really cold and start to snow.

After doing the last HackerRank challenge which was rated easy I decided to go back to the “Cracking the Coding Interview” book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell and start tackling the hard problems listed in chapter 17 of the book. Continue reading “Add without Plus”

Breaking the Record

I am writing a white paper on Agile. Hope to get done by the end of this week. I will be looking where to start posting it and future ones besides this blog.

I received a message for an easy challenge from HackerRank. Just to warm up I decided to tackle it. If interest in the Breaking the Records challenge please take a look at the description and then go for it. Continue reading “Breaking the Record”

Plane Routes

This past week my wife, our granddaughters and I returned from a holiday trip to Europe. We visited several cities in Italy, Belgium and Amsterdam. We flew commercial airlines to move between large cities. This made me think of airplane routes and filling up the tanks with fuel. For efficiency reasons airplanes do not get refueled on each stop if it can be avoided. Depending on the part of the world you travel to, airplanes have minimum amounts of fuel they must have on board when they takeoff. The amount depends on the distance to the next stop. I know a few things about the subject because I flew for fun private planes for a few years. For personal reasons (wife and family) I decided to stop. Continue reading “Plane Routes”

Java Collections List

It is a gloomy Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It rained last night. It is quite damp. It is a typical fall day in this part of the country. The only difference is that in the past two years the lawns are green instead of being brown. I do not know for sure the cause for the climate change which is a very controversial topic, but for sure something is changing.

I am going to quickly cover some operations with Lists in Java. Will use lists on my next post. I need a refresher given that lately I have been working with C/C++ and after a few weeks (which in this case included a two week holiday) of not working with a programming language I tend to stumble with the syntax. It all gets back after a day or so of concentrating on the specific language. Continue reading “Java Collections List”