I had promised to write about relevance today but disaster struck. When Anna and I left for work yesterday (we carpool), Anna forgot her rings, (or in her words “I rushed her out of the house, so it is my fault”). She left her rings on the coffee table in my study, which is normally off limits to our cats (because I have allergies).
Our error was this: School is out, so our children are home. My seven year old decided to have “quiet time” in my office, and left the door open when she left. She remembers seeing the rings, and swears that there were two at the end.
Now, an unreliable witness—my 2 year old—says she saw Fluffy, our male Ragdoll cat (the female is blameless) playing with a ring outside my office, near the in-floor air conditioning vents. I took the vents apart; no ring; lots of less than attractive dust bunnies.
I tried the obvious things—giving the cats small things to play with to see where they went, but to no avail.
I was hoping that Google would have a search appliance that would ransack your house for you, but it seems only to search files.
Does any one have any suggestions? A metal detector will probably demonstrate that a modern Californian house is almost entirely made by nailing things together. Will advanced interrogation techniques get more (reliable) information out of my children?
Anyway, I was distracted, so the relevance analysis is delayed. Sorry.
Tom
moo · Jun 11, 01:44 PM
ouch! give your kids a flash light this evening and ask them to play “treasure hunt”. kids are very good at finding things. :-) hope you find them soon, and look forward to the relevance analysis.
George Mc Keon · Jun 11, 08:16 PM
$50 to whatever of your kids finds the rings. Its a very effective search technique.
Imad Jomaa · Jun 11, 08:30 PM
A treasure hunt will definitely do. Give them a reward if they found it, tell them that if they find it, they’ll get a lolly or their favorite candy, which ever works. =)
seval Ozveren · Jun 11, 11:39 PM
Great excuse to renew your vows and grab anna’s arm on a rush to Tiffanys. Cant think if a better excuse..
Erik · Jun 12, 05:39 AM
Hi Tom
Perform a scan of the whole house. Now index it and categorize the indexed data. All that remains is a detailed exploratory search based on your category based directory, and ‘Bing’o (excuse the pun).
Finding It Easy !
TomDG · Jun 12, 10:18 AM
That’s horrible… I was just doing a bit of research on Cuil and ran across this… My wife was playing with our dog a couple days ago and the dog swallowed the ring (I think she fed it to him)…
Anyways, best of luck finding it!
Magnet + Kitty Litter?
Stephen Schwenker · Jun 13, 04:46 AM
Tom,
If the rings are no where to be found, I’ll bet my last dollar that their in the cat’s stomach. Either take the cat to the vet or start sifting thru the litter box.
Best of luck,
Steve
Kevin Luo · Jun 15, 11:24 AM
By the end, you will find the ring some where you have never thought of. I’ll bet one dollar for my words.
Bruce Baumgart · Jun 16, 05:58 PM
One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Frodo Baggins has the rings.
Heidi · Jun 19, 12:28 PM
I am with Steve on this one – the Cat ate it! I would break out the hazmat gear!
Good Luck!
Heidi
Dawn · Jun 23, 07:54 PM
Pray like fury. 16 years ago, during our first week of marriage, I lost the $3000 family heirloom engagement ring that my husband gave me. I was petrified. I couldn’t say a word. (In fact, this could be the first he finds out about that incident.) Three days later, I found it sitting all by itself at the bottom of a very large and empty packing box. I still have no clue how that happened, but I do know I prayed and prayed a lot.
search_engine_software_study · Jun 25, 07:50 AM
Relevance is always the biggest problem facing enterprise search, hope to see your talk later.