Pillow helmet Feb 7, 2017
So I had an idea the other night as I was falling asleep in a hotel bed with an uncomfortable pillow:  I usually sleep with a neck pillow, but I don't feel like traveling with it.  Wouldn't it be cool if there was a pillow that wrapped around your head like a helmet, with with the neck support of a neck pillow?  It would work in hotel beds, as well as car trips and plane rides.  There's a thing called an Ostrich Pillow, but it doesn't have neck support.  Million Hundred dollar idea here. #products
Sock lifetime Jan 30, 2017
I bought of 12-pair pack of black, ankle-length Hanes socks about 4 years ago.  Literally in the past month, holes have appeared in at least half of them.  It's almost like they're programmed to degrade at a fixed rate, which honestly I'm fine with.  I prefer reliability in my failures. #products
Atomic clock sync Oct 13, 2015
I was in the market for a new watch recently, and I stumbled upon Casio's line of watches that automatically sync to the NIST radio signal.  A problem I was having with my previous watch was that I kept having to set the time because its mechanism was wound by motion, and I didn't wear it over the weekend.  Having a watch with the wrong time is worse than having no watch at all.  So I bought one of the Casios, and so far so good. 

I liked the idea so much, I bought a little bedside alarm clock with the same functionality.  Knowing my clocks are always synced to the right time is a good feeling. #products
Expensive watches Sep 28, 2015
Watch prices make no sense to me.  I get that there are cheap Timex watches and expensive Fossil watches and whatnot, but we're talking a single order of magnitude here -- $25 to maybe $250.  That's fine.  What isn't fine is when a different kind of watch is grouped into the same category -- of search results for example -- costing ten times that price.  That's an additional order of magnitude.  I understand that different products can be manufactured to different standards, and that some components or decorative parts can really increase the price.  But when there are no diamonds on the watch, and it's not made of solid gold, and it costs $6000?  How does that work economically?  And can we please acknowledge that these are very different products?  Yes, they're all watches.  Yes, they keep time and sit on your wrist and look good.  But if I'm in the market for a new watch, I'm either in the $25 to $250 range, or I'm in the over $5000 range.  I'm not in the $25 to $5000 range, because that's stupid.  There are watches; and then there are luxury watches.  They're entirely different. #products
White whiskey Jul 9, 2014
White whiskey (or white dog, white lightning, moonshine) is simply unaged whiskey.  The thing that makes whiskey good is the aging in wooden barrels.  So white whiskey takes all the good parts of whiskey and removes them so you're left with only the bad stuff.  Put another way: 
White whiskey, then, is simply corn liquor that either never made it in the barrel or spent so little time in it to not matter. Consequently, it's clear as water, but hot with alcohol, harsh to drink and tastes heavily (and miserably) of sweet corn. All in all, it's not a very good spirit.
Slate says it even better:  "It tastes horrible."  It's true, the stuff is disgusting.  It's sort of like vodka, except more flavorful, and hence worse.  It's amazing that this has become a trend.  I was at a whiskey tasting and overheard a guy ask the bartender how to drink it (i.e. what to look for in smell, taste), and the bartender simply said "quickly".  Of all the myriad configurations of ethanol you can pour down your gullet, why anyone would choose something that's actively disgusting is beyond me.  If you want crappy whiskey, go with one of those giant plastic gallon jugs at the liquor store.  If you want to be extra American, pick anything with the word "bourbon" in it.  If you want something cheap, how about Jim Beam?  My point is that nobody is gaining anything by drinking white whiskey, except the distillers who are selling an unfinished product for much more than it's worth. #products
Mr. Coffee and Mrs. Tea Apr 25, 2014
Consumerist said this funny thing about Mrs. Tea, the automatic tea brewing machine made by the same company that makes the Mr. Coffee automatic coffee maker: 
Branding-wise, it isn't clear who Mrs. Tea is. Was "Tea" her last name at birth, and when she married Mr. Coffee, she chose to keep her original last name? Is she Mr. Coffee's sister, who married a Mr. Tea (not Mr. T) and then went into the family business?
Calling it Mr. Tea would've been the better choice.  Why make tea into a feminine thing? #products
Uncomfortable products Mar 27, 2014
A Greek designer redesigned a bunch of useful everyday objects to be more uncomfortable and annoying to use.  Examples include a concrete umbrella and open-toed rain boots.  (via kottke.org) #products
WD-40 failed (1) Feb 26, 2014
Life is unpredictable.  Things change.  Stuff breaks.  You can't count on much, but one fact that seems like an indelible universal truth can be illustrated with this flowchart: 



Duct tape fixes things that shouldn't be moving.  WD-40 fixes things that should be.  These truths we hold dear. 

But I recently discovered an exception.  A glitch in the matrix.  WD-40 doesn't work on the cast iron hinges of a wood stove door.  It works for a day or two, but the high heat always wins out in the end, and the creaking sound reappears. 

Initially I planned on writing a post about how WD-40 is never not enough.  No one has ever said, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work."  It always works.  But now I know that's not true.  I myself can now say on this day, "I tried WD-40 and it didn't work."  A day which will live in infamy. #products
Amazon add-ons Jan 30, 2014
Amazon has things called Add-on Items that are too cheap to ship by themselves and so require you to buy other things to make it worthwhile.  That's fine and all, but I feel like the messaging they use is misleading.  It says, "Ships with any qualifying order over $25," which sort of makes it sound like the items themselves are free.  What it should say is, "Minimum purchase required."  Also, this policy really shouldn't apply to Prime members because their membership fee already pays for free shipping on everything else.  Either charge for shipping or don't, but at least don't restrict me from buying your products. #products
Punch-top can Jun 21, 2012
Miller Lite came out with a punch-top can somewhat recently that adds a second hole to make pouring easier.  I don't disagree with the physics of this invention, but I have a few simple questions: 
  1. Was this really a problem that needed solving?  Do people struggle when pouring their beer from a can to a glass?
  2. Who pours beer out of a can and into a different container?  That's why beer comes in a small container -- so you can drink directly from it.  It's not like drinking from a milk jug.
  3. Who drinks beer out of a can?  I realize this is a little elitist of me, but I honestly don't know a single human being that drinks beer out of a can.
Either Miller is run by a bunch of idiots who like solving non-existent problems (see also their vortex bottles), or they're freaking geniuses.  Honestly, what are you gonna buy at the liquor store -- the regular old cans, or the cans with an extra hole for faster pouring? #products