How are you sir? My name is Stephen Pretto Rossillo.

My mother was Vitalina Pretto, daughter of Giovanni Pretto and Cecilia Povolo Pretto, who came from the village of Muschi, in the town of Recoaro Terme, Vicenza.

I have many cousins over there that I see every couple of years or so. Some of their names are:

- Roberto Pretto

- Luca Pretto

- Massimo Pretto

- Stefano Pretto

- Antonio Pretto

- Bruno Pretto

- Eugenio Pretto

…and of course many more.

~

I am from the NYC tri-state area — Ridgefield, Bergen county, NJ.

Talk to you soon.

-Steve

Horizon Geometry

“The square root of your height (or elevation) in feet times 1.2 equals the distance to your horizon in miles.

So, how high would Sarah Palin’s house have to be inorder to see Russia?:

Wasilla, Alaska, is 1130 km from Russia.

How high above the Earth’s surface do you have to be to see a point 1130 km away along the Earth’s surface? If we start plugging numbers into myDistance To Horizon Calculator, we see that the answer is 101425.88 meters. You have to go 101 km (63 miles!) above Wasilla before you can see Russia. You can knock 104 meters off of that if you like to account for Wasilla’s elevation above sea level.

Windows 7 Ultimate Installation log

1.       Burn copy of Window 7 Build 7000 ISO on Mac “just in case.”

2.       Backup data files on Dell Inspiron laptop (Window Vista Capable) 1Gig Ram 1.87G Duo 140GHDD

3.       Put Windows Disc in Machine and boot from CD

a.       Select Upgrade Path

                                                               i.      “Cannot Upgrade from Window XP. Can only upgrade from Windows Vista SP1”

b.      Reboot machine from XP partition

c.       Boot from Windows 7 Disc

                                                               i.      “Do you wish to check for updates prior to installing – YES

1.       This check took about 4 minutes to check and didn’t give any response or dialog back.??? (hmmm, is MS checking on us?)

                                                             ii.      Create New Partition

1.       Windows created two partitions

a.       A 200MB “boot” partition

b.      The remainder as “primary” partition

                                                            iii.      “Installing Windows

1.       Copying files                      Fast about 30 sec

2.       Expanding files                  About seven minutes

3.       Installing Features           just about 10 seconds

4.       Installing Updates            seconds

5.       Completing Installation it completed this after the below reboot

                                                           iv.      First reboot

                                                             v.      Setup is updating registry settings

                                                           vi.      Setup is starting services

                                                          vii.      Second reboot

                                                        viii.      Setup is preparing for first time us

                                                           ix.      Setup is checking video performance

                                                             x.      Setup prompt for Product Key

                                                           xi.      Displays list of wireless access points

                                                          xii.      Do you wish to create a home group?

1.       Select Libaries

a.       Pictures

b.      Videos

c.       Music

d.      Documents

2.       Remember this key

                                                        xiii.      Windows if finalizing

                                                        xiv.      Start desktop

4.       Finished!!!!

 Summary:

Deja Vu: I remember installing Vista in the Fall of 2005 and having a “bear” of a time getting things to work. In comparison, I installed Windows 7 on an older Dell Inspiron (1.87Ghz Duo) and everythig including aero is working great. I haven’t found anything so far that is NOT working. I’ll keep you posted.

Overall: pretty darn good. Microsoft eventually gets things right.

".....Or Don't"

What is all this fuss about Christmas? Well, people say “Oh, you can’t say Christmas because it is offensive to other religions…” blah, blah, blah.

The politically correct crowd says “Happy Holidays.” That seems to cover it all, eh?

Well I did a bit of research this morning and found this list:

• Happy Holidays – Canada, United States
• Kales yortes” or “Kala Christouyenna” – Greek for Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas
• Buon Natale – Italian for Happy Christmas
• Feliz Natal – Portuguese for Happy Christmas
• Feliz Navidad – Castilian lit. “Happy Nativity”
• Crăciun Fericit! Romanian for Merry Christmas
• Season’s Greetings – United Kingdom Christmas cards, not usually spoken
• Happy Christmas – United Kingdom
• Merry Xmas – Written English (often informal), referencing the Greek word Χριστος, for Christ.
• Merry Yuletide, Good Yuletide or Happy Yuletide – English, can generally refer to the period of cultural festivities surrounding Yule, Winter solstice, Christmas and the New Year.
• Merry Midwinter – English greeting, generally for the period of the winter solstice.
• God jul – Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, lit. “Good Yule”
• Hyvää joulua – Finnish
• Prettige Kerstdagen en een gelukkig nieuwjaar – Dutch
• Geseënde Kersfees en ‘n voorspoedige nuwe jaar – Blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year – Afrikaans speaking South Africans
• Glædelig jul – Danish
• Joyous Yule – Usually a Wiccan or Neopagan greeting for the Winter solstice
• Joyeux Noël – France, French Canada, Louisiana, Switzerland
• Joyeuses Fêtes – French for Happy Holidays used in French Canada
• Frohe Weihnachten/Fröhliche Weihnachten – German for Merry Christmas
• Mele Kalikimaka – Hawaiian, is preferred over the traditional American “Merry Christmas” in the U.S. state of Hawaii; made popular worldwide by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1950 in song
• Nollaig Shona Duit – Ireland, (Irish Language), Gaeilge, lit. “You have a happy Christmas”.
• Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda – Wales (by Welsh speakers), “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”
• S’Rozhdestvom Kristovym! (С Рождеством Христовым!) or, more commonly, simply S Rozhdestvom! for the informal Christmas greeting, while the traditional religious greeting is Khrystos razhdayetsya! (Христос рождается, meaning “Christ is born!”) and the traditional response is Slavite! (Cлавите!, meaning “Let us glorify him!”). – Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic countries
• Happy Kwanzaa – English greeting used before Kwanzaa.
• Wesołych Świąt – Polish greeting used before Christmas (literally ‘Happy Holidays’).
• Habari Gani – Swahili for “What’s the news?” is the daily greeting for each of the seven days of Kwanzaa.
• Happy Hanukkah or Happy Chanukah – English
• Chag Sameach – Hebrew for “Joyous festival”, used for most Jewish festivals.
• Gut Yontiff – Yiddish for “good holiday” used for non festival holidays.
• L’Shanah Tovah – Hebrew, Lit. “a good year”. Common greeting during Rosh Hashanah and Days of Awe. It is derived from L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem, lit. “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year”.
• Have an easy fast – the solemn greeting for Yom Kippur.
• Happy New Year – often yelled at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.
• It’s a Festivus for the rest of us! – often yelled enthusiastically to explain the meaning of the holiday Festivus
• Milad Majeed – Arabic for “Merry Christmas” as used in Syria and several other countries
• Kul ‘am wa enta bi-khair – Arabic for “May every year find you in good health”
• Taqabbala Allahu minna wa minkum. – “May God accept from us, and from you.”
• ‘Īd mubārak – “Blessed Eid” is used to greet at the end of Ramadan on Eid ul-Fitr
• ‘Īd sa‘īd – “Happy Eid”
• Bayramınız Mübarek Olsun – Turkey – “(is a celebration of Ramadan (religious holiday)”
• Selamat Hari Raya or Salam Aidilfitri – Malay and Indonesia
• Rite Catholic countries – Christos Voskresse! (Христос возкресе) replied to with Vo istina voskresse! (Во истина Воскресе!) – Bulgarian
• Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!! Filipino, greeting for “merry Christmas and Happy New Year”
• Среќна Нова Година и Божиќни празници, Srekna Nova Godina i Bozikni praznici – Macedonian (Makedonski)
• Boldog karácsonyt/Kellemes karácsonyi ünnepeket : Merry Christmas/Pleasant Christmas Holidays in Hungarian, Kellemes húsvéti ünnepeket: Pleasant Easter Holidays– in Hungarian( Magyar)
• Gong Xi Fa Tsai, Xin Nian Kuai Le –in (Mandarin), translation: “We wish upon you good fortunes, and may your heart’s desires be satisfied”.

Now, as a mathematician I am fond of “X”mas because your can replace whatever rhetoric you wish with the lookup table above and replace; Normal, logical and efficient.

Further, than I thought well, isn’t it really a mechanism to generate consumption increasing the “C” component in Gross Domestic Product?

Hmmm,  GDP = consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports −imports), or,

GDP = C + I + G + (X-M).

That is it!

Therefore, the new name of Christmas will now be:

GDPMas or (rewritten)

C + I + G + X-Mas

Or

CIGXMas

Merry CIGXMas everyone!

Your mathematician Mr. Pretto…