Geeks Experience Thermal Shock

The geeks underwent an unplanned and abrupt thermal shock as a freak hail storm hit during the regular meeting on October 5, 2010. With the geeks temporarily trapped inside Barro's by the raging tempest, the temperature outdoors dropped from normal October levels to a brisk 63 degrees F as registered by the thermometer in Russ G's truck immediately after the furor subsided. Most of the hail in the vicinity was around a half inch in diameter, although a few bigger stones fell as well.

The geeks observed drifts of hail and rare ground fog in the violent storm's aftermath.

Geeks Use Algebra As Needed

The August 31 meeting saw a minor debate about the value of algebra in everyday life. Although a couple of the geeks claimed that they actually use algebra once in a while, nobody could come up with a concrete example on the spot. It was a pretty dismal performance on the part of said geeks, to say the least.

In order to partially rectify (now that's a funny word!) the situation, here's a real problem from the real life of a real geek:

A geek wants to put four drawers one on top of the other into his workbench. He wants to make each drawer 15% taller than the one above it. The total available vertical space is 27 inches. How tall should he make each of the four drawers?

One way to solve this problem involves basic algebra. Are there other ways that don't? Please comment if you have one.

Geek Writes Software, Part II

It's happened to everyone. You're sitting around, minding your own business, when suddenly you feel like drawing yourself a fancy design or two. But, alas, you find yourself with no paper, no pencil, no protractor, and--worst of all--no artistic talent whatsoever.

Fortunately, now you can relax, with Russ C's online Hoot-Nanny simulator. This program lets you--by setting just a few simple parameters--create an endless number of elaborate and mysterious patterns, all with that N-sided radial symmetry that you've found so elusive in the past. And the best part is, you get to pick the value of N yourself!

Implemented in JavaScript using the new HTML5 <canvas> tag, the Hoot-Nanny simulator works great in Firefox and Chrome. Unfortunately, it's so slow in Internet Explorer that users thereof will very quickly get bored and go back to playing FreeCell. Please submit your bug reports, lavish praise, and suggestions for future revisions as comments to this article.

Geek Demonstrates Pizza-Powered Engine

The show-and-tell for July 20, courtesy of Ray H. was definitely the most colorful in recent memory. Inspired by a single-cylinder engine model he had seen somewhere, Ray demonstrated a four-cylinder version constructed from K'nex parts. For lots more pictures of the engine model and others, check out Ray's site on instructables.com.

Geek Would Rather Cook Than Eat

On July 13, Phyllis extended her streak of consecutive lame excuses for not eating Tuesday pizza to a record-breaking two. In surpassing the old record of one (held jointly by Bob F. for the now-legendary tree story and by Phyllis herself for shoe shopping), Phyllis cited a 3 PM doctor's appointment as her reason for not eating pizza at 11:30.

According to the geeks' exceedingly liberal "any excuse will do" policy, that would have been good enough. Maybe it's a long way to the doctor's office. Maybe Phyllis drives slow. Maybe there are roses along the way that need to be stopped at and smelled. Who knows? We don't have time to worry about such details, and would have accepted the doctor's appointment without question.

But no. Apparently worried that her story sounded fishy, Phyllis cooked up a secondary tale about needing extended emergency tanning of certain body parts for the benefit of the doctor. It's clear from her excuse that legs were involved. Phyllis also notes that additional parts required sun, but a momentary lapse in her normally impeccable penpersonship leaves some doubt over just which those additional parts might be. Here's an enlarged view of the handwriting in question:

What is that word? Clearly it starts with a lower-case 'b', ends with an 's', and is four or five letters long. Given the context, the only thing that makes any sense is "buns". So I guess we have to go with that.

Buns.

Geek Writes Software, Part I

Bob F. is pleased to announce the online publication of his new program, PianoNanny. Aimed at beginning music students worldwide, PianoNanny teaches music notation and keyboard notes using a fun, easy-to-use, interactive drill.

PianoNanny displays notes one at a time on the grand staff, and you try to click the corresponding notes on an on-screen keyboard. The program scores you for both accuracy and speed. You can tell PianoNanny which clef(s) to use, as well as whether or not you want to practice accidentals.

Implemented as a Java applet, PianoNanny has been tested in several popular browsers, and runs without problems in most of them. Please submit your bug reports, lavish praise, and suggestions for future revisions as comments to this article.

Geek Submits Lame, Written Excuse

Phyllis makes history by submitting the first ever written excuse for a geek pizza meeting absence. In her plea of June 29, 2010, Phyllis's artful use of colored pens and playful stickers sets a high standard indeed for future written excuses. Ironically, the actual excuse--shoe shopping--may be the lamest one on record (except, of course, for that ridiculous story about the tree).

Please click on the image to read full text of Phyllis's note.

Geek Attendance Database Gets New URL

The online attendance database now sports a shiny new URL, along with the addition of an FAQ page and a few new geeks. Understandably, nobody gives a rat's patootie, but Dave B did at least notice and ask about the change of URL. Thanks, Dave. It's encouragement from people like you that inspires the will to carry on.

Geeks' Blood Glucose Levels Reach New Highs

Following the traditional pizza meal, Phyllis on June 22, 2010 astonished the group yet again by serving a delicious assortment of Dunkin' Donuts in celebration of Dave S's recent birthday. While Russ the Greater exhibited uncharacteristic poor judgement by purchasing and eating a second slice of pizza in lieu of one or more of the free donuts, most of the remaining geeks enjoyed the sugary treats while pondering whether or not they had ever before slaked a donut-induced thirst with high-fructose corn syrup.

A Geek by Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

A few weeks ago, Mark rendered (on a napkin) a very valuable and informative Venn diagram showing the relationship between geeks, nerds, dweebs, and dorks. The napkin has since been lost, but a Google search located a similar diagram on several sites. Son of a gun, now it's on one more:

This would seem to clear up a lot of confusion, were it not for the recent publication of a different diagram by the fine folks at xkcd.com:

Here we have a conflict. The first picture shows "geeks" and "nerds" as disjoint sets, but the second shows that they overlap. Moveover, the alt-text for the xkcd diagram

The definitions I grew up with were that a geek is someone unusually into something (so you could have computer geeks, baseball geeks, theater geeks, etc) and nerds are (often awkward) science, math, or computer geeks. But definitions vary.

conflicts with the diagram itself by stating that all nerds are geeks.

As usual, nothing's easy. Perhaps the best policy for the pizza geeks is to simply forget the words, strive to exhibit geekiness whenever possible, and let everyone else figure it out from there.

Geek Attendance Records Go Online

Following weeks of eager anticipation, the geek pizza attendance records went online on May 29, 2010.

Intended primarily as a tool for studying the geeks' chronically dismal female retention rate, the site provides multiple views into the attendance database that may fill other needs as well. For example, the discipline committee has already found the site useful for tracking absenteeism and identifying the habitually late.

We also look forward to providing alibis as needed for geeks who would otherwise find it difficult to prove their Tuesday whereabouts. (For a small fee, the database can be adjusted after the fact in order accommodate those with special needs in this regard.)

June, 2010 to Tie Centuries-Old Record

With one Tuesday already past and four more planned before the end of the month, June of 2010 is on track to tie the existing record for the most Tuesdays ever in a single month. The current record of five was set centuries ago, not long after the concepts of "Tuesday" and "month" were established. However, the significance of the record was not appreciated until much later, when people started eating pizza on Tuesdays and soon realized that, hey, more Tuesdays?  More pizza!

The current record for the fewest Tuesdays in a given month (three) was set in Italy in 1582 when Pope Gregory decreed that eleven days be dropped from October in order to synchronize the calendar with the tropical year. This record was subsequently tied in other countries as they adopted the Gregorian calendar. Fortunately for Tuesday pizza eaters everywhere, three-Tuesday months have not been seen in recent times.

Will we ever see a six-Tuesday month? Most experts agree that the outlook is dim. Fundamentalist Tuesday pizza-eating groups accept this as a given, and limit themselves to a maximum of five meetings per month. Other, more progressive Tuesday pizza eaters allow "supplemental" or "emergency" pizza to be eaten on certain non-Tuesdays when they find that once a week just isn't enough.

Barros' Geek Pizza "Club" - All Are Welcome

Geek Pizza! A hallowed tradition for years and years.