Nerd

I finally decided that its time to backup everything I have on my computer and external hard drive. Its been 2 years since I last backed up my work. If you know me well, you would know that I am an organize-maniac. There's no 'orphan' file in my computer. Every file belongs to one folder and every folder belongs to one bigger category. When I am backing things up, I want to preserve the way I save my files. Since I have a DVD burner now, I decided that I should backup with DVDs, because it could hold more information and I don't have to break any folder into two separate disc.

I have A LOT of folders with various sizes that I need to back up. For folders smaller than 4GB, I was trying to fit several folders into one DVD. I used the software that came with my computer and choose folders by random to burn on one DVD. I kept getting the message "Exceed the limit on DVD" from the software I was using. I began to lose my patience, I was getting frustrated.

Then, it came very naturally to me: "Why don't I write an optimization program using simplex algorithm that would tell me which folders should go together into one DVD with the objective of minimizing the number of DVDs I need?" And subconciously, I already created the whole simplex table in my mind, with all constraints and numbers needed and I was beginning to make secondary plans: I could add more constraints, re-run the program and see which combination suits my 'taste' without increasing the number of DVDs I need. How could I assess the efficiency? Maybe I should try to add more constraints until the program fails, just to check the robustness of my program.

This train of thoughts happened very very fast, like a spark. Then I realized something was not very 'right'. I told myself, "STOP!! What were you thinking?" Something was indeed very WRONG here!

This is a life example of what academic can do to you. Though I didn't end up writing the program, the thought of doing it did count. But maybe I should do it, and maybe sell it to some burner software maker as an add-on to their software....day(night)-dreaming now....