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Comments on Puzzle #19513: WCP #115 The past gets us to where we are today....
By Kurt Kowalczyk (bahabro)

peek at solution       solve puzzle
  quality:   difficulty:   solvability: moderate lookahead  

Puzzle Description Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers

#1: Levi Ross (rhodyboy888) on Aug 10, 2012 [HINT]

Comment Suppressed:Click below to view hints
#2: Brian Bellis (mootpoint) on Aug 10, 2012
Same here Levi. Nice puzzle Kurt.
#3: Jota (jota) on Aug 10, 2012
Thanks Kurt!
#4: Kristen Vognild (kristen) on Aug 11, 2012
That would have been so much easier without all the blots! :D
#5: Kurt Kowalczyk (bahabro) on Aug 11, 2012
thanks

yep, waay easy without blots. kinda fun with em though
#6: Web Paint-By-Number Robot (webpbn) on Aug 11, 2012
Found to be solvable with moderate lookahead by gator.
#7: Gator (gator) on Aug 11, 2012 [HINT]
Comment Suppressed:Click below to view hints
#8: Tom King (sgusa) on Aug 12, 2012
Kurt: It was a hard puzzle. I don;t like blotting, but you did a great job. Odd ending to the solution...
#9: Kurt Kowalczyk (bahabro) on Aug 12, 2012
sorry Tom. the WCP has to be a blot puzzle. sometimes is ok, but I wouldn't want to see blots all the time...thanks everyone
#10: Aldege Cholette (aldege) on Aug 12, 2012
Well done Kurt.:)
#11: Jan Wolter (jan) on Aug 12, 2012
Sometimes blots add nothing to the puzzle, and sometimes they help a lot. This is a nice example of the latter I think.

I only worked for HP, in the Loveland Instrument Division for three months, one summer during college. It was the first paying programming job I had. I was working with the lovely computer eulogized on this website: http://www.hp9825.com/ . I was writing a library of instrument control routines for it, things that could drive electrical test instruments like voltmeters and generate graphs to draw on a plotter and such. If you didn't have a plotter attached, then the computer's graphical display ability was somewhat limited - one line of 32-characters on an LED display - so it probably wouldn't have been a ideal vehicle for PBN puzzles.

Hmmm....can't say I think I learned a lot about programming at HP. A bit about project management. Pretty much convinced myself I was more a software guy than a hardware guy. I suppose the HP9825 encouraged my already existing predilection toward minimalist user interfaces, since that's the only kind you could build on it.

In 1986 I visited Russia, and was given tours of various science museums and medical research labs. They knew I was a computer guy, so they went out of their way to find computers to show me. Only one actually appeared to be working, my old friend the HP9825, but it had no paper in it's built-in 32-character wide strip printer. I wondered if the supply of paper was locked up in a closet somewhere least someone used it to publish a 32-character wide subversive newspapers.
#12: Teresa K (fasstar) on Aug 12, 2012
Cool story, Jan.

Wonderful tribute, Kurt, and a most enjoyable challenge to solve.
#13: Kurt Kowalczyk (bahabro) on Aug 13, 2012
yeah, thanks for the story!

glad you liked it teresa, al, Jan, and everyone else!
#14: valerie o..travis (bigblue) on Aug 14, 2012
good one kurt :)
#15: Andrew Schultz (blurglecruncheon) on Sep 11, 2019 [SPOILER]
Comment Suppressed:Click below to view spoilers
#16: BlackCat (BlackCat) on Mar 14, 2020
Tough solve.

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