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.

A good point to eject.

CNN’s iReport has been taking some bashing lately over a false story submitted about Apple’s Steve Jobs, but don’t let one internet lamer keep you away from this cool site. Where else can you see a sandstorm engulf a city like this:

This happened in Omdurman, Sudan and the video was shot by Abdurrahman Jaafar Idris. Never make mother nature mad, she doesn’t care about the stock market, bailout plans what’s happening in America or abroad.

Would call it cosmic justic that OJ Simpson is finally going to face some prison time.

 

Karoli writes:

It’s just utterly bizarre that OJ Simpson is found guilty on all counts on the 13th anniversary of the not guilty verdict in his murder trial. Completely, and utterly bizarre. Maybe even symmetrical. Numerically weird, and everything else.

I long ago lost respect for the once great football star. Even if you think he didn’t kill his first wife Nicole and Ronald Goldman, the fact that he’d have anything at all to do with a book called "If I Did It" should have been deserving of declaring a mistrial the first time around and retrying him. OJ, come on man, think about your children.

Soon he’ll be behind those bars that eluded him for 13 lucky years. This would all make a good episode of the Twilight Zone. Enter Rod Serling epilogue: "Picture of solitary jail cell waiting for one incorrigible OJ Simpson. He could have lived his second chance among shadows and substance, but instead chose a life inside … the Jailhouse Zone."

The bulk of American people not listened to again, House passes bailout.

Here in Washington State I encourage other voters to remember who voted yes and no come election time. The details for how all reps voted are here, below are how WA State reps voted.

U.S House of Representatives (4 from WA state) Voted YES on bailout

Baird, Brian (D)
Larsen, Rick (D)
Smith, Adam (D)
Dicks, Norm (D)

U.S House of Representatives (5 from WA state) Voted NO on bailout
McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (R)
Hastings, Doc (R)
Inslee, Jay (D)
McDermott, Jim (D)
Reichert, Dave (R)

President Bush will not veto

President Bush just spoke to say he will sign the bill as soon at it reaches his desk. I remain perplexed what he has done that has been good for this country during his time in office. This bailout is a done deal.

He said: "I know some Americans have concerns about this deal." Some? Some! Bush remains clueless. Most people that I know are against this bailout/rescue/whatever. What about the people you know?

The DOW is down from its high of +300 to +110 -56, as of this writing. Cafepress has some creative anti-bailout hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and more.

If you happen to be in the minority in America that is for the bailout that the House contemplates, which they are now trying to sell as a "rescue" plan, then you might find it interesting that national debt clock has run out of digits, according to CNN reporting this morning.

The first screencap above shows the clock which has had to have three digits added since 1989. Three digits. Here are how the 14 digits stack up:

$00, … 000, … 000, … 000, … 000
trillion … billion … million … thousand

So in 1989 when it went up the thought was that 99 billion of debt would be enough space. Then a first digit was added to make it to 999 billion. Oops, not enough. Move to 9 trillion ceiling which they believe would make it until Spring 2009. Not any more.

National debt close to doubles during Bush presidency

When George Bush took over the presidency in 2000, the national debt was at 5.78 trillion dollars:

By the time Bush leaves office the national debt will be close to double, just look where it is now:

No matter what your feelings are on the Iraq war or the bailout/rescuse/whatever the truth is clear: we can’t afford it!

Go straight to sextillion, already

If the national debt sign modders are smart they’ll just skip the 99 trillion ceiling and go straight to sextillion. At the rate this is growing that might last awhile. Doing this would skip quadrillion and quintillion and go straight to something sexy. Americans love sexy things, after all. That’s 21 zereos and would look something like this as a ceiling:

000 (sextillion),000 (quintillion), 000 (quadrillion), 000 (trillion), 000 (billion), 000 (million), 000 (thousand)

Seriously, here’s a better idea: let’s do something about paying down the debt. It’s going to be even more difficult to do this if the bailout/rescue/whatever is approved. The bailout/rescue/whatever that has now grown by another $150 billion and gone from an original draft of 3 pages to 451 pages of fat.

This is so illogical that it would drive the entire Vulcan race into extinction.

With new AC/DC studio album Black Ice street date of October 20 inching closer I peeked into Wal-Mart over lunch time today to complete our collection of AC/DC albums by buying Let There Be Rock, Fly On The Wall and Blow Up Your Video all for the stunningly low price of — get this — $7.

If you’re nodding at this price thinking, yeah, yeah, but Let There Be Rock aside, these aren’t among the strongest AC/DC studio albums out there, Wal-Mart also had Back In Black, Highway To Hell and Dirty Deeds selling for $7 each. Yowsa! As I wrote yesterday, I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but it’s hard to argue with these bargain prices.

If you need to round out your AC/DC collection, might want to check this deal out. I noticed that the Walmart website had some of their studio albums for $9, but I saw them all priced locally for $7. If you’re new to the rock steady world of AC/DC this means you could pick up their entire back studio album library of 15 CDs (15 x 7 = $98) for a little over 100 bucks [AC/DC studio albums: ‘74 Jailbreak, High Voltage, Dirty Deeds, Let There Be Rock, Powerage, Highway To Hell, Back In Black, For Those About To Rock We Salute You, Flick of the Switch, Fly On The Wall, Who Made Who, Blow Up Your Video, The Razor’s Edge, Ballbreaker, Stiff Upper Lip].

Have you seen new AC/DC studio albums available for less than $7 each? Can’t say I have. Hells Bells for competition, it’s a dog eat dog!

Microsoft has released a new program called Search Perks (U.S and Internet Explorer only link: getsearchperks.com) which incentifies up to 25 live searches per day between now and April 15, 2009. You get 1 ticket per search (max 25 tickets per day) and these tickets can be traded in for various prizes.

The SearchPerks program is new but club.live.com has been incentifying search activity for some time now. It’s not a new concept for Microsoft or several other search engines like Blingo and Winzy.

My personal feelings on incentifying search is that it’s not a working strategy for dethroning Google but won’t go as extreme as Paul Glazowski at Mashable who writes:

A sensible person might say SearchPerks, as with the Cashback, only serves to devalue the company. Something of a last ditch attempt. Or attempts, plural. And that may well be true.

OR, Paul, maybe some people who are already using Live Search will simply add the counter, rack up tickets and bag some freebies for doing little extra. I see these sort of perk programs like swag at conferences which doesn’t in any way devalue companies, in fact, it promotes them.  We’re already in attendance to the conference, so why not accept the free magazines, t-shirts, pens, coffee cups and more? I don’t hear people crying about how this swag devalues any companies.

As for Microsoft’s Live Cashback program, which I wrote about back in May, I still don’t get what the general bashing was about there either. Fine, bash the program if you tried it and didn’t like it, bash the program for not having your favorite online store(s) (as my wife did), bash it if you don’t get your rebate (like for my first and only order, gasp), but bashing it because it was too "complex" or because you think it’s a lame attempt to get people to use Live Search as some people were doing is bogus.

While it wasn’t any kind of requirement when I started working with the Zune Team in the podcast area in June I decided to switch my default search away from Google to Live Search. I was curious if I’d be able to get along without Google search. Since then I have found myself navigating away from Live Search a few times back to Google for some searches but mostly Live Search has done the job better than I expected.

That’s right, Google, which I still own stock in BTW, isn’t that much better than Live Search. It’s still better, yes, but you won’t be completely lost by switching to Live Search if you want to seriously compare as I’ve been doing.

My most used browser these days is Firefox although I still must have IE open every day because I need it for both our businesses. Some of the corporate sites we deal with in our offline business only work with Internet Explorer. Escaping IE 100% simply isn’t reality for all of corporate America.

Since I still average at least 25 searches every work day, Microsoft is now giving me some swag for doing something I was already doing, thanks SearchPerks. I use Live Search in Firefox too and it’s a bummer that they won’t incentify me for that, but something like SearchPerks isn’t going to drive me back into using Google as my default search there.

The SearchPerks program is not going to have me trying to drum up extraneous searches just to earn these tickets (that would be a violation of the TOS anyway). I remain curious how many other people are already using Internet Explorer with Live Search? The only thing these folks need to do is add the counter install which takes a couple minutes and then it’s business as usual.

Now for the folks using Safari on the Mac, Google Chrome, Opera or Firefox with Google, etc. Well, you are already set in what you’re using for search and the browser you’re most comfortable with and I don’t see SearchPerks being enough incentive to change. That’s ok. It’s also ok for people to be happy using what they are using and getting a little addition swag.

Now there’s something people might also find to be a sensible perspective, Paul.

Wal-Mart is getting an exclusive deal on possibly the last AC/DC album Black Ice due out later this month. It doesn’t stop there as the New York Times is reporting another AC/DC exclusive: an AC/DC Rock Band game.

This is hot, we got teased by the Rock Band 2 AC/DC track "Let There Be Rock" and now there will be more:

Both Columbia and the band will make money on the game, which contains the songs from the popular DVD “AC/DC Live at Donnington.” The game, which will be available for all consoles in early November, will cost less than most new games, about $40 instead of about $60. That makes it an attractive product to Wal-Mart, which believes that lower prices drive demand.

Ahh, but what they don’t tell you in this snippet. Keep reading.

The track list for AC/DC Live At Donnington taken from 1992 DVD via Amazon:

1. Thunderstruck
2. Shoot To Thrill
3. Back in Black
4. Fire Your Guns
5. Jailbreak
6. The Jack
7. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
8. Money Talks
9. Hells Bells
10. High Voltage
11. Whole Lotta Rosie
12. You Shook Me All Night Long
13. T.N.T
14. Let There Be Rock
15. Highway To Hell
16. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Note: I’m pretty sure Wal-Mart sells another Live at Donnington (exclusive too?) so this might not be the exact track list of the game (it is NOT, stay with me). There is also an AC/DC Live at Donnington [Blu-ray] version of this concert — oh yea.

Even though it’s AC/DC there needs to be more than 16 songs for $40. I would expect 25 or more songs with some special Rock Band goodies exclusive to this game.

I checked the official Rock Band forums to see if they had any detailed information yet. Indeed, they did, providing the full press release with the actual AC/DC track list, which adds two more songs to the list above ("Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be" and "Heetseeker"):

AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack will feature the master recordings from the best of the band’s live performances. The live recording was specially remixed for Rock Band by Mike Fraser. The game features 18 tracks, with more than 99 minutes of game play for each instrument:

"Thunderstruck"
"Shoot to Thrill"
"Back in Black"
"Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be"
"Heatseeker"
"Fire Your Guns"
"Jailbreak"
"The Jack"
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"
"Moneytalks"
"Hells Bells"
"High Voltage"
"Whole Lotta Rosie"
"You Shook Me All Night Long"
"T.N.T."
"Let There Be Rock”
"Highway To Hell”
"For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”

Guitar Hero Aerosmith which sold well enough to spark a possible music trend: band-themed play our music games. There have been band video games before (I’m thinking about the Iron Maiden PC game quite some time ago) but they didn’t interact directly with the music like these crop of game. In the Aerosmith game players could rise through the club ranks playing Aerosmith songs along the way. It came with an Aerosmith-themed guitar. The problem with the GH: Aerosmith game was that it was a pretty short experience for experienced players and didn’t add anything that unique or new. My son got through the whole game in a few hours at the expert difficulty.

A Guitar Hero: Metallica game is in the works, presumably following the GH: Aerosmith formula. If GH and Metallica are smart, they’ll include some other goodies to sweeten the deal.

I’m guessing at $40 there will be no AC/DC guitar or other accessories. In fact, they are billing this as "The AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack" - which sounds like it’s going to be among the more expensive RB track packs released to date. Rock Band and Guitar Hero players are already paying a premium to play downloadable content songs. Would like to see an AC/DC themed Rock Band game for $20 more perhaps with an exclusive Angus axe.

Good news from the Wal-Mart sales page:

"Go Beyond the Disc! - The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions ship with a code on the back of the game manual that lets you import all of the songs into the Rock Band or Rock Band 2 game environment (Internet connection required)."

So that $40 will include an export code. And these are remixed tracks by Mike Fraser specially for Rock Band. Zing!

I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but a huge AC/DC fan, so they’ll earn my business for both the Black Ice CD on October 20 (you can buy the CD from AC/DC website if you want) and AC/DC LIVE Rock Band Track Pack on November 2nd. Hat tip to great big geek, who was the first to turn me onto this New York Times article.

BTW, AC/DC is running a YouTube Give It All You Got contest at their website trying to find the best video cover of their song, "Rock and Roll Train" where you can win a Gibson guitar signed by the Young brothers.

Update 10/2/08 4:00pm PST: Harmonix employee Henry writes: “There will be unique achievements and trophies for this track pack, as well as several song specific achievements. They will rule.”

A week or so ago the AJAX-powered service usernamecheck.com was all the rage in the various tech rags for being able to check a bunch of different websites (all shown below) to see if a username was already taken. I held off blogging it at that time because the service was crippled by the attention, but the tide has passed and today you can reliably get there (knock on wood).  Before you wonder if I succumbed to the lemming blogger bug (definition: to blog something just because everybody else is doing it) read the next paragraph.

The first time I saw the service I thought immediately of a second, more appealing use: to explore some sites/services you might not have heard about before. This is something I enjoy doing online and if it’s something not blogged too much already, can generate interesting blog posts. If you find an entertaining or useful service it can be like opening a present at Christmas.

With that in mind, I looked through this list and was able to explore the 10 following sites/services (links lead to registration page, where possible):

1. Vox - YABS? (Yet Another Blogging Service). This one looks a little too familiar although PC Mag gave it high marks and it "works seamlessly" (whatever that means) with sites like Amazon, YouTube and Flickr. The web is littered with third party blog hosting services. Your Vox member name is not unique, which is kind of different. Registration email confirmation required.
2. visualizeus - picture bookmarking service. The URL is a mess in a del.icio.us sort of way, fortunately the dot com redirects. Uses YAFBE (Yet Another Firefox Bookmarking Extension). Registration email confirmation required.
3. Posterous - YABS with a slight twist: post by email from your confirmed email address to post@posterous.com and it blogs it. Your email can have photos, videos, MP3 as attachments and Posterous will include in your blog post at yourname.posterous.com.
4. Meemi - is there an English version of this site? Could have used Google Translate to help, but I passed on registering for this one. YAFSIDU (Yet Another Foreign Site I Don’t Understand)
5. koornk - YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). Bonus points for using OpenID but didn’t see anything that breaks this one from the pack. I asked my Twitter friends/followers if there was something nicer to say about this service. Registration email confirmation required.
6. isfingawesome - self-described as mixtape + microblog, my non-awesome description: YABS+YATC. Bonus points for default profile message that reads: "This profile is completely void of anything awesome" and the screenshot to the right, save the uncapitalized ‘d’ in my name (I’m joking, friends, just joking). Their logo contest has borne some cool fruit.
7. iLikeLoveIt - ??? Where is this ??? Link from usernamecheck bounced back to usernamecheck.
8. hexday - interesting concept. Choose a different color every day and see if herd mentality generates different color patterns. I like this one.

    
   I went psychedlic today: fuschia. What color would you pick to describe today? Would have probably chosen red yesterday for the history drop in the DOW (-777.7).

9. hellotxt - a microblogging aggregator, think a bunch of twitter clones (++YATC++), although they also aggregate Friendfeed and some networks. I tend to like aggregators as long as they aren’t sploggy-like because they save time. Didn’t see any ad play here which is good. Could be useful to heavy microblogging users but it’s a bust for me because I don’t want to share my microblogging passwords with it. API keys no problem, passwords are a big no-no.
10. FunnyOrDie - watched several videos from this site and might have even blogged one or two (didn’t check archives). Funny stuff, good production value and celebrity comedians. Prepare to laugh. Registration email confirmation required.

Note to owners/developers/webmasters of these sites that may appear in the comment/trackback section below: My brief overview comments above were based on signing up (except for Meemi and iLikeLoveIt) and looking around for a few minutes not an exhaustive review. Did I miss something cool about your service? Tell me about it below and I’ll be happy to look further. Call this the second chance saloon if you will.

Beyond that, save for hexday and FunnyOrDie, I wasn’t that interested in the 10 sites above. Not all prospecting is fruitful; sometimes gold, mostly dust. There are good services though in the overall usernamecheck list, so look through that.

If you compare the list in the screenshot to the list above, you’ll see not every site is duplicated that showed as ‘available.’ Commercial services are in there like Smugmug that I know about and have chosen not to pay to use and/or have used in the past (TypePad).

There is also some bugs with the usernamecheck service, like Virb where I already have an account (’TDavid’ not ‘tdavid’) and diigo which does not have this username available and is the reason I had to register ‘tdavids’ instead.

So keep in mind just because a site/service in usernamecheck might show your name as ‘available’ it might be taken and vice versa.

Happy exploring to you!