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Easter eve...
Apr. 19th, 2003 07:58 pmOne of the major puzzles of my misspent youth was figuring out the mechanics of when Easter was supposed to happen. Today, I'm sure you can find out entirely too much information about the mechanics of Easter on the Internet, including the dates upon which Easter will fall for as far into the future as the heat death of the universe will allow.
Of course, back when I was a kid, if you wanted to find something out, you went to the library, unless you lived in a household such as mine, in which "going out" was not something that kids did without close supervision. (I seem to recall, in fact, that one of the minor injustices of my young life was the contradiction between not purchasing books because "you can borrow it from the library," and not really being allowed to go to the library.)
Anyway, nobody I knew had a clue as to why Easter jumped around so much, so I decided to break the code by what cryptographers call a "known ciphertext attack," although I most certainly wouldn't have recognized it as such at the time.
What happened was my chancing upon a pile of old calendars in our old sunroom. There was nothing particularly interesting about these calendars, except that they had graced a location of honor in our kitchen in previous years.
The "known ciphertext" in this case was those calendars. The date of Easter was shown on each one, along with a bunch of other stuff: the phase of the moon, major holidays, and even the weather (which was wrong, more often than not, but not much worse than what you heard on the radio).
So one year, when I again got curious about Easter, I gathered up the calendars and sat down to figure out why Easter jumped around so much. It didn't take long, if I recall to figure out the pattern:
Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
I am sure there is a much more complicated (and therefore, more impressive and more correct) definition, but this one pretty much works.
* * * I got out of the store as quickly as possible to start reviewing the training job. I managed to read through the English and make some minor changes here and there, and then output the finished translation from DejaVu. Unfortunately, the appearance of the translation in Word was really horrid, which is understandable, as the format of the translation mirrors that of the original, but which also makes me uncomfortable, as I didn't have enough time to deal with it, except superficially.
The good news - maybe - is that the editor was not really expecting me to send the whole thing today.
I took a short breather after sending off the file and went by the store, which gave Galina a chance to eat some lunch. She gave Drew the day off because business was very slow (it is, after all, Easter eve). Upon returning, I started to work on the item due Monday.
There are five documents in the assignment. Three of them are fairly short (1-2 pages), a fourth is 7 pages of single-spaced text, and the fifth is 18 pages of tables.
The last item is done, as of a few minutes ago, for a respectable haul of words down on phosphor for the day. Tomorrow, I shall address the remaining files.
Cheers...
Of course, back when I was a kid, if you wanted to find something out, you went to the library, unless you lived in a household such as mine, in which "going out" was not something that kids did without close supervision. (I seem to recall, in fact, that one of the minor injustices of my young life was the contradiction between not purchasing books because "you can borrow it from the library," and not really being allowed to go to the library.)
Anyway, nobody I knew had a clue as to why Easter jumped around so much, so I decided to break the code by what cryptographers call a "known ciphertext attack," although I most certainly wouldn't have recognized it as such at the time.
What happened was my chancing upon a pile of old calendars in our old sunroom. There was nothing particularly interesting about these calendars, except that they had graced a location of honor in our kitchen in previous years.
The "known ciphertext" in this case was those calendars. The date of Easter was shown on each one, along with a bunch of other stuff: the phase of the moon, major holidays, and even the weather (which was wrong, more often than not, but not much worse than what you heard on the radio).
So one year, when I again got curious about Easter, I gathered up the calendars and sat down to figure out why Easter jumped around so much. It didn't take long, if I recall to figure out the pattern:
Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
I am sure there is a much more complicated (and therefore, more impressive and more correct) definition, but this one pretty much works.
The good news - maybe - is that the editor was not really expecting me to send the whole thing today.
I took a short breather after sending off the file and went by the store, which gave Galina a chance to eat some lunch. She gave Drew the day off because business was very slow (it is, after all, Easter eve). Upon returning, I started to work on the item due Monday.
There are five documents in the assignment. Three of them are fairly short (1-2 pages), a fourth is 7 pages of single-spaced text, and the fifth is 18 pages of tables.
The last item is done, as of a few minutes ago, for a respectable haul of words down on phosphor for the day. Tomorrow, I shall address the remaining files.
Cheers...
