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The Traveling Salesman Problem Meets Starbucks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the secretly-replaced-with-folger's-crystals dept.

Call Me Black Cloud writes "John 'Winter' Smith, a contract computer programmer, is living the traveling salesman problem. His personal quest is to visit every company-owned Starbucks and he's not doing too badly. After 7 years he's hit over 4,000 locations in the United States and 167 in Britain and Japan. What motivates him? That's one for the professionals to answer, but since Starbucks opens an average of 10 stores per week it doesn't look like Winter will be stopping any time soon. His website offers insight into why he does this ('to be different') and has pictures of the 4000+ Starbucks he's visited."

12 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. How does one make a living... by teamhasnoi · · Score: 5, Funny
    when constantly assaulted by coffee craps?

    One of the great unanswered questions.

    1. Re:How does one make a living... by david.given · · Score: 4, Funny
      He's a computer programmer. Therefore, he's powered by caffeine. Without it he does not function.

      It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that the mind acquires speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion...

  2. Four bucks a cup! by niko9 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Among the paramedics at work they are known as Fourbucks, on acount of their prices. ;P

  3. now if he was CLEVER... by acroyear · · Score: 4, Funny

    he would have written a computer program to keep track of all the starbucks, and visit them in the chronological order that they were opened, and have that program keep track of all the messy details of any that closed or moved, etc.

    (yes, a douglas adams reference to the infinitely prolongued guy who insulted the universe in alphabetical order)

    --
    "But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
    -- Joe
  4. End of the Universe by ari_j · · Score: 4, Funny

    What's really important, though, is how many Starbucks he has seen across the street from another Starbucks.

  5. Well duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What motivates him?

    Caffeine, obviously.

  6. Mr. Caffeine by general_re · · Score: 4, Funny
    His website...has pictures of the 4000+ Starbucks he's visited.

    Presumably his camera has some serious jitter correction built in...

    --
    ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
  7. Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? by N3Z · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought it had something to do with the farmers daughter.

    --
    .signature not found
  8. Re:Traveling Salesman Problem? by kris_lang · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hmm... If I wanted to be like Len Adelman, I could encode each Starbuck's location into a short oligonucleotide sequence, create matched-pair of DNA oligos each representing a travel-step from starbu_x to starbu_y, create a DNA soup (watch your filthy mind!) of these oligo-pairs, do the appropriate restrictions and selections by weight and publish an article in Science or Nature, have the journalists and flacks mis-represent it as being a DNA computer capable of solving the "Travelling Salesman" problem when every mathematician and theorist knows it to be the Directed Hamiltonian Graph problem, not worry about it, and move on.

    Oh, and please insert "profit" and the appropriate "/item" tags around the list above, and let LaTeX number it for me. Thanx.

  9. Re:let me be the first to say.... by internic · · Score: 5, Funny
    What's the point?!?!?!

    Is this a test sir?

    Anything you order is free sir. Don't worry, it's clean sir.

    Your sure this isn't a test, sir? You were in here last Tuesday, standing right where you are now. You asked, "how good is security?" It's excellent sir, tight as a drum.

    You said if anyone came asking, we'd have to mod him down, even you. This is a powerful gesture, sir.

    --
    "You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
  10. What motivates him? by Roadkills-R-Us · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can understand this.

    I, myself, have a desire to visit every McDonalds on the face fo the planet.

    But first I have to buy a bulldozer, and a cargo plane to carry it between continents...

  11. Re:10 stores a week by EvanED · · Score: 4, Funny
    since Starbucks opens an average of 10 stores per week it doesn't look like Winter will be stopping any time soon.

    This reminds me of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged:

    This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing that would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this.
    He would insult the universe.
    That is, he would insulct everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decidid to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.
    When people protested to him, as they sometimes had, thta the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, 'A man can dream, can't he?'"


    (Life, the Universe and Ev8hing)