Step On It

Idea #4.  Another in the series of one dollar ideas.  Or maybe in this case a $.99 app idea.
You've probably seen TV commercials for all the new cars with features like blind spot alerts, automatic stopping if it senses an object in front of you, back up cameras that warn you if something is behind you and lane change warnings.  I think cars need a feature that alerts you when you're texting at a stop light, that the light has changed to green and it's time to get moving.  This would eliminate the need for horn honking. 
It could be an app on your phone that turns the screen green when you need to get going.  This phone alert is ideal since it's likely your phone that's distracting you.  Maybe the audio warning could be a horn honking.  It would be like that app that some have on their phones that knows when you're driving and silences your texts or sends a message to your texting partners that you're not available.
Another feature, connected to your cars sensors, could be an alert when you are driving in the passing lane and not passing anybody or when there is someone behind you wanting to pass or you're being passed on the right (what should be a clear signal that you are in the wrong lane).  This would be called the Autobahn feature since in Europe they would blow you off the road for cruising in the passing lane.  

All I want for Christmas is a Ritz Bitz

     I've been to a lot of holiday luncheons this December (2014) and it seems that everyone either has a new Fit Bit wrist band or it's on their Christmas wish list.  I now know how many steps my friends have taken before lunch or how they slept last night.  So it appears to me that if you get in 10,000 steps before lunch you've earned that red velvet cupcake for dessert.  And if you also didn't sleep well last night you can go right ahead and have a few butter cookies too.
     I think they haven't taken the Fit Bit far enough.  To be really helpful to humanity I think we need a wearable device I'd call the Nit Bit.  This would be a device that doesn't care how many steps you take or any other vital statistic.  All it measures is how many times you reach for your face.  If you think about it, most of the time nothing good really happens when you reach for your face.  You're either snacking, drinking, smoking, picking your nose, teeth or ears.
     So I envision that this device grants you a baseline of say 100 face reaches a day (can I coin the term "feaches?).  That's enough to eat 3 reasonable meals, brush your teeth a few times, drink 8 glasses of water, shave, comb your hair or apply makeup.  So once that baseline is reached, it starts counting your face reaches ("feaches").  The Nit Bit will have a monitor that shows how you're trending for the day.  Are you above your desired "feach" pace?  Should you really reach for that piece of chocolate at the office? (Oh why not, I just won't brush my teeth tonight).
    The real power in this device is that it will use your mobile phone to post your daily "feaches" to Facebook.  So the social media pressure (or should I call it support) of your friends seeing your numbers will modify your behavior.  The weight will fall off faster than if you were on Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig both at the same time. The other side benefit is that you probably won't hear at lunch how many "feaches" everyone has had today.  
    An add on option will be what I call the Ritz Bitz app.  You get several remote devices (I'll call them "Sentinels") that you attach to the refrigerator door and snack drawer that triggers a "feach" to your Nit Bit every time you reach into that drawer or the frig.   Maybe we should call them "sneaches" for snack reaches.
   Finally there could be an app for the guys only.  We'll call it the Belt Bit.  This counts how many times you reach below your belt each day to adjust yourself, scratch or pick your butt.  Again you'd get a baseline of say 10 belt reaches ("beaches?") per day before the Facebook posting starts.
    Everyone could benefit from one of these devices whether for weight loss or to improve your social behavior.  It's a little like having your mother follow you around all day telling you what not to do.  All that's missing is a smack on the back of your head.  Maybe I should just call the thing "mom".

Home Automation

We got a ROOMBA last Christmas and I don't trust it. We named it Rosie after the Jetson's robot maid.  I think we should have named her HAL after the computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey.  She seems to know when we aren't watching.  We call it EAP - Extrordinary Appliance Perception.  She works great when we're around but it seems every time I go out and she is cleaning, she sneaks into my office (even though I have a small baracade to keep her out) and she throws the papers I have on the floor all around. I guess she's trying to tell me something about my floor filing system.
 

She likes to sneak up on our dog Piper too.  Rosie is not very quiet, but Piper is losing her hearing so she doesn't hear her coming.  Piper gets a bump in the rear, Rosie changes directions and retreats across the room (I think I can hear her giggling) and Piper blames the cat. Rosie also hides the dog and cat toys by pushing them under the furniture.   

Rosie has also recently taken to speaking German.  If she gets stuck under some furniture she beeps a few times like R2D2 then calls out for help in German. I personally think she's swearing, but I can't be sure.  I'm going to get a German translation app.

I can't be sure of this either but Rosie might be communicating with our garage door opener.  I think she's telling it lies about me.  I feel this way because since she arrived the opener has become uncooperative just with me.  Works fine for everyone else.  But maybe she's just trying to crack the code on it so she can make her escape.

Fortunately Rosie can't climb steps or I wouldn't be sleeping too well with her in the house.  If I ever have a strange accident at home, be sure you question "Rosie the maid".
Or maybe technology just makes me paranoid.

The Blue Beast

When I was a kid my folks had a pretty big back yard that dad kept cut so we could play back there.  In those days he had a big self propelled lawn mower.  I remember it was blue.  It was kind of a reel mower with an engine mounted on top.  It must have been a bear to get started because he wouldn’t shut it off until he was completely done cutting the grass. He would take it out of gear and go get a Pepsi.  He changed the bag while it ran and he even fueled it while running (while smoking a cigarette).  How he lived to be 84, I don’t know.   The mower just sat there shaking violently in neutral while he walked away for a few minutes at a time. 

One day Mom got his attention from the driveway, seems my grandfather was on the phone.  So dad just put it in neutral and went into the house to take the call.  Well my best friend David and I were sharing the backyard with the noisy beast, just minding our own business when suddenly the thing just took off.  I guess it shook itself into gear.  I swear it had a mind of its own.  It rolled all around the back yard and we were sure it was after us (like in a Steven King movie).  This was before mowers had a lot of safety equipment, so the big spinning blades were very exposed right in the front of it (like on a snow blower).  Had it caught one of us (it would have been David, he was a little heavy and not very maneuverable) it could have killed us, well him.  We ran around screaming as it chased us around for what seemed like an hour.  It only had two big wheels in front and a small roller in the back so it could turn on a dime.  It was racing around the yard bouncing off tree trunks like in a pinball machine.   Mom must have heard all the commotion and pretty soon dad was chasing the mower around the yard as it continued to try and eat us. 

As you probably suspect, we all survived.  But I think the blue beast’s days were numbered.  I think dad got his first LawnBoy shortly after that.  Remind me to tell you about his Gucci grass catcher bag.

Dad, the unlikely major leaguer

When I was a kid back in the 1960's the man across the street (we'll call him Mr. Smith) was a major league umpire.  He would come home from work at the stadium and empty his pockets.  And what were umpires pockets full of?   Baseballs!  I suspect that they can't bring home baseballs today, but back then baseball was a little looser operation I guess.

Mr. Smith was very popular with the kids in the neighborhood because he kept us in baseballs and from time to time, he would bring home a signed baseball from a Pittsburgh Pirate or from some other team.  But in the 60’s we didn’t care much about collecting, we played with those signed balls.  They wore out or ended up as a fly ball deep into the woods (home run to left field), in Fabrizi's pool (home run to right field) or lost in the ground cover (foulball behind first base). 

 As you can imagine, Mr. Smith would bring home lots of plain, slightly used balls, but only a few signed balls.  But we all wanted the signed balls and made special requests that were difficult for him to fulfill.  My dad, a great creative thinker, had a solution.  Dad would take the orders, and when Mr. Smith would bring home extra baseballs, my dad would get them, autograph them with the name of whoever we had requested and then would distribute them to us.  After all, we lost most of them anyway and there was no Ebay or Antiques Road Show back then.   No harm no foul in that earlier age. 

My one concern is that somewhere out there is one of our old neighborhood kids that thinks they have an autographed Mickey Mantle or Roberto Clemente baseball in that special display case that is really a Hal Schmitt autograph.  A final note, I have a genuine autographed baseball, it’s just autographed by Mr. Smith.  Not of any monetary value, but a pleasant reminder of my old neighborhood.

Home Depot, we have a problem

Musing #3 More thoughts about taking things apart.  I took apart a new storm door latch last year.  There was nothing wrong with it but the reason I took it apart was that I had installed the whole door upside down.  I know, you’re wondering, how did you manage that?  Wasn't there a clue that it was going wrong.  It was one of those doors that can be left or right side opening.  I did all my figuring, but I drilled the holes on the wrong side of the door (fortunately not as critical an error as you might think), and installed the new (custom ordered I might add) full view door upside down.  You get pretty far into the process before it becomes clear it's upside down.  For this door it was when the door sweep wouldn't fit on the "bottom" of the door.  I believe this was the actual second to last step in the installation process.  The last step being to clean your new glass door. 
Since I'd never seen a door with the door sweep at the top, I knew I had a problem.  To mis-quote a famous movie, Home Depot, we have a problem. 
So I take it all apart, pretty much start over.  When I was assembling the latch/lock/handle mechanism (almost the last step), I lost a little oddly shaped ring/washer/clamp inside the door.  I still remember what the part was called, the "D"ring.  No getting it out without removing the door (again) AND taking a hack saw to the bottom of the door.  What the heck, I put it all together to see how bad it would work.  No noticeable difference.  What was that ring for if it works great without it? 
It's been 2 years now and the door and latch still work fine.  I've decided the "D" ring was the self-destruct mechanism (D for Destruct) that I have suspected are in all devices.  We use to suspect the car makers of building in "planned obsolescence".  Well with the self destruct trigger (the "D" ring) now safely disabled, that door and latch will out live me.  

Hair, not the musical, part 1

Musing#2:  If you've seen me in the last 15 years, you'll know I am mostly bald.  I look a bit like a monk, hair wise.  A very hip monk I hope, but there isn't much you can do creatively with my hair line that doesn't involve a very long, complex comb over or a wig.

Which brings me to part one of my hairstory.  Thirty years ago I was sitting in the barber chair, well stylist back then, it's a stylist if you have hair.  The place was called the Head Shed.  With out being asked, my barber says "you know you can get a crown piece".  Although I knew I was getting a little spot up there, I didn't think it required a rug just yet.  Instead, I just decided to stop parting my hair.  People were still wearing longer hair and combed straight back was actually a style at that time. 

This seemed to work OK for a while until one day the girl I was dating (Rose's room mate) walked up from behind me and announced "hey, you're going bald!"  The spot was the size of a 50 cent piece, but I guess to a 23 year old girl, it was a shock.  So there was no hiding it anymore.  I refused to start down the comb over path.

A year or two later, I'm sitting in the barber chair again, still the Head Shed at their new location and with the new owner Tony.  He talked way too much and got off on rants on topics I didn't want to discuss with a worked up guy with scissors and razors near my neck, so I pretended to nap while he cut my hair.  It went quicker and I got a better haircut if he wasn't talking to me.  So I'm sitting there with my eyes closed when suddenly I feel a plop on my head, I open my eyes to see me in the mirror with what could best be described as a long blonde Beatles style hair piece.  Tony says "well we'd have to get it in dark brown and we would trim it up, but you'd have hair again".  I don't think so.

As a balding guy, I was always worried about my hair, but unwilling to do anything as drastic as committing to a hairpiece.  Going to a rug is a bit like getting married, once you do it, you're committed to it for good hair days and bad, in sickness and in health, until death you do part.  I would prefer a more platonic hairpiece relationship.  I would wear it to work, take it off when I got home, probably hang it on the hall tree by the door, wear it to go out on the town, take it off to cut the grass.  This is how you treat a hat not hair.  I also refuse to wear a hat to hide the baldness.  Speaking of hats, do any of the aging rockers wearing hats on stage think we don't know they are bald under there.

I use to spend a fair amount of time getting each of the remaining hairs well placed.  I must stress, this wasn't a comb over, but I didn't see any reason to look any more bald than I was.  I credit my wife Deanna with giving me the gift of hair freedom.  Early in our relationship when I still had a fair amount of hair (I guess you would call this the "going bald" period), we were in Toronto and she encouraged me to stop using a hair dryer and let my mildly wavey hair be wavey.  We were out of the country and I wouldn't see anyone I knew so I gave it a shot.  I got use to it in a few days.  Hair freedom was achieved!

The major disadvantage to baldness, beyond the sunburn thing, is the lack of an early warning system for your head.  It turns out that hair functions a lot like eye lashes do for your eyes.  Something brushes your eye lash you blink, something brushes your hair you duck.  Not when you're bald.  I'm slightly tall, about 6'1" and you just can't believe the number of things that are just 6' above the ground.  Signs in women's clothing stores, the pipes in my brother-in-laws basement, lights in stores, tree branches, etc.  Now you know why we bald guys have a lot of battle scars on our bald heads.

You might think that once you go bald, hair adventures would be over, but actually stranger things happen in the barber chair when you are mostly bald than when you have hair.  But those will have to wait for Hair part 2.