17. Rubik's 4X4 is solved!

It's been awhile since I have blogged. I really haven't been doing much.  I have done little things, but those fit into the area of, "no one would care about this post" territory.  This one might also be in that category.  All I know is I was super excited when it happened and figured that it was something notable, and thus blog worthy.

Disclaimer: I do a lot of nerdy things.  This definitely fits into that category.

After learning how to do the 3X3 cube last year I have really enjoyed playing around with it. I even brought it into school and showed my students that I could do it. The next day, 4 kids brought in their own cubes to try to solve, and ultimately to have me solve.  Those students made me laugh.  They would carry their cubes around before and after school as trophies, because most people that own rubik's cubes only have them solved for the first two minutes.  After that, they remain unsolved forever.  They really were a hit in my class.  At one point I counted 22 out of 24 of my students that bought rubik's cubes for themselves to learn to solve.  Two of them learned how to do it by the end of the year with a few others just a step or two away.  Hopefully they have figured it all out by now.

For Father's Day Melissa bought me this.

This was the view of it about 10 minutes after I took it out of the package.

I spent a lot more time that I would like to admit on this thing trying to figure it out.  I even had a night where I didn't go to bed until 1:30 because I was stuck on one part.

One month later (today), this is what it looks like:

When I was about fifteen moves away from solving it I got really excited.  I knew I would be able to get it finished.  I know really nerdy. I took the luxury of saving you 10 minutes of watching a video of me getting it done.  I don't quite have it down as fast as I did with the 3X3. I'm sure with time it will get faster.  Solving the 4X4 is similar to doing the 3X3 which made it take a lot less time to learn.

Next up:

Should be fun!

UPDATE: After playing with it for no more than 5 minutes I solved the 2X2. Here's the finished product: