A rule of thumb:

When you ask how long a project will take, divide the answer in half, and bump up to the next significant unit of time.

If a programmer tells you that he or she can get that to you in ten minutes, that means five hours. If a contractor says it's a one-day process, that means half a week.

This rule of thumb has served me well in general.

A fun demonstration of playing with numbers

My aunt actually emailed this link around. In it, Arthur Benjamin (a math professor at Harvey Mudd in his day job) does fifteen minutes of impressive mental arithmetic. If you enjoy numbers, you may enjoy this.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/199

I just had a maraschino cherry.

Have you ever had a maraschino cherry?

I mean, a REAL one?

A sour marasca cherry preserved in syrup?

It's amazing.

The "maraschino cherries" that we get, well, in all honesty, you can taste a little bit of similarity in them. You can actually taste that, if you took a "maraschino cherry" and somehow made it into something GOOD, this is what it would be.

How do I put this? A maraschino cherry is a cherry almost, but not entirely, unlike a maraschino cherry.