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NASA Houston Tour

My boss, who is AWESOME, got us a VIP tour of NASA's Houston facility, including their pool training lab, their mockup collection, and even the moon rocks. Check it out! Sometimes it's cool to have your boss be an astronaut.


Good news

You know that annoying clunking sound my rear dampers used to make? Well that is fixed now.

These may have fixed some other problems, too, like my car's inability to pulverize transported objects such as eggs and glass.

Merry Christmas To Me

My rate of toy ordering did not slow down while I was on vacation, so by the time I got back to work this week, this is what my desk looked like.

First blood

I took my board to Kirkwood this weekend. It was really cold and windy and there's not much snow yet, but the dawn was gorgeous. When do I ever get to see dawn, really.


So it's come to this

Installed any software on Windows recently?

The experience of keeping your computer secure is now so incoherent that products from huge companies like Hewlett-Packard must beg you to defend them from the behaviors of products from other huge companies like Microsoft and Symantec.

You guys all understand that users don't read dialog boxes, right? They're not making the decisions about security and privacy that you've delegated to them. They're just playing a little mini game to click the rectangles until they're all gone.

Loyal pet needs a good home

Edit: I sold my car! It's going to a college student, bought for him by his dad. Maybe he'll even want to keep my rather embarrassing personalized plates.

Simple humor

I lol'd at this captcha test from craigslist. This is probably why other captcha implementations stick to nonsense words instead of using real words.

(Also, I tried the audio captcha. Those things are hard! It played a clip from a staticky movie soundtrack, and asked me to type the 20 word phrase the guy had said, which included the proper names of characters in the movie which I couldn't spell. I guess I'm not a person!)

Save energy
It's not a coincidence that I've been too busy to make a blog post for all of Q3. I've been hard at work on Google PowerMeter, which you can now get via our shiny new integration with The Energy Detective, an in-home monitoring device.

The device is $199, and to install it you need to fiddle with your breaker box. But once you have it, you can start tracking your energy usage, which (with PowerMeter's help) will let you use less energy. This will save you money, and save the atmosphere carbon emissions. (Not to mention all the fun you'll have demanding new features from my team.)

If you buy one and you live nearby, I'd be happy to install it for you, or at the very least take a look at your breaker panel and tell you if it will work or not.

About privacy
If you're curious, our team is absolutely rabid about keeping your data private and secure. E.g.:
  • Yes, your data is sent encrypted.
  • Yes, we use an anonymous key to link your account to your device and/or utility.
  • No we don't have your credit card number, your name, your address, your utility account number, or anything else identifying about you.
  • No, we don't want to sell your data.
  • No, we don't give any Google account information to anyone else. Devices and utilities can't figure out which Google account is yours even if they wanted to.
  • No, we don't correlate your energy usage with your search behavior or your use of any other Google product. Not only is that illegal in Europe, it's also a damned pain in the ass.
Happy energy saving!
New car

I got a new car last month. I've been avoiding mention of it because it is, frankly, ridiculous.

It's another Subaru, except faster than my old one. It's also a great deal uglier than my old one, if such a thing is possible. Here are some pictures of it from its best angles.

Anyone want to buy my old Subaru? It's well-loved.

Learning experience

At the new California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, their aquarium has a pair of electric eels.

To the right of the tank is this fun, educational display that helps kids understand how electric eels hunt.

(The little "touch here" hand icon is even small, specially designed for a child's hand.)


The views expressed on this site are mine personally, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.