One of my favorite gadgets is an Oregon Scientific self-setting clock with indoor and outdoor temperature sensors. I bought it on a whim on clearance at Target for something less than five dollars a couple of years ago, now I find myself consulting it frequently. I keep the probe for the outdoor sensor only just barely outside, between the screen and the glass of one of my living room windows, so the temperature displayed is not exactly what I will confront once I reach the parking lot, but it’s close enough for jazz.

The self-setting clock has always been rather temperamental. Lately it has been pretty good about resetting itself for daylight savings, but one year it went several weeks before the correct time would display. Still, I have to admit, the idea of a clock which syncs itself via radio signal is pretty cool.

Recently I noticed the display getting harder to read and then last night the outdoor temperature display dropped out altogether so I changed the batteries in both the outdoor probe and the main unit. The display is brighter and the outdoor temperature returned last night, but this morning when I came home from work the temperature was gone again and the clock is about eight hours off (presumably it has been unable to reset since returning to 00:00 hours last night, but maybe it’s channeling Moscow).

I tried resetting it, but the thing is having none of it. I guess if it still on the fritz when I wake up I’ll head off to Target to get a replacement. Funny how these objects integrate into our lives like cell phones, digital cameras and MP3 players. Sometimes I think I would be happier if I could divest myself of much of the technology I rely on and return to a simpler time, but it is true what they say about never being able to go home again and I really like knowing what the outside temperature is without turning on my computer (no way, I’d get rid of that either, of course).

According to some research that is to be published next month, looking at the Macintosh Apple logo makes individuals think further out of the box than staring at the IBM logo. This same study also showed individuals answered true and false questions more candidly after looking at the Disney logo than the E! television network logo. It would suggest that the subliminal associations which people make with various companies can impact their creativity and honesty. Some are saying that this lends credibility to the previously discounted work of James Vicary.

In the 1950s, Vicary quickly flashed messages on movie screens such as “Drink Coca Cola” and “Eat Popcorn”. He claimed that even though the messages appeared too briefly for the audience to notice, sales of these concessions increased. He later admitted that the sample was too small for the data to be conclusive and referred to the study as “a gimmick”.

Clearly people do associate brands with certain attributes. Corporations pay advertising companies huge sums of money to create these positive associations. They do this to impact consumer’s behavior (i.e., encourage them to buy their product by showing them what they could be or do with it); which is just to say, the idea that corporate logos can change behavior isn’t really all that far-fetched. It is still a far cry from the subconscious mind recognizing a message that goes “unseen” and causing one to crave popcorn.

But I am getting kind of thirsty …

Today while I was out, a man on a motorcycle got behind me at a light. Strapped to the front of him, there was a small white dog, a poodle or a bichon frise, wearing a helmet … and goggles. I am still amused.

When I came home this morning I found a trail of gumdrops leading from the parking lot to the building, no sign of Gloppy the Molasses Monster though.

For Easter, my mother sent me a greeting card with a small fabric bunny on the front of it. Today I went to Michaels to get a magnet to affix to the back of the bunny after removing it from the card:

Then I modified it a little bit:

No-brain vs. Hare-brain:

It doesn’t surprise me in the least when politicians lie. It does surprise me a little when they lie about events they know to have been well documented.

Perhaps, it is pathological and Hillary Rodham Clinton truly believes she landed in Tuzla, Bosnia, under sniper fire. Maybe in her mind today, that little girl who greeted her on the tarmac twelve years ago was an assassin.

CBS did a concise and unintentionally(?) humorous exposé (which can be seen here on YouTube) that juxtaposes clips from her speech with video from the actual events.

Thanks to Daniel who sent me the link to the video, supplied the above graphic and makes me happy in ways both large and small.

While being interviewed on Good Morning America Dick Cheney was confronted with the statistic that two-thirds of Americans were against the United States’ continued involvement in Iraq. Dick Cheney’s response was, “So?”

Somehow I missed this story back in the spring of 2006.

Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed sum of money to the victims of the Hurricane Katrina (namely, to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund), but it came with some strings attached.

It was earmarked to be spent on educational software from Ignite! Learning, a company which is owned by her son Neil Bush. I guess some people’s charity begins and ends at home.

On windy days, the noise outside my apartment window is something of a roar. On such days the noise in the hallway outside of my apartment is only heard elsewhere in the soundtrack for horror films.

Today, however, the wind outside my window was whistling. Whistling like a teapot; so much so that I felt the urge to check if I had a pot of tea on (I did not) — twice (either time).

I haven’t written much about LiveJournal here since making the switch. This website was created back in October in 2007 when things were, in my opinion, beginning to go downhill in a such a manner that drastic changes needed to take place. I didn’t really want to leave LiveJournal and the people that remained there whose journals I followed, but it seemed and proved to be inevitable.

Still I hoped that even after I deleted my account, I might see some progress and be able to restore it before it was purged to run in parallel with this weblog. That’s not happened and my old journal has since been purged while things on that site have only gotten worse. Daniel has a few entries on the subject in his journal.

The new management has forgotten or is ignoring that what they are really selling is content and that content is contributed and owned by the subscribers. Instead they’re all mixed up into thinking that their product is the space itself and that those who write interesting and engaging content are merely consumers.

Elsewhere I suggested, rather quixotically, that perhaps when SUP runs LiveJournal into bankruptcy a conglomerate of users could rise up and buy the company back, restoring it to its former self. Short of that, I don’t see a way for LJ to get back to where it was even a year ago.