We’ve all been there, somewhere without cell phone service or an internet connection. For most of us, it’s enough to make you feel claustrophobic and start doing the dance of trying to find a few extra bars. (You know the one, arm way in the air with your cell phone, walking around hoping for enough service to check your email.) But there is hope! If Turkish sheepherders can have internet service, I’m sure we can all find a way.
A producer of solar panels in western Turkey has created a solar panel that can be strapped to a donkey so that sheepherders can be connected to the internet even in the rural environments their jobs demand them to be. The solar panels produce as much as 7 kilowatts of electricity. This can be used to power cell phones, laptops, lights, pretty much anything. It’s great to see development in rural areas like this. The next time I’m driving to New Hampshire, I’ll have to remember to bring along a solar powered donkey for that one stretch of i91 where I have no cell service.
Criminals these days seem to be staying on top of technology. You see a rise in cyber crimes, new inventive ways of stealing your identity, hackers, and scammers. It seems as the technology grows, the criminals grow with it. Well, luckily for seventy-year-old Seattle resident Nancy Fredrickson, they don’t seem to retain the knowledge and understanding of our older technology.
Nancy returned home from a day out shopping at garage sales to be greeted by three hooded males. One of which was brandishing a gun and demanding her car keys. Nancy is a black belt in martial arts, but she is no dummy. She tossed her keys on the ground and let the criminals take her car. The only issue for these would-be car thieves is that Nancy drives a standard, and these three guys did not. Nancy said they struggled to even turn the car on. After a minute or two of fumbling with the clutch and shifter, the three guys exited the car and took off running. The three have not been caught yet, but they were seen on a local surveillance camera and hopefully will be brought to justice before they can find an automatic car to steal.
Most of us understand the importance of a good cup of coffee during the workday. For some of us it’s the only thing that can carry you through the day. Now imagine being 155 miles from the nearest coffee place. That is the issue that Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano was dealing with. When he returned from the International Space Station (ISS) he said the thing he missed the most was a real cup of espresso. Meanwhile, Italian engineers were already hard at work developing the first espresso machine able to work in space. The appliance is the first capsule based espresso machine, meaning it uses capsules rather than loose grounds. The machine is able to make other coffee drinks too, besides just espresso. The astronauts aboard the ISS have had a coffee machine before, but by all accounts it was a poor substitute for the coffee we know here on Earth. This new machine will provide our space men and women with the same coffee we would get in a coffee shop here on Earth. Now for the best part, this new espresso machine’s name… ISSpresso!
I fancy myself as a good tipper. I typically do at least 20% on any given meal. Some people, though, put what I consider a good tip to shame. For example, in Raleigh, NC a man at a Waffle House tipped his waitress $1,000!!!! He actually wrote the tip in as $1,500 and told the waitress to give $500 to a woman who looked blue sitting by herself. So let’s recap so far: a man left a $1,500 tip to be shared between a random patron of the restaurant and the waitress (a single mother, I should add). The man slipped away into the night not looking for any type of recognition for this charitable act. But a good deed never goes unnoticed. In this instance, it was the Waffle House management who noticed and mandated that the waitress return the tip she was given. $1,000 can make a HUGE difference to a single person trying to raise a kid, and Waffle House decided that with a tip that big they risk the man coming back and demanding his money back due to a “mistake.” As lame as this sounds, the story does have a happy ending. After the generous tipper was contacted about the dilemma, he instead wrote a personal check to the waitress for her $1,000 tip that was meant for her.
It’s been hot lately. I was outside earlier this week and almost melted. Ice cream was my savior. Not only is it delicious, it’s also cooling, refreshing, and on a hot day I’d go as far as saying it’s necessary. A woman in England seems to agree with me. She called 999 (the equivalent of our 911) to report that her ice cream did not have enough sprinkles. To quote the 911 call, there’s “a bit on one side and none on the other…” Now I hear her, if I request sprinkles, I want sprinkles, but I don’t think it’s a 911-worthy issue.
