We’ve seen cars that bounce, cars with little wheels, cars with wheels, and even cars with clear wheels. The next fad I imagine is cars with non-round wheels; I’m thinking elliptical. They could give your car interesting bounce characteristics and an uncommon, perhaps flashy, feature.
And before you tell me that it’s a stupid idea that would never catch on, look at the stupid ideas that have caught on.
I had to share this with Rachel because February 30th has become a running joke between us. Due to some cunning planning on my part, our first date was on August 30th. It follows that our 6-monther would be on February 30th. Realization of this fact went down the “we’ll have to do something on the 30th… wait… what? Oh it’s February!” path.
Not to be outdone, she tracked down the website of the calendar provider, which also provides some grumpy response emails, with the following being my favorite:
“…yet another in a long line of crimes against humanity perpetuated by you pinko tree huggers.”
But it occurred to me that this could be a business opportunity. Sell intentionally, subtly inaccurate calendars as gag gifts. Add a day, remove a day, start a month on the wrong day, shift some holidays. And with that add dual-layer packaging. The first layer, to be removed by the gift-buyer, clearly identifies the content. The second layer makes it seems like a run-of-the-mill calendar.
I think it would be funny to see how long your friends take to notice the problem, if they notice the problem, or if they don’t notice at all and spend half the year being very confused… maybe bonus points should be added for selling with it a CD that will alter the calendar in Outlook to match the wall calendar.
North Face has created a shoe that does not need to be tied. Instead a knob is tightened that evenly tightens the lacing system.
I want to adapt this and develop it is a universal plumbing adapter. The idea is that you can wrap a sleeve around any faucet in and around your house, tighten it, and connect it to a hose, or other standard fitting.
This would be a handy technology if waterbeds were still popular.
It could also be handy for those with a lot of plants. If combined with a light hose, it would let people easily attach the hose to a sink and water their plants without having to repeatedly fill up watering cans.
Similarly, it could be employed if the threads on a standard fixture are stripped, or otherwise damaged.
It would also be great for cleaning showers. If you have a fixed shower head, you know it can be tough to rinse the entire after you have finished scrubbing it. By quickly attaching a hose to the shower head the rinsing can be done quickly and easily without filling up buckets or anything else.
So who wants to invest?
It has probably already been invented, but I do not know for the life of me why it isn’t in every bathroom.
Today I was chastised for leaving the toilet seat up. In my defense, I’m pretty well trained in this area — but not perfect.
Anyway, it seems that the seats should be operated by a foot pedal. If you’re standing, you hit the pedal, the seat is up. You leave and the seat goes down. She’s happy because she doesn’t fall in. You’re happy because she’ll be able to find the next thing to yell at you about. I’m happy because I’ll be fucking rich for making these things.
Seriously, this should easily be a linkage-mass-spring-damper system. The engineering can’t be difficult at all. Plus I can’t imagine it adding more than $10 to the price of a seat, and who doesn’t spend $10 if it helps keep your wife off your back?
TO THE DRAWING BOARD!
How have I accumulated at least 10 phone cords? Where do they all come from, and why haven’t I thrown them away? I have a wireless phone and no land service.
Well I know where they come from. They practically give them away with anything remotely related to phones or modems. I guess it’s nice that they give you all you need to be set up. Except I now have a bunch of items that I don’t really want and will probably never use (any suggestions on creative uses?). I was quite surprised when I recently received my USB hard drive to find that the contents actually included USB and firewire cables. Now I have a firewire cable that I’ll never use.
I only bring this up because I was compelled to dig through my wire box last night. I recently moved my laptop from my living room to my bedroom and I wanted to keep it wired into my main stereo (in the living room). Of course the best combination of wires left me at least 3 feet to short. Practically, however, I need about 30 more feet. I don’t think having a wire crossing a room at neck height potentially clotheslining people is such a good idea. Best Buy here I come.
Cell phone makers, listen up. You need to sell phones that come with some extra equipment. That extra equipment should be a small paging device that could be hooked to a keychain. Press the button and the phone rings (the phone should be set to override the volume setting, and ring at it’s loudest volume). Actually, the phone, even when off, should be set to pick up a request to declare it’s location. Further, the system should work in reverse. When I have my phone and cannot find my keys, a handy little paging system would be sweet.
