Month: May 2021

How Sum

Once again it is Friday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. This coming weekend is Memorial Day 2021. My wife and I will be heading out after work to visit our younger son. It is about a three-hour drive. Today in the Twin Cities is rather cold. As we reach our destination it might be raining. At least that is what the weather forecast call for today. While driving the temperature is not much of a concern. Rain on the highway is OK as long as we do not encounter thunderstorms. Yesterday evening we filled up the SUV so we are ready to leave at the end of the workday today.

I kept on watching the Dynamic Programming – Learn to Solve Algorithmic Problems & Coding Challenges video on YouTube. I am around the 2nd hour into the video and to be honest with you I am enjoying it.

My wife and I drove back after spending a couple days with our son and family. We have not visit with them in person for the past year and a half. The boys are growing like weeds. We are planning on visiting them before the yearend holidays. They are planning on a trip with friends around Christmas 2021.

On a side note my Pixel 4 cell phone died again while we were out of town. Tried pressing and holding the different buttons but nothing happened. Back home, I tried charging the phone for an hour or so to get some juice in the battery. After repeating the process the phone continues to be dead. Today we have other plans. Will stop by T-Mobile tomorrow and see if they can revive the phone once again. The issue appears to be battery related. Now a day who knows? It might be a virus. One way of the other we are done with Google phones. We are moving to Apple. Will let you know my first impressions as soon as I get the new phone configured to a point I can have what I consider basic configuration. Continue reading “How Sum”

Can Sum?

Today is a cold and dark day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It has been raining all day. The forecast matched the day. Hopefully tomorrow it will be nicer.

Yesterday evening my wife and I were sitting in the living room watching YouTube videos. All was working as expected. At some point I decided to look for a video to watch so I picked up my phone that was sitting next to me on the couch. The phone was dead. I tried powering it up at no avail. I thought the battery might have discharged. Strange because when I picked it up from the wireless charger the phone was about 100% charged.

I tried pressing button sequences to restart the phone. That did not work.

I pulled my cell phone out of the OtterBox case. The phone looks like new. I decided not to open the actual phone thinking I might cause an additional problem. I put my phone back into the OtterBox case.

I then decided to put the phone to charge on a wireless charger. After half hour or so later I tried to power up the phone. It was not able to power up. I then tried with a regular plug-in charger. Half hour later the phone was still completely dead. Decided to take my Pixel 4 phone to T-Mobile and see if they can diagnose and hopefully fix the issue. We will find more about it today after work…

…Later in the day I took my cell phone to the T-Mobile store closest to home. They were able to rest the phone. All is back to normal. I did ask if T-Mobile would carry the Pixel 5 phone. Apparently they have no plans to do so. My wife and I might switch to Apple for the first time when our Pixel phones need to be replaced. Continue reading “Can Sum?”

Grid Traveler or Unique Paths

The weather is acting somewhat erratic. Today the forecasted high in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul will be 20F lower than yesterday. Tomorrow it should be 10F lower than today and should be raining. The water level in pond in my backyard is very low. Some rain should help. I noticed that a couple of cranes have made their home for summer the pond. Not sure if they are the same that return every year or they are an offspring of the ones from last year. I do not know much about cranes.

Since the weather will be nice today; my wife and I will go for a walk after the end of the workday. Not sure what we will do tomorrow. Perhaps we will go to the Mall of America.

On a different note, as you might know, I work in 2-hour blocks. After each block I go up and get something to drink. A few minutes later I head back to work. A few weeks ago I moved a stationary bike from a utility room and set it up in the lower level living room. I started biking for 5 minutes after completing a 2-hour block. That is working very well. I get between 20 to 25 minutes biking each workday. Since the bike is indoors I can do it year round. Continue reading “Grid Traveler or Unique Paths”

Fibonacci Revisited

Good day! Hope your day is winding down nicely. We were expecting thunderstorms today in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, but we just got some rain in an almost sunny and warm day. It seems that this summer is going to be warmer than usual.

I decided to watch Dynamic Programming – Learn to Solve Algorithmic Problems & Coding Challenges which is slightly over 5 hours long. The idea is to watch and experiment as you go. The code on the video is implemented in JavaScript. I decided to use Java.

It is going to take me a few days to watch the entire video and experiment with the code.

On a separate note I am in the process of setting up .NET on a different machine. I want to do so experimentation using the VSCode IDE. I have the same setup on a different machine but I am using Visual Studio Enterprise Edition. More on this as soon as I complete and verify the installation. Continue reading “Fibonacci Revisited”

Efficient Graph Search

It is a spring Monday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The weather forecast calls for humid and overcast day with the possibility of thunderstorms this afternoon. In general, I try to shutdown my computers at home as soon as I hear thunder. So far all is good. Hopefully the storms will start later in the day after my workday is over!

The weekend was rather nice. It was humid and warm. It seems that the weather has changed more than usual this year. In Lima Peru, there are no storms or any considerable rain. Apparently earlier today some lightning and associate thunder passed by the coastal city. As far as I know this is a first. Continue reading “Efficient Graph Search”

Movies on Flight

Good day! It is a Friday in the month of May. The forecast called for rain and thunderstorms. We only received some rain. It is good to have some rain because things were starting to dry up. When vegetation dries up it may catch on fire.

In this post I will attempt to solve two flavors of the same problem. I believe one can create a few more problems by changing just a few words in the requirement. This will become clear as we read the requirements and describe the differences.

I found this problem named Movies on Flight in the LeetCode web site. Apparently Amazon has been using different versions on some of their technical assessments. Continue reading “Movies on Flight”

Sam and Substrings

It is a sunny Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The earlier forecast was calling for thunderstorms. I just check the revised forecast and it seems that we might have some rain after dark. That is good news because my wife and I are invited to our oldest son’s house today to have the next version of the burgers we had last Saturday as I commented on the Roads and Libraries post. Will let you know tomorrow how it goes.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few weeks ago I had elective surgery performed on my left knee. All is going very well with the recovery process. So far most of the physical therapy sessions have been on Tuesdays and Thursdays towards the end of the day (04:30 PM or 05:00 PM). Today the session is at 01:30 PM. My wife changed our daily lunch schedule to accommodate it. We will be having lunch after therapy.

Yesterday we spoke over Skype with a couple friends of us that live in Peru. Things are not going well in Peru or Latin America in general. Seems that communism is creeping at alarming rates. In the next presidential elections to be held on June 06, 2021 there are two candidates. One candidate represents the right and the other the left. The left has mandated voters in different places to take a picture of their secret ballot to allow party representatives to verify that the votes are for the communist candidate. If voters refuse their lives would be in danger. Not much to say about a secret and fair election!

Of course the bottom line is always money. In this case some foreign nations will benefit by getting several mines at a much discounted price. It seems like a repeat of what transpired and is still going on in Venezuela. Such is life. Continue reading “Sam and Substrings”

Roads and Libraries

Good morning! It is a foggy Sunday morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In the past week or so the mornings have been sunny. That said, the forecasted high for the day is 76F. If the fog clears and with sun shine we might be a couple degrees warmer.

Yesterday the high temperature was forecasted to be 70F. My wife and I stopped by our older son place. He lives in Lakeville which is about 15 minutes away by car from our place.

We spent a few hours outside chatting and drinking a couple adult drinks while he was cooking some delicious burgers. He enjoys grilling and smoking meats. In the past couple weeks he decided to meet or better yet, improve on a butter burger sandwich from Culver’s.

I am not going to get into the details but in my opinion the burgers he made were a notch better than the ones from the food chain. That said, my wife and I would have cooked them no more than one minute per side. My son likes burgers very well done while we prefer them just done. He did not only cook the burgers, but in addition served them with all the trimmings and in waxed paper in the shape of a bag. We all had a good time. Today my wife and I will grill steaks but next week, we will do burgers with all the trimmings. We will be skipping the paper bag! Continue reading “Roads and Libraries”

Search in Rotated Sorted Array

It is another nice day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The temperature will be in the low 70s. I noticed in the Weather Channel app on my phone that a warning of brush fires has been issued in this area. Based on the temperatures above than normal and precipitation below normal, it was going to happen sooner or later. Hope we get some needed rain soon.

On a separate note the relationship between Israel and Palestine has taken a wrong turn. The last administration in the US was moving forward and had achieved peace between the parties. With the current administration thousands of rockets has been launched into Israel. Interesting but about 20% of the rockets launched have killed the terrorists that launched them. Hopefully both sides will be able to get to a new agreement. Continue reading “Search in Rotated Sorted Array”

Generate Parentheses

For lunch my wife made a pork and cauliflower dish. She added a few drops of Green Dragon Hot Sauce. It goes very well with pork dishes. For desert we had gypsy arm filled in with dulce de leche with strawberries on the side. Lunch was quite good. After chatting for a few and doing the dishes and pots I got back to my home office. Continue reading “Generate Parentheses”