By the Hearing of Faith

These Flignitz™ power bars are useless, IMO. I’ve eaten three of them just this morning, and I do NOT have superhuman strength nor the ability to see through solid objects. As for the ability to telepathically communicate with marine life: I just now mentally ordered Roddy, my pet koi, to mix me a Tom Collins. And he just gave me the fin ….

I couldn’t help but notice some disquieting anomalies in Mr. Smith’s data: His SSN contained no numbers (it was all Xs), he claimed to live at 123 Happy Lane, and digits 4-6 of both his cell and home phone numbers were all 5. As if that weren’t troubling enough, he claimed his wife’s SSN and birthday were the SAME as his. “Who ARE you REALLY working for, Mr. Smith?” I whispered quietly to myself. “If that is your real name ….”

It was a quiet Tuesday morning like many in late November: 41°F/5°C, overcast, and 30.38 in/1028.78 mb barometric pressure. I sat comfortably at my workstation, smartly clad in the mesh “Dukes of Hazzard” tank top I wear every Tuesday and my newly laundered “Hello Kitty” leg warmers. As the soporific whir of my ab-sculpting neuromuscular electrical stimulation belt beckoned me to a land of oneiric delights, my eyelids grew heavy. Fighting the urge to sleep, I began work diligently crafting a database schema modeled on the seemingly ordinary data of one Mr. John Smith. And that’s when things started to get WEIRD.

Just ran across this in a text book:

(n=0→∞)∑(3/4)ⁿ=4

Okay, math boy (or girl). Explain ….

Promising missive from blog contributor Howard Van Dam:

Providence perhaps, but I just found, wrapped around an old bottle of whiskey, a collection of Math related HAIKU. It appears that the author is Jim “Beam” Bernoulli, the least known nephew of Daniel. The text is stained, and looks to have bled by being wet. However, if I can reconstruct the texts, it could be an addition to TMBBOM. What I have seen so far, is something about the differential, and how the infinitesimally small ones don’t work well in Ford pickups. More to come.

This could be the most ground-shaking event in the history of mathematical poetry since the discovery of Leibniz’s naughty limericks.

Query:

SELECT NAME FROM SALESREPS
WHERE REP_OFFICE NOT IN (SELECT OFFICE FROM OFFICES WHERE MGR = 108)

Function: “List the salespeople who do not work in offices managed by Larry Fitch (employee 108).”

Source: Groff, James R., and Paul N. Weinberg. LAN times Guide to SQL. Berkeley [u.a.: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1994. Print. (p. 217)

Comments: This query illustrates the use of set membership (or non-membership) as a condition. The set in question is all the offices managed by the one whose identifying number is 108. The query result is a list of sales representatives who do not work in any of these offices. The query structure is simple and clear. What’s unclear–and somewhat disquieting–is the identity of this mysterious Larry Fitch … and the question of why we should want a list of sales representatives who are not managed by him. Has Mr. Fitch been implicated in some misconduct, some unethical or perhaps illegal activity? Churning? Embezzlement? Pump-and-dump? Or is he an especially troublesome manager, a martinet? Do we need to know who has not been psychologically damaged by his relentless reign of terror? The query leaves such questions unanswered, but I think it’s clear that Mr. Fitch is likely an especially loathsome fellow whom we should all endeavor to avoid. I would not answer his phone calls, texts, or e-mails, and if he should pass you in the hall, smile and nod politely, but do not engage in lengthy conversations … lest he pull you into his dark and twisted world of pain and wickedness.

General Information
-------------------
Host name:        MOE9000
Operating System:   MoeOS JrtREX 10.1 Generic_xyzpdq-01 moe4u
Architecture:        mmoe
Environment path:        /moe/moe/beeboe/banana/fanna/fee/foe
Default image storage dir:  m\o\!/e0/
Default settings in the hlib$zzsetenv.def file:
printer:            lp
stdplot:            lp
editor:             vi
imtype:             imh
stdimage:           imt512
cmbuflen:           128000
min_lenuserarea:        64000
graphcap:           dev$graphcap
termcap:            dev$termcap
tapecap:            dev$tapecap
capcap:             dev$capcap
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/opt/MOEspro/bin/cc
/opt/gnu/bin/gcc
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/opt/local/bin/f2c
/usr/ccs/bin/yacc
/opt/gnu/bin/bison
/usr/ccs/bin/jrtrex
....
uptime: 00:00:10 up 0 days, 0:00, 1 user, load average: 0.0
======================================================================
SYSINFO completed with:        
Tests Passed:  0
Warnings:  5234028124
Errors:  1
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Users should contact if ????????@???.??? help is  needed in
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