In Internat Use of Pancakes, Greg describes how his brain tried to interpret an IHOP sign with burned-out letters. I’ve experienced that kind of thing myself. When we see abbreviations (and a sign with burned-out letters is an abbreviation, albeit an accidental one), we fill in the missing information according to what we expect. And if we’re Internet geeks, that dictates the kind of information we fill in.

When I was working on Wake Forest Road, my daily commute took me past a sign that indicated the direction of Raleigh Community Hospital. But the sign didn’t have room for the entire name, so it said RALEIGH COM HOSPITAL. Inevitably, my brain parsed this as “Raleigh.com Hospital”, which makes no sense — but that’s how my brain insisted on interpreting it. I guess a lot of people had this problem, because the hospital eventually gave up and changed its name.

I can’t say that an IHOP sign has ever made me think of the Internet, but there was a time when I reacted that way to every Waffle House sign I saw. This was a decade and a half ago, when even dial-up Internet service was not widely available, and the World Wide Web didn’t exist. But things like e-mail and Usenet newsgroups did, and if you knew what you were doing, you could access them from your home computer. I learned how to accomplish this using a shareware application that was designed for running a BBS, but could also be used as a single-user newsreader and e-mail client. For reasons known only to him, the creator of this application named it Waffle.

Waffle included a UUCP program, which enabled computers running Waffle to exchange data with each other over dial-up connections. This meant several Waffle users could share the cost of a single dial-up connection, with one computer serving as a local hub that downloaded the e-mail and Usenet traffic for all of them. The other computers would then call the hub machine to download their data (and upload any outgoing traffic). It was slow, but it worked and didn’t cost very much.

For several years, I was part of a small community (about half a dozen) of Waffle users in the Triangle area of North Carolina that used this system to access the Net. I was using Waffle every day to check my e-mail, so you can imagine what kind of conclusion my brain would draw every time I saw a Waffle House sign. And that’s not the worst of it. There is a restaurant in Dunn called Triangle Waffle that made me do a double-take every time I drove by. (My local UUCP network of Waffle users didn’t hold meetings, but that would have been a good place to do it.)

All of this came to an end when the first ISPs began appearing in the Triangle. I dismantled my Waffle setup almost a decade ago. But when I saw that Greg was writing about Internet use of batter cakes cooked on a griddle, those memories came flooding back . . .

My family is still using the original clothes washer that we bought in 1986, but we’re on our third clothes dryer. So I was delighted to stumble across this simple tip for extending (and perhaps doubling) the life of a dryer. Excerpt:

Just removing the lint from the filter isn’t always enough — the fine mesh of most dryer filters can be clogged in ways that aren’t obvious at a casual glance. As suggested by the piece quoted above, softener sheets can cause waxy build-ups on lint screens that require a little extra effort — usually no more than a quick scrub and rinse in warm, soapy water — to remove.

Thanks to Gerard Van Der Leun for pointing this one out.

Virgil isn’t the only one trying to tame the e-mail beast. 43 Folders recently posted a list of five e-mail productivity tips. One of them is to stop trying to make e-mails into literary masterpieces, and instead just bang out something that gets the message across. That’s definitely advice I need to hear. I know perfectionism is a debilitating disease, but I never expected to find it lurking in my in-box.

The PalmPilot and its descendants have been around for almost a decade, but some people still aren’t convinced that they need one. Now there’s a Palm that will overcome their objections. The PaperPalm costs only five dollars, doesn’t require batteries, and can be dropped on a hard floor without breaking. There’s no software to install, and no learning curve. You don’t even need to use Graffiti — it can process your natural handwriting without error. But you may have to sharpen the stylus first.

A LEGO enthusiast who calls himself the Goldfish has demonstrated that one can use the little plastic blocks to build mechanical logic gates. This means that it should be possible to build a working computer entirely out of LEGOs.

Tourists in Germany can now visit a tropical island only 50 kilometers from Berlin. Well, technically, it’s not really an island, but it has a beach, a lagoon, a rain forest, and a tropical village (just look at the pictures). And the weather is always nice, because the whole thing is under a dome.

I like computers and electronic gadgets, so I’m usually pretty receptive to innovative new high-tech products. But occasionally I run across one that just makes me scratch my head and ask, “Why?” For example, it’s not clear to me why I would want a talking first aid kit — especially if it costs $150.
I see that the same company sells “Intelligent First Aid Kits” that don’t talk (and are much cheaper). That makes sense, actually. Sometimes intelligence means knowing when to shut up.

Does your computer have a cigarette lighter? No? Well, for heaven’s sake, get busy and install one. What do you mean, you don’t smoke? Use it to plug in the car charger for your cellphone. Do I have to spell everything out for you?

Energizer has just unveiled an omnivorous flashlight: one that can use multiple types of batteries. An AP article reports that “the Quick Switch takes two C, D or AA batteries and works by merely adjusting a switch to the proper cell size, automatically locking the batteries into place.” If you ask me, the ultimate flashlight is the NightStar, which requires no batteries at all — but the NightStar is expensive ($39.95). The Quick Switch sells for $9.99 to $12.99, so it’s much more affordable.
I think I will buy one just so that I can finally use up my C batteries, which are currently gathering dust. Almost nothing uses C batteries anymore. (I don’t recall what device I originally bought my Cs for — but it must have died shortly after that, leaving me with a stockpile of batteries that I can’t use.) But the biggest advantage of the Quick Switch may be that, in a pinch, you can raid almost any gadget in your house for batteries to power your flashlight. That ability could be a godsend during a power outage.

In nearly three decades of playing and working with computers, I thought I had experienced just about every way in which they can malfunction, from hard disk failures and faulty power switches (my Gateway Essential 550 did both of those) to chronic operating system instability (Windows 98, I’m looking at you). I’ve even dropped a Palm on a hard floor and heard the sickening tinkle of glass as its screen shattered. But my office computer surprised me today with a new variety of disaster.
Remember what happens on Star Trek when a decloaking Romulan ship attacks, or an overlooked gravitic mine detonates nearby? Sparks fly from the consoles on the bridge, and the air fills with smoke. It was like that. Well, okay, not quite that spectacular — but the computer gave off a bright flash and the snapping sound of an electric arc. As the air filled with the pungent smell of ozone, the computer went dead. Something had shorted out in the power supply, and now I had a rectangular beige doorstop. This computer is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker — hang on, IBM is its maker. Well, anyway, it’s definitely an ex-computer.
My coworker in the next office submitted a repair request on my behalf (that’s normally done online, so I was certainly in no position to do it). The “doctor” will come to my office tomorrow morning, but we know the patient is dead and can’t be resurrected. The best prospect is a brain transplant; he’ll bring another computer with him (actually, I think his hunchbacked assistant will be carrying it) and will attempt to swap the hard disks, then channel a bolt of lightning through the lifeless body. (Isn’t that what happens when you turn on the switch?) The result will be a kind of zombie version of my computer, which will shuffle around the office making incoherent noises until a mob of my coworkers gathers, brandishing pitchforks and torches, and . . .
Sorry. Anyhow, the deceased computer should be either repaired or replaced tomorrow.