…about mattresses.  Here’s his quote:

The Perfect Mattress
Don’t spend a lot of money on a big, giant mattress with double padding
on both sides and all that. Just go out and buy a normal firm mattress.
Then go buy the three-inch Tempur-Pedic pad, the memory foam, and put
it on top. I’m telling you, take my tip. It’s the perfect pressure. I
take full credit for the discovery. You will sleep in bliss forever
more . . . unless you’ve got a six-week-old.

---

Following his advice, June and I bought a foam mattress pad at Costco.  Actually, June got it for me because I mentioned how much I liked the pillow-top mattress at a recent hotel stay.  It comes with two layers: a 2.5″ memory foam layer, and a 1.5″ microfiber “down-like” layer.  When I opened the box, I found that everything had been vacuum-sealed to save space.  After opening the seals, the microfiber layer puffed out to its full glory immediately, but the memory foam remembered its squashed state and refused to expand.  Well.  The instructions said to unfold it and let it rest for 24-72 hours.  So for the next three days, there was a queen-sized foam block slowly expanding on our floor.  During that time, we put the microfiber layer on the bed, and we loved it!  At the end of the three days, we were excited to try the memory foam layer too.  We added the foam layer and slept on it for two nights.  The results?  Not good.  The memory foam sags under my hips, making me feel like I have a butt made of lead.  Let me try to describe in a picture.  Here is the standard picture used in memory foam mattress ads:

See how the foam conforms to the person’s body?  Well, this is how it felt to me:

So now June and I are going to remove the foam mattress pad and go back to the microfiber layer only.  Any ideas on what to do with the foam pad?  I guess we could always keep it around as a spare bed, since it feels a lot better on the ground than on our bed.

For speed-dating, that is.  In case you haven’t heard, the next Boston Christian speed-dating event is this Saturday, Nov 18th.

http://www.speed8boston.org

We need a few more men to fill out the registration.  Time to pull out the cape and be a superhero, to the applause of admiring women!  No, just kidding — please leave the cape at home.

My company has a policy that whenever bonus checks are given, the first $100 is given in cash, and the rest is in a check.  Seems kind of inefficient compared to direct-deposit like normal paychecks.  Because it’s not like there’s a lack of ATMs to withdraw real cash.  And $100 bills are kind of hard to spend, at least at the fine dining establishments where June and I typically unwrap our food.  So today is bonus day:

I have to say it feels kind of good to carry around a $100 bill.  If I ever start a company, I’ll keep the policy of giving away cash.  Even though it’s less convenient and efficient than an electronic bank account transfer, there’s just something about the feel of money.  It makes you feel like you have… spending power.  In a way that carrying around a credit card just doesn’t do.

Five years ago, I was in a startup that made a sale to a police office in Japan.  Oddly enough, they paid by cash.  We had made a lot of sales to companies that paid the normal way, but this cash was a cause for celebration:

These past few months I’ve been thinking about money.  Mostly, how to collect and organize my thoughts about it.  June and I have been in an Economic Discipleship small group with mostly people from CCFC and The Gathering.  The focus is how to live simply and give generously.  Our discussions have been really good (and personal), and I’m trying to figure out how to share the wealth, knowledge-wise.  Been tossing around the idea of maybe coming up with a series of 4 talks, all about being wise with money:

1. How to Earn Money (Career and Calling)
2. How to Save Money (being Chinese — just kidding — Basic Money Management and Investment)
3. How to Spend Money (Living Simply)
4. How to Give Money (Generosity and Global Impact)

But I get paralyzed by a lot of questions.  What’s the best format — is it lecture, roundtable, or something else?  What if there’s too much material for each topic to cover in one session?  Would a retreat-style setting be better?  How big is the target audience?  Where can I find the activation energy and support?  Will it be affiliated with CCFC or multiple churches?

Thoughts, anyone?

Edit: I had just bought new tires at Costco two weeks ago.    My guess is that thieves scoped out a bunch of parking lots and saw new tires in the size they needed, so they took the wheels.  Guys at work say that pros can do the whole job in 5 minutes with the use of pneumatic power wrenches.

Update: This morning I called the police and got a report number.  I then called my auto insurance company, and gave them the police report number.  They said it was covered under my comprehensive, minus my $300 deductible.  I called my mechanic (Murph @ Honda Zone), and he recommended *not* getting it towed, since it might damage the car further.  He said I should call a junkyard and get old cheap wheels to put on until I could drive it down to the shop to get real replacements.  The junkyard said the wheels would be $125 each, and tires $40 each.  Murph said that was way too much, and it would be better for him to just order new wheels and tires, and come over to my lot to install it himself.  If I got insurance approval, that is.

So I called my insurance company (Commerce via AAA) and explained the situation.  They wanted a written estimate Faxed from Honda Zone, as well as my Costco receipt showing my recent new tire purchase.  I got them the Faxes, but the second clerk just said I needed to submit a receipt, and they would work out a reimbursement.

“It’s a go,” I told Murph.  He called the local Honda dealer to get new wheels, only to learn that this month there have been five local thefts like this (all four wheels, size P205/55R16)!  Murph recommended locking lug nuts which require a special key to turn — that would deter future thefts.  It wouldn’t be covered by insurance, but I sprung for the option anyway.  Because what would suck worse than having my new tires stolen again?

If I were you, and I lived in the Cambridge/Somerville area, and I had a car with wheels of that size with new tires, and I parked outside, I’d head over to the local auto store or dealer right now and pick me up a set of those nuts.  Locking nuts to deter thieving nuts — what could make more sense than that?

Update2: 29 hours later, the car is all fixed!  Murph brought over the new wheels and installed them on-the-spot.  Then I drove over to the shop, where he put the car on a lift, checked it out, and declared no other damage.  I paid $1680 for the whole thing; we’ll see how much Commerce insurance will reimburse me.  Murph also installed Acura-brand locking lug nuts ($80 for a set of 4, a lot pricier than the non-dealer brands).  The locking lug nuts are round on the outside, and custom-cut grooved on the inside, so they require a special key to use.  My only concern is that with the wheel covers installed, you can’t even see the locking lug nuts.  So any potential thieves will still get to the point of taking off the wheel covers, and then… Psych!  I wonder if they’d be mad enough to vandalize the car at that point.  Oh well.

Fixed Car, with spiffy new wheels:

Locking lug nut on left, standard lug nut on right:

Special secret coded key for locking lug nut (please don’t copy this!):

After some months of thinking of job and career issues, calling and life purpose (including the Threshold stuff I posted on xanga), I decided to accept the role of group manager.  I had been bored with my previous level of responsibility, the door was open, and… it seemed like the right thing to do.  Now I have a job opening to fill for a position in my group.  Please email me if you know of anyone who might be interested.

Job Description:
Image Processing Engineer
Job Specific Requirements:
As a key member, you will develop novel and advanced image processing algorithms for a variety of end applications. Areas of research will include color processing, contrast enhancement, tone mapping, 3D vision, and machine vision. These algorithms will eventually be ported into hardware applications that go into final products. You will be part of a team of algorithm engineers and therefore will need to communicate (listening, documentation, verbal) complex ideas in a lucid manner. Self motivation and the ability to effectively collaborate with other engineers will be important.
Minimum Education & Work Experience:
Min Education and Work Experience: MS or PhD in Math, EE, CS or Physics, 4+ years experience developing algorithms for imaging, graphics, and/or computer vision applications. Required: Visual C/C++ expertise. Desired: Matlab and other simulation environments, color science background, experience porting algorithms to hardware (FPGA, DSPs, etc), experience in developing system critical algorithms.

I am really big on cheap home remedies.  When I was in grad school, I read that cream of tartar could be used to remove certain stains.  I think it might have been rust stains off my racquetball headband?  Anyway, my roommate Brian turned that idea into a general mockery: “Hey, maybe we can solve this problem with some cream of tartar!”

But lately I’ve found one that really works.  As the weather gets colder, I’ve started getting static shock on touching any metal.  Now if I were a mutant, that could be some sort of cool super-power, but in reality it’s just an annoyance.  Plus, it’s dangerous at work, since I handle circuit boards and chips which could be damaged that way.  June really hates getting out of the car and getting shocked when she closes the car door.  So I googled “anti-static” and found some commericial sprays.  I also found a homebrew solution that involved commercial fabric softener and ammonia.  Now I don’t mess around with ammonia, because in the back of my mind I know there’s chlorine involved, and that stuff was used as a WMD back in World War I.  So I thought, maybe commercial fabric softener itself will do the trick.

I took a sheet of Bounce (the sheets you throw in the dryer) and used it to wipe down the car seats.  Voila — no more car-exit static shock!  I think I’ll start using it on regular dryer loads, too.

For the past few years, I’ve believed the myth that hotels store your name and credit card info on your electronic keycards.  I’d heard that to be safe, you should keep those keycards after checking out (you never get charged for them, after all), and destroy them later.  Because if a thief got a hold of it, he’d have your credit card info.  And ID theft is a big deal these days.

Well, it turns out this belief is false.  Leave it to snopes.com:

Anyway, I never did the keycard-destroying thing because it takes extra work, and it feels like a waste of plastic that would go into landfills.  I figured that hotels would have their own security systems in place to erase the keycards immediately.  And I’m not afraid of credit-card theft because I subscribe to a credit-card monitoring service through Equifax.  Ironically enough, I got the free lifetime Equifax subscription because Fidelity lost a laptop containing my 401k data, along with that of thousands of other former Compaq employees.  I guess when it comes to identity theft, as in many areas of life, you can’t expect the unexpected.

But first, a short quiz.  What has the greatest effect on the speed of your everyday computing (startup, email, web browsing, switching applications)?

For most modern computers, the answer is C.  I don’t have hard numbers, but here’s my experience running Windows XP with various amounts of RAM:

So last week I specced out a machine for my cousin-in-law.  We decided the only requirements were: 1GB RAM, WinXP, and a DVD drive to watch movies.  She wanted a desktop (no need to move it around), so we added “LCD monitor” to the list.  After looking through a number of websites, we ended up ordering an entry-level machine from the Dell website for $500, including a 17″ LCD monitor.

Today I got a flyer from Micro Center advertising a $499 laptop (Winbook V415) that includes 1GB RAM, a DVD *burner*, Win XP *Pro*, 15.4″ screen, and all the standard features (USB 2.0, ethernet, wireless).  Since when did laptops cost the same as desktops, and what’s driving the price down?

One Laptop Per Child is a project started by the MIT Media Lab — their goal is create $100 laptops and give them to poor children for education.  I think that’s a great idea to unleash their learning potential and get them started on World of Warcraft.  But seriously, if regular low-end laptops keep getting cheaper, maybe market forces themselves will bring about this price point.

June is getting a haircut today.  So naturally I busted out the Cosmo Makeover software I tried out a few years ago.  Here are the top four styles we whipped up.  Any opinions?

  

June and I are flying to Buffalo tonight for a wedding trip.  And
in case you haven’t heard, all liquids are prohibited on plane flights,
since the 8/10 UK bomb scare.

No drinking water, no hair gel, no toothpaste… although they now allow up to 4oz. of eyedrops.

The
stupid thing is, it’s an irrational regulation.  There is no
evidence to support the belief that you can easily mix liquids into a
powerful explosive.  This is the stuff of TV thrillers and movies,
not reality.  Reference: Article in The Register

It
pisses me off that millions of travelers are going to be incovenienced
for no good reason.  Either because the TSA is too dumb, or
because [channeling the spirit of Michael Moore] the Bush
administration wants to keep everyone in a heightened state of fear.

What’s next?  No clothes allowed on planes?