If you suffered through a recent heat wave at your desk while the computer churned out even more heat, you can appreciate the U.S.B. Beverage Chiller from CoolIT Systems.

The people behind this device point out that chilling an entire can of soda or other refreshing drink is not the idea. What they want to do is keep the last third or so of the drink cold. The part that, when you come back to it, is lukewarm and therefore not that drinkable.

Unless you have access to crushed ice, as I finally do, and highly recommend. If your a/c is not efficient, and I truly know the feeling, a handful of such ice can be applied to pulse points for instant cooling. If desperate, a handful down the shirt always works, if only briefly.

At a little place in Mountain View on Castro.

Yesterday I popped into the downtown SF one, which was packed. Near the front was a display of MacBooks, which I’ve been curious about. My old 17-inch Powerbook and I are as one, but it gets heavy at times. I picked up the nearest white one, and the young woman next to me became agitated.
YW: Oh, you’re not supposed to do that!
Me: Why not?
YW: Oh, you can’t do that!
Me: I want to see how heavy it is.
YW: I’m supposed to be watching this display and you’re not supposed to do that!
Me, noting that all the MacBooks are securely attached and therefore imminently unstealable: Really?
YW (looks even more agitated, starts glancing from side to side)

I head to the other end of the table where I pick up the lovely black MacBook without intervention. Much more portable machine. As I go out the door, I turn to check, and the YW is gone. In her place is a scruffy young man who is handling the white MacBook with all the enthusiasm of a would-be buyer, holding it up and looking underneath.

I couldn’t walk out of the Disney store without a couple. One of my sons said Pooh and his clones must have been irregulars. No matter. He got one too. The other son lives in a place where plush rules, and he declined the offer of yet another.

High levels of testosterone were found after the testing, which occurred after stage 17 of the Tour de France. He denies using drugs, saying the find is either a mistake or due to ‘a natural process’.

Now that’s more like it!

This is a view from the webcam at Lawrence Hall of Science, which currently shows the area is socked in. If you happen to come by later, chances are good that you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Up till now it’s been pretty much business as usual around here, getting the day job done, keeping the yard irrigated, which takes twice as long as usual, and of course, not sleeping at night. Is this day 10? Can anyone count anymore?

Today my brain shut down. Around 10:30, when the sun beats down on a flat-roofed house, before lunch, before I noted that the tomato plants were all droopy again, and right about when the laptop started glowing.

Some are working in bikinis. My neighbor in back believes that the louder the music, the cooler she feels. I wonder if she’s heard any Slayer recently.

Some stayed at hotels over the weekend. Frankly I think the military should issue those cooling vests for all of us.

And you happen to be a big name star getting ready to bare onscreen, you can pick a prettier one from a picture book of butt photos, as did Owen Wilson. Or if you’re Keira Knightly, you choose from live bottoms.

After being hooked near Bermuda, the 800-lb, 14-ft marlin came out of the water, stabbed the fisherman in the chest and tossed him in the sea.

According to his doctor, the fisherman is lucky to be alive.

I generally eat breakfast and lunch while working, and have so far managed to keep the keyboard relatively free of crumbs and other debris. Now there’s a product to make juggling food, drink and typing a bit easier. Well, for some anyway.

Seems to be fine for conventional desktop work, but maybe not so great for laptop users since the tray, while transparent, will still block part of the screen.

Both my sons work in SF, but only one has a view of the bay, and he has just reported that fog is coming in at a good clip. While some appeared last night, it did not cool those of us farther inland, who suffered through yet another sweltering night.

Here’s a view from the Fairmont Hotel. To many Bay Area dwellers, it’s the sweetest sight.

She won’t exactly fit in your purse, unless you have a big one, or a man purse, but she’ll sure brighten your day.

As ‘dense fog’ is expected to cool things down a bit here in the Bay Area, if only temporarily, Europe is preparing for record temperatures.

I tossed garlic, onions and fresh corn in butter and a little soy sauce, added the shrimp and scallions, and served it with vermicelli.

My powerbook gets pretty hot these triple digit days, and a few days ago the battery died. Or so it seemed. (Heat alone does not make batteries die however.) One of my sons knows a fellow who works at one of the Apple stores, who advised him to zap the pram. It worked, except the little lights on the bottom of the laptop don’t work. I’ll look that up later.

For now, it seems that SF is hotter than the peninsula. Wow. That’s a switch. 95° there, 93° here, but it feels like 100° minimum.

For those who missed it earlier, here’s the egg frying on the back of a Mac laptop. Of course it’s a joke , but these things do get really, really hot.

He won first place in the food category of the IPA photo competition in 2005.

a) Everybody in the pool (for about 10 days)!
b) Ice cream for breakfast, gelato for lunch, milk shake, smoothies, and granita for dinner
c) Flip-flops compulsory for office wear

By Haruki Murakami, here’s the first chapter. Last night I got through the infamous Chapter 16, the one some advise that you skip if you don’t care for violence.

For all the rabid fans, a condensed version via Feld Thoughts.

It might get to 105° today. With a connection that is less than satisfactory, and free wifi that is balky and fitful, what else can I do but see how fast the dough can rise?

The heat is like a weight pressing down, so maybe I’ll just have bread and jam for dinner. Possibly some melon if I can get up the energy to cut one up. But the tomatoes are dancing in the sunshine, and basil is coming up in the raised beds.

Monday night it must have been 95° in the living room. Dinner was steak, salad and baked potato, which meant the oven had been on for at least an hour. It was not a good time to watch Cache, but it had been sitting around for a while. Once started, it was impossible to look away, even at the very last, when the viewer is left waiting for an answer.

The blanket almost won.

The Burmese python named Houdini had the queen-size blanket in its cage for warmth. Vets suspect the snake’s rabbit dinner hid in the blanket. The python swallowed the entire blanket along with its controls and cord.

After a two-hour surgery, Houdini is expected to be lethargic but just fine.

But once again, there’s never a video when there should be. However, there is a photo.

Balloons are fun to shoot, but when the temps are in the 90s, they lose their shine fast.

They’ve never been on the best of terms, and now Lance has enraged the French once more with the use of the word ‘trouduc’, which means ‘a–hole’. Lance claims the French have misunderstood what was meant as a joke in reference to their soccer team. The French, still upset that he won the Tour de France so many times, are less than appeased.

Things not usually considered include not getting enough sleep and air-conditioning. What?

On one of these dog days of summer, I’d gladly swap a/c in return for being hungrier.

Got a cantaloupe, a honeydew and a Charlyn chilling in the fridge too. It’s over 80° in SF, and here, it’s 91° and climbing. Elsewhere, it’s not any better.

Smog particles from cars and trucks are the culprits behind storms that seem to occur more frequently during the week, scientists report.

Games such as Rag Doll Kung Fu are gaining avid fans as developers go for innovative approaches and good old-fashioned fun.

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a baby boom on, at least here in Silicon Valley. And all those little feet aren’t quite ready for flip-flops yet. ShooFoo, a shoe company out of Olympia, WA makes soft leather shoes that are attracting the likes of Hollywood infants. At a price that won’t make you cry.

Two of the most vivid eating scenes in recent memory occur in this delirious film. One involves the hero, the other pits the heroines against an abundance of frogs. Neither scene is conducive to viewer dining.

Two of your avocado problems can be solved with this neat tool, which pits with one end and slices with the other.

It reportedly has the head of a horse (or is it a dragon), the body covered with scales and a crest, possibly wings. There are few accounts because most who have seen it die shortly thereafter. A search team is headed to Gambia to find this creature.

A brave crew indeed. And a slow summer for fans of these beasts. Why, no one has uttered the word ‘chupacabra’ for months now.

Not the most optimally balanced meal - hot dogs with sauerkraut, zucchini with mushrooms and corn on the cob. Triplets is the most fun I’ve had with a movie this year.

How drug research at St. George’s, University of London might wipe out allergy problems in five years.

The house smells great! My crust-making skills are poor, but maybe they’ll improve if I keep practicing this summer.

When a Seattle choreographer and performance artist lost the dress she wore for an entire year, she didn’t realize that the dress had taken on a personality all its own.

She is still receiving emails and photos as the dress moves from place to place, telling a story of fabric in search of identity.

When my younger son began work recently at an SF startup, he announced that soon he would be wearing flip-flops to the office. I expressed alarm until he explained that all the principals did so, even the CEO.

The pin-striped shirts he wore to his last summer’s internship at another company have been tossed aside for t-shirts. In other words, he works in tremendous comfort.

Flip-flops have caught on across the pond too.

A recent study indicates that those who get a good night’s sleep are much better at retaining a sequence of facts, even when that sequence is complicated by new information.

The 68 families in the group known as the Mekong Giant Catfish Club will no longer seek out the ones left, said to number in the low hundreds. For each giant catfish net turned in, the fishermen will receive $500.

The LAPD is trying out the StarChase system, which shoots a homing device on the back of a fleeing car. The cops can then fade back while a computer tracks the vehicle.

Seems like the bad guys would catch on fast.

Their plans for the widebody jet are highly unusual, but now the aviation designer hired for the job has been released, with much talk of lawsuits.

At the Conservatory of Flowers’ Butterfly Zone last weekend, a young girl was taking pictures with one hand while holding this with the other, and kindly allowed me to take a shot of this eastern swallowtail as well.

There’s the kind you and I may have done back in elementary school, and then there’s the complex kind that Robert Lang does. He is currently perfecting software to ease the laborious folding of extreme origami.

Who does he look up to? Satoshi Kamiya, who can envision a finished piece, then unfolds it, bit by bit, all in his mind.

Lemon chicken and spinach soup. Brokeback Mountain was the first Heath Ledger movie I’d seen, wanted to see how he was in a different setting. Since I didn’t expect much, it was a surprisingly entertaining film.

Do whale hunters still use harpoons? Yes, but technology has empowered modern-day harpoons with explosive grenades. Advantage: hunter.

Found in Borneo, the Kapuas mud snake can change from an iridescent reddish-brown to white.

Speaking out on an Iraq pullout, North Korean leadership and Justin Timberlake, but not in that order. Sort of. In a way.

Some were in better shape.

At the Conservatory of Flowers in SF yesterday, butterflies were clinging to the windows as visitors streamed in and out of their controlled environment. Many of the insects had beaten-up wings.