I’ve noted for a while a lot of misunderstanding about hydrogen fuel cells as a possible solution to our dependence on fossil fuels. This article correctly points out that since we have to manufacture hydrogen, it is really an energy storage mechanism, not a fuel.
The manufacturing process uses electricity to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting hydrogen is collected, and distributed. Then fuel cells combine the hydrogen with oxygen again, producing water and electricity. It takes more energy to create, collect, store and distribute the hydrogen than is regained when it is used to create electricity–which makes hydrogen a very inefficient energy storage mechanism.

When I walked into the office kitchen the other morning to get my coffee, several of my coworkers were huddled in front of the snack vending machine, talking excitedly. It seems that one of my coworkers, let’s call him Ray, wanted to buy a Pop Tart for breakfast, but the Pop Tart in the front had slid to the side and looked like the coiled steel thing might not push it all the way out.
The group discussed whether they thought “Ray” could shake the machine enough to make the Pop Tart fall if it didn’t come out, whether he could possibly get his arm through the slot up into the machine, etc. I thought they were going to take bets.
Finally, “Ray” deposited his coins. There was a tense silence in the room as the Pop Tart moved toward the edge but not all the way. “Ray” shook the machine a few times and it fell. The group cheered.
That drama was the highlight of our day at the office.

In case you’re wondering, O N E L is this year’s spelling of the mantel stocking hooks, created by Katie.

These are the two vegetables that we had with dinner the other night. I’m pretty sure our kids are totally unfamiliar with their proper names. But who cares? They both taste yummy with a little cheese sauce. Fortunately, they’re both still to young to understand why I thought ‘You want a little head?’ (and variations thereof) is so funny.

Every time I hear a news report about the problems of General Motors or Ford, I get pissed off. Their current problems are all their own damn fault. I heard years ago that pretty much ALL of their profits came from high-margin, cheaper-to-build, gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. So, now that the price of gasoline has inevitably gone up and consumers are buying fewer of their profitable vehicles, these companies are in poor economic shape. Shocking! Who could have predicted such an event!
My astounding observation is corroborated by The Truth About Cars:

We’re looking at two strategies here. Toyota: build affordable transportation for the masses at a quality level that slightly exceeds expectations relative to price. GM et al: build oversized, under-engineered and fuel inefficient cars for people who don’t care about money while palming off sub-standard cars on mainstream customers. Is it any wonder that the truck-crazed domestic manufacturers lost mission critical market share to the transplants?

A while back, I wrote about some annoying behavior with iTunes regarding podcasts. I’ve worked around that problem by adding my podcasts to playlists and syncing them as playlists instead of via the Podcasts sync screen.
This means that syncing podcasts to my iPod is not as automatic as it was before, but I don’t mind managing a couple of playlists by hand. It also solves another minor problem: a couple of the podcasts that I subscribe to consist of very short recordings. I can listen to several of those during one commute. The problem is that if I play them via the Podcasts menu on my iPod, at the end of each one, I have to navigate from the top level menu back down to the podcast and play the next one. Not a great idea when I’m driving at 70 mph. But, if I add all of them to a playlist and play that, my iPod will just play one podcast after another.
Update January 11, 2007: Please see Apple’s intended solution to this problem.

At the beginning of the month, I blogged about Austin’s new toll expressways and their effect on my commute. Now that we’ve lived with them for almost a month, I’m having other thoughts.
Pflugerville has long been one of Austin’s lesser known suburbs, and our subdivision is on the outskirts of Pflugerville. Now, all of a sudden, we have two expressways leading directly to Pflugerville, and more precisely, to our neighborhood’s front door. A month ago, we would have been loath to go into Austin, or even nearby Round Rock, without a really good reason. Now, Round Rock has the closest shopping and running into Austin is largely not a big deal.
On top of all this is the feeling of impending doom development. Since we’re at the intersection of two freeways, I think our area is about to become the new retail hub. In a couple of years, it will look nothing like it does today. Strange.

I’ve had a very predictable evening routine for the last several years. After dinner, get Samuel ready for bed. Then, at around 8:30 or so, I spent an hour or more on his second bed, usually with my laptop, because he would only go to sleep with someone in the room with him. After 60-90 minutes, when I was sure he was sound asleep, I’d slip out, maybe watch TV for 30 minutes and then retire myself at 10 p.m. or a little later.
A couple of months ago, we finally sought help on Samuel’s sleep problems (the bedtime routine and the fact that he rarely stayed in his room the full night). Over the last few weeks, he started to sleep all night in his bed, but he was still resistant to going to sleep alone. He wanted to do so, but was still afraid. Then, week before last at bedtime, Katie asked him again, and this time he said that he would try it. He’s gone to bed by himself almost every night since! He spent two nights over Thanksgiving weekend with his Uncle Jim, and he slept by himself in the gust room there. That was a very big accomplishment.
So, now I have my evenings again. Since Katie usually goes to sleep by 9:00 or so, it’s nice to have time again with her again. But in addition to that, I have time to myself to do whatever I want. I’m still adjusting. So far, I’ve watched quite a bit of TV. But now that I’m getting tired of TV, I’m starting to pick up my former activities: I’ve been thinking about getting my needlepoint out again and I’m thinking about some personal programming projects.

From an IM conversation with a friend whose son is about 3 years old now:

Friend: My plan is to get him playing Dungeons and Dragons when he turns 10. That way we can guarantee that we won’t have any girl problems until after he’s 18.
Me: That plan worked out for you, didn’t it?

Slate writer Jack Shafer notes that “As recently as 1980, the New York Times reserved an honored—if small—place in its pages for “bus plunge” news. Whenever buses nose-dived down mountainsides…the news wires moved accounts of the deadly tragedies, and the Times would reliably edit them down to one paragraph and publish.” In more recent times, however, the Times has been virtually free of bus plunge news.
The reason: the move from manual to digital typesettings. In the manual days, such short news items were used to fill in remaining space in columns. Nowadays, that’s not necessary. Most interesting is that many such items were written in such a way that they could be shortened even further due to space needs:

This Times plunge story, for example, filled the loose space at the end of a news column on July 21, 1964:

Bus Plunge Kills 8
LAS PALMAS, Canary Islands, July 20 (UPI)—Eight persons perished today when a small bus plunged over a 300-foot cliff into the sea near the town of Mogan. One man jumped from the vehicle before it reached the edge and was saved. All the victims were Spaniards.

As typeset, this article takes up 10 lines. I assume that the copy editor who cut this piece from the AP wire included the sentences about the jumper and the victims’ nationality to maximize the makeup editors’ options. By physically snipping one sentence, the makeup editors could reduce it to a nine-line story on the fly. By snipping two, they could cork an even smaller layout hole with a six-line story.

On a related note, I can’t get the Bobs’ song Bus Plunge out of my head now.
(via Rafe Colburn)
UPDATE: This made it onto MeFi after I blogged about it. Mildly interesting thread.