Is it any wonder that the current Google Ad for my blog is an advertisement for “Brain Injury Rehab?”

Back when I first began blogging Hallie’s young life, it dawned on me that other parents might want to do the same thing. I reserved a domain name for that purpose, but – like a lot of web projects – I never got around to building a site (wonder why my blog’s subtitle is “A Life, Unfinished?”).

A gentleman by the name of Michael Reeps contacted me a while back, asking to purchase the domain name. After an exchange of emails, he sold me on his idea and felt I couldn’t turn him down. I gave my domain name up for “adoption,” knowing it would have a better life with someone else.

Well, that domain is all grown up now. Michael has announced the launch of Babyblogger.com and its a winner. If you’re a parent looking for a place to blog about your baby, head on over.

I’m in Jersey today after getting in late last night. The clock radio in my hotel room was unplugged and needed setting.

Why haven’t clock radio manufacturers figured out a good, consistent way to set these things? For instance, why does the time always start at 12 midnight? Who sets their clocks in the middle of the night? Why not start them at 12 noon, since most of the time they get set in the daytime? Putting them at midnight by default makes you have to move through six hours or more when you set them.

And while we’re on the topic, why are we still setting clock radios? We’re in the third millennium. Why aren’t clocks smart enough to set themselves? With GPS satellites flying overhead, radio stations all over the dial, wireless networking, and mobile phone service everywhere, why can’t clocks use one to set the time?

I think I’ll just go back to using a sundial.

Wouldn’t it be great if your computer had the ability to react to sounds? Sure, speech recognition is out there and it does a decent job. What I’m talking about is teaching a computer to hear.

I’d like my computer to be able to recognize sounds that it hears:a ringing phone, the microwave oven signaling its done cooking, a dog barking, glass breaking, the doorbell ringing. What if my computer could get smart about these things? There are a lot of household tools and appliances which aren’t “smart appliances,” those that share their status electrically. A computer taught to recognize these sounds could log them or even respond to them somehow. Then the everyday beeps of these “disconnected” appliances would be communicating to a computer, allowing for some imaginative possibilties for home automation and the like.

Imagine an iPod-sized box that could be loaded with samples of sounds and spit out a network packet whenever it recognizes one. Does this sound useful to anyone? Any other uses anyone can dream up?

The Hack-A-Day story on bullet trajectories reminded me of this idea. Imagine an iPod-sized box that could be loaded with samples of sounds and spit out a network packet whenever it recognizes one.I don’t know enough about sound processing or I’d start hacking it myself.

An email I just read had me convinced I would be interviewing a job candidate in the five minutes. I was busy with another project, which got me thinking…

One of the best ways I know to evaluate a prospective employee’s performance is to give them a problem to solve and see how they do. Lots of people can talk a good game but when its time to roll up their sleeves, who’s in and who’s out?

This could lead to some interesting abuse, however. If you’re a cheap, Scrooge-type bastard, you could schedule all-day interviews with a string of job candidates. Give them some of the work you’d otherwise have to do, telling them you’re “evaluating their performance.” At the end of the day, you’ve gotten your work done for free!

Profit!!!11!1!
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I just replaced the second set of decanters for the office coffee maker. Yesterday, some clueless individual left less than a cup of coffee in my new decanter. It was starting to burn, but not as much as I did when I realized someone almost destroyed my new decanter.

This reminded me of a way I came up with to save decanters: make the burner weight-sensitive. Put it on a spring where the filament doesn’t make contact below a certain weight. That weight would be the equivalent of one cup of coffee plus the decanter. No decanters would ever break. No fires would start. Problem solved.

A better approach is to do away with the glass decanter completely. Thermal decanters keep coffee fresh all day long, where coffee that cooks in a glass decanter goes bad in an hour or two. Thermal decanter coffee makers are also more energy-efficient: they’re on only when they’re brewing. You don’t have to worry about them starting fires.

But maybe I just have too much time on my hands.

Why don’t power companies provide their customers better ways to track their electricity usage? Don’t get me wrong – I love the little bar graphs that Progress Energy puts on their monthly bills, but the problem is they’re monthly. I want data that’s more real-time. Wouldn’t it be great if you could query your electric meter to get the current (ha!) usage, anytime you wanted? I’d love to graph this data and use it to really analyze how we use electricity in our home: things like how much power a particular appliance draws when running and so forth. I know that some power companies use electronic meters that can be read remotely by meter readers – why not let the customer do that, too?

Candy corn is the evilest thing about Halloween.

(On a side note, is it “more evil” or “eviler?” Where is Dr. Evil when you need him?)

Like many sailors in the Navy, I had the collateral duty of damage control. I participated in shipboard firefighting training on every duty day.

One early morning, the bell rang and it wasn’t a drill. A lit cigarette discarded by a drunken shipmate had been left smoldering in an aft compartment. My damage control team sprung into action, grabbing our gear and racing to the scene.

Men tripped over the hoses snaking everywhere. Flashlights cut through the smoky darkness. Oxygen masks muffled the shouts of the firefighters. Confusion seemed rampant. In the midst of all the chaos, I looked up from my position and casually flipped on the lights.

Duh! No one thought to turn on the lights. I laughed at the lunacy. We were idiots for fumbling around in the dark.

I use this story to illustrate how people tend to forget the easy stuff in the midst of an emergency. The same can be said about the radios the public service agencies use to coordinate with each other. When it comes to a multi-agency chase or incident, reason goes out the window.

Every time there’s a car chase or something similar, police departments and other first-responder agencies plead their case for a coordinated radio system they can all use to communicate. Cops can’t talk to firefighters and vice versa. Instead, they have to relay messages through dispatchers, causing delays. Their preferred solution has always been a new, multi-million dollar communications system.

Like my light-switch solution, there’s a far more practical and affordable solution. It’s called simplex. Simplex is a radio term for when one radio talks directly to other radios in the area. First responders on the scene can talk to other responders in the area directly. No million-dollar radio systems are needed. In fact, no towers are needed at all. Radio A talks to Radio B,C, or D. Even kiddie walkie-talkies can do this.

First responders simply (no pun intended!) need to pick a frequency they will use for communication on the scene. Then they just tune to that frequency when they’re working together. It’s simple, effective, and far cheaper than these boondoggle radio systems being pimped by some major communications vendors.

It’s as easy as flipping a switch.