Tag: Windows 10 computer

All Construct – Tabulation

Good day!!! Hope your day is going well. The day started relatively cold at 58F with relative humidity around 93%. The weather, according to my iPhone, was fair. My wife and I did our daily morning walk as soon as we were done with breakfast. On my way back I usually water the plans, but due to the weather conditions, I decided to skip. I will water them tomorrow morning.

In my previous post Can Construct – Tabulation I was not please with the telephone support provided by Delta Airlines. They offer a callback when you are waiting to speak with a representative. For example, a callback was promised while being informed that the wait was about 3-hours long. The callback would be received about 12 hours latter; sometimes in the middle of the night.

It is a fact that airlines were hit hard with the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of them (never generalize) let go a large part of their staff. In the past few weeks things are starting to return to normal with customer service at Delta. Earlier this week I placed a call to change several things on a reservation. There was a delay of about two hours (2:15). I requested a callback and as usual wrote the time I expected a representative to call me. About two hours later, Ronda from Delta called. She was very pleasant. She spent a lot of time (15 minutes or so) to make all the changes I requested. Not only that, but she suggested alternatives that could save me some money and make the travelling experience better. Felt like service was back to pre COVID-19 pandemic. Great job Ronda!!!

You probably have heard of competitive programming. It seems that software engineers need to solve a problem as soon as possible. Sounds good, but imagine if you go for a surgery and the surgeon wants to perform the procedure in the least amount of time. Not sure about you, but I would prefer someone with experience that takes its time and wants to produce the best results, not just finish faster than others. Seems to me like a compromise between quality and time. That said; I will try my first competition on Saturday. Will let you know my findings. Perhaps I will change my opinion. Continue reading “All Construct – Tabulation”

Count Construct – Tabulation

Earlier today I read an article commenting about how the high temperatures are rising all over the USA. In Arizona and Nevada the forecasted highs should be about 115F and 112F respectively. The average temperature for a human adult is around 98F. That is quite warm if you ask me.

Today in the suburb in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul where I reside, we woke up with 72F. At some point we might be getting some rain. The high is forecasted to be 91F and we are still in spring 2021.

My wife and I have breakfast and then head out for a walk. We like to get the workout in first thing in the morning. After returning home, I watered some plants that were replaced outside a week or so ago. I have been informed that I need to water them 3 to 4 days a week for a month or so until the plants adapt to their current location; so far, so good. We do need some rain. The lawns in our area are starting to show some brown spots. We can see and hear the sprinklers in the morning, but seems that laws need additional water. A few good down pours each month would take care of the brown spots. Based on NOAA’s forecast, it is going to be a dry and hot summer for most parts in the USA.

Yesterday I mentioned that I requested a callback from a Delta agent. Based on the information at hand, I was expecting the callback in about two hours. I did receive the call. At that time I had performed enough searches on the web that I had solved the issue before talking with the agent. All is well at this time. Continue reading “Count Construct – Tabulation”

Can Construct – Tabulation

Good day software engineers / developers. Hope your day has started on the right note. Today is Wednesday (hump day). Two more workdays and the weekend will be here.

I have read on different articles that airline traffic in the USA is back to pre COVID-19 pandemic levels. After reading the articles I felt good about the pandemic coming to an end and for the airlines and their employees. That said; I live in a suburb of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. MSP is an international airport and a hub for several airlines (including Delta). The airport is located next to Bloomington, MN. I used to own a software development company which was based in Bloomington. Every day on my way back home, depending on the wind direction, I could see two lines of six or more airplanes on final to land at MSP. In addition, the city in which I live is very close to a pattern used by planes to land on a third runway at MSP. Depending on the time and wind patterns, we could see several dozen planes around lunch time.

Today you can see a few planes if you spend an hour watching for them to land or after takeoff. By no means, the amount of traffic is close to pre COVID-19 pandemic levels. Being generous I would say that the traffic at MSP is about 10% of what is used to be a couple years ago when the pandemic started. So why are we seeing FAKE NEWS? Is there a presidential election coming up that I have missed? Of course not! In my opinion airlines are so desperate in getting people to vacation this summer, that they might have recruited writers and reporters to spread the need to take a vacation in the USA or better yet in Europe.

For reasons I do not wish to get into at this time, my wife and I decided on a weeklong vacation OUS this summer. We have done this before for the birthday of a good friend. We booked our tickets and hotel via Delta. A week or so we added our two granddaughters that wanted to meet my friend and family and just wanted to relax for a few days.

In the recent weeks we decided that the flights are good, but want to make changes to the accommodations to a different resort. The resort we are currently booked on has a one day policy for cancelation. In other words, you can cancel without penalty if you do so one day before you are scheduled to arrive. Nice!

I have tried to cancel the resort component of our trip using the Delta website. I have tried calling Delta Vacations (800.800.1504) on multiple occasions. A recording states that there are busy. After indicating to do a search on-line, the call disconnects. You cannot wait for an attendant. VERY POOR SERVICE CHOICE DELTA!!!

I have also called General Sales & Services (800.323.2323) on multiple occasions. As I am typing this post, I am holding for about two hours waiting for a representative. After half hour on-hold I hang up.

While waiting I found a different number for International Sales & Service (800.241.241). I will also give it a try. In addition I found on the Delta app on my iPhone Silver Medallion Reservations (800.325.6330) so I called. There was a two-hour wait. I left my phone number. I should be receiving a call from Delta within a couple hours. I placed my call at 13:27 CDT. Will let you know my findings after lunch. It seems that a couple family members from my wife will be joining us today.

We are done with lunch. We usually have lunch around 12:30 CDT, but today it was a couple hours later.

I have not received the call from Delta yet. Believe or not, having to wait for hours allows customers to continue searching the web and finding answers to most of their problems. I found what I needed on-line. I was able to cancel the resort reservations. My wife and I will book on a different resort tomorrow morning. We have stayed at this other resort a few times. The grounds are quite larger and the facilities seem to be newer. Continue reading “Can Construct – Tabulation”

Can Sum – Tabulation

Hope you are having a wonderful day! The temperature in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul continues to be way above normal. Today is going to be another spring day with temperatures in the upper 90Fs. My wife and I continue to walk after breakfast. The days are sunny so it is very nice to get our daily walk out of the way early.

Yesterday we had a short thunderstorm with heavy rain. The rain lasted about 30 minutes. It was good for the plants. Tomorrow we also expect some rain.

Something that we have noted in the past couple weeks is that there are more insects. We had to swat a couple flies and a couple bugs in our place. We can also see a few of mosquitoes and wasps. I guess that is to be expected when the weather gets warmer than average. Hope all is going well with farmers. Their crops feed livestock and us. This weekend my wife and I will go to a couple Farmers Markets. On Saturday we will stop by the one in Apple Valley and on Sunday the one in St. Paul. Will let you know our findings next week. Continue reading “Can Sum – Tabulation”

Grid Traveler – Tabulation

It is another nice and hot spring day in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yesterday after work my wife and I headed to the bank. On our way back I noticed that the temperature had gone up to 99F.

Earlier today after breakfast my wife and I went out on our daily walk. There were more people than usual. We stopped to talk with a neighbor that was also out and about. She likes to walk at a good pace. She was covered in sweat.

The forecasted temperatures for the next couple weeks will are in the mid 80s to the mid 90s. During lunch time the temperature went up to 93F. In general the high temperature for the day occurs around 05:00 PM.

A couple weeks ago we were talking with a couple of neighbors. They mentioned that some of our plants in the front yard were dead. Today during lunch the company that handles plants and lawns stopped by to remove and replace all the dead shrubs.

On a separate note, things are not going well with the vote counting process. There seems to be a lot of cheating going on. It seems that the candidate that represents communism and terrorism will get elected president. The economy has come to a standstill. The Peruvian currency is devaluating.

In addition the candidate from the left is instigating people to go after the upper and middle classes. Hope this things is resolved peacefully in the next few days. Continue reading “Grid Traveler – Tabulation”

Best Sum

It is the first Tuesday after the Memorial Day 2021. As I mentioned in a previous post I have been experiencing problems with my Pixel 4 phone. Apparently I purchased the phone less than two years ago. About a week ago the phone was working fine and suddenly it died. I tried restarting it but the phone was completely unresponsive. My wife and I ended taking it to the T-Mobile store where we purchased the unit. After a few minutes of tinkering and a reset the phone came up. BTW the service at T-Mobile is quite good.

After a couple days, while visiting our son in Madison, WI the phone died once again. Tried reviving it but the phone did not come up. On Sunday we returned to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We decided to wait until Monday to take the phone back to T-Mobile.

At the T-Mobile store they tried reviving the phone once again. This time the phone did not respond. We decided to get a replacement. Since we did not purchase an extended warranty we would not get a dime for our phone. It is hard to believe that you can buy a cell phone, use it for less than two years and with the phone looking like new, it would be worth nothing. We decided that we would no longer get an Android phone or a unit by Google. So my new phone is a IOS Apple phone. I also got an Apple watch since my Ionic Fitbit had been slowly dying. When I purchased it a few years ago it could communicate with my android phones. I was able to screen incoming calls. With time my Fitbit would just count steps. The new Apple watch is not only able to count steps but I can answer incoming calls and hold a conversation without needing to have with me the actual Apple phone. Not only that, but the watch looks much better than the Fitbit.

I have been using Android phones for a long time, so now I need to get used to the Apple Store and the different ways things work. In a few weeks will let you know my initial opinion on this combo. Continue reading “Best Sum”

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?”

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”

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”