Monday Meandering - 7.2.12

The big news this week-end was the announcement of the arrival of an In-N-Out in town. Or near to town. The rumored location is on IH-35 in Round Rock, near Ikea. Don't think we'll be driving out there much, since there are excellent burgers much closer. The current buzz in town is over the Hopdaddy Burger Bar. It appears to be a local enterprise, promoting organic Angus beef (or goat, buffalo, turkey or other game) and "crafted" burgers. Barb met some friends there the other day; the burger got her highest rating: "It's a hamburger."

Did the week-end just seem to drag on endlessly? That's because they tinkered with the time Saturday and added an extra second. I could sure tell the difference, I tell you! It was to compensate for a creeping divergence from solar time, meaning the period required for Earth to complete a day.

Normally, the planet takes just over 86,400 seconds for a 360-degree revolution, but it wobbles on its axis and is affected by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon and the ocean tides, all of which brake the rotation by a tiny sliver of a second. This was the 25th intervention to add a "leap second" to UTC, dating from 1972, when the world went off astronomical time and started relying on an atomic Timex. So, how did you spend your extra second?

I told you about my archival project. I continue to find interesting (at least to me) bits of trivia in the file drawers. Like this item on an old Mastercard bill:

That first charge is for tickets to see Brazil and Netherlands play a quarter-final World Cup match at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1995. The tickets cost $120.00. It could have cost more. Much more. The way the tickets worked for the USA World Cup was by lottery; you sent your lottery ticket and credit card info in and that made you eligible for the drawings. If you won, you were assigned - and charged - for tickets to whatever game was being drawn for; it could have been group play, one of the knock-out rounds, or even the very expensive championship in Los Angeles. I asked Barb what we would do if we won tickets to the Final; she said, "We would get on a plane and go see it, silly."

Last year Texas was on fire; sadly this year it seems to be Colorado's turn. The news from the Colorado Springs area is really disturbing. Many years ago I attended a conference held at Glen Eyrie, the Navigator's beautiful facility located in Waldo Canyon, next door to the Garden of the Gods. At this writing, Glen Eyrie is not harmed, but many near-by houses and buildings have been destroyed, and of course everyone was evacuated. While at that conference, we went a short distance down the road to the Flying W Ranch, for a chuck wagon meal and a fun evening of entertainment. Sadly, the Flying W was destroyed last week.

You may remember that back in February, I warned you that all our medical devices are eves-dropping on us, and reporting our activity to Big Brother. My closing statement in that blog was, "Just to be on the safe side, right now I'm examining my toothbrush very carefully. It did come from the Dentist's office, you know."  Well, my fellow Americans, take a look at this:

Bits meet bite: Check out the connected toothbrush

Want to really embrace the quantitative self? Forget tracking your sleep and start tracking your dental hygiene. Beam Technologies, a year-old startup, is set to introduce a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush and app that will launch next month. The toothbrush contains a sensor and Bluetooth radio that will send your brushing information to a smartphone app. Later versions will also track how long you spent in certain areas of the mouth and might add some kind of gamification layer to help encourage better brushing.

Remember, you heard it here first! Now where did I put that aluminum foil hat?