Creativity is a funny thing. Sometimes it leaves you for oh, a week or so, and sometimes it comes back without ever explaining where it's been and why there are so many strange charges on your credit cards. Sometimes it just sits on your couch and ignores your requests for it to take out the trash, and other times it smacks you in the back of the head and says, " Time to play Questions, Questions!"

1. Do you think you can last in a relationship for 6 months without cheating?

I can hardly sit down for a game of Monopoly without cheating.

2. What did you do today that was productive?

This.

3. When’s the last time you kissed someone?

Just yesterday I put lipstick on my hand, and... oh, you mean someone else.

4. What is one thing you question a lot?

Why I answer all these questionnaires.

5. Do you think you lead people on?

Huh. Maybe that's why some people don't like me.

6. Are you married?

Why do you ask? Was I leading you on or something?

7. Have you ever told someone that you loved them?

That is typically part of the leading-on business.

8. Is there anyone who doesn’t like you?

People I've led on, people I haven't led on, people I've met, and also, people I haven't met.

9. Do you miss someone?

Meh, friends and exes, the usual.

10. Did any of your friends go out with any of your exes?

If they have, then they've wisely not mentioned it.

11. Are looks important?

Nah, I look all the time.

12. What are you wearing?

Clothes, duh.

13. Are you mad at someone right now?

Yes, whoever wrote this questionnaire.

14. Are you talking to anyone?

Yes, an imaginary voice from my computer that keeps asking me the most inane questions.

15. Where do you keep your money?

Nowhere. I find keeping money to be quite difficult in this economy.

16. How did you wake up this morning?

First I ate a piece of toast, then I brushed my teeth...

17. Which is more romantic: sunrise or sunset?

As a concept, sunrise.

18. Would you die for someone?

Myself. In your face, logic!

19. Last time in the hospital?

Let's hope so.

20. How many letters are in your last name?

1,024

21. Do you love anyone?

Nah, I don't believe in love. I also don't believe in motherhood, apple pie, baseball, rainbows, puppies, or the power of laughter.

22. How was your day?

Fine, until Dr. Zoidberg threw an octopus at my window.

23. Are you scared of spiders?

Not as much as I am of Communists global thermonuclear war the ozone layer Saddam Hussein Global Warming Al-Qaeda Saddam Hussein Kim-Jong Il Saddam Hussein limited thermonuclear war George Bush poisonous Chinese imports the economy.

24. Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

Not anymore.

25. How do you walk?

First you move one foot, then the other. Try not to fall down.

26. What do you think of Fergie?

I don't.

27. Do you believe in love?

I just said as much. Aren't you listening?

28. How old do you want to be when you have kids?

Eleven, so we can go out for beers this Friday.

29. What’s your favorite food?

It's for sure not sushi.

30. When was the last time you threw up?

The last time I ate sushi.

31. Do you curse a lot?

No, but I swear like a drunken sailor.

32. What do you know about the future?

It'll be here tomorrow.

33. Do you hate your first boyfriend/girlfriend?

I've never even dated a transgender so this is not applicable.

34. Do you only drink bottled water?

No, it's got other uses, too.

35. Are you happier single or in a relationship?

No.

36. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?

No, but I deserve at least six billion of them.

37. Would you believe your ex if she/he said they love you?

Again, I've never dated a transgender... let alone one with multiple personality disorder.

38. Most hated food?

Again, sushi.

39. Do you wish someone would call you?

No, it would probably just be a telemarketer, or worse, a bill collector.

40. What’s something you wish you could understand better?

The pink and rubbery pre-chewed bubblegum mind of a person who'd put together such a questionnaire.

41. If someone doesn’t like you, it’s usually because?

Yes, it usually is just because.

42. What are you excited about?

That this questionnaire's almost over.

43. Kissed someone in the last 24 hrs?

Okay, now I know you aren't listening.

44. Have you lost friends in the past years?

Yes, but they usually turn up between the seat cushions.

45. If you could go back in time and meet your younger self, what’s the one thing you would tell him/her?

Don't do the questionnaire!

So, it appears that after all my lofty proclamations about posting more often, somebody, as they say, thought they had a better idea. And it wasn't me, honest. Well, maybe it was me just a little bit. Okay, 100%. Whatever.

Anyway, I have got the most delightfully tedious trivia for you. As I've mentioned, I've been tinkering with an old Mobile Armatron with the aim of putting it under autonomous computer control. I partially rewired the motors and built a small power supply for the eventual onboard logic, and then began on a motor controller that would fit in the Armatron's "trunk space". I ordered a few L293 chips, since they seemed to be ideal for the purpose, and lots of people seemed to like them.

Unfortunately, I learned that setting up the circuit on a piece of protoboard would definitely not work. I ended up with a spaghetti nest of jumper wires that was so thick I couldn't even fit them all in. Obviously, I'd have to design a board. I set that project aside for a while in order to do some reasearch on how to do that. I finally discovered three techniques which made it relatively easy.

One discovery is Eagle, a printed circuit design application, which makes designing boards easy (for limited values of easy.) You draw your schematic out in the schematic designer, choosing parts from a vast library and wiring them together. It is not a launch-it-and-go application. Eagle is quirky and odd and has a definite learning curve. I would definitely advise anybody to run through a few tutorials before trying to design a masterpiece. It took me a few hours, but I did get the hang of the basics.

The next discovery was of the toner-transfer resist method. Laser printer and copier toner can be transfered from paper to a copper-clad printed circuit board with the use of a simple clothes iron. Of course, using the correct sort of paper makes a big difference. It's been said, and I must agree, that magazine paper works quite well.

The final piece of the puzzle was the cupric chloride etching method. A reusable etching fluid can be made by combing ingredients from both the drugstore and from the hardware store. And it works pretty well. I did notice that the etching process was pretty slow, but I eventually realized that was because it was a cold night. I had set my etching container in a Pyrex dish to catch any spills, so pouring hot water into the dish warmed the etchant and sped things along.

So, you may be wondering, what do I have to show for all that work? Well, it looks sort of like this:

Yesterday, I heard a rumor that the founder of the Weather Channel was planning to sue Al Gore. The lawsuit would charge Gore, and sellers of carbon credits, with financial fraud.

Although there's not much mainstream news coverage of the statements, as apparently the suit has not yet been officially filed, there is at least a little coverage outside of the realm of pure opinion.

Now, I'm all for reducing pollution and weaning the United States off of petroleum. On the Global Warming issue, I even lean more toward "probably" rather than "probably not." However, I must applaud this lawsuit as a move to force the issue and settle the debate once and for all.

The problem with the Global Warming debate is that too much money is flowing from the terminal ends of the continuum, and creating such noise that the public in general can't distinguish fact from opinion. Irrational opinions, whether held by the Chicken Littles or by the Pollyannas of the world, do nothing but polarize a society.

Of course, who's to say that truth will be found in a courtroom? In the past, the Supreme Court has declared fruits to be vegetables, business firms to be persons, and losers to be winners. It's entirely possible— whether out of a misguided idea of what's right for America, or a need to avoid overturning a previous decision or two— that a packed bench may make a similarly ludicrous ruling in the future.

When it gets the job done.

A few weeks ago, I needed to set up a mail server, pronto. A bigwig wanted the ability to send mail remotely, from his corporate e-mail account, without having to use the webmail system. Fine. It's not my job to argue, it's to make sure everyone else can get their work done.

While I could have set up a fancy VPN arrangement, I didn't want to make things too complicated. Instead, I opted to set up Postfix with SASL authentication, which would only require a tweak or two to the user's Outlook settings.

Since I was under a time constraint, I had to make do with whatever hardware I could scrounge up. I found an unused machine that seemed originally to have been a Linux-based firewall/router appliance. It had 512MB of RAM and a 300 MHz K6 processor. Not exactly a powerhouse by today's standards, but certainly sufficient to relay an e-mail message now and then. So, I reformatted its mess of a hard drive and began installing Ubuntu. Unfortunately, after the install completed, the machine entered some sort of bizarre spin cycle of reboots. Something about this ancient hardware was throwing Ubuntu for a loop.

After a little bit of research, I realized that something was probably the CPU itself, and Ubuntu just wasn't going to happen. Since I had already had FreeBSD running on some other pretty low-end hardware (almost identical, in fact) I figured it ought to work in this case, too. And it did.

The Lantern Festival marks the end of the Chinese New Year, and in the past has been somewhat equivalent to the Western world's St. Valentine's Day. Chaperoned young people would traditionally roam the lantern-lit streets of China, searching for love, while their elders might play a game of matchmaker.

Today is also the second day of Spring, as the vernal equinox occurred yesterday. Spring, a time of new life, new beginnings, and of eggs balanced on their ends and then decorated with food coloring pellets and vinegar. A time of plastic grass and chocolates for some of us, and for others, a time of drunken beach debauchery. Still others see it as a season of cleaning and planting. Whatever, I say, suits your fancy.

What's my fancy, you ask? Well, although hard work certainly pays future dividends, and chocolate and debauchery are both compelling enough on their own— never mind if they were somehow combined— something about an evening stroll down a street filled with paper lanterns, young lovers, and music sounds just so pleasant.

Oh, and before I forget, here's Friday Fun: Spring Edition.

1. Does your household do spring cleaning?

No, it's really more of a quarterly thing, although I believe that the exact dates might actually be reckoned by the lunar calendar, possibly even the Aztec lunar calendar.

2. Do you approach spring with joy for all the newly growing things and the sight of grass, or does it just scream MUDDY FLOORS AND MOPPING?

Please, I've got better worse more important things to worry about than muddy floors. Besides, there's supposedly a drought on.

3. Do you have a garden that you will be planting and, if so, what do you plant?

No, I live in an apartment, you insensitive clod. And I've never heard of pots. Also, there's supposedly a drought on.

4. What is your favorite thing about springtime?

For a little while, the weather will be just right. Then it will be time to cower indoors from the heat instead of the cold.

After hearing about it just about everywhere, I finally signed up for Twitter. Now, I still don't quite see why everyone's gone bananas over the thing. Of course, it's entirely possibly that I'm completely missing the point, or am doing it wrong, or am simply an incorrigible Luddite. (I somehow don't believe the last to be the case, though.) Don't worry, I'm not ready to give up on it just yet. Maybe I'll have some kind of Twitter epiphany.

In the meantime, I'll be playing with power tools.

The cybernetic arm I linked to a while back could become irrelevant as a prosthetic if Star Trek-style regeneration becomes a reality. A substance called an extracellular matrix can signal the body's own cells to begin regrowing tissue. It has apparently worked for one man who lost a fingertip in a freak model airplane accident. Has the matrix given him super powers and the desire to take over the world? No— at least, not yet.

Now, burn victims can recieve an experimental version of the treatment in which they are basically spray painted with their own skin cells. The cells continue growing and can eventually repair the damage.

However, there's one thing that an extracellular matrix can't knit together, and that's a lampshade. Sleeping Beauty, a robotic lamp shown at the Design Academy Exhibit, knits a stocking-like shade for itself whenever its bulb is lit.

Perhaps knitting isn't entertaining enough for you? Check out the Yellow Drum Machine. This little drummer robot drives around a room looking for objects with interesting accoustic properties. When a sufficiently interesting object is located, the robot bangs out an improvised solo.

TroyBoy at Pheasantly Fascinating asks,

Which is your current all time-favorite blog entry? And no, you can't select one of your own! Post about it and let me know in my comments.

I don't think I can select just one! My true blogroll is a just a wee bit longer than the one displayed in the sidebar. I've read a lot of blog entries, and many of them are amusing and memorable, and each of the bloggers behind them is brilliant in unique ways. It's not really fair or possible to create one set of criteria with which each of them should be judged. (There's also the the fact that everyone who wasn't picked will be least a tiny bit offended. Honestly, you will be, just admit it.) So instead, I'll do a top five type of thing.

5. Surrogate Samurai at Radioactive Jam.

Why do managers get the best equipment? All I got was a Splintered Sharpened Stick.

4. How To Piss Me Off With Your Blog at dyers.org

I mentioned this one a while back. Even though the rise of OpenId may have made one or two of the annoyances less common, the rest are no less true. (And I'm sure I'm guilty of at least one of those, myself.)

3. Execution In The Kingdom Of Nouns at Steve Yegge's Blog Rants

An allegory (in the style of the Thing King ) about the shortcomings of the Java programming language, it's written in an entertaining but informative style that makes a dry subject interesting and easy to digest.

2. My Weekend at Nice To See Stevie B

A seemingly mundane "moving day" story takes a macabre twist. If I were in that situation, I probably would have jumped to the same conclusion about the crock pot.

1. Personality Disorders at Digital Heath

It's a pet peeve of mine that people occasionally make remarks about OCD that show that they don't understand it. For example, someone may blog that they deep-cleaned their home in anticipation of the in-laws' visit, and remark that OCD compelled them to clean the oven, polish all the brass, iron the curtains, and zshoosh all the magazines.
Sorry, but unless you're convinced that your mother in law will kill you for having a tchotchkie out of place, and you've cleaned the oven several times consecutively— just in case it's gotten cooties in the few minutes since you last cleaned it— then in my humble opinon, you're just a perfectionist.
The author of the above post knows the difference, too, and delivers (also in my humble opinion) a fairly accurate description of OCD. (He doesn't mention numerological obsessions, but that would be a whole blog post blog in itself.)

How about you, dear reader? What are some of your all-time favorite posts?