This likely isn’t a problem if you live alone and/or have some super unique toothbrush. But most toothbrushes to me look the same and when I go to brush my teeth among a bunch of other toothbrushes from family members, I want the fast and easy way to grab the right one. Turns out from my blog reading this morning I’m not alone.
Fellow techie, blogger and long time hmm reader Sterling writes:
Several months ago, I came up with a reliable, low-tech solution. Put a Band-Aid around the handle of my brush, but not on hers. It provides both tactile and visual identity confirmation. I can be sure to grab the right brush in the morning, even when I can’t yet distinguish the faces of family members. They all laugh at my crazy innovation, but it works.
For years, toothbrush after toothbrush I’ve been using a rubber band wrapped around the handle like the picture above to the right to identify which toothbrush is mine. Do you have some special way to mark your toothbrush from others?
Update 10/10/08 11:20am PST: Be caught in the web of my new toothbrush:
Please pardon this morbid post. I would argue that death is among the top make you go hmm moments for all human beings.
A week ago Monday I turned 40 years old. On that birthday I wrote this historical blog post and before publishing decided to do something different: post it in the future. Wait, not a nearby future date, heck a lot of bloggers already future post posts. Not just any future date but past my death date per the actuarial table:
At 40, the table shows that I should live 37.28 years longer. For an additional challenge, I decided to round up, rather than down, to 38 years. My wife who coincidentally is 38 years old should still be alive even if I’m not to be able to read that post, as the table shows she will live 43.35 years more. It’s fairly well known that women statistically outlive men, sorry guys.
Blog software 38 years from now
It’s extremely unlikely this blog will be using the same blogging software 38 years from now, but text is text and dates are dates. So even if we’re using some sort of uber futuristic publishing platform, I should be able to copy and paste this post into that platform.
Note to Wordpress users: you cannot post future publishing dates beyond Tuesday January 19, 2038 as of this writing. If you try to do it, you’ll see your date reverted by Wordpress to the day before Epoch time January 1, 1970:
A techie aside: by switching the timestamp libraries to a 64 bit integer would take us into 2139 (actually, it would take us 292 billion years to/from 1/1/1970), which is the most likely next fix. Assuming Wordpress is even in use any more in 2038 (and still being updated) — which is unlikely — there will be something that handles the current 32-bit timestamp date limitation. I’m reasonably certain the Wordpress team hasn’t thought about this too much yet, but someday if they are still around and updating the Wordpress blog software, they will.
What to do in the meantime if you’re using Wordpress and want to post blog posts beyond 2038? Easiest, non-programming way would be to publish before that date and simply mark in the post body what the actual publishing date should be. Something like the timestamp shown to the right.
Better solution: use the year 2037 (since it’s a complete year before the Epoch) as Wordpress post publishing date and use the minutes as the year (e.g 20:46 = 2046) and day/date for the actual day date.
E.g let’s say I’m making a post on December 3, 2050, it would look like this:
December 3, 2037: time: 20:50
Of course the real solution would be to mod Wordpress or use some other blog publishing platform that doesn’t rely on 32-bit integer UNIX timestamps for dates.
Beyond the technology concerns, this raises a number of intriguing questions though. What will you be doing in 38 years? I was 2 years old 38 years ago and don’t remember much. A lot can happen in 38 years.
Something tells me that we won’t call this type of publishing ‘blogging’ in 38 years. What it will be called, I don’t know and don’t want to venture a guess right now, but it doesn’t matter.
But what if I’m dead
Being a betting man of sorts, I’m willing to bet against the reaper. My health is good and I don’t have a risky lifestyle. I smoked many, many years ago for about 3 years total and then quit to smoke nevermore. I am within my BMI normal levels. Had to reapply for life insurance recently as my term life was nearing expiration and got the best preferred rate. My dad is alive and well in his 70s and my mother could — and should — have prevented her death. Relatives on both family side tend to live longer than normal. Add to all this the fact that statisically people are living longer.
Heck, if John McCain wins the presidency for two terms, then he’ll be older than I would be in 38 years old by the time his second term closes.
Can never rule out things like accident or being in the wrong place at the wrong time (homicide). Hopefully none of that will apply, but for the purposes of this section let’s say the reaper wins and I’m gone.
Assuming this website will continue to be maintained after my premature death — and I’m asking for this to be done of my survivors — and it is using the same software, then automatically this post will publish as if I’m still here, heart a pumping.
In 2008 anyway there is no reason not to continue this blog beyond my death because it is profitable and more than pays for itself.
More 2046 posts
You really didn’t think I’d stop at one blog post and call it a day, did you? I’m planning on adding more posts from time to time. Assuming the reaper doesn’t win, I think it will be fascinating to return nearly 40 years into the past and read things that make you go hmm.
Join MakeYouGoHmm.com in September 2046
Is this the ultimate make you go hmm? What could be more hmm inspiring than blogging beyond death? Or planning to blog beyond that?
So for those of you who are still alive 38 years from now in October 2046 you’ll be able to read this post written on my 40th birthday in all its glory (or lameness if you think it sucks).
What about those of you older than me?
I think it would be neat to be able to setup a reader version of beating the actuarial tables. This way hmm readers who are older than me could read these posts published 2046 and beyond. Sure, somebody could simply lie about their age, but what’s the fun in that? Maybe there will be a more reliable technological way to verify age within the next 38 years. Hmm.
Being our 19th wedding anniversary this Friday, I’m in the shopping mode. Can’t write about what I’m doing for my wife as she reads this blog and would see the telegraph. Will say that I won’t be buying her anything through GiftGirl.
The idea behind GiftGirl is straightforward: just pick options from a dropdown menu like how much you want to pay, who the girl is (wife, long time girlfriend, friend, colleague, sister, mother, etc.) and you’re shown a selection of gifts that match. There are preset templates for things like ‘west coast girl’ and ‘bohemian girl’ — somebody please tell me what a bohemian girl is? I know Bohemian Rhapsody is a great Queen song that was in Wayne’s World.
Google informs that the definition of bohemian is: "unconventional in especially appearance and behavior" so answered my own question. Can safely say there aren’t many (any) bohemian girls that I know very well. Do you know any and, more importantly, would they be into any of the gifts.
Looking at the screenshot I’m not sure my wife would have wanted any of the things suggested above, but I’m wise enough after over 20 years together not to try and put any words in her mouth or thoughts in her head — ever. Not to get too sappy here, but one of the things I found appealing about her was that she couldn’t be programmed into some box-like algorithm like GiftGirl offers. Don’t think you could put me in a box service like this either.
Still, I’m guessing this type service will appeal to some folks. At least has to appeal to the webmaster who could tag all these gifts with his/her affiliate code.
As mentioned back in November 2007 and despite being within hours of the ocean, we usually only get out to the beach about once per year. We’re beach bound again today, this time not to Lincoln City, but to Ocean Shores. I collected pictures from the last Lincoln City trip that haven’t been posted and shared yet online and uploaded to my Google Picasa web space.
Slideshow embed (you will likely have to click thru from RSS reader to see this):
We are traveling to Ocean Shores with my sister and law and her two girls, one of which has never seen the beach before. Should be a great time if weather cooperates. According to Weather.com, it’s going to be a bit on the chilly side (high of 61F) tomorrow. The sun is supposed to be out both today and tomorrow, but it’s going to rain on Wednesday.
As a parent with three teenage boys and our oldest at 18, I’ve seen and experienced a lot to date. Still, the parental surprises keep coming: good, bad and indifferent. Recently our oldest son asked me to help him lose weight. I’ve tried to help him with weight loss before, but not under the circumstances or, frankly, pressure facing us today.
He’s been steadily gaining weight and it’s gotten to a point to where this is no longer wishful thinking like it was 3 years ago. Can’t say any more that he’d like to lose some weight like so many of us say when spring rolls around, he must lose some or could begin to start suffering some health consequences.
Weight is also limiting his job opportunities. He has been thinking about going into the service, but he doesn’t meet their current maximum height/weight charts. He had a meeting with a recruiter but backed that off so he could dedicate more time to getting into shape.
I’d do anything to help our children and would gladly take 50 pounds from him and figure out how to work it off myself, but that’s not within my powers. I’m not a spiritual person, but would consider being more spiritual if this would help. Right now, no ideas that are safe and sane are off the table to help reach these weight loss goals.
Start tracking calories, diet at the forefront Last time I think a major reason we failed to stay on track is because we didn’t alter and track our diet. About every dieting plan on the planet involves keeping track of calories and food types. No excuses, we’re on it this time. It already started when we looked at the chain restaurants we like to eat at and shared back the nutritional links for our common haunts.
First thing done was getting us both set on daily tracking what we eat using TweetWhatYouEat.com and keeping track of our weight using traineo. There are a ton of different calorie trackers out there, I picked these two for us because they were new to me and have sharing functionality. This way he could view my progress and vice versa and, if he desires, get his friends online involved.
Exercise and the Wii We’re keeping our eyes peeled for the Wii Fit and will be buying that soon. My son likes playing Wii Boxing and has been working out several times a day with that. You can burn some calories with that. We also bought him a bicycle and have made a plan to walk daily. For days when the weather sucks, we’re planning on buying a treadmill. We already have a stationary bicycle and the plan is to break that out.
I have a new deal going with him that every time there is a task that requires going anywhere (in walking or biking distance) to get on the scale and if he weighs the same or more than the last weigh-in, he has to go do the task. Yesterday that didn’t work in his favor, but today it did. This might seem a little corny, but seems to be reinforcing using the scale as an ongoing benchmark of progress.
Week #1 progress This week so far I’ve lost 3.5 pounds and he’s lost 4 pounds. My goal is to lose 15 pounds and get down to 160 or less by my birthday in September and his is to lose about 75 pounds over the next year. That’s about 6 pounds a month or about 1-2 pounds per week on average, which from what I’ve been reading is a healthy amount of weight for an overweight person to lose. A diet where you are losing huge amounts of weight every week could have serious health consequences, so we’re taking things slow and steady, not trying for any dramatic drops.
If all goes well once I get to my goal weight, my plan is to build some more muscle strength and tone while I continue to work with him on reducing his weight. He’s got a lot harder job since he has more pounds to shed and it’s been several years since he’s been at the weight where his BMI level was normal, but I believe in him. I believe he can do it.
While I’m not planning on increasing my fatblogging frequency, I will try to pass along updates on our progress once in awhile as well as share back any tools, sites, services, etc., that help us in our journey towards shedding the pounds.
Watching and tracking what we eat plus daily activity and exercise is only the beginning.
What else can we do, or should we be planning to do, to accomplish our respective weight loss goals? If you’re reading and been successful losing weight before, especially if you have lost more than 50 pounds with some sort of (safe) plan, how did you do it?
It’s not often that we see 98% movie review scores from the Rotten Tomatoes collective. WALL-E is getting lots of reviewer love.
This morning skeptical, but curious, I told our recently graduated son who has been working with me in our online business: “Hey, you want to go see this really quick?” At first he wasn’t that interested, but then he read some of the reviews and changed his mind.
The single line synopsis of this movie is irresistible:
What if mankind had to leave Earth, and somebody forgot to turn the last robot off?
Off to the 10:45am PST showing we went, intrigued.
There was a deaf person with her family in front of us buying tickets who were having some animated sign language about the movie. We ended up sitting behind the family during the movie. About 30 minutes into the movie I realized just how great a movie this is for the hearing impaired. How many movies are made that don’t need subtitles?
The first 40 minutes of the movie have almost no dialogue and the final hour have very little dialogue. WALL-E is one of those extremely rare films that don’t need much in the way of dialogue or subtitles and yet can not only sustain interest but entertain. While we’re on the “how many movies …” kick, how many movies can get laughs out of sporks?
Sporks!
WALL-E is Pixar’s latest compelling animated tale. A science fiction love story about a final remaining trash compactor named WALL-E operating on a trash-ridden future version of earth somewhere around the year 2800. Where did all the people go? And what happened to humanity? WALL-E offers a bleak, and somewhat believable premonition of mankind 800+ years from now. Without spoiling the movie, I’ll just say we haven’t become the most sedentiary beings. You’d think mankind would learn not to leave too much control to robots. This is a well-trodden path many science fiction writers have been writing about and warning us against for the last 75+ years.
The only company WALL-E has on earth is a cockroach (who doesn’t speak thankfully) until a probe droid named Eve (”Eva”) is sent back to earth. WALL-E who spends his time making cubes out of garbage and picking out the good stuff like old VHS tapes (what, no DVD?), watching movies through an old iPod, and popping bubble wrap, takes an immediate liking to Eva to stave off his loneliness.
Can’t say I ever imagined liking a romantic story involving a trash compacter but WALL-E fires on all cylinders. This is the best animated movie I’ve seen in a long time. No animated movies come to mind to compare it to, which is a high compliment. I’ve written hundreds of reviews and never given an A+ to anything. I have no problem giving WALL-E the first A+. It’s that good. It’s family friendly too. The 98% Rotten Tomatoes reviewers are giving it is well-deserved. My son gave it a B-, but his only other favorite animated movie was Toy Story. WALL-E is better than Toy Story. Get out of the heat and into the air conditioning. Take your loved ones to see this film. Grade: A+.
Last year we bought one of those above ground swimming pools and after setting up in mid July were only able to enjoy a dozen or less good swim days.
This year the weather has been so crappy to date and with June almost over there was some consideration that we may never set the pool up in 2008. I mean, why set something up for only 10 good hot days? A hot day on Wednesday and rumor of 90 degree weekend days coming this weekend quickly changed my mind. Time to switch into pool assembly mode.
Leveling the pool in our backyard proved to be challenging last year. This year I dug a bigger trench than last year and used the dirt from that to bulk up the lower side. You can see the trench in the picture above which was big enough to put the pump in. What happened this year is the pool ended up dipped on both ends and higher in the middle. At least we don’t have the sloping we had last year, but man, why is leveling earth so difficult a concept for me?
What’s buried in your backyard?
A side bonus from the excavation was finding a 1948 shilling. My son went to the internet to research the coin.
Tools for leveling land?
There must be some sort of tool for excavators to be able to easily level land, yes/no? I remember when being in the restaurant business and seeing some laser red light used by contractors to show a level line across an area. I wonder if there is something like that contractors use to get the ground level?
Anywhere, here is how it looks from the side. You can see it’s not a great leveling job:
Guessing I won’t get any pool setup jobs any time soon, but the process did go much faster this year than last. We were able to setup the pool in less than three hours, including digging the small trench. Filling the pool took about 8 hours and cost us $25 extra on our water bill last year.
Our three sons took a dip yesterday when it wasn’t even 70 degrees outside. The pool water in the morning was at 50 degrees but had warmed up to 56 degrees by the time they climbed in. I told them they were nuts. How they managed to last in that frigid water for 30 minutes is beyond me, but they splashed around and had a good time. My son’s girlfriend was the only smart one of the bunch, like us parents, she stayed out.
The final picture at 6:59am PST.
The skies are blue, it’s gonna be a scorcher. Glad that the work is done. Now all we have to do once the heat sets in is get in and enjoy.
The last couple Father’s Days I’ve highlighted other father bloggers. This year I’m going to break from the mini-tradition and talk about how proud I was as a father this past week. Our oldest (pictured right) graduated from high school on Tuesday night. My dad flew out from Arizona to witness the glorious event too.
Various times I’ve been a proud father throughout our son’s life to date but none topped Tuesday night. His birth some 18 fast (way too fast) years ago was a close second. The realization struck me that this was our first true checkmark as a parent. When I graduated from high school (barely), I wasn’t into the event. I didn’t see it as that important. I remember that was the last time I saw tears in my dad’s eyes. He was very into the event. Some 21 years later I finally understand what graduation means to parents and why it’s so important to them.
This part might seem a bit unbelievable, but it’s true. For the first time I learned where my high school diploma has been the last 21 years. My wife has had hers all along but I never even asked my dad what happened to mine. I’ve never seen it. During lunch this week I asked him if he had it and he said yes, it’s with his important papers. I’m sure he’s taken very good care of it.
Today it’s hat day at Emerald Downs. I like wearing baseball hats and since the Mariners can’t seem to win (they are in danger of being swept by the freaking Washington Nationals?! Grr), maybe wearing a horse racing hat will be better luck. Our oldest is 18, so going to take him with us, although you don’t have to be 18 to visit the track, unlike casinos.
Job-wise he’s helping us with our online business so far and working to get another job outside the family businesses. He doesn’t drive yet, but I’m sure that will happen eventually. While this might seem a bit odd for a teen, we live in a fairly small town and he has been walking distance from his school and the stores all his life. I was surprised there were forty 13 year seniors in his class of 104. A 13 year senior is defined as one who has gone through every grade in the same school (kindergarten, 1st grade - 12th).
Next year, our middle teenager will graduate and I’ll be equally as proud of him. Two years after that, our youngest is scheduled to graduate, same thing. It’s funny how you share different father-son moments with each child. With our oldest, he and I share a love in music (we went to Ozzfest and Van Halen together). Our middle teen and I love videogames together. And our youngest and I play music together on guitar, bass and drums. We’re the ones playing the original music that backs Hmmcast #181 below. Sorry about the shoddy HD camerawork, I should have brought a tripod to the event, my hand was shaking bad by the time we got to the end.
In kindergarten our oldest was a bit reluctant to leave home. He eventually warmed up to the concept of school and did well socially (seemed like there wasn’t a place we’d go that he didn’t see another student who trumpeted his name in public). I’m proud of you, son. Well done. Keep making your parents proud.
Got to get this one off my chest. Women who use hyphenated last names bug me. If my wife had been the type of woman who wanted to use a hyphenated last name, I would never have married her.
Now wait, before you bash me for being shallow. Look ladies, you marry someone, you don’t have to take his last name. You can keep your maiden name, but I do not like at all the whole maiden_name-married_name convention. The whole hyphenated last name thing needs to fly to a distant galaxy and never return. Those who have stage names should keep their names whether they get married or not. That’s part of your brand.
And while we’re at it, it’s 1000 times worse if you do this online. Women, I know you won’t listen to some blogger who doesn’t even have a last name, but I beg you to stop pointing at yourself, intentionally or not, with your 25+ character names. First rule of internet naming common sense: choose something short.
That’s at least partly why my name is ‘TDavid’ and even more preferably: TD. It’s easy to type, easy to remember, and easy not to screw up (but some people still do and miss the capital ‘T’). If you want to be Jane mynameisimportant-soIusetwoofthem make that your problem, not ours.
Ahhh, I feel so much better. I’ve been waiting to write this for years. I made it a Twitter message before blogging this, here are a few heartfelt responses before pressing the publish button.
@claynewton writes: “@TDavid, I don’t think it’s pretentious in the least to hyphenate. The “last name” matter is as complex as the fabric of our culture”
But *online* why hyphenate @claynewton? It seems to go against the KISS principle. Look at Twitter with 140 chars. 180 for married women?
@Trula: “married women who hyphenate aren’t being pretentious. it’s just they don’t realize the point. the name issue is mere icing.”
And then Trula’s follow-up: ” @TDavid take his name, keep your name, hyphenate. none is more valid choice. you’re still married, complicit in patriarchal institution.”
Ironic, but this post might seem pretentious to some. Wow, it’s also the second post of the day, been awhile since I could say that (gasp). Feel free to weigh in below whether or not you think hyphenated names are pretentious and please note that I didn’t use any freaking hyphens in the title, ha!
Congratulations to Kara for turning her $500 deposited in July 2007 into $544.93, a 8.99% return in our 2007 stock competition. She had better performance than me that ended 2007 with $522.78, a 4.36% return. Here is Kara’s competition portfolio:
Here is my competition portfolio:
We both traded 11 stocks during the time, with her still holding one (JOSB) and me holding two (ZL which is way down and NLY which is up). Since our balance is under $2,500 per the new Zecco rules any trades we make now will incur a $4 commission.
Hypothetical: if we had paid $4 Zecco commissions on each trade
To illustrate how much commissions can negatively impact a portfolio, paying $4 commissions on all our 2007 trades would have resulted in an overall loss for both portfolios. Since the commission applies to both buy and sell: I had 11 buys and 9 sells = 20 total trades. Kara had 11 buys and 10 sells = 21 trades.
Me: 20 trades x $4 = $80
K: 21 trades x $4 = $84
= $164 commissions divided into total of both portfolios: $1067.71 (15.36% commissions)
And instead of a balance of $1,067.71 we’d only have $903.70 and be sitting on two of three stocks that are currently in losing positions. Using that scenario it would have been better to put the $1,000 in a savings account than play the stock market. Although this is on a smaller money scale, it shows how difficult the stock market can be to make money. With the addition of the commission in 2008, it’s going to be even more challenging.
The 2007 prize
When asked what she wanted as a prize for beating me in the 2007 competition Kara replied, “take our kids shoe shopping.” Man, I got off easy. I was willing to buy her something for at least the difference between our portfolios. (Note: I still will).
Speaking of the kids, they don’t go back to school until tomorrow? Strange. Why aren’t they going back today? Is there an assumption this is an after New Year’s travel (or recuperation for those who partied) day?
2008 competition begins
We’re going to continue our competition into 2008 with the same setup. As for prizes, same deal: if she wins again, I’ll buy her something using the value of the difference in our portfolios or vice versa.
You are welcome to and encouraged to follow along with the trades we’re making on our Google Finance shared page. The quotes are delayed 20 minutes.
I also am sharing my competition trade activity through Zecco social (my wife currently is not), which provides third party verification that, yes, I am buying and selling the stocks listed on the Google Finance shared page. Zecco doesn’t actually show the dollar amounts or number of shares.
With my permission, they picked me as one of their featured investors (pictured above), thanks Zecco! You can add me as a friend, if you like, from my Zecco profile page.
While on the transparency front, as of this writing I also own the following stocks that are not part of our ongoing competition and are not traded through Zecco: AAPL, EXPE, GOOG, IACI, IGT, SHOR, VCLK and YHOO. For newer readers, I do disclose in each blog post where relevant when writing about these companies.
Free real time stock quotes
If you wanted to see a more real time view of either a real or fantasy stock portfolio you could use something like freerealtime.com.
I used Free Real Time with the Apple Web Clip function in Safari to make a dashboard widget and just have to hit the Apple key + R to refresh to see how the portfolio is doing during trade days. Since my main machine is Vista, I wonder if there’s a Vista gadget that does something similar? If you know of one please let me know in the comments.
Overall I’m satisfied with the results in 2007, especially with the instability of the market the last six months, but I’d like to see at least either my wife, I or both get over $1,000 by the end of 2008. If our portfolios combined a year from now could reach the $2,500 minimum, even better.
How did your portfolio(s) perform in 2007? No need to share dollars, but percentages would be nice. Happy, unhappy or satisfied?
This likely isn’t a problem if you live alone and/or have some super unique toothbrush. But most toothbrushes to me look the same and when I go to brush my teeth among a bunch of other toothbrushes from family members, I want the fast and easy way to grab the right one. Turns out from my blog reading this morning I’m not alone.
The last couple 
Got to get this one off my chest. Women who use hyphenated last names bug me. If my wife had been the type of woman who wanted to use a hyphenated last name, I would never have married her.
