Just laying out a garden of information on repeat.
Read MoreAuthor: Matthew Heick
Two of every set…
My youngest brother and I have birthdays with a difference of 18 months and 14 days. While that’s not a mathematical marvel in any way it’s been interesting in finding pairs of famous people that either share exactly or are close to our birthdays.
The birthday problem asks for the probability that, in a set of n randomly chosen people, at least two will share a birthday. The birthday paradox refers to the counterintuitive fact that only 23 people are needed for that probability to exceed 50%. This isn’t representative of anyone having my exact birthday which is 1 in 365, but also my brothers birthday which is also 1 in 365. Combining those odds (1 in 133,225) and finding a pair of people considered famous or well-known in some way makes the odds out of this world.
Except the odds seem to favor our pairing, and thus the following…
Read Morelivejournal + archive
A long, long time ago I used to be known as 
kraqur on livejournal. Although that site has sailed along with it’s previous creator Brad Fitzpatrick, archive.org seem to have some amazing historical snapshots that I feel need to be rehomed here.
So, this is just going to be a sourced squabbling of my early blogging/journaling days, complete with cross-references to niffynoo‘s journal, of whom was my on-and-off girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife-then-ex-wife.
Not Related…
In doing a family tree or any kind of genealogy you sometimes come across facts that you might have to accept are canon to either side of the family. In my case I have to look at Heicks (father) or Myers (mother) trees and work the way through the branches to determine distance of relative. Myers is amazingly a common last name, but Heick is not.
Recently in my searches I came across Profiles of 10 Racist Skinheads [pdf] from the Southern Poverty Law Center. SPLC was founded in 1971 by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin. Their Intelligence Project is internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups and other domestic extremists. When I found the 2006 article it both identified Richard “Richie” Myers and Bob “Nazi Bob” Heick in the same paragraph, and my panic immediately set in.
Read MoreOptimizing Video: 2021 Honda Odyssey RES
On April 7, 2024 at about 3am I physically beat the poop out of a deer on Interstate 90 crossing into Ohio from Pennsylvania (41.925716, -80.54277). The front bumper being damaged and excrement all along the drivers side of the vehicle does qualify for the “beat the crap”-stamp to be applied to the drivers side door.
Insurance did what insurance does and says that the 2012 is not cost effective to repair so they scrapped the vehicle and wrote a check. With that check the family was able to go place a down payment on a 2021 Honda Odyssey Touring.
One of the biggest improvements from 2012 to the 2021 is that the rear passengers have access to an Entertainment System. I decided one day to figure out what we could do with the USB input.
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