Car audio aux Jun 21, 2011
I'm not a car person, and I'm not a car stereo person, but I recently installed an auxiliary adapter in my car's stock radio, and it was surprisingly easy.  Once I figured out it was possible, I bought an adapter online and found a video that showed how to take apart my dashboard.  With a screwdriver, a socket wrench, a laptop, and about 10 minutes of free time, I modified my car stereo so it can easily interface with an iPod or any other portable music player.  I'm amazed at how awesome I am.  And at how awesome the internet is. #technology
Online age verification May 20, 2011
Websites with information about alcohol, tobacco, or "other" often have an age verification system that asks the user to either confirm they're of legal age or input their birthday so the system can determine whether or not to allow access.  This is one of the stupider things on the internet.  Anyone with half a brain knows how to lie, and there's some doubt as to whether anyone has ever clicked "I Am Under 18".  At this point in my life, it's been a while since many things were illegal for me, so I take offense to being asked to verify I'm of legal age.  And as with any time I take offense at something, I lash out by entering the most unrealistic age or birthday possible, like "37.5" or "1/1/1200".  Some people think the system should be made easier so that people have less of an incentive to lie.  I think protecting people from accessing information by filtering out those who are unable or unwilling to lie is a flawed system. #technology
Mechanical devices fail Apr 13, 2011
It occurred to me on one of my many trips to the car mechanic that certain physical components in mechanical systems routinely wear down and fail.  Such is the case with tires, brake pads, windshield wipers, engines, and really anything that makes physical contact with something else while moving.  It's not a design flaw or a mistake.  That's what's supposed to happen.  I guess the alternative would be to buy a new car every 5000 miles instead of simply getting an oil change. 

This is an especially helpful thing for me to remember, because I tend to think of car repairs as a penalty for driving a certain way or for owning a car for too long.  Needing new tires makes me feel like I did something wrong.  Needing new shocks and struts feels like punishment for driving too fast over speed bumps.  And while that may be true, it's also true that tires, shocks, and struts are some of the components that move and simply wear down over time.  They need to be replaced.  It's not my fault. 

Technically this idea can be carried over into house repairs as well.  Light switches, water pumps, valves, and fans are all mechanical devices.  They won't last forever.  Heck, even roofs, windows, and floors are technically in the same category, since they experience wear and need to be routinely replaced.  If I had known this before buying a house, maybe I wouldn't think home ownership sucks. #technology
Foolproofing plumbing Apr 7, 2011
The other day one of the pipes sticking out of the top of my water heater sprung a pinhole leak which pooled water directly on top of the water heater where the electrical panel is conveniently located, thus causing a situation that thankfully ended in loss of power but which could've easily ended in fiery death.  My first thought, after that of moving to a tent in the woods, was one of foolproofing:  Who in their right mind designed a water heater with piping and electronics located in such a way as to utterly ensure their eventual fatal interaction?  I can think of at least two ways to get around this specific scenario:  Don't put water pipes near electronics, and/or waterproof the electronics.  I have a hard time believing I'm the only water heater customer that's managed to get water to travel like four inches from the piping to the electrical panel. #technology
Optical media Apr 5, 2011
I borrow a lot of CDs and DVDs from the library, and I'm always amazed at how poorly people treat optical media.  Not just finger prints and smudges, but deep scratches and thorough abrasions.  What is it, exactly, that people do with these disks?  Give them to their dogs as chew toys?  Use them on their disk sanders to refinish their deck?  As an anal retentive perfectionist, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that those death metal CDs I bought 15 years ago when I was in high school are still in mint condition.  That's how I roll. 

I wonder whose idea it was to store important information in optical format with no sort of protective measures to prevent loss of optical quality.  Remember floppy disks?  They had that little metal door that slid over to reveal the disk when it was inserted in the computer.  Even audio tapes, which fully exposed their ribbon-like tape at the bottom, at least had a convenient plastic enclosure so your big fat fingers wouldn't mess up all the data.  I guess my point is this:  Let's just digitize everything so we can stop dealing with error-prone optical media. #technology
iPod podcast sorting (2) Mar 30, 2011
My iPod sorts podcasts in reverse chronological order, i.e. newest ones first.  This is a dumb system in my opinion, since many of the podcasts I listen to are news shows and other date-sensitive stuff that only makes sense when listened to chronologically.  But oh well.  There's no way to change this, so I'll move on to the next problem:  Changing the sort order of podcasts added from external sources (i.e. not iTunes).  I have several spoken word mp3s that I like to consider to be podcasts (one of which is an audio version of the Bible), but they weren't added through iTunes; they were ripped from CDs or downloaded from various websites.  When these mp3s were added to iTunes and classified as podcasts, they were sorted in some unintuitive, undocumented way.  And no, it's not based on file name, track number, date added or anything else.  After some digging, I found that it actually all depends on an iTunes-specific mp3 tag called "RELEASETIME".  The way to utilize this is to get a program like Mp3tag that can edit "Extended Tags," add the RELEASETIME tag in the form of "2000-01-01T12:00:00Z," and go from there.  For a chronological list of mp3s, change any part of the date (I changed the seconds) so that each successive mp3 has a chronologically different date.  But remember that since iPods sort the way they do, you should use the earliest date for the last file in the list, and go up the list from there.  Finally, in iTunes, right-click on each file you just modified and select "Get Info" so that iTunes realizes the file was changed. #technology
Extra cell phone minutes Feb 16, 2011
In order to prevent the hemorrhaging of their dissatisfied customer base, AT&T is giving 1000 rollover minutes to its iPhone users.  As on outside observer, this sounds like the least appealing deal I've ever heard of.  Who uses a cell phone to make calls?  And even if they do, who actually gets close to their maximum minutes per month?  In the 8 years I've had a cell phone, I can't remember a time when I used even 50% of my allotted minutes. #technology
Profane passwords Jan 6, 2011
Like any modern computer user with too many accounts on too many websites, I have a document that contains every username and password I've ever used for the past decade.  I'll admit this isn't the pinnacle of security, but it works for me.  Whenever I can't remember a password to something, I look it up in my document.  But while doing so, I'll inevitably glance at a few other passwords along the way, and more often than not, those passwords will contain profanity.  Usually whenever I'm forced to generate a password, I think of some stupid word or phrase and just go with it without putting too much effort into the process.  But when I'm inconvenienced or annoyed by a particular website's ridiculous password requirements or method of signing up, that anger will be reflected in the password I create.  Such is the case with a website at work, where my password expires every five months, and new passwords must be at least ten characters long with capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols, and can't be the same as any of the ten most recently used passwords.  I invent new profanity for this website every time I'm forced to change my password. #technology
Molten salt energy Dec 20, 2010
California is planning to build a molten salt power plant in the desert, which is kind of cool.  If you're a nerd, you might like reading these words: 
In the case of a molten salt solar plant, heliostats--giant rotating mirrors controlled by computers to best track and reflect sun onto a specific point--reflect sun rays onto a central tower, or a series of pipes, containing a molten salt mixture. The molten salt generally consists of sodium nitrates and potassium. The solar rays heat the liquefied salt to a temperature of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steam from the molten salt is then harnessed to power a generator that makes electricity. Afterward, the cooled molten salt is then piped back to the tower to be heated once again.
If you're not a nerd, you might enjoy reading these words instead: 
With reliability, unused desert, no pollution, and no fuel costs, the obstacles for large deployment for [concentrated solar power] are cost, aesthetics, land use and similar factors for the necessary connecting high tension lines.
I've been to the desert, and personally I'd be ok with having a big ugly solar plant in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to, say, coal-burning power plants strewn about the "Garden State."  Two interesting factoids:  (1) This is essentially the same system as nuclear power but instead of capturing the heat from a radiation-emitting nuclear fuel rod, it's capturing the heat from a sun-warmed block of salt.  (2) The "salt" is actually a mixture of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate, which are used in gun powder and rocket propellants. #technology
Wireless charging Dec 20, 2010
I've seen a few commercials recently for Powermat, which is a wireless charging system for small electronics (technically called inductive charging), and I'm excited to see this technology finally gaining some ground.  The science is complicated, but the reality is pretty simple:  Instead of plugging something into your cell phone to recharge it, you just place it in a holder or on a mat.  It takes the mess and complication of cables out of the equation.  My Palm Pre came with a wireless charging base called a Touchstone, and it's so dead-simple and convenient that it makes you wonder why they didn't think of it sooner.  When you don't have to fumble around with wires that aren't long enough and tiny micro-USB connectors that never fit on the first try, you tend to forget about abysmal battery life. #technology