Life is a Queue

New Age Math

2007-05-08T05:27:00.000-07:00

The reason I named this Blog "Life is a Queue" is because I used a Mathematical discipline called Network Queueing Analysis in my computer performance analysis work at NASA. I am an Expert in that field.

Simply put Queueing Analysis is all about Time. It is used to predict the response time of tasks in computer and communications systems, the queues of passengers at the airport, the queueing at shopping malls, supermarkets, banks.

Also Life is about Time. We spend our whole life using Time. We use time to Sleep. We use time to Brush our Teeth. We use time to Travel and time to Shop. I am using time to write this essay. All of life is a Queue. Right now I am waiting for the coffee to finish brewing.

As we use up time, it is added to our Age. Good times are added to our age, bad times are added to our age, wasted time is added too. Every tick on the clock is added to our age.

There is fascination about "Time Travel" both Forward and Backward. What if there was a Machine that would allow you to move about freely in the Fourth Dimension. We can move from place 1 (home) to place 2 (work) and back to place 1 (home) no problem, but we can't move in time any way other than t1, t2, t3...... . There is no going Backwards.... and No Jumping Ahead.

The Physicists and Astromomers go absolutely mind bending when they muse about time see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/ .

Carl Sagan: The grandfather paradox is a very simple, science-fiction-based, apparent inconsistency at the very heart of the idea of time travel into the past. Stated simply: you travel into the past and murder your own grandfather before he sires your mother or your father. Where does that then leave you? Do you instantly pop out of existence because you were never made?

Or are you in a new causality scheme in which, since you are there you are there, and the events in the future leading to your adult life are now very different?

The heart of the paradox is the apparent existence of you, the murderer of your own grandfather, when the very act of you murdering your own grandfather eliminates the possibility of you ever coming into existence.

Stephen Hawking's chronology protection conjecture: the laws of physics do not allow time machines.

Going Backwards in time means getting Younger... All of us would like to handle that trick. It cheats Death!

Going Forward in time means getting Older. Fortune tellers con folks by claiming they can see ahead to the future. With a time machine there are tremendous financial gains to be had on the Futures Market if one could jump forward a few days and then come back to Now and Invest with certainty about prices.

There are popular songs about time... "Don't stop thinking about Tomorrow... It'll be here sooner than you know... Yesterday's Gone.... Yesterday's Gone..."

We make promises "till the end of Time..." We buy things with "lifetime warranties".

Time is very precious to us. We try to save time. (As if we could some how put it in a bottle)

There is an Important Law in Network Queueing Analysis that I call the Law of the Supermarket. No one had ever given the law a catchy name so I chose the name to capture the imagination. In its simplest form the Wait at the Supermarket Checkout server is

W = S + SxQ

W is the amount of time spent (wait) at the server. It is equal to
S the amount of time it takes to serve a single customer
Q is the number of customers ahead of you when you arrive.

Everyone I have ever met understands and practices this law. We look at the Line ahead and estimate the time it will take to get through the server. Note: the wait time is how much older we will be when we leave the line.

Age@start + Wait = Age@end

Suppose the service time is a negative number... then the Wait would be negative... If the wait is negative, you come out of the server Younger than you arrived.

This server is a "Fountain of Youth"... the longer you are there the Younger you get. Ponce de Leon was looking for it in Florida back in 1513.

Back in 1980 I discovered that using negative service time in Network Queueing models allowed approximate response time predictions for tasks that had parallel servers. It is a Useful construct and it did not break my computer!

Today we go to Health Spa's and Plastic surgeons they promise to "take years off your appearance." But they are not Time Machines.

In time for my last Birthday I discoverd a new mathematical series. Here is a sample from the series: ....... 36, 46, 56, 66, 67, 68, 69, 7, 17, 27, 37 .....

Can you complete this series?

Take the numbers from 1 to 99 and reverse digit pairs, if you get a smaller number it is in the series.

I call this the NEW AGE MATH series. When someone asks you age, use the NEW AGE MATH series to answer the question. Simply reverse the digits of your age and get the NEW AGE MATH Answer. Once you get past 60 it cuts decades off your age.

By the way I just turned 27. And last year was a Blast!

Thanks Google

2007-04-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

Who would have ever Known That the house could be seen from Space?

There is a red vehicle in the Drive way... I did not leave it there.

Grade School - Our House

2005-12-20T12:55:00.000-08:00

Shortly after I started in Grade School , my dad started expanding our house.

First came a new bedroom for Raymond and me on the North side. It had a separate bathroom and was plenty for the two of us. The connecting Breezway became extra storage and the refigerator was moved there from the kitchen.

Then a sleeping pourch was added on the East side. It was screened in and had jalosies for protection against the wind.

The back bedroom was enlarged for Mom and Dad.

Virginia got the Front bedroom.

Finally a two car garage was added and a driveway down the side of the house.

As a testament to the construction the house still stands.

Grade school

2005-12-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up at 4 AM needing to go to the Bathroom. I had been dreaming about something, and the words "The Baltimore Catechism" was stuck in my consciousness. I think it was a reminder to get back on this project.

I was in one of the first classes to start in kindergarten and graduate from St Vincent dePaul School. I did Kindergarten fresh from childhood. When I arrived, I did not Read or do Math like preschoolers do today. I do remember that my mother read to me a lot. And she got me to memorize a lot of songs and poems. That made me semi-literate I guess.

The school was small and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word taught two grades in the each classroom except for Kindergarten. They kept adding classrooms every year or so. I had the same teacher, Sister Joseph, for grades 2 through 5, she moved up with our class. She was a very nice teacher and had a reputation of being fair. Because I picked up Reading and Math quickly I got skipped from First Grade to Third Grade. This made my parents proud but made me miserable.. I was the youngest and smallest in my class forever more.

During the first few years I rode the school bus. There was a stop about two blocks away and, since it was only the second stop, there was always a choice seat. By fifth grade, I had a bike and usually rode it to school. It was only 1.5 miles to the school and it was much faster than taking the bus.

For sixth through eighth grades I had Sister Perpetua. She was tough and very demanding. Under her tutelage I learned to Diagram sentences with subordinate clauses. I also got smacked with a yard stick for cutting up in class. By this time we no longer had two grades per classroom, and Grades 7 and 8 were housed in Temporary buildings out by the playground... I remember these Classrooms were very cold in the winter.

We had about 20 in our class and I had the seat at the back row in the first column. That meant I had a job of adjusting the window behind my desk. The window was attached to the frame by a pair of hinges at the top and was held open by a 3 foot long 1 x 2 . It had two positions Open and Closed. There were no screens on the windows. With no Air Conditioning this was the best seat in the classroom

Preschool Memories- Our Neighborhood

1990-06-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

When you are just a kid your Neighborhood is kind of limited... Modes of transportation are your feet and your tricycle/bicycle.

When I was four, Momma would walk with me to "The Park" ; it was two blocks south and had several Swings, two Sliding Boards ( Kiddie and Super), a Teeter Totter, and a Merry-go-round.
The big thrill was the "Super" sliding board. You had to climb at least 15 steps to get to the top.
Momma would bring along some Wax Paper that you could sit on to go extra fast. I think she was encouraging me to go faster because she always got a kick out of how fast I went.

There was a lady who ran a Nursery school in her home over by the park. I went there for a while. She was a Nice lady but I would avoid getting hugged by her; I did not like the way she smelled... Too Much Perfume. I did learn to sing Frere' Jacques at her school.

There was a limited sidewalk in front of our house; it only went one house to the West and Three lots to the East. There was a house then a vacant lot then the 'Two Story House". And then there was a long space of about two vacant lots before you got to another strech of sidewalk.

This meant that you could only ride your tricycle/bicycle about half a block ( five lots) until you ran out of Sidewalk. This Limited sidewalk space was Critical to achieving High Speed and still Stopping in time.

My friend Billy and I would race our vehicles down the sidewalk until we ran off the end at the Vacant lot. There we would crash and compare notes about how fast we went. We decided one day to build a pseudo sidewalk across the two vacant lots out of old Cardboard Boxes. We gave up because a cardboard Box would only strech about 6 feet. It would have taken more than 20 boxes to span two vacant lots.

Then we tried to build a Ramp at the end of the sidewalk which would allow us to Leap through the Air. We gave that up when we could only leap about eight inches. We crashed a lot doing that. Nevertheless, we were on to something.... High Speed Tricycle/ Bicycle leaping... We were not even in First Grade.

Daddy had to go to work so he didn't get to do all this stuff with me.

The Other place to go was the J&M General Store. Momma would take me there to buy groceries. It was two blocks East and two North at Milton and College St. The store had very rich odors of livestock feed, freshly slaughtered meat and Oxydol soap. You could buy Ice in 20 Lb Blocks for your Ice Box.

It was also a place with a great candy case. I was partial to Licorice and Jaw Breakers. On a hot day I also favored Grapette or Orange Crush... Momma usually got a 6 oz Coke in the bottle, sometimes she got me a Dr Pepper and explained the benefits of drinking it at 10 , 2, and 4. Fritos had just been invented.. They came in a sealed wax paper bag.... I always liked them more than the soggy Dentler potato chips.

My favorite place was the Fire Station. It was a slight detour on the way home... just one more block East and two blocks South from the General store on University and Auden. I would beg Momma to take me there... I would ask the fireman if I could climb up in the cab and steer the fire engine. He was kind enough to let me but always nervous about me hurting myself.

That was pretty much the my range of my Neighborhood until I got to School.

Google Local - 4144 University Blvd,Houston,Tx 77005

Preschool Memories - keeping cool

1990-04-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Iwas born in 1935. I grew up in West University Place when it was really out in the sticks. University Blvd was a two lane Oyster Shell road in front of our house. We had a ditch in front and when it rained I remember asking Moma if I could go out and play in the rain. She usually said yes.

The rain was the easiest way to cool off in Texas. We did not have Air conditioning then. I would go out in the ditch and splash in the water. Sometimes the bus would come by and hit a nearby puddle. It would splash muddy water all over me but I could rinse it off in the ditch.

Momma would always make me strip naked on the back porch and dry off with a towel she handed me before I could come in to the house.

We had three trees that were big enough to climb. They were all Chinese Tallows. The other way to cool off was laying in the shade.

Preschool Memories- Our House

1990-01-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

The House where I grew up was at 4144 University. It was a two bedroom single floor bungalow.

Here is a rough Floor Plan. This is how it looked when I was five. I shared a Bedroom with my younger brother Ray. Virginia still an infant had a crib in our parents room. It was pretty crowded by todays standards, I thought it was plenty big. The House had two Bedrooms,
Living room, Dining Room, One bath, and a Kitchen where all the action took place.. Right in the middle if the house was Hall with doors leading to Bath and two Bed rooms. The master BR had a door to the Living room. This established a path that we kids used to "Run around the House"