Microwaves and Cats

Good afternoon my faithful readership.

Few things in this life give me genuine pleasure. Bourbon. Striking small children. Peanut butter. Vigorous self-abuse. These are staples which never let me down, and always shine a light into my dingy, upsetting world. However, occasionally, the fog of disappointment has been known to clear for unexpected reasons and, for a few brief moments, I actually smile. Here, for you, dear, dear readers are a couple of things which temporarily amused me.

First off, we have this site which details experiments that you can conduct with your microwave oven.

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/el/microwave/

Things that you can put in your microwave include light bulbs, CDs, bars of soap, toothpicks and marshmallows. If, like myself, you are something of an athlete and sports enthusiast, you can take up a brand new sport - grape racing! Pierced grapes placed in the microwave will heat up and emit tiny squirts of grape steam thus propelling themselves around the ice-rink of your glass microwave plate. Fantastic.

One thing, don't ever, EVER put a plastic icepack in the microwave. Apparently they contain ammonium nitrate which is a high order explosive. This was discovered by several potheads who tried to heat one up so that they could warm soup whilst on a marijuana induced picnic on a cliff. It seems they were lucky not to blow their faces off. Shame really.

The second (and last, actually) site is this one:

http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/index.html

Now, how many of us have been working on an important document (say, an official report on the existence of WMD in Iraq), popped to the toilet for a moment and, upon returning, found that the cat has walked all over the keyboard and completely deleted your data. Doh! That darn cat! Not a shred of WMD evidence left!

Well, worry no more. An utterly insane computer programmer has created this piece of software which will detect from the pattern of key depressions* whether or not your keyboard has a feline visitor prowling over it. The message (and I swear to God, I'm not making this up) "Cat-Like Typing Detected" appears, the keyboard locks and the speakers emit the sound of a harmonica to frighten the cat and deter it from re-offending. To unlock the keyboard, simply type the word 'Human'.

Re-read the above paragraph. Please, do it for me.

This product is not a joke; I've checked it out. It actually exists.

It's name? Pawsense.

God Bless America.


*Here's a picture to better explain the above. Ain't it great?

http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/keybpaws-small-004.gif