If you want cheap gas . . .

. . . move to Venezuela. It's only 15 cents a gallon.

Andrew and Jacob's 15 minutes of fame, Part I, Collectors Edition

I'm a little delinquent in putting this up, but this fort, modified slightly to have a greater resemblance to King Kong, made the Novi Commnity newspaper in December of last year ('05). This is the missing (from this blog, anyway) part of Andrew and Jacob's 15 minutes of fame.

Jacob is pictured here. The picture in the paper included Jacob , Bethany, and Elise, plus other neighborhood contributors and of course, Andrew.

Andrew and Jacob's 15 minutes of fame, Part 2

My brother, Andrew Schmid, and his son, Jacob, are getting all 15 minutes of their fame out of the way this year. First their King Kong snow fort landed them in the Novi paper in January, now Andrew's expert commentary on Pine Derby vehicle design and manufacturing has him being quoted in the Free Press. Jacob and his car get a mention, too. Didn't he have a Batmobile design?

You can read it here.

I guess all of that schooling and time at Ford taught him something about cars. Here's an excerpt from his e-mail.

I guess this is my year. I got quoted in the Detroit Free Press Newspaper's Community section. For those who do not know, a Pinewood Derby is a race conducted by Boy Scouts. Basically, cars are made out of a piece of pine wood that is formed into the body. The plastic wheels are installed into the body with nails. They roll down a ramp and the fastest wins. I was put in charge of the vehicle design competition.

P.S. No Schmids are visible in the picture.

Davin, Adam says you need this

Adam tells me that Davin needs a good uninstaller. He has an insatiable appetite for installing applications. So do I. Now, if we can get enough people to blog about AppZapper 1.3, we can both get an easy to use uninstaller (AppZapper 1.3) for free via MacZot! (A mac sofware Woot-like site) .

What's the catch, you ask? They are lowing the price $0.05 for every blog post link and will thus require 293 blog posts to reach free.

Get the details and post a comment with your blog post link here.

P.S. I tried out the demo version of AppZapper recently and it is quite simple to use. It has cool sound effects when you Zap an App, too. Fun!

Really Dealing with Stress

Tom Asacker is smart enough to see that the usual advice for stress relief has us running from the problem instead of addressing it head on.

Most people, Americans at least, do the same thing with their debt load. Instead of spending less they think a new low interest rate, debt consolidation or lower monthly payment will solve the problem. For most, it doesn't. More on this later.

And while we're on the topic of relieving stress, isn't it fear we're trying to deal with? What is stress, but fear? More on dealing with fear later, too, maybe.

Joke of the month

I received this from Blinker Bob. It was the best laugh I've had in some time.

---------
Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the
night celebrating.

Mick, the bartender says, "You'll not be drinking anymore tonight,
Paddy!"

Paddy replies "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off and falls flat on his
face.

"Shoite," he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself
off.

He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face again.

"Shoite, Shoite!" He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if
he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine.

He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame.

He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels
much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his
face.

"Boy... I'm smashed," he says to himself.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door,
hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside.

He takes a look up the stairs and says "No way."

So he crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it
to the bed."

He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face.

He says, "Dang it" and ultimately climbs into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of
coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?"


Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was smashed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned, . . You left your wheelchair at the pub."

Moore's Law applied to razors

Did you ever wonder why Gilette tells you you need five, no six blades to get a clean shave? It's because of Moore's Law . Thanks to Gordon Moore, other technologies must constantly increase thier complexity and capabilities. Don't believe me? Then check out this piece in the Economist.

Getting the best value from a one-trip salad bar

Warning. You may want to do some strength conditioning and check with your doctor before you try this.

Maximizing your ROI at the Pizza Hut salad bar

Six Degrees of Wikipedia

If you liked Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon or the Six Degrees of Separation idea in general , you'll love Six Degrees of Wikipedia.

For those of you seeking college money

If your looking for money for college. Here are a few sites of interest.

fastweb.com
This site is about finding scholarships. Go find some "free" money.

finaid.com
This site is broader providing information on loans, scholarships, educational savings plan, military aid, and other types of aid. It also has some financial caclulators.

collegeanswer.com
This site is hosted by Sallie Mae. No, she isn't some sothern belle. It's the federal student loan program. Th site has some useful information about the entire college process fro preparing to choosing to, of course, financing.

More choices can lead to lower sales

Michael Kanellos over at CNet has a good post on the negative effects of our glut of choices.

Killing me softly with salad dressing choices

"Studies back this up. In a grocery store experiment, a table loaded with 24 types of jams got many visitors, but sales were ten times higher when only six jams were offered. In a study of the 401K plans at 1,500 companies, participation in retirement plans dropped 2 percent every time ten more investment choices were added to the mix. In speed dating, participants had a greater chance of hooking up if they met six, rather than twelve, people in a session."

They think that intelligent filters may help people narrow their choices, but how do you put an intelligent filter on a grocery store isle?

It's curious that I saw this today because I thin there is a lot of opportunity in the filtering business.

Quote of the day

"Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay."

- Sam Abell

via AMA e-news

Quote of the day

"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."

Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967) American industrialist

via daily e-mail from justsell.com

Michigan makes the Crazy Street Names List

Can you imagine having Psycho Path for a mailing address. What would be the ideal business on Psycho Path? A butcher? A barber? A counselor? How about Bates Hotel?

via Reddit.com

Take medication, get a gambling habit.

Apparently one of the side effects they should mention in the ads for these Parkinson's drugs is compulsive gambling. Strange.

By now you must have seen the ads where the side effects are the very condition you are seeking to treat. At least it's not a medication for people with a drug habit.

Tenacious Kids - A Tribute to Tribute

OK, I'm so behind the times. I had never heard Tribute, byTenacious D, until Monday evening. I smiled all the way though it. It seemed to me a rockin' spoof of "The Devil Went Down to George". So now Noel links to some kids acting it out.

Come to think of the Spartan hoopers could use some Tenacious D, too. Maybe I should send a CD to Coach Izzo.

DIY Simpson's character

Simpsonmaker is a great site to turn yourself or your friends into a Simpson's character. Enough said.

Every house needs a hidden passageway

This company specializes in hidden passageways for your home or business I suppose. You can pay to have them installed or do it yourself. Click on Videos to see animation of the designs. The

My favorite is the chair that is also the secret entrance to a spiral slide. ( Click on Animation #4) The little kids would be using this one all of the time. "Excuse me I have to go downstairs to get something again"

They claim it increases the value of your home. Of course, it will create buzz in the neighborhood, too.

via reddit.com

If you like to watch the Winter Olympics

We'll definitely be tuning in for some Olympic action. My family has had an interest in the Winter Olympics as far back as I can remember. My Dad grew up in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where they hosted the Winter Olympics in the 50's and my dad and his buddies also did a lot of winter sports on their own.

If your following the Olympics in the U.S. of A., NBC has well designed page for you to keep up on things.

This first page gives you the TV schedule for all of their coverage.

Another page is a table of days and Sports with Medal Days marked with what else, a medal. Click on the day your interested in and you get a run down of everything going on that day and what time it is occurring in Torino time. If you want to see the event schedule for a specific sport, click on it, and you can the entire schedule of events in that sport. Smart.

Now if I had a Tivo to skip all of the commercials. Which reminds me, David Pogue has another good post on human friendly design that mentions the Tivo. Did you know the Tivo takes into account the delay between you seeing where you want to be in the show and pressing the play button. Nice.

But I digress. Go USA. Go Switzerland, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera, Helvetica.

The Swiss have four native languages. German, French, Italian, and Romantsch. Swiss-German, a dialect of German that most Germans cannot understand, and Romantsch were the primary languages of my parents when they came to the US. Both of these are dialects and are not written languages. This may be a partial explanation for why this immigrant's son doesn't have perfect spelling. That and the fact that for Mom and Dad English was a second language.

But I digress, again. Now back to work all of you.

World Wide Waste of Time

The Guitar Shred Show will let you play around with some serious guitar riffs. A fun way to waste your time, and pretend you have guitar skills.