So this is going to start out a little weird, but I was in the Men’s restroom at a fancy hotel. Admittedly, it’s a nice hotel and the bathrooms were pretty ornate. But, I go to a lot of conferences and events at nice hotels, and after a while, they all blend together. As I was walking into the Men’s room, a somewhat embarrassed man smiled at me as he took out his camera and took a picture of the bathroom. That’s right, a picture of the bathroom.

At first, I scoffed to myself, “what, has this guy never seen a bathroom before?” But that is such a ridiculous thing to think. This guy was impressed. He saw something that he thought was beautiful, and he wanted to remember it by taking a picture of it. He experienced a moment of joy in marveling at this impressive bathroom. And he would experience several more moments of joy in the future when he got to show friends and family this picture that he took, and when he got to explain why he thought it was worth taking.

This guy got something priceless for free. He experienced joy in just looking around this bathroom. It reminded me that I should pay attention to the many things around me every day that I take for granted, and to try to look at them with fresh eyes. I work with amazing companies that make incredible products. I use computers that make trillions of calculations every day to make my life easier. I fly to lots of great cities all over the planet, and I meet some of the most unique people I can imagine.

I’m sure I learned this lesson a long time ago, but now I just need to remember it: you can create your own joy and have as much of it as you like, for free.

If you’re stuck without collar stays, you can either A) put your tie on and let your shirt take flight with its brand new set of wings, B) spend hours hunting for a men’s clothing store where you can pay large sums of money for little pieces of plastic, or C) make yourself a new set of temporary collar stays out of a business card. If you’re like me, you’re interested in option C), so here is my quick guide.

1. Put the business card up against the collar stay “pocket” on the backside of the shirt collar. Measure the length of the collar stay you need to make since you will probably need to shorten the business card to make it fit, and mark the card at that location by starting to fold it.
2. Continue to fold the card back-and-forth, making a sharp crease where you need to trim the card. Once the card feels weak enough to tear along this line, go ahead and remove the part of the card you don’t need.
3. Now, fold the card in half the long way. Repeat the process of creasing the fold, and folding the card back-and-forth until you can split the card into two equal parts.
4. With each of your new collar stays, fold the card in thirds along the length of the card. You don’t need to crease the folds this time, nor do you need to fold them back-and-forth. The goal isn’t to tear the card anymore, you are just trying to make the paper thick by creating three layers.
5. If needed, fold a “point” onto one end of each collar stay so that it fits into the collar stay “pocket” better.
6. Insert your collar stays, and enjoy the look of a nice, straight collar.

This has worked for me on a couple of occasions, but I am sure someone out there has a better idea. So if you have improvements on this, or a better method altogether, please leave a comment.

I’ve always found remote control cars, planes, and helicopters cool, but QuadCopters (and related variants) take this to a new level for me. They are nice remote control helicopters (with four rotors to make them easier to fly than traditional helicopters), but with a twist. Most of these QuadCopter kits include advanced computing power in the form of Arduino boards. Arduino is a topic for another time, but for now, consider it a cheap open-source computer (like the Raspberry Pi). So with the advanced battery technology available today, small onboard computers, and open source hardware and software design, it is possible to build your very own helicopter drone for less than $1,000. Heck, you might even be able to do it for less than $500, I’m not sure.

To see some of the cool stuff that people are doing with this toy/platform, check out DIY Drones. With this technology, people are creating autonomous aircraft that can fly to various waypoints (programmed from a groundstation) and take photos and video (amongst other things). I’ll admit that this could be a bit creepy, but I still find it cool. And I’d be remiss for not mentioning that you can pick up something like this at Amazon for $300. The Parrot AR.Drone has built-in video capture, and you control it with your cell phone.

I’ll admit that this one is a little odd, but I nonetheless found it interesting. I was reading a magazine, saw an offbeat business opportunity, and that led me to this tidbit about dog poop. I knew dog waste was unpleasant, but I didn’t realize it was toxic.

So first, the business opportunity. PooPrints is a company offering to DNA match dog waste to dogs. The idea is that apartment and housing complexes will be able to locate offenders of their pet clean-up rules without catching dogs in the act (short article on CNN.com). OK. Not my thing, but whatever.

Here’s the part where I learned something (other than that there is a business out there for just about anything). The article I read (as well as the PooPrints website) talked about the environmental and health dangers of dog waste. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I suppose it makes sense. This USA Today article from 2002 talks about the topic in a little more detail, but the gist is that the bacteria in dog poop poses a health threat. And the sheer number of dogs – more than 60 million – means that the issue isn’t insignificant.

The flight I was on had just finished up boarding, and the flight attendants had gotten all of the bags into bins or under seats, and we were just waiting for the paperwork before the flight could leave. Normally (on Delta flights), this is about the time that the pilot comes on the intercom and tells us the general parameters of the flight. He typically mentions our flying time, what the weather will be like on the ride, and the current conditions at the destination. And sure enough, this pilot did that, but he made one small change that impacted the experience for me tremendously. This pilot got up out of the cockpit, walked back to the cabin, asked for everyone’s attention, and proceeded to deliver the same information I mentioned above. But he made eye contact, he paused to let the information sink in. And he asked if anyone had any questions. Wow!

I’m not sure whether this small gesture had such a significant impact on me because I am a frequent flyer and I am so used to the routine of pilots rushing through this information like it is one more thing on their checklist, or because this pilot was just adding such a human touch. Regardless, my takeaway was that a small change to the “script” made a big difference (I noticed I wasn’t the only passenger impressed by this). The message was the same, but the delivery was entirely out of the ordinary.

So good job Delta, and kudos to this pilot.

Computers and programming may not be your thing, but I had a ton of fun as a kid learning how to program using Logo on my TRS-80. The people over at Raspberry Pi seem motivated by the decreasing lack of interest of today’s youth in understanding how computers work. Most people just accept that their laptops, PCs, cell phones, and other smart devices just “work” without understanding any of the principles behind them. Understanding logic, interfaces, code, and other geeky stuff like this isn’t for everyone, but Raspberry Pi sure seems like a good way to make those things accessible to a broad audience again. For $25, these things are cheaper than many toys you could buy for a kid.

So check it out, and maybe pick one up if you’re looking for a new hobby. Any product that includes mathematical references in its name has to be cool, right? Remember to bring your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor though. You didn’t think you were getting that stuff for $25, did you?

I did some thinking about what’s behind this, and I believe the problem/challenge is rooted in the fundamentals of the situation. Mass production is based on the concept of division of labor – the idea that a group of people can make things faster if they divide up the work and specialize in a particular task, instead of each person trying to build things individually (craftsmen). So a wrench might cost $10 if you buy one of the 1,000,000 made in a full production run, but it would probably cost $100 or more if you tried to make it yourself out of metal.

In this kind of scenario, you’d be crazy to make your own wrench, and you’d probably never even consider repairing a broken one. I’m noticing this in all kinds of things in my life: the shoes I just threw away because the sole came detached, the sprinkler head I replaced because I couldn’t find a replacement for the little broken plastic cover, etc. It’s great that I can get new shoes or a new sprinkler head as inexpensively as I can, but the impact to the environment (when you consider this incentive system on a global scale) is scary.

The gist of ITAR is that you can’t share sensitive technology outside of the U.S. or with non-U.S. persons. What a lot of people don’t realize, including the engineers at risk for this sort of thing, is that ITAR includes stipulations for penalties against individuals, not just companies that make defense-related products.

For instance, an engineer accidentally taking a set of drawings in his briefcase when he travels out of the country could be subject to multiple violations of ITAR. When you couple that with the fact that each violation can carry up to $1,000,000 in fines and 10 years in prison, the implications get serious very quickly.

The drawing example is simplistic though. Think about emailing something to yourself (you don’t know where the servers on the internet are located), or what files are lingering on your laptop when you head off on a trip. Many defense companies educate and protect their employees against this sort of accident, but there are a lot of companies that don’t even realize that they are making a defense-related component (like the guy working at the machine shop just making parts for some customer that he doesn’t even know). And of course, ignorance is no defense for this sort of thing (pun intended).

To me, Buy N Large is a satiric stand-in for Walmart, and the movie is poking fun at the company and asking the audience to recognize the role the company plays in the ultimate decimation of Earth. I don’t do much shopping at Walmart, but I got the point that the movie was making, and of course there is some truth to it. What struck me as funny was wondering if Walmart carried the very movie that poked fun at the chain.

Of course Walmart carries the movie! Walmart, in typical Buy N Large fashion, carries 22 different WALL-E related items so we can super-size our consumption of this cute movie. Oh, the irony.

So my lesson was that irony is apparently lost on Walmart.

My problems with note-taking techniques and software is that they work for me while they are new, but over time, the novelty wears off and my usage habits trail off. Then, when I don’t have a completely reliable set of notes (because I stopped taking them reliably or stopped using the “system”), I consider that note-taking system a failure.

Recently, I read an article about Evernote that made me think that maybe I am the problem. For those of you that don’t know Evernote, it is a cloud-based note-taking app that claims you can “Remember Everything.” Evernote includes a web interface, Windows/Mac clients, and mobile apps for just about any device imaginable. That means you can capture (or recall) stuff just about anywhere. And because your “stuff” is kept on the cloud, the same set of stuff is available to you regardless of where you access it from (this is important).

Back to the article I read. In the article, the founder of Evernote pointed out that Evernote users are more likely to upgrade the service over time, and the reason is simple – Evernote is like an augmentation of your memory and your memories become more valuable over time as you collect more of them. Indeed.

OK, so now I’ve had a revelation about note-taking and the ways in which various techniques and tools have failed me in the past. I need something that is messy, that doesn’t require structure, and behaves more like my brain/memory. Evernote is helping me to see that. I’m learning that to get the most out of it, I need to keep exploring it, coming up with new uses for it, and ignore the “habits” and “procedures” that I used to think were critical about note-taking. Here is a brief list of the cool things that I have done with Evernote that have helped me “augment my brain”:

• Use my phone to take a picture of the model/serial numbers on something I need to fix so I can find a replacement on the internet when I am back in front of a computer (beats a paper and pencil)
• Ask the medical assistant to repeat the time and date of my next appointment while I record the audio into an Evernote note (beats fumbling with my schedule on my phone while I’m trying to get going)
• Take a picture of the sprinkler system in my yard and note the location of the valves I need to adjust when I winterize the system
• Take a picture of notes made on a whiteboard after an entire day of meetings at work (guess what, Evernote does text recognition on the handwriting and makes those notes searchable)
• Capture links of webpages that I want to read later (the Share button on my phone lets me send stuff right to Evernote)

Let me know if you’re using Evernote and you’ve found something cool to do with it.