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

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

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

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

From a recent On the Media episode regarding the role of security in our everyday lives: 

The mission is first. You don't let yourself be tied in knots. Security at best is a means to an end. It should be serving the national interest. When we become servants of security rather than being served by security, then we've got things backwards.

#technology

I got a new TV recently, and it accepts a USB input.  On a whim, I decided to stick a thumb drive in to see what would happen, and I was blown away by how it simply showed my pictures and played my movies.  There was no installation or setup or drivers or hardware configuration.  I just plugged it in and it worked.  The same thing happened with a family member's new TV.  I don't know why it worked, and I don't understand how it could be that simple, but I wish all my other gadgets worked that easily. #technology

I'm an engineer, so my brain floods with happy chemicals when I'm able to identify a problem, figure out what's wrong, and solve it.  For example, when my DVD player stopped working, it was fun to dig around in the pile of wires behind the TV and find out that my rabbit chewed the hell out of everything including the power cable for the DVD player, which was surprisingly easily fixed with electrical tape.  But sometimes I'm ok when that middle step gets skipped, and when the problem just magically goes away.  For example, my car's check engine light was on, so I took it to AutoZone to get a free error code reading (that's seriously a great deal), and the sales guy interpreted the various codes for me with some complicated automotive verbiage.  He said I'd need to go to a special place to get it fixed, and it would cost lots of money just for them to figure out what the problem was.  Being a cheap bastard, I looked up the error codes online, and one of the solutions was to remove and replace the gas cap.  I tried it, and it worked, and I haven't seen the check engine light since.  But just because I solved the problem, it doesn't mean I actually fixed what was wrong. #technology

Ctrl is an NBC-produced series of 10 webisodes about a guy in an office who can control life with his computer keyboard.  Each episode is about a major keyboard function involving the control key, e.g. Ctrl-Z (undo), Ctrl-X (cut), etc.  It's extremely nerdy, and I love it.  It's better on Hulu. #technology

Wendy got me Bose noise-canceling headphones for my birthday.  It's weird buying and receiving gifts from someone with whom you share a bank account, but that's a different story.  The headphones work through some sort of system involving nuclear power and witchcraft.  But what's important is that they're battery-powered.  And the feeling produced by their phase-shifted sound waves is kind of like being underwater.  After you've had them on for a while, it's a shock to the system to turn them off and resume normal noise levels.  And while Bose is famous for making great products, I feel like they messed this one little thing up:  Whenever the battery gets low, the noise-canceling noise clicks on and off in a rapid succession, which is almost enough to give me a seizure.  I'm afraid that one day I'll wake up with my face on the ground in some foreign locale, wearing only underwear and carrying a shovel, unaware that my brain has been under the control of phase-shifted sound waves for hours.  What I'm trying to say is I guess I'm getting to that point in life where I'm afraid of technology. #technology

I regularly get phone calls with a recorded cheerful voice that starts out like this:  "Hi, I'm calling about your current credit account."  The caller/robot doesn't identify him/herself, doesn't mention my name specifically, and doesn't mention what "credit account" they're calling about.  It's phone spam, and every time it happens, I hang up and think, who falls for this crap?  Seriously, are there people out there who give out their credit card information and social security numbers over the phone and on the internet whenever asked?  Do people still really fall for stupid scams?  Aren't we smarter than that?  But I guess the fact that I keep getting these calls proves that they're at least mildly successful.  If there was no money to be made, or if there was money to be lost, these things wouldn't happen.  And I guess it's the same with email spam, clothing catalogs (honestly, who on earth orders clothes through the mail?), phone books, internet pop-ups (which are mostly a thing of the past at this point), and those local car dealership TV commercials with the crazy guy screaming at the camera.  If there's money to be made, people will do anything. #technology