Month: May 2020

Travel Planner System

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Good morning. It is Sunday May 24, 2020. The world is struggling with different plans on how to restart their economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic that started in a lab in Wuhan, China. It seems like most of the day today is going to be overcast with rain sprinkled here and there. The high temperature in the area I live in is going to be around 76 F. By the way, tomorrow is Memorial Day 2020!

Since I took a Data Science course a couple years ago, I have been talking about a system that would help planning a recreational trip. I have been lucky enough to have traveled for work and holiday reasons in the USA and different countries in North, Central and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Continue reading “Travel Planner System”

Components in a Graph

It is a cloudy day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Today I woke up around 05:00 AM. Read for about 45 minutes and then headed to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

It is all over the news that most (never say all) states have started updating the stay home orders in order to give people more freedom to do the things we are used to. I fully agree that the economy needs to get back to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic started. That said, we need to move slowly making sure that there are enough ICU beds for all people that requires them. If such quotas cannot be met, then we need to go back to a full quarantine. This type of cycle is well known and will come in the form of multiple waves.

In particular, in the State of Minnesota, the Mall of America and casinos (e.g., Mystic Lake Casino) are opening. My wife and I do not go to casinos. During the long winter months we go to the Mall of America early mornings before stores open to walk. At that time there are very few people. When we shop at the mall we visit Nordstrom and Macy’s.

Continue reading “Components in a Graph”

Disjoint Union Sets

It is a rainy Sunday morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Rain started last evening around 08:00 PM and according to the weather forecast will subside later tonight around 10:00 PM. Not a nice day to be outdoors or grilling.

Last Friday my son mentioned that he would be going shopping on Saturday morning to the Costco Minneapolis Business Center Warehouse. My wife and I decided to join him at 07:00 AM (opening time). We met in the parking lot, donned our gloves and mask, and headed in. We have been at the Restaurant Depot many times, but were nicely surprised with the size of the Costco facility and the variety of items. From now on my wife and I will make the trip from home (30 minutes about 20 miles away) a couple times a month to the Costco in Minneapolis. We believe it is worth the drive.

My wife and I cook and bake. I like to bake deserts, breads and Italian cuisine. My wife cooks lunch during the workdays. We both cook on weekends. We have breakfast which I prepare every day and we both skip dinner. The point that I am trying to make is that we did not start cooking or baking due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week we noticed that we were running very low on yeast. We went grocery shopping last Tuesday morning and where not able to find yeast at Costco in Eagan, MN or Trader Joe’s in St. Paul. Back home, I went to Amazon.com and ordered a 2 pound pouch of Red Star dry yeast. The total after taxes (we do have Amazon Prime) came to $24.99 USD. I thought it was expensive but it seems that every one and their brother are baking now a day. The delivery will be sometime tomorrow (Monday).

While at Costco we found lots of Red Star dry yeast in the same 2 lb pouches we ordered from Amazon. That is the same yeast we have been using for over a decade. What we found disgusting was that Costco had the same 2 lb pouches of yeast for under $4.50 USD each. We bought two pouches (totaling 4 lbs) for about $9.00 USD. They should last a year or so. Continue reading “Disjoint Union Sets”

Angular in VSCode

!!! UPDATE !!!

As you will read in this post, I stopped working on it at the end of my workday yesterday. Overnight I received a message from a good childhood friend that studied in the USA, received a MS degree in geology, and return to Peru to work. Today he owns a company that employs 60+ people.

I have read on different occasions that some old and readily available medicines seem to work on patients with COVID-19. The severity of the symptoms and the number of days in a hospital has been reduced. The hospital stays are on average five days. When you compare results we are experiencing in North America and Western Europe, our treatment approaches do not seem to be working as well. People continue to die and stays in hospitals are between two and three weeks.

So what is going on?

First and the more obvious idea is that such treatments in Peru and Latin America in general are “fake news”. Could be, but when you look at number of deaths and people who we know are experiencing firsthand the benefits, I think is time to look for other theories.

Second, we live in a country whose economic system is based on Capitalism. Most (never generalize) companies are in business to make the last possible penny of customers at all cost. We have multiple examples (which I will not mention at this time) of companies in which the top executives and stock holders make huge amounts while at the same time many employees and customers are not able to take advantage of lower prices.

The possible conclusion is that Big Pharma backed up by politicians, is only interested in making money so they will delay as much as possible the use of cheap, simple and readily available medicines in favor of the ones in development that could potentially cost millions of deaths and billions of dollars to consumers.

Years ago my wife was seeing a very good doctor in a very good healthcare system. He and his wife, both doctors in medicine, were born in India. They both live in the USA and have built a nice and educated family. My wife asked her doctor for a treatment for nail fungus. Knowing the doctor for years he said that he could prescribe some medicine which is what the hospital suggested, or he could tell her what works in less time and at a fraction of the cost. Dip your feet in warm water with Listerine mouth wash a couple times a week. The issue should disappear in a few weeks. We tried it and it worked.

I did the following Google searches and read some of the articles in the results:

“IVERMECTINA”

“ivermectina coronavirus”

“Ivermectin Wikipedia”

FDA Letter to Stakeholders: Do Not Use Ivermectin Intended for Animals as Treatment for COVID-19 in Humans (https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/fda-letter-stakeholders-do-not-use-ivermectin-intended-animals-treatment-covid-19-humans)

Ivermectin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivermectin)

Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043740/)

The FDA-approved drug Ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011)

FAQ: COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals (https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/product-safety-information/faq-covid-19-and-ivermectin-intended-animals)

The approved dose of Ivermectin alone not useful in treating COVID-19 (https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200427/Ivermectin-alone-not-useful-in-treating-COVID-19.aspx)

‘Ivermectin can kill COVID-19 within 48 hours’, Monash University study finds (https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/ivermectin-can-kill-covid-19-within-48-hours-monash-university-study-finds)

Parasite Drug Shows Early Promise Against COVID-19 (https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200407/parasite-drug-shows-early-promise-against-covid-19)

My suggestion would be to check if the sources are reliable and make up your own mind. In my humble opinion we need Capitalism 2.0 and Democracy 2.0.

Continue reading “Angular in VSCode”

CS50 2019 Lecture 6 – Python

It is Friday afternoon and we are still observing social distancing restrictions and working from home. That said, things are slowly relaxing and more people are out and about. The number of cars on the road has more than tripled since the stay home order started a couple months ago. Please observer social distancing and wear a mask when in public. It is for your well being, your family and friends, your country, and all human beings on this planet.

Currently I am running some tests and writing documentation on some code I wrote earlier during the week. During idle times I am putting together the contents for this post. Hope to be done in the next hour or so. My wife left a minute ago to walk (keeping social distancing) with a neighbor. The day is sunny but rather cold. The temperature is in the upper 40’s. Continue reading “CS50 2019 Lecture 6 – Python”

Down to Zero – Revisited

!!! NOTE !!!

Not sure what happens with the formatted code which seems to display well and sometimes it does not. The good thing is that the entire code is in my GitHub repository. Sorry about the inconvenience. If you have a formatter for Word Press that you like and is reliable, please let me know.

I received a message from a reader of my blog requesting some clarification on my original solution and associated post Down to Zero II. The associated post was from 2016. The initial code was not in my GitHub repository. Sorry about that.

After reading the message (which I keep private unless told otherwise) I went to GitHub and created a new repository. I added a short and simple README.md file and cloned the repo to one of my Windows 10 computers.

I then copied the original solution.java file and opened it using VSCode. The original code was developed using the Eclipse IDE. In the past year or so I have switched to VSCode for C++, Java, and Python. Continue reading “Down to Zero – Revisited”