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A Product Warning Obviously Not Written By Lawyers

From HDTV outdoor antenna instructions:

WARNING
Do not attempt to install if drunk, pregnant or both.
Do not eat antenna.
Do not throw antenna at spouse.

That made my day.

A Simple Comparison

I've been asked to give a talk at my alma mater in a week. (Abstract!) I'm looking forward to it!

While reviewing my slides I'm putting together, I ran across these fun facts:

Highest elemental melting point: Tungsten (74W), ~ 3,400 C
Temperature of Sun’s surface ~ 6,000 C
Fusion reactor: ~ 20,000,000 C

This is why I like fusion. And preparing talks like this -- because it reminds me just how awesome it is to be working on real fusion devices. :)

Time to be (even more) Proud of My Dad -- One of MN 2008 Lawyers of the Year!

The title says it all. What an honor!

Dad's been working this case for quite some time, and it's still going on -- sometimes, seeming like a dramatic courtroom novel instead of being real life.

Links:

Minnesota Lawyer
Firm Press Release

Way to go, Dad!

So, I joined Twitter

Now people have another way to keep track of me. On Twitter.

I'm still not sure if this will be useful, but I'll give it a shot. I mean, if my various blogs aren't enough, or my Facebook account, or an email, or a phone call, now you can see limited character sporatically-updated "tweets" about what I'm doing without any actual interaction with me personally. :)

Not to be harsh. I figure with a shiny new phone that has Twitter integrated, etc. it'd be nice. But for now, my cell phone is just a phone. (No camera, Internet, or anything!)

This is Me

Today's XKCD totally is related to me.

I use TrueCrypt on my laptop to achieve whole-disk encryption that's NSA-proof strength. Why? Primarily anti-theft; I don't want my personal files used/abused in any way. The typical thief will see the "enter password" on bootup and either give up or reformat the disk drive. (The 10% speed boost resulting from its installation was a great benefit, too -- good work Open Source software engineers!)

Still, it offers peace of mind against theft. That the same software offers all the tinfoil-hat precautions like secret hidden partitions, etc. with plausible deniability, is certainly great. Still, this comic totally captures Kristen's sentiments:

Oh my goodness Mike, that is so you.

I'll get the wrench.

Saddlebacking

I've received an invitation from America's best advice columnist Dan Savage to help enshrine the new definition of the verb "saddlebacking." Just like the Savage Love-defined "santorum," we've got a new word to represent interesting dirty concepts.

Please feel free to view the new definition (NSFW!) at saddlebacking.com.

Other Dan Savage-related news: I stumbled across this fun clip of Dan Savage on the Colbert Report where he manages to make Colbert lose his composure. (Not bad!)

Sometimes, I miss cable. :)

Bombadil, I hardly knew ye

Just a little stumbling on the WWW today yielded a rather fascinating, in-depth analysis by Gene Hargrove of who Tolkein's Tom Bombadil really is.

Why would I end up reading such a long, in-depth analysis? Well, it's primarily because I always found Bombadil's presence annoying in the LoTR. He always seemed out of place -- and I could never get over the fact that he had tremendous power over the Ring: immunity to its effects; seeing Frodo while wearing the Ring; and even making it vanish.

Hargrove's argument is that Bombadil and wife Goldberry are in fact two of the Valar: Aule and Yavanna.

And boy, does it make sense. At least, it makes sense to total Tolkein nerds like myself who have read the Silmarillion more than once. He does a great job of pulling together writings of Tolkein's letters, the Silmarillion, and others, fitting things into place.

And it now gives me a nice, consistent view which explains Bombadil's power over the Ring.

A Spontaneous Moment of Hilarity

My wife and I had a fun moment this last week that I felt was worth sharing.

We received a small decorative hot-air popcorn making machine that is essentially a scaled-down version of a movie popcorn maker. Our first trial run of it was this last week, while we prepared to watch some well-deserved "24" man-opera action.

I had set it up to run by itself and found that it made a big mess all over my kitchen counter -- popped kernels of corn were all over the place, presumably because I didn't have a correctly-sized bowl to catch the popcorn. So, for our second run, Kristen had me wait and hold the bowl at an appropriate angle to catch all the kernels on their way out.

And therein lay the fun.

You see, shortly after one minute into the next popping exercise, with me standing at the bowl, I saw that the popping kernels were also causing a sizable fraction of unpopped kernels to be blown out of the popper. "That's strange," I thought, "since my last bowl didn't have lots of kernels all over the place." I kept staring at the bowl with more and more kernels piling up when it hit me.

Literally!

All those unpopped, superheated kernels which I had so efficiently been catching started violently popping all over the place. The entire bowl started erupting popcorn all over the kitchen floor, our countertop, my hair... everything.

As soon as we figured out that what was happening, it was too late to stop, so we just laughed along while the bowl was doing its thing.

We didn't get a big yield of popcorn, since it was all over the floor and ourselves, but it was enough to get us a light snack between commercial breaks. The next time, though, we used a towel too. :)