I'm a sucker for cool and nifty gadgets that seem to fix some of the more annoying problems of everyday life. The whole "build a better mouse trap" idea appeals to me greatly, and I'm one of the few people I know who actually enjoys the Sky Mall magazine on airplanes.

With that introduction, I wanted to point out a few great ideas that have that "why hasn't anyone else thought of this yet?" feeling. Feel free to comment and let me know what cool inventions or gadgets you can't live without.

1. Our wine bottle opener. As long as the wineries are going to stick with old-fashioned cork for everyday table wines instead of screw caps, the age-old problem of how to get the cork out of the bottle will be with us. I want something that just works, with no complicated contraptions. The opener we have just works. You screw it into the top of the cork and then just keep turning the handle. The screw keeps going into the cork and once the handle hits its limit the screw action begins to pull out the cork. It's completely brilliant. Just keep turning. No need to stop turning and then do some clever leverage thing or risking the opener slipping off the lip of the bottle or some such nonsense.

2. The freezer-on-bottom refrigerator. I don't think this is a brand new idea, but whoever put us through decades of freezer-on-top design did us a great disservice. When my parents first got a FOB fridge a couple of years ago as part of their kitchen remodel, I couldn't believe I'd never seen it before. FOB makes so much more sense than FOT -- why do all that bending to peer into a FOT fridge? You use the fridge part much more than the freezer part, so why had the freezer been given ergonomic pride-of-place for so long? Maybe it had to do with pumps and motors and stuff, but thankfully whatever it was has been figured out. And, one big fridge door, not two split ones, thank you.

3. Power Strip Liberators . Many of you can sympathize with a rats nest of computer power cables and power strips under your computer desk. I don't actually have these yet, but they're one of those slap-forehead inventions that just makes perfect sense. Until electronics companies redesign the huge transformers so the plug isn't the size of a house, thus forcing you to use/buy more power strips than necessary (maybe there's a link there?), these little extenders are perfect. 

I've been passed the "musical baton" meme by the Digital Medievalist. My responses are:

Total volume of music files on my computer: my iTunes folder is 63.77 GB with 14,250 tracks (songs, movements, etc.). I keep them on an external 160 GB hard drive. Most are 128 kbps MP3s, though I recently started using 160 kbps AAC.

Last CD bought: That would have to be the new Dream Theater album, Octavarium, which I actually ordered at the end of April. It was released yesterday and is in the mail now. I suppose that doesn't count the albums I've purchased from the iTunes Music Store, of which Count Basie & the Kansas City Seven (iTunes link) would be from last week.

Song playing: "Steel Guitar Rag" by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (1937). One of my favorites.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me (mostly that I listen to a lot):
• Metallica, "Master of Puppets" (duh)
The next four are what iTunes tells me are the top four most-often played songs in my library. Don't ask me why these seem to be my "favorites"
• Stormtroopers of Death, "Anti-Procrastination Song"
• Megadeth, "Rattlehead"
• Motörhead, "We Are the Road Crew"
• Kansas, "Carry On Wayward Son"

Three people to whom I'm passing this baton:
• SSG_Jas
• Complainr
• c3pomeara 

Notes on the Big Wedding and Such and So On:

• Great pride has been taken in organizing the wedding and related facets. Around 130 of our closest friends attended from everywhere. A small, intimate affair it was not. A gallery of the design is forthcoming. Ok, here it all is. We're not responsible for lost productivity on your part...
• The bride looked amazing in her dress (as did the bridesmaids!), and the groom was quite elegant in his black morning coat.
• The choir sang magnificently, fulfilling one of our most desired wine-addled brainstorms from over a year ago. The choir director was completely brilliant in "insisting" on performing the Josquin "Ave Maria" after the minister inadvertently started talking too soon.
• Saturday night baseball was a hit, so to speak. 20+ folks traveled to Sacramento's neat minor league stadium to watch the home team Rivercats wollup the Salt Lake City Strikers 13-3.
• Our ringbearer took his responsibilities very seriously and did a wonderful job. He's also a budding avant garde poet specializing in poetry about spiders and dragons.
• We simply can't wait to see the official wedding pictures. Our photographer really made things fun and creative. Her name is Tammy Hughes (www.tammyhughes.com), if you're getting married in the northern San Joaquin valley.
• We have lots and lots of towels now, so if you're in the neighborhood stop by and take a shower.
• Why does Macy's pack a seven-inch non-breakable salad sprayer in a 17x10x8 box and fill up the rest of the cubic space by depleting the world's supply of packing peanuts? We're basically drowning in packing peanuts because of packing decisions like these. However, there are worse problems to have...
• Apple's iWork suite of Pages and Keynote have a lot going for them. We did 90% of the design in those programs (the 30-day demo came with Tiger). Pages 2.0 should be really good.
• InkJet cartridges are expensive.
• Kinkos didn't screw up our program paper. We didn't ask for anything more than a cut-and-drill operation, but it was difficult to trust something like that to someone other than ourselves.
• The Metallica table at the reception almost got a little out of hand but there was no naked table dancing, thankfully.
• Four days on Moloka'i was perfect. We spent the last night of the honeymoon in Waikiki, at a hotel right on the beach, and we're so glad we chose the location ratio the way we did.
• Waikiki is a combination of Santa Monica and Las Vegas. The Pacific Beach Hotel, where we stayed that night, is an elegant facade to an otherwise average hotel experience. The complementary bottle of champagne (screw-top) was a very nice touch though.
• Waikiki is an American resort area catering to wealthy Japanese citizens and selling them cheap Chinese-made knick-knacks.
• Moloka'i is an interesting combination of expensive resort and Indian reservation. The west end of the island, where we stayed, is reminscent of the California central coast region (San Simeon), while the east end is more stereotypically tropical. Moloka'i has a reputation as slow-paced and as "The Friendly Isle" and it did live up to that.
• As independent hikers we were a little disappointed that so much of the trail network is only available to those on guided/paid tours. Much of the island is protected in some form or other, so that explains the restrictions.
• Great time on our day-long kayak trip along the southern shore of the island. We were in a tandem kayak so we could go quite fast. Unfortunately, Pete forgot about the much higher intensity of the UV in the tropics and got a really deep sunburn on his feet, lower leg, and the insides of his ankles. He's still walking gingerly.
• Always read the travel itinerary and documents before you go on your trip. Doing so ensures you get the lei greeting you paid for, as well as the simple transfer from one terminal to another at the airport. Otherwise, you walk right by the lei guy and then have to figure out where the heck the Island Air desk is, and then lug your bags completely across the airport to reach it.
• 4 am shuttle pickups for a 7 am flight on a Sunday morning is a bit excessive, don't you think?
• Enjoyed quizzing some of the non-native Hawaiians about how they came to live in Hawai'i. The general store owner next to our hotel on Moloka'i first came to Hawai'i as a hippy in the early 70s, moved back to Portland to raise her kids, and then came back to the islands 13 years ago. Our waiter at Cheeseburger in Paradise on Waikiki packed up with his girlfriend and moved from San Francisco after he lost his job at Napster in the dot-com crash. An African-American we met at the Moloka'i hotel, who was on the island for a wedding, came to Hawai'i to attend U of H and get PhD in economics in 1993. Things didn't quite work out apparently and he's been working in the travel industry with no plans to leave. Just some of the stories behind the glass...