I was at Burger King the other day (I must recommend their vegetarian burger as it's made with a morning star branded patty and sweet sauce. Quite tasty) and a woman walked in with a little girl who couldn't have been more than 5 years old.
Immediately upon entering the girl announced that she had to go to the bathroom and led the mother directly to it.
Once done in the bathroom they approached the counter and the little girl proclaimed that she was going to order for herself. She placed her order with the employee and then went to find a table while her mother ordered for herself.
When their food had arrived the little girl again had to use the bathroom and would not take no for an answer. Her mother told her to "just go" and stayed seated at the table. The little girl would have none of this and stood her ground until the mother relented and accompanied her to the bathroom.
Upon returning to the table and getting situated the girl decided she wanted to sit in a booster chair so the mother got up and got the chair and got the girl into it.
After this they were quiet for a while and my attention wandered until just before they left. That was when the mother, in response to something the little girl had asked, replied "because I'm in charge."
Something deep inside tells me that whatever that comment was in reference to that the little girl got her way in the end.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Stocking stuffer idea
I just had an idea for a stocking stuffer. I went down to a local store here ("Just Imagine") and purchased a few pieces of Pyrite. You should be able to find them at mineral shops, museums, educationally centered establishments, etc.
Pyrite is an iron sulfide that is the color of gold. It usually looks like small crystals all bunched together or like a fine lava stone.
Tomorrow I'll be going to our local dollar store to find some black play dough. I'm going to pack the play dough around the pyrite and allow it to harden (Might bake it to speed up the process) to give it the look of a lump of coal.
The "coal" can then be broken open to reveal the "gold" center.
If you're worried that the play dough might work itself into the crevasses in the pyrite you might try wrapping the pyrite with plastic wrap before packing the play dough around it. If you do it this way I'm not sure I would recommend baking it for fast drying.
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Update: OK, so here's how they turned out. I ended up wrapping the pyrite in aluminum foil so that I could bake them once encased with play dough. I baked them which took several attempts at 450 degrees for half an hour at a time. It smelled REALLY bad too. However, I was using a dollar store knock off so that is probably the reason for the smell and for the difficulty in drying it. The stuff was also very difficult to work with and had a plastic, slimy feel to it.
Once dry it had a rough texture and some cracks in it which gave it the look of a lump of coal. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find black and I only had a black marker handy so it only ended up MOSTLY black. The kids still loved it and were thrilled to find "gold" in their coal.
So...tips for those interested in doing this? 1) Use name brand play dough or find a recipe for some online that you can make and dye yourself 2) Bake it until you're sure it's done all the way through as mine got a hard shell but was still soft on the inside the first couple of baking sessions. Longer baking time won't hurt anything and a little burning isn't an issue as it's supposed to be black anyway 3) Wrap your "gold" with aluminum foil 4) Use colored dough instead of painting or coloring it after baking as it gets on your hands when breaking it open.
Pyrite is an iron sulfide that is the color of gold. It usually looks like small crystals all bunched together or like a fine lava stone.
Tomorrow I'll be going to our local dollar store to find some black play dough. I'm going to pack the play dough around the pyrite and allow it to harden (Might bake it to speed up the process) to give it the look of a lump of coal.
The "coal" can then be broken open to reveal the "gold" center.
If you're worried that the play dough might work itself into the crevasses in the pyrite you might try wrapping the pyrite with plastic wrap before packing the play dough around it. If you do it this way I'm not sure I would recommend baking it for fast drying.
-----------------------
Update: OK, so here's how they turned out. I ended up wrapping the pyrite in aluminum foil so that I could bake them once encased with play dough. I baked them which took several attempts at 450 degrees for half an hour at a time. It smelled REALLY bad too. However, I was using a dollar store knock off so that is probably the reason for the smell and for the difficulty in drying it. The stuff was also very difficult to work with and had a plastic, slimy feel to it.
Once dry it had a rough texture and some cracks in it which gave it the look of a lump of coal. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find black and I only had a black marker handy so it only ended up MOSTLY black. The kids still loved it and were thrilled to find "gold" in their coal.
So...tips for those interested in doing this? 1) Use name brand play dough or find a recipe for some online that you can make and dye yourself 2) Bake it until you're sure it's done all the way through as mine got a hard shell but was still soft on the inside the first couple of baking sessions. Longer baking time won't hurt anything and a little burning isn't an issue as it's supposed to be black anyway 3) Wrap your "gold" with aluminum foil 4) Use colored dough instead of painting or coloring it after baking as it gets on your hands when breaking it open.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Our rapidly accelerating universe
So there are these super smart guys sitting around looking at data collected by telescopes and getting paid good money for it. These smart guys have noticed that it looks like the galaxies that are furthest from the center of the universe are accelerating. This is contrary to what SHOULD be happening. Because these galaxies have lots of matter behind them (relatively) and there is no apparent pulling force in front of them they should be slowing down.
Now these super smart guys are often incapable of uttering the three words "I don't know" and so they immediately started brainstorming to figure out why this would be happening. They have, to my knowledge, come up with four theories. 1) Our galaxy is in it's own "time bubble" (and yes they used that term.) 2) There is "dark matter" that is causing the acceleration (dark matter being this invisible thing that they THINK they can detect with their telescopes.) 3) A strange alteration of space/time when energy levels become extreme (which is strange because I was just sitting here thinking of writing this exact blog entry when I came across this web site ) and 4) Giant space faeries with giant space brooms sweeping the path clean in front of the galaxies (OK I made that last part up.)
I have a more simple explanation. I think they look like they're speeding up because they're actually slowing down. I LOVE it when my brain comes up with these things. But here's the thing. We have to dive into the shallow kiddie pool end of Einstein's relativity theory (so don't be scared.)
First off, everything in the universe is moving. Nothing is actually still. We are on earth which is spinning and orbiting the sun which is orbiting the center of our galaxy which is hurtling through space. You get the idea.
Now, Einstein says that as we approach the speed of light time is altered. For simplicity we'll say that someone orbiting the earth VERY quickly might experience 1 day while everyone on earth might experience 10 years in that time.
This idea goes both ways. The astronaut would look down and see a year pass on earth in only 2.4 hours his time. At the same time, if someone on earth could see the astronaut's watch with a super powerful telescope they would see that it takes a whole year for his watch to advance 2 hours and 24 minutes.
So here is where I get my light bulb moment. This time relativity thing shows that something moving more quickly than you appears to YOU to be progressing more slowly through time. It also shows that something moving more slowly than YOU appears to be progressing more quickly through time.
So let's look at the most simple answer here. These very distant galaxies have been spinning through space for a very long time. They have the drag of gravity behind them. They are SLOWING DOWN but since everything flew out of the big bang at the same speed(don't take me for an evolutionist because of that term. It would take another whole blog post for me to explain how the big bang is not contrary to divine creation)our galaxy has not encountered as much friction or gravitational drag as these distant ones have and is, therefore, traveling more closely to its original speed at time of creation.
So we are moving more quickly than these galaxies which means that to OUR perspective they APPEAR to be progressing through time more quickly than us. Since speed is equal to distance/time and time is being perceived incorrectly by us they appear to be traveling more quickly than they are. And since they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that time difference is becoming more pronounced and therefore makes them appear to be speeding up.
Weird isn't it?
Next problem...if they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that means we're going to run into them eventually...I wonder what the braking distance is for a galaxy our size.
Now these super smart guys are often incapable of uttering the three words "I don't know" and so they immediately started brainstorming to figure out why this would be happening. They have, to my knowledge, come up with four theories. 1) Our galaxy is in it's own "time bubble" (and yes they used that term.) 2) There is "dark matter" that is causing the acceleration (dark matter being this invisible thing that they THINK they can detect with their telescopes.) 3) A strange alteration of space/time when energy levels become extreme (which is strange because I was just sitting here thinking of writing this exact blog entry when I came across this web site ) and 4) Giant space faeries with giant space brooms sweeping the path clean in front of the galaxies (OK I made that last part up.)
I have a more simple explanation. I think they look like they're speeding up because they're actually slowing down. I LOVE it when my brain comes up with these things. But here's the thing. We have to dive into the shallow kiddie pool end of Einstein's relativity theory (so don't be scared.)
First off, everything in the universe is moving. Nothing is actually still. We are on earth which is spinning and orbiting the sun which is orbiting the center of our galaxy which is hurtling through space. You get the idea.
Now, Einstein says that as we approach the speed of light time is altered. For simplicity we'll say that someone orbiting the earth VERY quickly might experience 1 day while everyone on earth might experience 10 years in that time.
This idea goes both ways. The astronaut would look down and see a year pass on earth in only 2.4 hours his time. At the same time, if someone on earth could see the astronaut's watch with a super powerful telescope they would see that it takes a whole year for his watch to advance 2 hours and 24 minutes.
So here is where I get my light bulb moment. This time relativity thing shows that something moving more quickly than you appears to YOU to be progressing more slowly through time. It also shows that something moving more slowly than YOU appears to be progressing more quickly through time.
So let's look at the most simple answer here. These very distant galaxies have been spinning through space for a very long time. They have the drag of gravity behind them. They are SLOWING DOWN but since everything flew out of the big bang at the same speed(don't take me for an evolutionist because of that term. It would take another whole blog post for me to explain how the big bang is not contrary to divine creation)our galaxy has not encountered as much friction or gravitational drag as these distant ones have and is, therefore, traveling more closely to its original speed at time of creation.
So we are moving more quickly than these galaxies which means that to OUR perspective they APPEAR to be progressing through time more quickly than us. Since speed is equal to distance/time and time is being perceived incorrectly by us they appear to be traveling more quickly than they are. And since they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that time difference is becoming more pronounced and therefore makes them appear to be speeding up.
Weird isn't it?
Next problem...if they're slowing down more rapidly than we are that means we're going to run into them eventually...I wonder what the braking distance is for a galaxy our size.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The "pad"
There is a nifty new device out there on the market that will charge your cell phone or other electronic device just by placing it on a pad (no plugs required.) That's pretty cool. It uses an ambient electrical field to charge them. The thing is that the type of field it uses exists all around us all the time. It's nowhere close to as powerful as this pad is but it's there. In fact, whilst this pad may be able to charge your battery in a few hours (I haven't checked the specs on it) there was talk over a year ago about a technology that could do the same thing with your cell phone or other gadget while it rested in your pocket. This technology would take a little longer to charge but it worked all the time so it didn't have to do the job in 3 hours. It did the job constantly.
Herein lies the reason that we will probably never see the earlier technology and will be stuck with the pad (which still tethers you to a wall socket even if it works in a really cool way and you don't have to mess with multiple plugs)
In 2007 a study showed that there were about 203 million cell phones in use in the United States alone (2 billion world wide.)
My home has three phones in use. One by me (I talk very little), one by my wife (who talks a bit more) and one by our teenager (who texts a LOT). I figure we're a fairly rounded and average dynamic of users. My wife has to charge her phone daily, my son every day and a half or so and I charge every few days. Charging takes about 3 hours for each of our phones.
My chargers are all very close in their energy consumption. One uses 22 watts and two of them use 33 watts each.
So here comes the math (this happens a lot with me)
I charge every 3 days
kid charges every 1.5 days
wife charges every 1 day
Average 1.8 days between charging (I'll go low ball here and call it once every 2 days)
Average power consumption = (33+33+22)/3 = 29.3 watts (I'll round up to 30 and make up for that low ball)
Charging time for each phone = 3 hours
3 hours @ 30 watts = 90 watt hours (every 2 days) = 45 watt hours per day
Any of you who pay the electric bill know that you are charged by the kilowatt hour and not the watt hour. So here is where our number gets small because we divide it by 1000.
My household uses .045 kilowatt hours per day to charge our phones.
We pay 13 cents per kilowatt hour for our energy (SCE {Southern California Edison} are highway robbers) so we pay .00585 dollars per day to charge our three phones (about half a cent for those paying attention.)
That isn't much at all even less when you divide it by 3 (to get the amount each phone costs). Even at 365 days a year that's only 71 cents a year we spend charging one phone. But remember that first little statistic? There were, in 2007, 203 million cell phones in use in the United States. So let's multiply that 17 cents by 203 million so we end up with $144,485,250
So in 2007 the U.S. power suppliers were making just over 144 million dollars a year just by consumers charging their phones. How much of that money do you think they had to throw at the team who was developing a way to charge cell phones for FREE before they handed over the rights to their research? I would probably give up on John Q. Public for a measly 100 million or so myself.
So we are left with just a taste of what that technology could have meant for us. We have the pad and will soon have household surfaces (couch arms, coffee tables, computer desks, etc.) that will charge our phone just by laying it on top of them just as long as they stay plugged in so good ol' Uncle Power-Company gets 144 million a year (and that's just for the cell phones. Don't forget about the media players, PDA's, GPS units, etc.)
Herein lies the reason that we will probably never see the earlier technology and will be stuck with the pad (which still tethers you to a wall socket even if it works in a really cool way and you don't have to mess with multiple plugs)
In 2007 a study showed that there were about 203 million cell phones in use in the United States alone (2 billion world wide.)
My home has three phones in use. One by me (I talk very little), one by my wife (who talks a bit more) and one by our teenager (who texts a LOT). I figure we're a fairly rounded and average dynamic of users. My wife has to charge her phone daily, my son every day and a half or so and I charge every few days. Charging takes about 3 hours for each of our phones.
My chargers are all very close in their energy consumption. One uses 22 watts and two of them use 33 watts each.
So here comes the math (this happens a lot with me)
I charge every 3 days
kid charges every 1.5 days
wife charges every 1 day
Average 1.8 days between charging (I'll go low ball here and call it once every 2 days)
Average power consumption = (33+33+22)/3 = 29.3 watts (I'll round up to 30 and make up for that low ball)
Charging time for each phone = 3 hours
3 hours @ 30 watts = 90 watt hours (every 2 days) = 45 watt hours per day
Any of you who pay the electric bill know that you are charged by the kilowatt hour and not the watt hour. So here is where our number gets small because we divide it by 1000.
My household uses .045 kilowatt hours per day to charge our phones.
We pay 13 cents per kilowatt hour for our energy (SCE {Southern California Edison} are highway robbers) so we pay .00585 dollars per day to charge our three phones (about half a cent for those paying attention.)
That isn't much at all even less when you divide it by 3 (to get the amount each phone costs). Even at 365 days a year that's only 71 cents a year we spend charging one phone. But remember that first little statistic? There were, in 2007, 203 million cell phones in use in the United States. So let's multiply that 17 cents by 203 million so we end up with $144,485,250
So in 2007 the U.S. power suppliers were making just over 144 million dollars a year just by consumers charging their phones. How much of that money do you think they had to throw at the team who was developing a way to charge cell phones for FREE before they handed over the rights to their research? I would probably give up on John Q. Public for a measly 100 million or so myself.
So we are left with just a taste of what that technology could have meant for us. We have the pad and will soon have household surfaces (couch arms, coffee tables, computer desks, etc.) that will charge our phone just by laying it on top of them just as long as they stay plugged in so good ol' Uncle Power-Company gets 144 million a year (and that's just for the cell phones. Don't forget about the media players, PDA's, GPS units, etc.)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Could I be insane? Or maybe just really smart?
So I picked the kids up from school today and one of them said "Hi" so I responded "low." They were, for some reason, fascinated by this. So I explained the idea of being presented with random words or phrases and responding with the first thing that pops into your mind. I know this is an exercise used by psychologists, employers and others to gauge certain aspects of a person's psyche. The thing is...even I was kind of taken aback by some of my responses. Here are a few.
McDonalds : therapy
Skate : Day of the Rope
Basketball Hoop: Orangutan
Park : Hang glider
Quicksand : Frisbee
Marshmallow : Alien
Those are the few that remain fresh in my memory from the 10 minute long session we had in which we bounced words around as I drove. The thing is that I can explain all of them. It's just that I can't explain how I jumped from the impetus to my reactive word(s) without hitting upon the steps in between until I gave retrospective thought to it.
It seems to me that someone administering a test of this sort to me would find my answers to be rather insane. So I wonder if my having skipped several logical steps in the relational chain is a sign that my mind is still going strong and just thinks so quickly and so efficiently that it doesn't have to register all the steps in order to reach the conclusion or if it means that my mind has weakened to the point where it gets lost along it's way and instead of being able to relate the very first thought in the though chain it wanders along that chain momentarily before tripping on a link down the line and spewing forth apparently random nonsense.
McDonalds : therapy
Skate : Day of the Rope
Basketball Hoop: Orangutan
Park : Hang glider
Quicksand : Frisbee
Marshmallow : Alien
Those are the few that remain fresh in my memory from the 10 minute long session we had in which we bounced words around as I drove. The thing is that I can explain all of them. It's just that I can't explain how I jumped from the impetus to my reactive word(s) without hitting upon the steps in between until I gave retrospective thought to it.
It seems to me that someone administering a test of this sort to me would find my answers to be rather insane. So I wonder if my having skipped several logical steps in the relational chain is a sign that my mind is still going strong and just thinks so quickly and so efficiently that it doesn't have to register all the steps in order to reach the conclusion or if it means that my mind has weakened to the point where it gets lost along it's way and instead of being able to relate the very first thought in the though chain it wanders along that chain momentarily before tripping on a link down the line and spewing forth apparently random nonsense.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Sansa e200 playlist sync problem
I have been searching for three days to solve a problem with my SanDisc Sansa e270 MP3. When I first got it I loaded it up with all my music, videos and playlists with no problems whatsoever. After having installed some updates to my system and such I find I'm suddenly unable to use Windows Media Player 11 to synchronize playlists. It will copy all of the music to the player but not the playlist. This was quite frustrating as I use my player almost exclusively to listen to audio books.
Well, three days later (which is almost unheard of for me as I am a VERY good internet researcher) I finally found a solution. It seems that this problem is common to ALL e200 series players that Sansa has created. NONE of them are working anymore (way to go Microsoft.) Turns out there is someone out there looking out for all of us Sansa users though. A company called "Hot Coffee Software has created a FREE Sansa Playlist creator and editor. It lets you use the player in MSC mode so you can drag and drop just like you would in Explorer. It lets you create, edit and merge playlists. You can make playlists from files on your computer or files that are already on your Sansa player. It is THE solution to the Sansa playlist problem.
You can find the file here http://hcware.110mb.com/sansa/ and I must give linkage to the place that led me to this find which is a forum at a place called "anything but ipod" (which, despite my love for Apple, is something dear to my heart as I hate ipods) You can find the link to the forum post here http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3827&highlight=playlists and I would imagine that a few other non ipod issues might be solved at this forum as well.
Well, three days later (which is almost unheard of for me as I am a VERY good internet researcher) I finally found a solution. It seems that this problem is common to ALL e200 series players that Sansa has created. NONE of them are working anymore (way to go Microsoft.) Turns out there is someone out there looking out for all of us Sansa users though. A company called "Hot Coffee Software has created a FREE Sansa Playlist creator and editor. It lets you use the player in MSC mode so you can drag and drop just like you would in Explorer. It lets you create, edit and merge playlists. You can make playlists from files on your computer or files that are already on your Sansa player. It is THE solution to the Sansa playlist problem.
You can find the file here http://hcware.110mb.com/sansa/ and I must give linkage to the place that led me to this find which is a forum at a place called "anything but ipod" (which, despite my love for Apple, is something dear to my heart as I hate ipods) You can find the link to the forum post here http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3827&highlight=playlists and I would imagine that a few other non ipod issues might be solved at this forum as well.
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