Some Blog Site

At work I use a laptop, and at my desk I have a second monitor.  When my laptop is at my desk, it is connected to the docking station, and I have the laptop screen and the stand-alone monitor both active.

When going to a meeting, I will close the laptop, undock it, and then open it at the meeting.  Occasionally, I am greeted by a warning when I open the laptop.  Sometimes the warning appears after I go back to my desk and re-dock.

Actual un-retouched screen shot of the warning
Click on the image to see it full size.

I tried to set the screen resolution to zero by zero, as Windows XP recommended, but my computer wouldn’t let me.  Plus the warning is wrong.  How could zero be the best display size?  I know I could check the box to not show the message again, but it is just so amusing to read.  And reminds me to put realistic checks in any software I write.

As with most warnings that Windows generates, I will ignore this one too.

“Surely God will not listen to an empty {cry,} Nor will the Almighty regard it.”
– Job 35:13

The same co-worker who appeared in Tuesday’s post also mentioned something else, completely unrelated and on another day.

Did you know there are glow-in-the-dark tattoos? And blacklight (UV) tattoos? I had no idea until my co-worker said that a friend of his had a glow-in-the-dark tattoo. I forget what subject we were discussing and how we got onto tattoos. It’s a skull, I think, made of regular ink but the eyes are filled with the glowing ink. So they appear empty during the day or in lit rooms, but they glow when it’s, umm, dark.

I was going to link to some websites, but most places that show examples of tattoos are not completely family-friendly. So I’ll let the curious reader find those sites himself. But I will say that one of the more interesting examples of a blacklight tattoo was someone who had bones (i.e. skeleton) drawn along his arm and hand and fingers, with the correct bones at the appropriate places. During the day, no one would really notice his arms. But when he would go under a blacklight (say for laser tag), then his arms would appear like an X-ray.

I didn’t see one of these, but I’m thinking the Cheshire Cat would be a good candidate for one of these inks. It seems that the blacklilght ink is fine, but glow-in-the-dark inks can be radioactive and are not recommended. There are ways other than tattoos to have your hands glow.

“So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.”
– Exodus 34:30

Yesterday I bought a reel to store my 100′ extension cord. Until yesterday, it had been sitting in a less-than-neat pile. But now it is organized.

While I was setting up the cord reel, I noticed a warning on the label. It said to unroll the cord before use.  I initially thought “why bother with that?” Isn’t the point of the reel to keep the cord in a nice coil? Why not let it stay coiled, like the garden hose does? It doesn’t complain at all. Then the lessons of how to make an electromagnet came to mind, and I thought there might be something to it.

There is some argument about whether it is induction causing the issue or just the normal heat associated with voltage drop for such a long wire. Normally the heat would be able to dissipate along the surface area of the cord. With the cord wound tightly however, there is much less surface area. Normal household loads for a moderate time should not cause any problems. But I would still be careful not to let any metal go into the core of the cord reel.

“He covers {His} hands with the lightning, And commands it to strike the mark.”
– Job 36:32

Growing up in my family, I was informed that humans have a separate dessert stomach. I don’t remember when this knowledge was conveyed to me – it is one of those things that everyone just always knew. No matter how much you ate for dinner and no matter if you could not eat another bite of beef/chicken/pasta/insert-other-dinner-item-here, you could always eat some dessert. And this post will show you the science behind the dessert stomach.

After investigating the matter further, I have concluded that, although many people indicate the dessert stomach does not exist, it does exist. This is in stark contrast to the ridiculous notion that some people have a hollow leg where all their food goes. Those who eat a lot, more than would be expected, are said to have such a leg (or two, in extreme cases). For some reason, I have never liked that saying. The stomach doesn’t go anywhere near the leg. It would be absurd to have the digestive tract go down into the leg and then back up. It would have to be early in the digestive process, in order to allow people to eat a significant amount, so the plumbing would be quite crazy.

But the dessert stomach exists; it exists in your brain rather than in your belly. It is a psychological concept known as the law of diminishing returns. It says that more is not necessarily better. For example, 5 cupcakes won’t taste 5 times as good as one cupcake. At the end of your meal, you have consumed enough beef so that the return on taste has diminished. More beef doesn’t taste good anymore. And the same goes for potatoes, green beans, or whatever else you have for dinner. Each dinner item has been eaten and the initial tastiness has decreased, such that you do not want to eat any more of them.

But now dessert arrives. This is a new food group, a new taste that has not appeared in your dinner yet. This is the second part of the law of diminishing returns – in order to be satisfied, you need something new. So your mind tells your body that this should be good, and your body sets aside the feeling of being full – but only for this new taste. And thus: the dessert stomach.

“So they ate and were well filled, And their desire He gave to them.”
– Psalm 78:29

Here is my first Java applet. For those who don’t know what a Java applet is, it is a little program.

Just click on the square below to start. I think everyone should be familiar with the concept. The goal is to get the numbers in order. Click on a number next to the blank square to move that square into the now formerly blank spot. To reset the grid to a new random order, use your browser’s reload button.

“But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.”
– 1 Corinthians 14:40

In speaking with a relative-in-law recently, I thought of my earlier post about video monitors. The relative-in-law mentioned the phenomenon that the baby will sense your presence when you go check on him, reminiscent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If you open the door to see if the baby is asleep, that action will awaken him when he otherwise would not have been awakened.

I haven’t decided whether to call it the Heisenbaby Uncertainty Principle or the Babyberg Uncertainty Principle. Either way, the principle is that measuring the state of the baby will affect the state of the baby. The benefit of using a video baby monitor, as opposed to an audio baby monitor, is that it minimizes the effect of the Heisenbaby Uncertainty Principle.

On a related note, here is a story. When our oldest was a baby, his crib was within sight of the dining table, through an open doorway. We were remodeling the bedrooms and so his crib was temporarily in the living room. We found that if we were at the table and he was in his crib, he would be content as long as we didn’t make eye contact with him. If we did make eye contact, then he knew that we knew he was there and he would cry to be picked up. Some mealtimes, especially when grandparents were over, were interesting: “Whatever you do, don’t look directly at the baby!”

“For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by, Or {as} a watch in the night.”
– Psalm 90:4

We took my wife to dinner for Mother’s Day. This particular restaurant had free suckers, and the kids knew it. So when they were done eating, they asked for them. Since it was Mother’s Day, we let the kids get one sucker each so that my wife could enjoy the rest of her meal in peace.

One child chose watermelon, and the other chose blue raspberry. I am not quite sure how raspberry got assigned the color blue. My guess is that when the artificial flavor industry giants collude, they decided that there were too many other red flavors and not enough blue flavors. Really, is blueberry the only other blue flavor?

Green has lime and apple, yellow has lemon and banana, red and pink have cherry and strawberry and watermelon, and orange has orange and peach. I suppose purple is used only for grape – they could have also chosen purple for raspberry. Not all raspberries are red – there is the black raspberry variety. They could have made the color for artificial raspberry flavor as black. Black raspberries are more like a dark purple, so I think purple would be a more fitting color than bright blue.

The child with the blue raspberry sucker of course had his tongue turn very blue. I asked what flavor he had, and he replied “blue raspberry”. I said that I have never seen a raspberry that’s blue. So he picked up the sucker wrapper (which had blue raspberries drawn on it), showed it to me, and said “Now you have!”

“The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.”
– Genesis 1:12