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I was trying to think of something to write today and it came to me at breakfast with a little extra thought. I was making my morning Double Americano with Fresh Ground Kona Coffee Beans (yes I love Hawaii, but that’s for another post), when it came to me. Why does boiled water seem to re-boil faster? I pondered the thought for a while and even thought about punching in a query into Google, but I thought of a better way.

It seems as though mother’s have been making it into blog posts. BTW, if you haven’t checked out Lyndon Reid’s mom shotgunning a beer…you need to. My mom would never do something like that, but she is a science geek. In fact she’s got her Ph. D and is a serial cereal chemist for the government. So I decided to email her for some insight (thanks Lyndon for the inspired thought).

Hey mom

I figured I’d ask my favorite Ph D person this question since I figure it’s somewhat science related:

Q: Why does previously boiled water, boil faster the second time around…even the next day?

I was making coffee this morning/afternoon an this definitely happened. I figure since you’re a cereal chemist that typically eats oatmeal (a cereal grain) for breakfast and it requires boiled water you would be able to answer it quickly.

In non-typical government fashion, it didn’t take long for my mother to reply. I had a reply in under 15 minutes (it was actually 12).

As far as I know it’s because you’ve driven most of the air out of it the first time you heated it so when you ‘re-boil’ it the heat transfer is faster – but don’t quote me on it (in your case it could have been that the water you boiled the first time was cooler than when you re-boiled it therefore you wouldn’t have to heat it so long to get it to the boiling point). Where you live there could even be some effects of atmospheric pressure (thought I doubt this).

TTFN

I always love the TTFN she signs off with in reference to Winnie the Pooh stories. Anyways, back to the thought. It didn’t seem as though her answer was really to concrete on the thoughts. In fact she even says “don’t quote me on it”. So with that I had to hit Google. Low and behold the first result about Water Freezing and Boiling Myths has an answer:

Previously boiled water boils faster than regular water. Likewise, previously boiled water at room temperature should boil faster than water that has never been boiled, for the same reason it freezes faster (less dissolved oxygen).

So mom, it looks like you were right. I guess it’s just further proof that our mothers really are a source of information, knowledge and love. So if you’ve got a beer or glass of wine, raise it in a toast to your mom—or in the case of Lyndon, shotgun it with her!

Today I was beginning to think of new names for a different business venture I’m considering. I typically go to dictionary.com then use the thesaurus. Of course I could always go to thesaurus.com but spelling dictionary is just that much easier. Based on Google Trends it would appear I’m not the only one who feels this way. Having been to the site just a day or two ago I was stunned for a moment when I was presented with their new home page. Then I realized it was in fact an ad for Adobe.

dictionary.com vs. thesaurus.com

Naturally seeing somethings of this magnitude I clicked the link but was a little disappointed to find it was for CS4 Design Standard – Student Edition. It sucks for someone who’s not a student (like myself) but the point of this post was actually to analyze the placement & ad itself.

The colors and layout of the page are wonderful and consistent with the Adobe brand. It’s consistent throughout the entire process (the landing page on Adobe has it as well) and the use of pulchritudinous in the ad copy was brilliant. I definitely had to type that in to see what it was. Overall the ad was well executed but page design lacked a little common sense. On a 1024×768 screen resolution there’s horizontal scrolling and the ad itself is almost below the fold. It’s interesting though to see this kind of “takeover” on a page that gets well over 100,000 daily unique visitors. I wonder if we’ll see more of this tactic from Adobe and other advertisers in the near future? Who do you think will be next running a takeover page like this?

It’s been some time but I finally got around to updating my runs yesterday…mainly because after almost four weeks I finally went out for a run. Not to mention it was eight weeks until my first full marathon I’m supposed to run. While I was approaching the three mile mark of the run I noticed another guy jogging towards me, headphones on & music blaring. As we passed each other the head nod was given and received. It got me thinking about just how universal the head nod is. Maybe it’s a guy thing? I often witness it in the parking lot at work or walking by someone in the hallways while in conversation with someone else.

I’d be interested to know where else you witness the head nod and if you’re a woman reading this (woo hoo I have readers) then let me know if it truly is a guy thing. Guys, I know you do it but feel free to comment around witnessing the female species nodding as well.

Yes it’s true, I’ve been thinking. Often this is something scary as the end result and it just may be in this case. As you may or may not know I’m off on a bit of an Eastern European tour. I’m sitting in the small town of Hostinée, Czech Republic right now. It’s beautiful here and so I plan to take a lot of photos. Of course, there was the connecting flight in London’s Heathrow airport that I got to spend a little too much time in as I missed my connect flight by mere minutes. Well, I missed the chance to check-in for the flight by about three minutes. I was not happy at first but took the opportunity to spend some time taking some photos and thinking. I haven’t had a chance to upload the photos or come up with a complete post around it but I’ll definitely give you a bit of a preview. It’s basically Canada vs. UK (or even Europe for that matter) and things that I know I’ll miss about this part of the world or that they’ve done right.

Honestly something as simple as actually separating the toilet and the shower/washroom makes perfect sense. I’ve yet to be in a home out here (and I’ve already been to a few) where the sink & toilet live in exclusivity alongside a bathtub or shower. To me it makes sense because it works. Just like low-flow toilets. Back home in Canada we’ve got this Americanized sense of entitlement that there will always be fresh water and a bit of a “who cares” mentality. One other thing I love…people are polite. Not only are they polite but they dress nicely too. Hard to find ‘scrubs‘ over here, unlike home…even in the office some times!

Of course I do my best thinking on my runs and finally had a chance to get out for a quick 3 miles today (or I should say 4.8 km). Everything here is metric…and I mean everything. I can’t tell them I’m 6′ 2″ (188 cm) or they look at me like I’m on drugs. Though the elevation is lower here then back home in Calgary, it’s a little more challenging as I have to watch for cars (pedestrians are truly seen as obstacles) and there’s quite a mountain climb initially. I’ll be updating my runs page off and on. The plan is to not spend a lot of time in front of the computer while here.

Oh and definitely one last thing I’ll miss that I’ll write about later would be the awesome selection of dirt cheap local brews! This country definitely knows beer!

I have the ‘privilege’ of being on a rotating on-call schedule with my team at my ‘real job’ and this week is the first week I’ve had to carry around the BlackBerry. Our team is so awesome and things are so solid that it’s rare we get a call unless Mother Nature decides to drop something on us. So confident I tweeted about it.

Tuesday night was good. It didn’t ring. Wednesday, not so great. Let’s set the scene. A smokin’ hot fiancee who has to be in the office for a 7:00 am meeting which means a wake up before 6:00. A 13 month old asleep in her own room. Me, over tired and exhausted but in bed at a decent 10:30 pm. Fast forward to 12:53 am while we’re all dead asleep. I wake to this annoying ring, but at least now I know what the on-call phone ring sounds like. I see the number and it’s indeed a 403 area code — the same as where I work & live. I answer with what I thought was a wide awake sounding “hello” to which I receive dead air. “Hello. Hello? Yeah this is Marshall, web business on-call.” Still no answer, dead air. Then an ear shattering beep in my ear indicate new voice mail. I must’ve been a little slow to answer.

After a few rings of the phone and now the ear shattering beep, said smokin’ hot fiancee begins to stir. “Oh crap” I think to myself. “Can’t have her wake and I really don’t want to get out of bed.” So I dial into voice mail. Thank goodness the password is easy (yes, it’s 1-2-3-4)…presumably so we can remember at the hours normal people are asleep.

Well thankfully the voice mail is NOT from work. I believe they’re human, but their antics may preclude them from having a certain level of intelligence that I want to classify them in that category. Here’s the message.

My first thought is this is one of my co-workers playing a dirty prank on me. Then I realized that there’s no way any of them (specifically this one McMullen guy) could ever change his voice to be that annoying. So I laid there in a daze trying to figure out what to do.

• Call this guy back and tear him a new one? No, from the sounds of it he’d like that.
• Go downstairs, call him back and tell him how drunk he must be? No, then I have to move.
• Lay here and do nothing but go back to sleep. YES, sounds great.

So I went back to sleep. My smokin’ hot fiancee got up on time (yes her alarm work me too) and got to her meeting on time as well. I on the other hand just wanted to sleep, and sleep I did. I woke a little late, but still managed to get to work at a respectable time. I then remembered the “call” last night. I also remembered his phone number wasn’t blocked. Hopped online and punched it into Google. 403-764-7… BOOM! There it is. Some guy’s selling his Toshiba laptop on Kijiji.ca and included his number.

Now is where I have my dilemma. Do I call the guy and ask him about his laptop then break into asking if someone died last night while his sister was sleeping and his bunk boyfriend went to bed? Do I do nothing? Do I attempt to make something bigger out of this then it really is? Oh what to do, what to do? There’s honestly so much out of this I could soap box about. Like seriously, you hope I die in your sisters sleep?! Apparently he really does love me (or one of the other three guys that get the phone each month).

Tell me what to do? What would you do to have fun with this guy (and no, not in the booty call way this call was clearly about).