Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 January 2

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January 2[edit]

Richard Helm birth date[edit]

What is the birth date and location of Richard Helm (author/computer scientist/IT professional who wrote Design Patterns...)? I've looked all over but can't seem to find it anywhere. A good source for this would also be appreciated. --Nerd1a4i (talk) 16:24, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Added a title and a link. Rojomoke (talk) 21:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC) [reply]

Bad phone calls[edit]

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This question has been removed. Per the reference desk guidelines, the reference desk is not an appropriate place to request medical, legal or other professional advice, including any kind of medical diagnosis or prognosis, or treatment recommendations. For such advice, please see a qualified professional. If you don't believe this is such a request, please explain what you meant to ask, either here or on the Reference Desk's talk page. --~~~~
Tevildo (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This is really a question about how to handle alleged inappropriate behavior by a Wikipedia editor, so it seems to me that we should refer the requester to the appropriate part of Wikipedia. However, I'm not sure what that would be. John M Baker (talk) 21:46, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The post was pure trolling, by a banned user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:57, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, WP:OWH is the appropriate link. Tevildo (talk) 23:22, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It would be, if the complaint was legitimate, which it wasn't. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:39, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Well then, what's the appropriate place for illegitimate complaints? (Asking for a friend.) —Tamfang (talk) 01:56, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The circular file. μηδείς (talk) 02:37, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Or better yet, "where the moon don't shine" (to quote Dick Cavett).[1]Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:19, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rose Parade on Monday, January 2[edit]

Since January 1 this year is a Sunday, the Rose Parade is held on Monday, January 2, instead. How often does January 1 fall on a Sunday? How many times does January 1 fall on a Sunday in 400 Gregorian years? What about the 6-year difference between 1899 and 1905 due to 1900 not being a leap year, between 2096 and 2102 due to 2100 not being a leap year, and the 7-year difference between 2197 and 2204 due to 2200 not being a leap year? GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 16:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Perpetual calendar might be a good place to start. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:18, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
One that I use is this:[2] In recent years, January 1 fell on a Sunday in 2012, 2006, 1995, 1989, 1984, 1978, 1967 and 1961. That's 8 times in 56 years (starting 1962), or average once every 7 years, which is not too surprising. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:20, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a program "count" that will produce a list of consecutive numbers (I think this is built-in on some systems, but I use my own that I wrote, so I don't know about that), all you need to do is:
     for year in `count 2000 2399`
        do
        cal 1 $year
        done | grep ' 1 ' | sort -r | uniq -c
The output is:
    58  1  2  3  4  5  6  7 
    56     1  2  3  4  5  6 
    58        1  2  3  4  5 
    57           1  2  3  4 
    57              1  2  3 
    58                 1  2 
    56                    1 
So in the 400-year Gregorian cycle, January 1 is on Sunday 58 times, Monday 56 times, and so on.
(If you don't have a "count" program, you could insert some awk or perl instead, e.g.: for year in `perl -e 'print join(" ", 2000..2399)'`
--69.159.60.210 (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
When I try it on MacBSD, the last line is missing, because cal doesn't do trailing spaces. —Tamfang (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]