Mandy Advances to Region Science Fair

Our family is very fortunate to get a double play in Science & Engineering Fair goodness this year.

Mandy had so much fun playing with Brennan's Tic-Tac-Toe project last year, that she decided she wanted to create her own game for the Web this year as her Engineering Fair project.

She chose the game of "Dots".  You know, that game you play on paper with other nearby friends during long boring meetings like a middle-school geography class, where you vie to capture more boxes than the other players by connecting dots to make the sides of the boxes.  She opted to name her game "DotMania", paying homage to our favorite video game franchise "ManiaPlanet" by Nadeo.

It was a blast to help her think conceptually about how to teach a computer to allow this game to be played, and even more fun helping her figure out how to make an interactive board with HTML, CSS And JavaScript.

The design she finalized on was to use an HTML table, with dots absolutely positioned in each corner of every cell, then adding "Click Zone" divs along the borders of each cell, handling the event when a player clicks on one of them.  If it's a valid move, it will highlight and check to see if that table cell's square is complete, as well as any adjacent square that shares the same border.

The game also tracks score as it goes.

Whether you're already a fan of the game, or you've never played it before, please give Mandy's "DotMania" project a try, and wish her luck in the Central Utah Science & Engineering Fair in March at BYU!

Play DotMania
It brings happiness.

Congratulations Mandy!  You're "awesomesauce"!

Brennan Advances to Region Science Fair

Last school year, Brennan tackled developing Tic-Tac-Toe for 2 players using HTML, JavaScript and CSS.    It was really fun for me to help him with the project and learning 3 new computer languages.

This year, he decided he wanted to delve into Artificial Intelligence and add a computer player to his Tic-Tac-Toe game.  It was a unique and exciting experience to help him process through concepts and watch the gears turn as he tried to figure out what our minds ask ourselves when we play Tic-Tac-Toe.

The outcome is quite fun.  If you haven't seen it yet, check it out on his website, brennan.thatoneplace.net

The next round will be held at BYU in March.  We've never been this far in a "fair" before, so we're both nervous and excited.  Apparently there are cash and other prizes at stake as well; and rumor has it, there might be companies present that look to give scholarships for interesting computer engineering projects.  It would be awesome for one to take an interest in our aspiring engineer!

Brennan and I would like to thank all of you who helped "beta test" his project and provide feedback.  We are excited to see how he does at the Region Science & Engineering Fair!

Congratulations Brennan!  You rock!

The Gateway to Customer Service

I bought a killer 21" Gateway Monitor (FPD2185W) last August. It's been fantastic, with swivel action on both axes, height adjustment and rotation. It's got all the video hookups under the sun and a powered 4-port USB hub. It's been a fantastic ride for the last several months.

I had the monitor in a dual-monitor configuration. I had a lan party last weekend that required me to unhook it and use it in a single-monitor configuration. After hooking it back up in my office after the lan party, I went to re-enable my multi-monitor configuration.

Mind you it was still in single-monitor mode at the time; and the display was showing up on my killer Gateway monitor. When I re-enabled the multi-monitor... the screen blinked, but the other monitor didn't come on. The display was still solely on my LCD (my other monitor is a CRT.)

So I thought to myself, "Self, you should reboot the computer and see if it will go back to normal." I did so, and when it restarted... the display now came up on my CRT and NOT on my LCD anymore.

Playing with settings and uninstalling/reinstalling drivers for an hour didn't resolve anything. All display was stuck on my CRT with no hint of going elsewhere.

So I unhooked the LCD from my computer and hooked it up to Gwen's computer... no DVI love there either... so I swapped cables and still no love...

I decided to check the VGA port instead on the monitor to see if it was the DVI port that was the problem, or the whole monitor had given up the ghost. Well, the VGA worked, so I decided the DVI port was bad.

Enter Gateway support. I got on their website and figured out how to email support. Their first response came in hours and they asked me a few questions. We exchanged emails over the next several hours. I received one from them that agreed the monitor was defective and that they had already scheduled a replacement to ship to my home.

They cross-shipped the monitor to my home (on their bill) through Fed-Ex 2nd Day Air (I'll rant about Fed Ex' LACK OF SERVICE in another post) -- with an extra box to ship my defective monitor back in (also on their bill and also FedEx 2nd day.)

It was incredible... my monitor's DVI port went out on Saturday; I had the new monitor on Wednesday ... the defective monitor will be back to them by Tuesday.

One word... heavenly.

I wish all big companies would learn a lesson from Gateway... This is the way you build loyalty!!!!

I didn't receive any two emails from the same Gateway employee; but every email was signed with their name and badge number; and they were all intelligent, competent and professional; and all were sincerely concerned with getting me taken care of.

If that kind of service keeps up, I'll be recommending Gateway to others for a long time... Thanks Gateway!