Recycled Electrons - Blog of Keith Horowitz

I had another one of my 'ideas' :) I was thinking about the shows on Discovery/TLC, and basically missing Junkyard wars, when I thought about the formula of their shows. There is Mythbusters (my favorite) which is basically taking ideas from common culture, and usually figuring out how to make thing blow up. So I started thinking about what else would be entertaining enough to watch for 50 minutes to see them get around to blowing something up? I like watching the ones where they have to build something in a limited amount of time - well I like the building thing - the time limits can sometimes get a little annoying. Then I thought about some of the other shows - like the home improvement shows and the auto improvement and customization shows. Including the ones where they would steel somebody's ride, then trick it out. So I thought of a merger of all the ideas. Why not have a show, where you get someone out of their house, or get their car away from them. Then the build...

I was reflecting a couple of days ago, on a change of view. In my case, it has to do with humor. Jokes. Specifically, internet jokes. For a while, maybe 6 months or a year, I ran a humor mailing list. It did not have a very big distribution, but it had a high rate of publication. I had one going out 5 days a week, and another once a week. So that meant at least 6 humor-oriented pieces a week. I subscribed to a number of humor-based lists, and scoured additional source for humor, to make sure I was always sending something new. My father was big into telling jokes, and I always seemed to have trouble remembering whole jokes to tell like he did. But I supposed that was a basis for my like of humor, and wanting to do more with it. I also enjoyed sending along jokes and getting jokes. Of course, this was before people got harassment-crazy. But I noticed after a while, it got harder and harder to find new material for my list. There was always some topical humor, like Letterman's...

Seems I'm building up to stage 1 :) --- A NEW DISEASE We have identified a new disease, probably caused by a virus among geocaching people. It apparently has been in existence for a considerable time, but only recently has anyone identified this disease, and begun to study it. We call it the Acquired Cache Obsessive Syndrome (ACOS). At first, ACOS was originally considered to be psychological in nature, but after two young researchers here suddenly decided to become geocachers, we realized that we were dealing with an infectious agent. Epidemiologists here have identified three stages of this disease and typical symptoms, and they are: A. You have early symptoms (Stage I) if: 1. You think that any cache within 300 miles is near by. 2. You begin to enjoy getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning to drive 300 miles to go look in tick and mosquito infested woods to be a "FTF" for other people's caches. 3. It is fun to spend several hours a day on Saturdays and throughout the ...

A bar made entirely of ice? Talk about a cold drink! The oddest thing I read was the 'partial human figures along the walls'

Yeast found in toothpaste tube in items shipped from a jail supplier to a jain in Colorado. The concern is that the yeast could be used to make 'hooch'.

In the morning we went about an hour drive South along the front range to go apple picking. We picked a basket and a small bag's worth - and added another bag's worth of a pre-picked variety. Then we tried to find some honey in town, and ran into an 'Apple Day Parade'. Then I went up to Highlands Ranch (Southern Denver) for the monthly robot club meeting. I managed to finish putting on all the sensors for the common club robot that will do a ping-pong ball competition. On the way home, I decided to try for a couple of geocaches in the Highlands Ranch area. View from first cache This rabbit was in the street right near where I parked. It did not move when a car came by. It did not move until I got pretty close. Then it went to the other side of the street. So moved towards it again to get it out of the street. View at the second cache