I did it on my first try.
Posted on 12/21/2007 11:20:22 PM PST by Bloody Sam Roberts
Here I sit.
I sit in my computer room. My son, who is home from college after ace'ing his first semester final examinations...sits with me. We are discussing historical tidbits. World War II is the current subject.. We discuss certain aspects of the War in the Pacific in late 1944. I have Winamp playing selected numbers from Roger & Hammerstein's "South Pacific".
My son holds in his hand one of my posssesions. A Rubic's Cube.
I have owned this puzzle for a number of years. It has been sitting on my computer desk for many a month in a completley solved state. An icon of a proud achievment by me.
He picks up the Cube and begins to disassemble it...meaning he twists and turns all the constituent squares that decorate its six faces and arranges them into a melange of smaller squares comprised of green, red, blue and yellow square components. He does this in an almost, absentminded state while he looks at me as I relate to him some of the interesting juxtopositions of Art and Life as they relate to the War in the Pacific in the 40s.
As I sit at my comupter desk, I decide to queue up some Steely Dan to spice our discussion.... he looks at me and, making sure he has my attention, holds the Rubic's Cube behind his back and proceeds to continue his minitrations on the puzzle....tongue appropriately raked out of the left side of his mouth...until he presents the Cube to me in both hands. A total of 15 seconds has passed. The Cube is completed. All 9 red squares on one side and the other colors appropriately arranged.
My mind is blown. I can solve the Rubic's Cube...but not behind my back while listening to...and contributing to an historical discourse.
I think...no. I'm sure I love this kid.
Ummm....Ping.
And here you thought he was off learning and all that jazz. Nope he was wasting time with a rubic’s cube. God I miss college.
Actually, he is enrolled in one of the top nursing programs in the country and got nothing less than a B+ in all his Freshman year courses. Not too damned bad.
Oh, no, not bad by any means. I just has to laugh that between all that, he managed to figure out how to do a Rubic’s Cube behind his back. Just goes to show you that the real fun of college is all the hijinks (and it sounds like you’ve got youself a good kid, if his hijinks consist of Rubic’s Cubes), not the classes.
In short, congrats on raising what sounds like a good kid, being an RN is a nice gig. He can essentially travel the world for free, and have a job anywhere he wants to go. Not a bad gig at all.
What really impresses me is that he decided to do the health care thing all on his own. Up until his junior year in high school he was set on a career in either Electrical Engineering or Computer Science.
One day, the kid who has had a copy of Gray's Anatomy (thanks to his great Grandad) on his bookshelf since he was 3, decided that he could do much better after college in health sciences than anything else. Dang.
Hmmmm...he takes after his mother????
LOL
I did it on my first try.
A couple of my friends are studying to become RNs, once you get past all the male nurse joke, it really is a good career. Plus, when you’re an RN in your 20s, it can be a ton of fun to go around the country working at different hospitals, everyone is always trying to hire a good RN. He can essentially go anywhere with it until he decides he wants to settle down.
Its sounds like a whole lot more fun being an RN that an electrical engineer (YUCK). Sounds like he’s got a bright future ahead of him.
Enter him in the championships!
Tysonn Francis Mao (born on May 8, 1984 in San Francisco, California), is one of the world's top competitive Rubik's Cube solvers. He is known especially for his prominence in the 3x3x3 blindfold Rubik's Cube category where his competition times are currently surpassed only by Leyan Lo, Mátyás Kuti, and Chris Krueger.[1] In 2004, with Ron van Bruchem, he formed the World Cube Association, the organization that holds competitive events for the Rubik's Cube. On January 12, 2006, he appeared on the CW Television Network's "Beauty and the Geek" as one of the participants of the second incarnation of the reality television show.[2]
I too was awed by a ribic's cube puzzle solver recently. Having deftly solved the puzzle myself 25 years ago in a mere 1,489 attempts, I watched as the puzzle was solved in matter of seconds.
I took it back from him, rearranged it, handed it back. Seconds later, solved again!
How could this be? I asked the solver his trick, how did he know?
Answer: He had downloaded from the internet the solution motions required and had worked that until he had it memorized.
The solver? My 12 year old nephew.
Hey...it was very late at night and I missed one or two edits....the sun got in my eyes...the wind was blowing in the wrong direction...I was distracted by the møøse in my den...he was eating cheese and I lost focus.
The real question is....can an old dog learn this new trick?
...maybe he Cuban..
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