Death and Love

For some reason I've been hearing a lot recently about people who have unexpectedly lost their loved ones.

My youngest, Miss Thang, has a very tender heart. Whenever someone we know dies, be it four-legged, two-legged or finned, she always asks me if I'm ever going to die. And I have to tell her that everyone dies, although I don't plan to die for a very long time.

But I also let her know that none of us can control when we die, and the best thing to do to deal with that is to love each other as much as we can while we're still here. While we can't control the world, we CAN control how we love others, so that's what we do.

Photo by Rena Marou for openphoto.net

Happy Birthday, Barcode!

Let me beat you to it: I am a geek. Not one of those genius geeks who make their fortunes coding the Next Great Application, but one of those geeks who enjoy spending quality time doing things no normal person would find interesting, such as wishing the barcode a happy birthday.

According to Wikipedia and a few other sites, the first bar code was patented on Oct. 7, 1952. Granted, it looked a bit different from the ones we recognize nowadays and the technology for its modern use didn't come into play until much later. But it was a barcode all the same and I applaud its inventors.

Other than serving as a quick identifier for almost everything we buy nowadays, the barcode also serves to entertain me. I found a really cool Web page that shows you how to read a barcode and have spent at least the last half-hour practicing my new skills on items from my pantry. I think my eyeballs are ready fall out of their sockets now. Good times.

Try it yourself, if you dare, and go to http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/upc3.htm. Tell your eyeballs to get over it.