Camping in the Back Yard

Okay, here's the thing.  I am retired (even more so now but that is grist for another post).  I am planning trips galore: Mexico, Olympic National park, California, Florida and even a few more.  My wife and I will stay in hotels, on trains, in hostels, so it wasn't a great leap to consider camping.

Now, I have no shortage of tents, from a one-man coffin tent, to two and three-man domes to a big old cabin tent that supposedly sleeps four.  It also needs to be said that my wife was less than enthusiastic when I broached the subject of camping in say, Yellowstone or Zion.

Sooooooo, I suggested that I could make our cabin tent extremely homey, perhaps with the addition of an air mattress that I would gladly fill up every time we went camping (I being the rough and tumble outdoors-man would not need such frilly additions).

Which brings me to last Monday.

With an energy bordering on mania, I purchased a cool air mattress and pump (not an electric one but a hand pump.  I figured, "I can use this baby no matter where I am, even if I can't get to a electric outlet").  Then I went down into my basement and brought out to my back yard the impressive, the gigantic, the hopefully homey CABIN TENT.  I approached the setting up of this monstrosity with a zen-like calm and with just one more trip to a hardware store (I needed some more guy-rope to secure the corners) I set about my task.  I don't want to brag, but I believe I did splendidly. Not only did I calmly figure out the slip knots needed to snugly tie down the upright and corner poles, but when I ran into challenges (one of the cross-beam poles in the roof refused to allow itself to be elongated easily), I didn't rant and curse (I am after all, a spiritually advanced individual), I doped out solutions.  Inside of an hour, I had the beautiful structure standing.

Next came the air mattress.  It was here I had my first inklings of doubt.  After two hundred pumps, my wonderfully thick air mattress (it promised to be a full 18 inches in depth) still wasn't fully inflated.  Maybe the electric pump would have been a good idea.  So, it goes. Eventually, I got the darn thing up to its potential.

For those of you who actually live in Colorado, you might at this juncture be thinking. "Hey wait a minute.  Didn't some bad weather, snow and high winds, come in last Monday?"  If this was your thinking, you were absolutely correct.  Before I finished inflating the magnificent air mattress, the wind had kicked up to about 40 mph.  However, I was undaunted.  After all, I had tied down the tent quite expertly.

By the time evening rolled around, it had snowed about 4 inches.  But my enthusiasm would not be dampened.  My wife looked at me like I was out of my mind.  "Do you really mean to do this."  I put on my best outdoors-man face.  "Of course."

When I couldn't delay any longer I headed out to the tent.  I had camped a few summers ago in Leadville, Colorado, which even in the summer, gets very cold at night, so I know that a closed up mummy sleeping bag was just too darn hot, so I had chosen to open my sleeping bag as a thick blanket and take my repose in this manner.  Let me, at this juncture, say that I was very comfortable on my inflated mattress and at first even acceptably warm.  However, things change.  Two o'clock in the morning I woke feeling somewhat chilly.  It wasn't like I was going to die or anything, but there was no getting over the fact that I was cold.

No problem.  I'll just zip up the blanket into a nice warm downy sleeping bag.  In the light of a flashlight, I realized the terrible truth.  Because I wanted to use a blanket and not a sleeping bag, I had chosen the one sleeping bag that had a broken zipper.  Still, I wasn't ready to give up. Surely, I could position myself beneath this excellent blanket and find the requisite warmth needed to fall back into the arms of Orpheus.

An hour later, I gave up.  Chilled to the bone, I made my way back into my house and my ordinary, dull, but warm bed.  My wife might possible be one of the nicest folks on the planet Earth. She never said one reproachful word, but merely hugged me until I stopped shivering.

The next morning I informed her that I was not ready to completely throw in the towel.  With a new sleeping bag, I would brave the snow and wind (which pummeled my poor tent the next day at 60 mph) the following night.

This next adventure will be the subject of my next post.  I will say this.  Things went from bad to worse.  

Answer to this week's puzzles.

Dear Puzzlers,

First of all the answer was yes, you can fit the 70 cm sword.  I'll congratulate the winners on Facebook but for now the solution.  The box was 30cm X 40cm X 50cm.  We will solve by a repeated use of the Pythagorean theorem.  First the bottom:

30 squared + 40 squared = hyp squared

900 + 1600 = 2500 --> hyp = 50

Use this in a second application of the Pythagorean theorem:

50 squared + 50 Squared = large hyp squared

2500 + 2500 = 5000 --> hyp = 70.5cm  THE SWORD WILL FIT YAY!!!!!

Now the first two answers (the missing integers)

As we recall we had some info regarding the product and sum of 5 one-digit integers (product = 2520, Sum = 30).  We know two of the integers are 8 and 1.  5 must be one of the numbers since 2520 ends in 0.  Subtracting from 30 we get 16.  Which means we get 8 and 8 or 9 and 7, but the numbers must be different so 9 and 7 it is.  Therefore the numbers are 1, 8, 9, 5 , 7.

If we allow the numbers to be the same the only other choice is 8 and 8 BUT the product is not 2520 so the answer to the adjunct problem is that we get no additional answers.

1, 8, 9, 5, 7 are the only solutions.

Solution to the Superlong Necklace Problem

Okay, lets reiterate what we know (we'll condense it somewhat).

Broken Necklace:

a) 1/3 of beads at lady's feet
b) 1/6 on bed.
c) 1/2 of what remained (and 1/2 of what remained thereafter then 1/2 again) six times in all, fell everywhere else.
d) 1,161 pearls still strung.

Let X be the total of all the pearls originally.

A third plus a sixth makes a half of X.  So, the following equation is generated:

1/2(1/2^6) X = 1161.  The amount in the parentheses is that mysterious amount from part 'c'.  The ^ is for exponents.

Simplifying we get:

(1/128)X = 1161

X = 148,608

Literary Conferences: Writing and Reader.

Dear Reader,

I just spent the better part of a year attending a plethera of conferences.  Some were writers conferences: Pikes Peak Writers Conference, Crested Butte Writers Conference.  Some were reader and genre conferences: Left Coast Crime, Malice Domestic, Men of Mystery.  One was an amalgam, a mixture if you will, of the two: Killer Nashville.

Before I go into the pros and cons and my evaluation of these literary get-togethers, let's define our terms.

Writers Conferences - This is an event structured to enhance the writer's career.  They feature classes in all aspects of the writing life.  For the beginning and intermediate writer there are classes in the craft (plot, setting, characterization, dialogue, etc), genre classes taught by experts in that genre (Romance, Young Adult, Western, Action, Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery/Suspense, and so on), classes on aspects of writing (humor, critique groups,self-publishing technology as it touches the writing life, etc). For the more advanced writer there may be classes in promotion, marketing, networking, and other areas to help make a published and close-to-published author more successful.  Another aspect of these types of conferences are the presence of literary agents and publishers.  The conference provides a platform whereby the authors and agent/publishers can meet and talk business.  After all, the aim of most writers is to see their work in print (be it electronic or otherwise).  Big name authors are invited and these provide motivational and humorous talks on what they've experienced in their writing journey.

Genre Conferences - These are primarily conference designed to cater to readers of various genres.  There are YA conferences, Western conferences, Romance conferences, and my own particular interest, Mystery/Suspense conferences.  Avid readers come to these conferences to meet their favorite authors, learn what is new in some sub-genre they are enamored with (say Historical Mysteries or Paranormal Romance).  For the most part these conferences are the home of THE PANEL. Panels are a gathering of pundits who answer questions in the their areas of expertise.  A panel might consist of 4 to 6 authors, all of whom write Mysteries set in the old west or Science Fiction set in a dystopian future.  These authors answer questions designed to interest readers who are consumers of such works or are fans of the authors themselves.  A weekend conference of this sort might feature a hundred such panels and readers are invited to sample as many different sub-genres as they can fit into their schedule. Usually, following panels of these sort readers are invited to join the authors for a signing of their works and perhaps a more intimate Q & A session with the author.

This is the portion of this post where I give my opinion of the relative merits of the conferences I have attended.  Be aware that I am speaking from my perspective as an author of mysteries, not as a reader of genre fiction.  As such I am biased and proudly so.

Let me begin with writing conferences, Of which I attended two, three if you count the hybrid Killer Nashville. Here comes my personal bias.  Pikes Peak Writing Conference is so diverse that it caters to every aspect of what a writer might need to further his or her career.  Plus there are a boatload of the publisher/literary agent types.  I have but suggestion for this wonderful conference.  At PPWC there is a grueling day of agent/publisher pitch sessions--ten minute sessions where an author presents what they are working on to an agent or publisher they have signed up to meet.  On a typical day, these literary professionals listen to fifty-plus avid writers hoping to break into print.  For the most part nothing comes of these interviews.  At Crested Butte Writers Conference they take a slightly different approach.  A writer sends the first ten pages of their work ( up to 2 manuscripts) and the conference distributes the work to all the agents and publishers who are attending the conference.  From this initial introduction, the agents and or publishers select those that interest them. A writer might have many professionals who request a further interview.  Of course, the other possibility is that no one will select their work.

Killer Nashville has classes for all levels of writers.  From marketing/promotion classes to craft classes.  They take the TRACK approach.  If you are a published writer, you take the tracked classes that help you in that phase of your career.  If you are a beginning writer there is a track for that.  However, if you are genre reader of fiction, there are several tracks that cater to you.  And here's where we meet the PANEL.

Malice Domestic (a conference promoting the cozy mystery), Left Coast Crime (a conference designed to entertain suspense/thriller/and mystery readers) and Killer Nashville all have a large number of fan readers who attend, which is definitely a kick in the butt if you are writer in these genres.  All of these conferences are designed to connect the reader to their favorite writers and to help them find new favorites.  Let me just say right here that mystery readers are the best fans in the world.

And now my only complaint.  In all three conferences, LCC, MD, and KN authors are put on panels with similar authors, say five who write academic mysteries, or historical mysteries.  An hour of Q&A is followed by an invitation to join the authors for a book signing.  And here's where things could use a good hard look.  Audience members follow authors to signing tables where their books are displayed, but less than ten minutes later the next panel starts and the signing arena is a ghost town.  Authors, unless they have a rabid following are left sitting staring at one another.

And now the Fifty Men of Mystery Conference.  It is only a one day affair where 50 male mystery/thriller/suspense writers are invited to meet 400 readers.  There are fans and newbees, established authors and first-timers.  Early on in the day, a gathering ensues where the authors introduce themselves and their work.  Big names are not invited to do this since they are already well known.  Immediately after this fun session of blatant and humorous self-promotion everyone, both fans and writers, are taken to a great room adjoining the conference bookstore where a significant amount of time is set aside to cater to book signing and meet and greet between reader and writer.  Readers can ask the authors questions, talk about their own preferences, and generally spend a relaxed time in the company of writers.  I had a blast.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Other conferences have similar times set aside for meet and greet.  Pikes Peak Writers last year had a very similar situation and again it was a kick in the butt.  Malice Domestic has a session where authors circulated from table to table (10 readers per table) and talk about their work and themselves.  This was a hoot!

Let me finish by saying that I found something to like about all these gatherings.  My only regret for this year is that I didn't attend the mother of all mystery conferences, Bouchercon.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Full Solution to the Three -Question Quiz Problem

First a re-statement of the brainstretcher:

Thirty students took a three-question quiz with the following results:

20 got the first question correct
16 the second question
10 the third question
11 got the first and second correct
7 the first and third
5 the second and third
4 got all three correct

How many missed all three?

For this we will eschew set theory and tempting as it is a Venn diagram (plus I don't know how to draw a Venn diagram in my blog).  We will just be very good little accountants.

Start with the original 30 students and subtract out those that got each of the problems correct.

30 - (20 + 16 + 10), of course this is negative but hold your horses.

Now add back in the ones who solved two problems because they were counted twice in the first number that was subtracted.

30 - (20 + 16 + 10) + (11 + 7 + 5)

But wait, you say!!!!  What about the ones who got all three questions correct?

AHA!!! this number was accounted for all over the place in our last expression: three times in the first parenthesis (subtracted), and three times in the second parenthesis (added).  They cancel each other out.  So we only have to subtract out the last 4 to make our expression complete.

30 - (20 + 16 + 10) + (11 + 7 + 5) - 4 = 3

Therefore only 3 students failed to solve any of the problems

Wine, Wine and More Wine solution.

Okay Puzzlers,

It seems my little experiment where I scheduled a post from my blog to Facebook last Friday worked.  So here is the solution to the wine container problem.

First a re-statement of the problem: 

3 wine containers:   Container C - 7 quarts, full

                             Container B - 13 quarts, full

                             Container A - 19 quarts, empty

I want to eventually have 10 quarts in one of the containers.

Solution:

As I said before, the best I could do was 15 pourings:  I will show the pourings and what is in each of the 3 containers (A, B, C)

1.  Pour contents of 7 quart can into 19 quart can  (7, 13, 0)

2.  From the 13 quart can fill up the 19 quart can (19, 1, 0)

3.  From the 19 quart can fill the 7 quart (12, 1, 7)

4.  7-quart into 13-quart (12, 8, 0)
5.  From 19 quart fill 7 quart (5, 8, 7)
6.  From 7 quart fill 13 quart (5, 13, 2)
7.  Pour contents of 13 quart into 19 quart (18, 0, 2)
8.  Pour contents of 7 quart into 13 quart (18, 2, 0)
9.  From 19 quart fill 7 quart (11, 2, 7)
10. Pour contents of 7 quart into 13 quart (11, 9, 0)
11. Fill 7 quart from 19 quart (4, 9, 7)
12. Fill 13 quart from contents of 7 quart (4, 13, 3)
13. Pour content of 13 quart into 19 quart (17, 0, 3)
14.  Pour content of 7 quart into 13 quart (17, 3, 0)
15.  Finally from 19 quart pour into 7 quart (10, 3, 7)

You now have the 19 quart container holding 10 quarts!!!!!

Puzzler Problem for Friday, October 12, 2012

Okay Puzzlers,

I am trying something different this week in that I am away from computer (and like it that way) but want to post my brainteaser anyway.  I have scheduled this one and we'll see if it shows up on time.

Wine, Wine, and More Wine

This puzzle is a slightly harder version of the Two Container Problem.  This time we have three containers of wine: 

7 quart - full of Merlot

13 quart - full of Merlot

19 quart - empty

Your job is to end up with one container holding exactly 10 quarts.  As with all the other multiple container problems, there are no markings on the containers, so you must achieve  the desired result by clever pouring back and forth ffrom one container to another.

Hint: The best I could come up with was 15 pourings.