I am a fifty something woman, I have a strong interest in the Arts and in food preparation. I like to spend my free time painting, reading, cooking, or working on special projects. I am the "goto" resource for parenting tips and problem solving for my friends and family. My professional interests are in web development and in developing training programs for business professionals in team work and communication on the job. For the past 6 months I have been on medical leave learning to deal with epilepsy, a new diagnoses but not a new illness. I have experienced these symptoms since I was a child but never knew it was unusual until my job stress became very high in the past year and I developed an auto-immune illness. These extra stresses apparently triggered more seizures and I began experiencing memory and concentration problems. One day at work I had a mini-convulsion that we thought was a stroke. Months of testing showed weird EEG patterns more typical of epilepsy. I am slowly improving and regaining energy and some ability to concentrate, I still suffer from some major fatigue when I work to hard at any particular task so I keep a pretty minimal activity level. Life has taken on a whole new meaning now that I know what is going on.

Been Gone a long time!

I have been gone from my blog for a long time. I have been fighting a serious illness and struggling to get better this past year. I did not want to bring a downer to readers so I have avoided posting till I was feeling better. I found out that I have a mild form of epilepsy, not life threatening, or anything like some other forms of this disorders, but it makes life interesting. I am not working so I have been spending much of my time perfecting my housekeeping skills, some reading, some other hand work, etc.I still have trouble painting for any length of time or sewing. Bit by bit I am getting back into life again. I will never be the same but I will have a better quality of life than I had while I was feeling sickest. I can say this just because I know better how to take care of myself. I will try to post once in awhile about some of the things I am doing. Problem is I just don't think I am that interesting and my mundane life is really quite ordinary. I do love to cook and I write ad paint. I will post some of my work from time to time.

How to make a Mashup

Stick Michael

Swarm Intelligence and Robotics

WolframAlpha A5

I have been asked to post information about this "knowledge engine on my blog enjoy!

Spend some time looking at wolfram|alpha. Check out the examples to get an idea of what it can do.
Use both wolfram|alpha and google to try and determine the answer to the following questions. For each one, state the answer, and say which tool was the most useful or fastest in finding the answer.

1. All english words containing the letters "eue"
2. How much potassium in 4.7 oz of banana?
3. How old was Barack Obama on the day you were born?
4. Date and time of the next total solar eclipse in Eugene?
5. What is the minimum and maximum price of google stock since it went public?
6. Link an image of the barcode for UPC 01234567890
7. How many vertices does an icosahedron have?
8. Distance from Eugene to Tokyo?
9. Average Oregon income per capita?
10. What is the Morse code for your first name?

1. Wolfram: queue, queued, queues.
Google: found: feued, queue, queued, queueing, queuers, queues

2. Wolfram: A 4.70 oz banana’s potassium content is 477mg and constitutes 14% of daily value.
Google: numerous references to potassium but no specific answer.

3. Wolfram: May 28, 1957 is before Barrack Obama was born.
Google: numerous references but no specific answer.

4. Wolfram: Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm-duration 5 minutes 46 seconds, path width 147 miles.
Google: August 21, 2017

5. Wolfram: Minimum is $306.57 maximum is $629.51
Google: numerous editorial sites
6. Wolfram: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=UPC+01234567890
Google: nothing in the way of specific fact.
7. Wolfram: 12
Google: wikipedia had a quick accurate result.

8. Wolfram: 4886 miles
Google: nothing specific

9. Wolfram: $40,040 per yr
Google: provided a link that reported yearly averages but no aggregate.

10. Wolfram: Leslie in morse code = *-**|*|***|*-**|**|*
Google: found a really cool site called poke my name http://www.pokemyname.com/firstname_843_leslie.htm