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My sister remembers the 80’s. She’s selling Mr T Chocolate lollipops on Etsy

Seen in Newark Airport at Christmas. Joy.

Useful information if you own an AprilAire 2400 whole house air cleaner:

The OEM filter (model 401) for the AprilAire 2400 is a MERV 8 (via since it mentions “70% of 3 micron particles”)

(more info about MERV ratings) (image via)

You can get filters that catch smaller sizes but they get expensive. For example, the best, a MERV 16 filter costs about $120 instead of the regular $25. Also, I think higher MERV ratings require a more powerful blower (see the image and mention of “Final pressure”) and/or it will wear out your existing blower faster.

Everyone (except Julia) smokes in my parents’ house. They use standard filters and I’ve noticed that all my clothes smell of smoke after I’ve been there for a couple days. I’ll try getting a MERV 11 filter for a while and we’ll see how it goes.

My new hard drive, a Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500, 500GB, 7200 rpm, 16MB, SATA-300 / RoHS / OEM / Hard Drive, model #7H500F0. It’s a midline drive, rated for 1,000,000 hours.

$150 from Tiger Direct.

It makes me giddy. I’m such a nerd.

Andre tagged me. So… 5 things about me that most people don’t know….

When I’m having stressful weeks, I sometimes talk in my sleep

I never use nail clippers on my fingers. I bite instead.

I am proud that I can eat an ice cream cone without a single drip

I have a collection of Chief Big Wheels. In high school, one of the kids I sat with, George Karl once tore up the Chief Big Wheel from his package of Big Wheels (cousin to Ding Dongs and Ho Hos). He said something like that he hated them and wanted to destroy them all. In response I (of course) took the Chief Big Wheel from my package and said that I loved them and was starting a collection. Every day, the more he told me how he hated them, the more I’d -need- to collect them. My collection has grown to about 70. That’s about 140 Big Wheel treats! Yum!

I have a secret super-hero identity where I wear the letter “R” on my chest. I’m called Resourceful Man! No, really.

I don’t really feel comfortable tagging others. But if you are reading this and saying to yourself, “Bring it on!” Consider it “brought”!

The front page of Boston.com as well as the Eagle Tribune report:

Public safety officials are not laughing and a 27-year-old immigrant from Belarus is going to end up in front of a judge for planting illuminated electronic devices throughout the Boston area that brought out bomb squads and raised fears of terrorist attacks.

The first of the devices were found early yesterday afternoon at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway. They turned out to be part of a nationwide publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon by Turner Broadcasting. Most of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

Peter Berdovsky of Arlington was arrested last night on one felony charge of placing a hoax device and one charge of disorderly conduct, state Attorney General Martha Coakley said. He had been hired to place the devices, she said.

Here is how to make the terrorist devices in question

Just to be sure you get it: 2 artists were arrested and given felony charges for putting up blinky-art around Boston. The police thought the (12″ x 12″ x 1″) blinky-art were bombs so they closed down the city. The police even blew up a couple of them just to be sure.

TJIC, add this to your Boys in Blue file.

I’m still working on this a project where I want to find and continue to know the location of 10 robots moving up to 10kph in a field about 100 yards square with 0.2-1.0 meter accuracy. RFID-Radar is -almost- a solution in a box except that it takes many seconds for it to do range-finding.

GPS isn’t accurate enough.

I’m now envisioning 2 sets of antennas using angle of arrival interferometry. I’ve been googling (and the library) my head off and not coming up with too much thus far. Do you know of an interferometry system that might detect 0.1 degree difference or so? I figure that with 2 sets, one on the X plane, one on the Y, we can get an accurate location. I’ll ping the RFID-Radar guy on this but I think he’s focused elsewhere.

Check out the Flaming Lotus Girls in Australia with the Hand of God

There was a guy in an SBA class a couple nights ago that had Tourettes Syndrome. I had seen documentaries about it but never met someone with it. It must be a horrible way to go through life.

He was sitting about 20′ from Charlotte and I. At first, it sounded like he was using a cell phone while in class. He’d say something quietly every couple seconds. I listened closer and could tell that, in general, he was occasionally echoing the words of the speaker.

Whenever he looked around the room, especially if he made eye contact with someone, he’d say something… like the kind of thing you might think for a split second if you were looking around, nervous at a party. Things like, “Don’t look at me!”, “What are you looking at?”, “What’s your problem?”

He’d sometimes feed off his own words and actions. At one point, he made eye contact with Charlotte and started scratching his eye with his middle finger trying to “subtly” give her the finger. The scratch grew into a spasm. The spasm grew into thrusting his finger across his face repeatedly and forcefully such that he was just as likely to hurt himself as insult Charlotte.

He made many people in the classroom very nervous. Several people left. Someone suggested that he was schizophrenic.

I couldn’t imagine how sucky my life would be if I had no choice but to voice every emotional thought I had. There aren’t any very effective treatments for this one in a million disorder.

I had wondered this for a long while.. http://www.coinflation.com/

…
Description Denomination Metal Value Metal % of Denomination
1909-1982 Cent (95% copper) * $0.01 $0.0175681 175.68%
1982-2007 Cent (97.5% zinc) * $0.01 $0.0095110 95.11%
1946-2007 Nickel $0.05 $0.0706507 141.30%
…

I see opportunity here.

(via)