Check out the clever trick at http://www.instructables.com/id/Invisible-Book-Shelf/.
I walked up the stairs to the second floor of a nursing home today and was denied entry by a keypad the code for which I did not know. The above sign suggested I go back downstairs and try to reach the second floor by elevator instead. Such precautions are used often in nursing homes to prevent disoriented residents from wandering off into dangerous situations.
Maybe I don’t get out much, but I’d never seen the word “elope” used for anything other than running away and getting married. Merriam-Webster backs the sign fully, though: “1: to slip away : escape, 2: a: to run away from one’s husband with a lover b: to run away secretly with the intention of getting married usually without parental consent”
Nevertheless, when a nurse’s aide saw me through the small window in the door and let me in, I had to tell her that if the management was worried about the possibility of a couple of ninety-year-old sweethearts sneaking out of the building and running off to Vegas, then the residents there were clearly my kind of people.
After they had an article on it last week, I’m agonizing over whether to do this program.
I don’t know if I have the sticktoitiveness.
Should I try?
Ever see someone at a red light waiting to make a left-hand turn at an intersection with no arrow, and when the light turns green, instead of waiting, they hit the gas immediately and try to make the turn before the oncoming traffic gets started?
Ever think people like that were arrogant jerks?
Ever wish that for just once you could see one get creamed?
I did today. 
If the world you see out your own window and the world the press describes for you are not the same, may I make a bold proposal as to which is the real world?
It’s the one you see and live in.
Recently there were 15 hostages freed from a Colombian terrorist group. One of them was a woman who had once run for president of Colombia: Ingrid Betancourt. Upon her rescue from five years of captivity, she repeatedly made it clear in a number of ways that she was a Christian and that she thanked God for her survival of the ordeal. How the press handled that is outlined and criticized in several things I’ve read lately, most notably by Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion and Sheila Liaugminas at Mercatornet.com. Some reported on it, but others ignore her faith entirely. The Associated Press went with a story that masqueraded as an in-depth look at her experience but left out all reference to religion entirely.
When news organizations do things like this, but in your own life you talk with neighbors and co-workers about what’s going on in your church or what you’ve been praying for lately, which is the real world? Yours, or the one the AP paints?
[It’s] brought me closer to God and to my wife - that’s a pretty good deal - and to my family. That’s a pretty good place to be.
Spending five minutes and forty-five seconds to watch this interview with him is a better use of time than anything else I can recommend today.
What a giant of a man.
One of the first financial investments I ever made was in a mutual fund concentrated in energy stocks. It was 1979. Gasoline was soaring upward of a dollar a gallon. Oil was running out. “Synfuels” were all the rage. I figured the future was in finding an alternative to oil, and I’d get in on the ground floor.
That marked the end of the 70’s energy crisis. A couple of years later I sold my $100 of mutual fund shares for $70 or so.
Today, I figure it’s time for me to step up to the plate again. This week I purchased 50 shares of stock in Ultra Petroleum Corporation at about $86 a share.
(I love their website. No chit-chat about a “green” strategy, no pictures of children running through fields of daisies - just a graphic of an oil rig aimed straight at the very same moon they intend their oil prices to shoot over.)
So if I have once again, thirty years later, called the top on the energy market, and prices plunge, you’ll have me to thank.
You’re welcome.
I’ve seen plenty of instances where I’ve thought news organizations were trying to make the news themselves, but National Public Radio was so intentional today they shocked me.
In a break between stories, All Things Considered made an appeal for people who lose their jobs in the next few weeks to send their stories in. They said any layoff situation was welcome. They wanted to make a collection. They urged e-mailers to include the word “firing” in their subject line.
Never mind that unemployment is entirely a statistical topic and individual anecdotes like this could never be broadcast on a radio station in any statistically significant way.
By the way, they gave no invitation for and showed no interest in any stories from people who just found great jobs or whose companies are having exceptional success.
I’d love to point you to a link where you could hear a replay of this, but I don’t find it on their website. I do think I’ll keep an eye on how this all plays out.
A long list of people in my life have criticized my taste in visual art. They don’t like my sense of decor; they don’t like the paintings I like; they, ahem, don’t even like the styles I choose for this website.
None of these critics, to my knowledge, have ever made a darned cent as an artist. Just let the record note that.
Anyway, I’m falling in love with what this guy does. I don’t know anything about him and don’t even remember how I found him but I think he’s good.
Surprisingly, I don’t think I’ve mentioned Lifehacker here before. It’s a blog run by a group of people who survey the Internet horizon for useful computer programs and websites.
I have no idea how Gina Trapani and her staff find all this stuff, but you can expect several new gems every day, even on the weekends. Much, maybe even most, of it is free. (And yet they vet their tips well - you won’t get strange things on your computer from going to sites they recommend.)
A couple of years ago when I discovered Lifehacker, I would go there every few months. Gradually it became every few weeks, and now it’s quietly slipped into the list of sites I visit every day. If I haven’t mentioned it here before, it’s probably because I subconsciously assumed it was a little too geeky for some of the people who visit my site. It’s not. Check it often enough, and soon you’ll find something you’ll be glad you discovered.