The housing is a Pacman Ghost Sours candy tin from Boston Amercia.

Since this day about two weeks ago, I’ve been running back and forth to Radio Shack. And even though Jenny has moved on to the next lesson plan, I’ve discovered a new hobby: electronics. It started with a few LEDs, resistors, and a book from Radio Shack that teaches electronics.

A few days later, I was back for the Electronics Learning Lab kit. From this I made LEDs blink, synthesized cool Atari-type noises from pulses, made a 7-segment LED display read light levels, and many other fun projects.

I wanted to do more. I then found the microcontroller. Back to Radio Shack for the “What is a Microcontroller?” kit. With this, I designed circuits to blink whenever I programmed them to blink, and made specific tones to sing as I programmed them to.

After 2 weeks of starting my new hobby, I created Stampy: the light-loving robot dude. It’s my first “custom” creation. He has a face made up of a crudely formed array of LEDs that I harvested from a strand of Christmas tree lights; a photoresistor and capacitor to measure light; a digital potentiometer with a transistor to control his “nightlight”; and a piezospeaker programmed to vocalize his mood.

(Cellphone video sucks on these, and you can’t really hear the piezospeaker). He smiles in bright light, has a straight mouth in low light, and frowns in the dark – complete with tones to vocalize his mood. When the light is dark, a “night light” turns on, but will only remain on for several seconds. The night light goes through a dramatic blinking fit to mimic a bad bulb then slowly fades away, making Stampy frown again. Oh, and he blinks at random.

Now that I’ve accomplished this, I’m ready to try new challenges and opportunities, such as DIY custom-made PCBs and cool POV toys.

Code for Stampy:

' ------[ Title ]-----------------------------------------------------------
' Stampy Wants Light - StampyWantsLight.bs2
' Stampy is an array of LEDs on the BS2 Board that forms a face.
' Stampy is happiest in bright light, so-so ("Meh...") in medium light, and
' absolutely scared of the dark. Stampy's emotions is visible on his face
' and by the tone of his voice. Stampy blinks his eyes periodically (and
' randomly), and best of all - he's equiped with a nightlight!
' However, his nightlight is programmed for a short lifespan...

END

via Submitted by snowbird.

This proves what many of us in management have always felt to be true: despite the conviction of the individual towards the task at hand, a lack of time easily leads to potentiality damaging shortcutting.

A 1973 experiment demonstrates how much a leader’s communication about time influences people’s behavior in powerful and often unexpected ways.

Social psychologists John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson went to a seminary and explained to a group of seminarians that they were there to verify their skills to give an impromptu speech. An assistant waited for the seminarians in another building in order to record them as they were giving the speech. As the seminarians walked to the building, they ran into a man in desperate straits (an actor on the researchers’ payroll): he was alone, leaning on the wall, complaining as violent coughs shook him.

The question was: would the seminarians stop to help the poor man? Who will actually stop?

The researchers introduced three variables: first, using a questionnaire, they measured the motivations at the root of their subjects’ religious feelings. Second, they split the seminarians into two groups: the first was assigned a speech on the value the experience in seminary could have in professions other than the religious ministry. The second group was asked to comment on the parable of the Good Samaritan (a story Jesus told about a man who stopped to help a wounded person on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.) No statistically meaningful correlation was found between either of the two variables (motivation and subject of the speech) and whether or not the seminarists stopped to succor the man.

Now for the third variable. When the seminarians were about to reach the building of the speech, one group was told they still had a few minutes before the speech, a second one they were exactly on time, and a third was told they were late and had to hurry.

Darley and Batson found out the choice whether or not to succor the man (and therefore his fate) was determined by a time factor: in general, those who thought they had enough time at hand stopped and helped; those who were late did not.

Now ask yourself: how would my employees react in that scenario?

The newest entry to our public crazy forum: Joan Heffington. A resident of the suburban Wichita town of Derby, Heffington’s public foray into crazy starts with some otherwise entertaining lawsuits. She accuses President Bush of issuing a National Security Letter (NSL) instructing doctors to botch her surgery and to “remove her body parts unnecessarily.” This lead to the death of her husband, the appeal continues, from a sudden heart attack. Her lawsuit then extends to the Kansas Medical Mutual Insurance Company. She stipulates that they were negligent for failing “to offer a settlement to resolve this matter…” The appeal lawsuit includes other fun reminders to avoid psychotropic drugs, including Heffington’s suspicion that the “government” tampered with evidence and brought false charges against her 14 year old son to arm twist her into dropping her lawsuit. These “false charges” include making a false report of another student’s threat to cause violence at school and for allegedly taking a truck on a joy ride. Perhaps lacking memory or an inability to read her own website, Heffington has another lawsuit that instead blames rival real estate developers for her son’s “life of crime” in their attempt to defraud her.

In a 2006 lawsuit, Heffington contends her father, a fighter pilot killed in the Vietnam war, was sent on a suicide mission in order to create support for the war.

Heffington currently runs the Association for Honest Attorneys. Her website admits that no attorney has contacted her association to undergo her approval process. Heffington’s website also caught the attention of an assistant attorney general for the state of Kansas, who filed a lawsuit last December contending that she dispenses legal advise without a law license. On a side note, her Campaign Manager – Dan Martinez – has also been found guilty of practicing law without a license.

Her latest advice to a client, per her website, resulted in the client suing several entities – including President Bush for issuing an NSL to kill the client’s wife via a botched medical procedure (sound familiar?). This, of course, is completely logical for a US President to do when neighbors have disputes over property flooding.

Man, I wish I could make this stuff up. I’d be an amazing fiction writer. But how can you make up this in your lawsuit:

Approximately one hour later, Dr. Bruce Thomas performed emergency surgery on Mrs. Heffington. Upon cutting her open, one of Mrs. Heffington’s body parts came flying out and had to be manually put back in its place.

But it gets even crazier! Joan Huffington’s running mate for Lt. Governor is (throws dart at the Crazy Kansas Dartboard)… Mark Holick. The hate-pastor who’s Spirit One Christian Center attacks liberals has had some controversial marquee signs.

So I, like other non-crazy citizens in the Kansas minority, will do the logical thing: vote for Joan Huffington in the Republican primary.

via Does McLeland know what he’s talking about?.

State Rep. Joe McLeland, R-Wichita, said at a forum Saturday that USD 259 had $252 million in fund balances as of December. “Schools have a lot of money,” McLeland claimed. But more than $242 million of that total, or 96 percent, is school bond and capital outlay money that can’t be used for other purposes. The remaining $10 million consists of student fees for textbooks and grants — which also can’t be used elsewhere. Either McLeland, chairman of the House Education Budget Committee, doesn’t know what these funds are for, or he was being deliberately misleading. Which is worse?

McLeland also said at the forum that he would introduce a bill this week to prevent districts from transferring general fund money into restricted funds. Most such transfers go to special education funds. State and federal statutes mandate that districts provide special education services, but neither government adequately funds them. As a result, districts are forced to transfer money in order to cover the shortfall.

via The Science News Cycle..

It’s nice working for a company that’s ahead of the curve.

Superior customer service can be an essential source of strength as companies emerge from the recession, but managers need to understand the extent to which the consumer landscape has shifted. Weakened brands, customers’ easy access to information about vendors, and the erosion of barriers to switching among competitors have combined to create a much more challenging environment for service, whether it’s outsourced or delivered in-house.

Evidence shows that customers will no longer tolerate the rushed and inconvenient service that has become all too common. Instead, they are looking for a satisfying experience. Companies that provide it will win their loyalty.

Our recent research demonstrates that when customers contact companies for service, they care most about two things: Is the frontline employee knowledgeable? And is the problem resolved on the first call? Yet those factors often aren’t even on customer-service managers’ dashboards. Most service centers continue to measure time on hold and minutes per call, as they have for decades. Such metrics encourage agents to hurry through calls—resulting in just the kind of experience customers dislike.

More than half of the customers we surveyed across industries say they’ve had a bad service experience, and nearly the same fraction think many of the companies they interact with don’t understand or care about them. On average, 40% of customers who suffer through bad experiences stop doing business with the offending company.