Teeth-Controlled iPod

Osaka University develops teeth-controlled iPod interface

Shared Phone

I don't call M. at work often. Both of our jobs require high concentration so we usually keep to email or IM as a mean of communication during the workday. On my way home today, I called M. at work. The phone only had my partial attention because I was driving and listening to the radio. After four to five rings, a woman picked up the phone. "Hello?"

Confused, I blurted out, "Is M. there?"

I wasn't rude really, but under normal respectable circumstances I would have kindly asked, "May I speak to M. please?" Unfortunately having a stranger on the other end of the phone completely caught me off-guard. I mean, I know he has coworkers, and I know they share the office phone, but in the age of cellphones and dedicated Skype accounts, I'm so accustomed to calling a number and having exactly the person I called pick up the phone. It was almost as if I forgot how to ask for a person on the phone. Weird.

What is a Blog

Over the weekend I tried to explain the concept of a blog to my mom. I said, "it's like writing a diary, except you want the whole world to read it." Funny, since I highly suspect she read my diary when I was a kid. Well, this was never confirmed, but she would know random things I wrote in my diary, which made her highly suspicious.

I don't think she knows I have a blog.

Of course I also used to believe that there was an alternate Mom under the bedroom floor. We had tatami flooring, so the floor was elevated. We used to keep bottles of soda in the space between the tatami flooring and the actual room floor. Anyways, for a while I thought the nice Mom and the mean Mom take turns. When it's not her turn, she hides with the soda bottles.

Yes, I was a strange kid.

Downtown Los Altos

M. commented once that for a small downtown area, there are a surprising number of salons in Los Altos. So it was funny for me to stumble across this article talking about downtown Los Altos:

"Preserving retail space downtown has been a city priority for the council. Shops provide a pedestrian-friendly, browsing element that promotes foot traffic, especially in high-profile areas like Main and State streets. Salons do not, according to the city's General Plan. For those reasons, the city passed a moratorium to limit salons for one year in 2000 believing retail space was becoming threatened..."