Minimum Viable Product – John Canessa

Divide Chocolate

Good day! Hope your workday has started on the right note. Currently in the USA we are observing the Daylight saving time which this year ends on Sunday, November 7, 2021. Today is Thursday October 14, 2021 so we have a little over one month for the time to get back to normal.

I see the positive sides of daylight savings time during summer. In my opinion, in the USA, daylight savings should start on Memorial Day and end on Labor Day. The reason for this is that schools and universities tend to be off during such period.

For college students it should not make much of a difference, but for K-12 students it does. Most children use public school buses to commute to school. Depending on the grade they attend, they may be picked up in the morning around 07:00 AM. I am always up before 06:00 AM. I am a morning person. After fixing breakfast I wake up my wife so we can have the first meal of the day together.

After we are done with breakfast, she helps me with the dishes. After rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher I shower, get dressed, and head down to my office to work on my first 2-hour block of the day. This includes weekends in which I work one or at most two blocks. On regular workdays I tend to do four to five blocks a day.

For the past week or two, when I head down to my office, the day is very dark, to the point that I have to turn on lights. It happens that when I am heading down is about 07:00 AM and I see kids that are already riding public school busses. They had to walk from home to the bus stop while it is quite dark. I thought that children were first in our society. It seems I am wrong. Go figure!

In the month that we have to wait before daylight savings ends, it will be dark close to 08:00 AM. So why is this happening? Well, the thought is that if the school day ends with some light, parents will be more prone to head out and grab a bite which is good for business. I guess children do not have much homework in these days. Things have changed since I attended K-12. Continue reading “Divide Chocolate”

Merge Sort Revisited

Good morning! Hope your day has started on the right note. Yesterday was quite hectic for me. Hopefully the day will go as smooth as possible. Continue reading “Merge Sort Revisited”

Longest Substring without Repeating Characters

Good day ladies and gentlemen. It is Monday and I am taking this week off from work. I have not taken enough days off so for health reasons I have to take of this week. That said, if I am called to solve and issue I will be available. I am spending the entire week at home.

Today my wife was preparing lunch. She noticed some zucchini in the refrigerator and decided to prepare them stuffed. It is funny that after my wife and I got married, she asked my mother for her recipe on several occasions. The reason is that at my parent’s house, when zucchini were in season they were the first plate for lunch at least once a week. I really liked them the way my Nona and mother prepared them. My mother did not pass on the recipe. Good thing that my wife and I cook. We are on our way to a better recipe. Will let you know when we achieve the goal. Continue reading “Longest Substring without Repeating Characters”

Producer and Consumer – Part 3

It is Friday once again. The cleaning crew is at home. I have been listening to the vacuum for a few hours. They should be done shortly.

I have to get a COVID-19 test this afternoon. On Monday I will be having a procedure and the clinic requires a COVID test in the past 72 hours no matter if you have already received the complete doze of a vaccine. I was going to get this procedure done a couple years ago, but with some travelling plans and then COVID did not have an opportunity to get it done.

Today I suggested to my wife if we could have Asian from Trader Joe’s for lunch. She suggested noodles with an Italian sauce we fixed last week. We were able to fill five one-pint containers and put them in the outside freezer. The sauce turned out very good. We made it last Saturday when my wife’s brother and wife had lunch with us. We used a few pounds of chuck and Italian pureed tomatoes. Hopefully the cleaning crew will leave soon so we can have an early lunch. Continue reading “Producer and Consumer – Part 3”

Merge K Sorted Arrays

Good morning! It is once again Saturday morning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today is March 13, 2021 and the sun is shining in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The forecast calls for the temperature to get up to 58F. For this time of the year it is welcomed. Tomorrow it will be a little cooler and daylight savings time starts at 02:00 AM when the clocks spring forward to 03:00 AM. Tomorrow we lose one hour.

A week or so ago I was talking with an engineer about merging a set of sorted arrays. I also generated the post Merge Sorted Array which probably motivated the exchange. If you take a look at the last post, the idea was to merge two sorted arrays. The obvious next step is to consider multiple sorted arrays of the same or different lengths. In that post we considered two approaches. In the first one we add all the elements from both arrays into a priority queue. We then populate the result array with the elements being removed from the priority queue. Continue reading “Merge K Sorted Arrays”

Merge Sorted Array

Good morning! Hope your day has started on the right note. The high temperature in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is forecasted to be about ten degrees less than yesterday. BTW, yesterday the temperature went up to 61F which is the highest this year so far. My wife and I were planning on grilling yesterday but one thing and the other and I ended having BBQ Chicken Teriyaki from Trader Joe’s. Tasty but I prefer my wife cooking (just making points).

It seems that COVID-19 vaccinations are starting to pick up Minnesota. We are behind other states but the expectations are high. We need to hit herd immunity as soon as possible. It seems that masks and social distancing will be a good idea for people with or without the vaccine for the near future until there is enough data to understand if we will need periodic vaccine boosters or not. Continue reading “Merge Sorted Array”