Can you spot the difference?

I was at Dollar General when I saw this cache of heavy duty triple outlets. Then I noticed something funny about them.. Can you find it?

Something to think about (carefully)

I was recently directed to an article concerning the efficacy of various tin beanies (thanks to MIT for supporting this research). Be sure to also check out the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie page. The information on these pages could be vital to preventing the government or other "multinational corporations" from controlling your mind. Perhaps, in the weeks to come, I'll work on some design and testing of my own to provide effective protection from the potential mind-controlling signals that the government and other agencies may be using to persuade you to follow their direction. (Then again, maybe not - you'll have to wait to find out.)

I just thought I would sound the alarm now that I'm aware of this information. I hope that it has been enlightening and informative to you.

Talking hands

Why do people "talk with their hands" when on the phone? I mean, the other person can't see what you're doing with your hands (I know, someone's going to mention video-phones - but I'm talking about plain old phones where it's voice-only communication). The other day the lady behind me, driving down the road, was holding her phone to her ear with one hand and mainly talking - occasionally driving - with the other. I mean really... that's not only wasteful of energy (why do something if it's not doing any good? talking with your hand while on the phone? no one's benefitting from it, you're just wasting energy; did I mention I'm kind of lazy? besides... you'll create more body heat by the extra motion, which in turn heats up the atmosphere around you, which in turn spreads, and suddenly you're an instigator of global warming!), but dangerous as well (fortunately there were no accidents during the time that I was in front of her; don't know about afterwards, but I was praying for her - and especially those around her - safety).

This sparked a brief discussion in our car of "talking with your hand" - I suggested that to do so you should pull your sock off your foot and create a sock puppet to hold up to your phone. That would really be talking with your hand.

--- subject change warning! ---

Does anyone else out there like the movie Hot Rod? That is my current favorite "recent" movie (Raising Arizona is probably my all-time favorite movie ever; Noises Off is really good, as is Big Trouble and The Rock and The Princess Bride - did I ever mention that I'm in the movie The Rock? If not, ask and I'll surely share!). I'm always quoting little things from Hot Rod... like today when I said in a text message to my friend (who has borrowed the movie, so he knows what I'm talking about), "Said cool beans.. reminded me of Hot Rod.. any chance I can get it back from you sometime soon?" Except my T9 predictive text input wrote (and I failed to correct), "Said book beans.. reminded me of Hot Rod.. any chance I can get it back from you sometime soon?" My next message (after he commented on that) was full of "book" in place of "cool" (at least four occurrences). Pretty clever, eh? (Ok, I admit, not really.)

So, anyway... talk with your mouth, not with your hands, especially if there are more important things you should be doing with them (like driving). Besides... you look kind of silly. Especially if you're talking on your Blue-tooth headset, leaving both hands free, and have your hands waving wildly while (appearing to be) talking to no one in particular... :)

Off center

I'm sitting outside Starbucks and I notice something awry that's bugging me on a subliminal level. Then I notice it.. the hole on the cup lid isn't centered. Ahhhgh! It's driving me crazy. At least I have my wife here to keep me company in my time of distress..

Another game...

Sorry, you'll have to wait a bit longer for a post based on your ideas (see "Random Thoughts"). You still have time to add to them. (I'd wanted to post it tonight, but my mind isn't working well; of course, that might lead to the best material, but we won't find out tonight.)

Instead I thought I'd throw another game your way (courtesy of my kids, who tend to find these games). It's called "Totem Destroyer" - and it's quite intriguing. I'd come home for lunch today, and the kids mentioned it to me, and I ended up taking a longer lunch than I'd planned... :) Enjoy!

Onion bangle..?

I was having brunch with the family at IHOP and one of my onion rings had a problem: as shown in the photo, it was not a complete ring. Thus, my thought is that it was that much rarer of onion-esque items; it was the elusive onion bangle. I ate it anyway. (That sandwich I'm eating is a Philly cheese steak, minus the cheese.. it was pretty good. As were the onion rings and, yes, even the onion bangle.)

Hedgehog Launch

For those who may not know, it's addictively fun to launch hedgehogs into space (if you don't already know, click the link and prepare to be amusingly addicted to a stupid-yet-too-much-fun game; you need to beat the game at least once - and watch through all the credits - in order to learn some amazing science facts!). For those who do, marvel at my accomplishment indicated by the partial screenshot to the left - I completed the mission of putting a hedgehog in space in only three days (surprising even myself). I've only done that twice. I think I got lucky both times. I'm getting better, though... I did manage to nearly duplicate this mind-boggling (or maybe mind-numbing, depending on your point of view) feat tonight, although I missed space on the third day just barely (I did make it on day four, of course). Now, not all my attempts are this fantastic - sometimes it takes six days, or nine. Sometimes, especially if I miss the three-day mark, I'll just send my hedgehog all over the place and try to rack up a princely sum of money (not that I can do anything with it once I've bought all the available upgrades).

On a less fantastic note, I'm having issues with the Samsung Katalyst phone that we got my wife to use with T-Mobile's Hotspot@Home service (this is slightly different from their T-Mobile@Home service which they've recently announced). The tech support guy was trying to tell me that it was because we hadn't registered our home address as the E-911 address that we can't connect the phone to our wireless router. Yeah, right. It's probably the router I have (I didn't get the T-Mobile one), although the phone has connected before. And this is the third Katalyst we've gotten (first had horrible battery life; second rebooted quite frequently; now neither the second nor the third will connect to my home wireless network). Whatever... one of these days my technological life will be nice and I'll have 100% working everything. (Yeah, right.)

Well, only a few more days to submit your ideas for my next great post (ok, maybe my first great post; ok, simply "another mindless, non-great post" - shut up already!). I'd have worked on it tonight, but I'm kind of [brain dead] at the moment. (What, you say, is the difference then? Compared to my "regular" posts? Shut up already!)

Going to go launch some hedgehogs...

No Longer Stumped!

YEAH! I'm no longer stumped! Here's the area where the stump used to be (over to the right):

And here (below; click the pictures to enlarge, if you care) are the pictures of the final extraction. We'd gotten it to the point where, when we whacked it with the sledge-side of a maul, it would move 4-5 inches. So I went to Lowe's and picked up a chain and a couple of connection links - the best $18.12 I have spent today (well, the $10 we spent on shrimp - which I grilled in aluminum foil in a butter/garlic/spices mixture - was really worth it, too!). Anyway, we'd hacked and hacked, for (literally) weeks and months, and I declared (this morning) that today we would have victory - today would be our independence day from the stump! And we did.

A couple of hours of manual whacking and digging this morning, then (once we got it to the point where it was actually movable - not significantly movable, but enough that we could push on it to make a difference) we went after the chain. Now, I know that a Lexus is not a truck (although the engine is related to the engine in the Tundra, and I even had one of those for a couple of years), but you can still hook a chain to the tow hook on the rear and pull out a stump with it. The stump was heavy, so I dragged it with the car/chain over to our "big stuff pile" on the side of the road and rolled it up onto the branches we had piled there. Then I unhooked and picked up the chain and promptly burned my right pinky finger on the portion of the chain which had been dragged across the cement with a stump on it and was exceptionally hot.

But the stump is out! Today I declare victory over and independence from the stump! (Ok, I still have to put the dirt back in the stump-hole...) Hope you've had a great 4th of July!

Steakhouse

Well, I'm a little disappointed in the response to my last post: only two comments so far (note to the commenters: thank you! I sincerely appreciate your comments and value your input, even though it's "blank" from one of you... :) ). Thus, I'll have to postpone the posting of the post in response to your post comments (wow, that's a lot of "post" words in one sentence!). But it will come - as soon as I have a few more ideas to incorporate into some grandiose story.

So, anyway, we were at Outback tonight, and I thought, "I'd like to live in a steakhouse. Granted, it'll probably get smelly after a while, and fly infested, but if you ever get hungry, you can just gnaw on the walls for a snack!" You know, steakhouse, kind of like a gingerbread house, but steak instead. You'd probably want to make it a beef-jerky-like house, since that would help provide some stiffness to the structure and the cured meat would be more resistant to spoiling. That, and I like beef jerky.

You'd have to be careful about what pets you have, though... a dog would quite literally eat you out of house and home if you lived in a steakhouse. A cat might, too. Certainly a lion or tiger would be a bad pet for such a home, and birds might pick at it as well. You'd need pets like hamsters or gerbils or guinea pigs (my favorite) that are dedicated herbivores and wouldn't be tempted to nibble on your abode. But imagine the parties you could throw there! (Did I ever mention that back in high school I used to like to say I was searching for "participles and gerbils" in sentences [instead of "participles and gerunds"]?)