There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes his kids do not possess some preternatural ability to fill out NCAA March Madness brackets. And thus he must come to terms with the fact that he will not be able to exploit encourage their abilities to retire early in some warm climate on a beach. That realization came for me this month.
The experiment worked like this: During a car ride I asked Wesley which teams would win in the East and West regions while Jillian made picks for the Southwest and Southeast. I would say something like “Wesley, Washington or Georgia?” He would make his choice and I jotted it down. We repeated this for every match up flipping a coin to see who would win it all (How else would I choose between Wesley’s pick and Jillian’s?).
By flipping a coin you’d expect that each kid would have made at least 15 correct choices. How did my kids do? Wesley got 13. Not bad, but less than random choice would have suggested. Jillian didn’t do quite as well on sheer numbers. She managed only 9 correct choices, but did manage to pick one team that made it to the final four.
So I won’t be betting any large sums based on the kids’ picks any time soon. Do you suppose they are any better at football?
**PS: The title comes from an excellent The Mountain Goats song “Insurance Fraud #2“, which incidentally has always made me think of Adrianne.
On Tuesday I took the morning off and chaperoned Wesley’s class on their field trip on a Washington State Ferry from Edmonds to Kingston and back. Amber was supposed to come, too, but she was sick and so it was just Wesley, Jillian and I. The class met up at the park at the ferry dock and then luckily we got the group rate of only $2.00. That’s $2.00 per group, which certainly beats the more than $7.00 per person that a walk-on usually costs on this route.
Our ship was the Spokane.
Captain Tom came down and gave us a short talk about the ferry and then told the kids a fun, but non-ferry-related story. Once we were free Wes, J and I went outside, the rest of the class soon followed. Like it always is on the front of a ferry, it was rather windy. The kids weren’t thrilled with the wind. Even though we had sunny weather it was still chilly. The 18 knot headwind created by the ferry was a bit much for them.
Through a bit more luck we were able to visit the wheelhouse with one of the captains. Each ferry has two wheelhouses and two captains. One captain in one wheelhouse going one way and then the other captain in the other wheelhouse going the other way. According to “Captain Vic” it is pretty rare that they let the classes come up and visit. It was certainly the first time I’ve ever been inside. Jillian and I were only invited because I had the camera. Most of the parents and other non-class kiddos had to wait down in the main cabin. On the way up we also got to see their toilet/shower and each of the three cabins.
A few shots of the wheelhouse (click to enlarge):
Since it was the inactive wheelhouse the kids also got to “steer”.
They also demonstrated the landing signal. Normally sounded from the active wheelhouse we got to watch the Captain sound one long and two shorts. Then shortly after one of the kids sounded another short. Apparently that means turn right. Captain Tom, who has 5 kids of his own, knew well enough to ignore it. It was loud and the kids loved it.
If you look carefully you can see Jillian’s reflection in the compass.
Captain Tom waved goodbye to Wes and J. They waved back and yelled thank you.
Tags: Edmonds, Field Trip, Jillian, Kingston, School, washington, Wesley
Programming Python, 4th Edition by Mark Lutz continues to be an excellent book for Python programmers of all levels.
If you are new to Python you definitely want to start with Learning Python or some other introductory book. Once you are familiar with the basics Programming Python should be your next step. While the author repeatedly mentions that this is not a reference book I think you’ll find yourself referring to it frequently. The tutorial programs are not only excellent examples how to do something in Python, but also how to do it well.
This version of the book covers Python 3, the latest version of the language. Since Python 3 and Python 2 are not fully compatible this is a big change. If you are new, start with Python 3 and then only reach for Python 2 if the need arises (say a module or library that isn’t yet ported to v3). The examples in the book can, for the most part, be used with Python 2 with relatively minor changes.
At more than 1600 pages even the PDF is heavy. But it is well enough written that, as far as programming books go, this is a real page turner.
Full disclosure: If it wasn’t obvious I received a free PDF version of this book for free in exchange for writing this review. I’ve followed the review guidelines set by O’Reilly. Especially (and always) “First and foremost, we want nothing but complete honesty in your reviews”.