No. 0027 - Monsters with Shoulders

I've recently had a random conversation with my friends about the Power Rangers the other day. We talked about how dumb it was and how I despised the show, even as a young child. I like to consider myself to be somewhat of a decent film critic, and I know what I don't like in a show; and I know I didn't like the Power Rangers. The show is so predictable, so predictable that it has a pattern. They all start out with some elusive monster wreaking a havoc, then the Power Rangers investigate, then somehow the monster freakishly grows ten times bigger and starts to topple buildings. The Power Rangers would then conjure up their dinosaur themed robots, get their butt kicked a little bit for dramatic purposes, then they would combine into one big robot and kicks the trash out of the monster; every episode, same pattern. (Unfortunately, I've seen enough episodes to point out these observations). Let's think back with me for a minute. Have you ever realized how all of the monsters that the Power Rangers defeats, most of them really don't have the full mobility of their shoulders? The monsters often just swirl their arms around aimlessly as their death rays emitting eyes or fiery breath are doing most of the damages? I mean come on, if you are a monster and are going to take on some advance dinosaur-like robots, wouldn't you want your shoulder cuffs to rotate so you can use one arm to put the Power Rangers in a head lock and use your other arm to grab a semi truck or something to beat the Power Rangers silly?! (A little side note: I especially love those monsters where it is just one giant eye ball with legs and stuff. Real smart! Let's choose one of the most vulnerable parts of our body, make it big and see what kind of damage it can do. . . . maybe it can stare down something . . . duh. Power Rangers, leave your robots at home because a giant case of mace would be sufficient). So to all those future villains out there that are planning on taking over the world, please, give your monsters some shoulders would ya?

No. 0026 - Call-in-Sick Detector

Call-in-sick. What a concept! When people call in sick, employer normally don't check doctor's notes or proof because they wouldn't want to challenge the "employee/employer trust". Yet, people abuse them all the time. And the darn thing is that everyone suffers when one call in sick, even you as a co-worker, because guess what?! You've just been asked to cover for the little boy (or girl) who cried wolf. What do you do then? Call them on their bluff and don't cover for them while they might be coughing up blood at work, or cover for them and wonder if your co-worker is joy riding their way to San Diego?
For all the bosses and managers and co-workers out there, here is an invention for you: a call-in-sick detector. The detector sits inside the cell phones. It will take samples of the breath of the caller and run an analysis on it to see if indeed the caller is sick. On your cell phone, it will have an indicator showing how sick the person really is; simple as that. So the next time your co-worker is calling in sick and asking for your help to cover for them, check your call-in-sick detector on your phone. If it indicates ". . . strong as an ox", then you could give response like "sorry, I've already decided to get sick today as I'm on my way to the beach."

No. 0025 - Self Destructing Wedding Announcements

Being in the singles world, it is only natural for me to receive lots of wedding announcements from my friends. Typically, I hear my married friends would spend in the units of hundreds of dollars on their wedding announcements. And guess where most of them will end up? In the trash! With this knowledge in mind, it makes me feel real guilty to throw away my friends' wedding announcements. With their fancy cursive lettering on its quality paper, double enveloping and along with that waxy paper to protect the glossy portrait, I feel like I'm throwing money away. Sometimes I would have to make sure the picture is facing down in the trash can as I'm throwing it away to prevent the illusion of my friends from looking straight back at me from the trash can. Currently, my system is to have only one wedding announcement up at a time; the prior couple will be ousted with the up coming couple. In general, most of my friends like to get marry in the summer time so as a result, the couple that gets married in the beginning of Fall would end up on my fridge for the entire year.

To relieve of me of this guilt, why can't wedding announcements self destruct? It really can't be that hard. Timer chips are cheap (555, Elton!). All you need is a trigger that would set the timer off upon opening of the announcements and a pyro charge. Here is how I would envision the announcement would go. "Mr and Mrs. So-and-so are pleased to announce the marriage of their daughter Dah Dah Dah to Blah Blah Blah, son of Mr and Mrs. So-and-so. . . . this announcement will self destruct in 5 days." There! Problem solve! Of course, you might want to leave the wedding announcement in the sink or something like that on the fifth day before you go to work in order to prevent your house from catching fire. Besides that little draw back, I honestly would be quite intrigued by such a wedding announcement. In fact, I might just sit around 5 days later to see the thing self destruct.

No. 0024 - Baby's First Book

Unlike most of my other inventions, this one actually exists. A friend of mine, Amanda, gave birth to a baby awhile back, however you see, Amanda is really different because she decided to make her baby shower co-ed. Considering this is the first baby shower that I got invited to, I wasn't going to embarrass myself and in front of my friends because of a crappy gift; I was determined to make it good. Then it hit me, I'll make her a book, not just any book but a book for babies with advance mathematic and engineering theories. Another friend also helped me out at this and I must say, it was pretty good. Here an excerpt from our book:

"In “Baby’s First Book”, Elton and Chow presented some advance topics that sometimes they don’t even know in its entirety. However, this book has come forth targeting children as young as newborns with the intention to give gifted babies a head start . . . a major head start.

Imagine how amazing it would be to see your newborns to identify turbulent flow out of the milk bottle, or to recognize the founding father of Physics, Sir Isaac Newton, before they can even count. How impressive it would be to see your very own baby is trying to figure out the stability of a bifurcation diagram using a TI-86 while other newborns are slobbering on their nasty chew toys. Elton and Chow provide that opportunity for newborns to take their intellects into a level that surpasses any soft felt story books ever made.

This book is decorated with colorful illustrations and interesting looking text intended to tantalize the young minds into remembering the topics presented. It will change and revolutionize the way you raise your newborn."

Side note: with another friend of mine, Josh, we purchased a doggy sweat shirt for the baby as my second gift. I mean come on! Dog crawls, dog gets doggy sweater; baby crawls, then why can't baby get doggy sweater too! Here's the link if you are interested

http://usandthings.blogspot.com/2007/04/dog-sweater.html

No. 0023 - PII Blog

In respond to popular demands (popular as in two people), Patrick's Invention Ideas are going public!! From this day on, the following blog address will take care of the housekeeping of all the ideas to come:

http://patricksinventionideas.blogspot.com

All the old ideas have been copied and pasted over there already along with the comments. To all the old PII commentators and visitors, your comments have been identified with your real name. If you don't want your real name to be posted, please let me know and I'll weed them out and put in place a nickname of my choosing instead. Here is the list of nicknames I'm thinking about: Thor, Skud, Spudnik, Optimus Prime, Bone Crusher. . . even Bumble Bee (yes I saw Transformers and I loved it).

I'm not quite sure how I'm going to deal with your future comments as yet but the new ideas will definitely be coming out of the blog first. Comment at the blog if you can but I won't cane you if you comment in Facebook instead. I may just put the title of future inventions in Facebook just to let you know and reference you back to the blog each time. I couldn't quite figure out the import a blog option so I might just have to do some extra work with your comments.

So tell your friends, send them the link! Now you won't have to be my friends to criticize my mindless rambling and satirical comments.

No. 0022 - Conversation Pacer

I'm all against awkward moments, especially the ones that commonly occurs in office places as you may have notice the office theme in some of my invention ideas. This week, I wish to take on the awkward short talks that you may have as you are going from point A to point B.

I work in a very big office place, which means there exist an intricate network of hallways. So intricate, that there are numerous combinations of routes that I could take simply to go from the front door to my desk. However, on any given mornings, I would walk in the front door along side with co-workers that I know somewhat well. To be courteous, sometimes the person would start a little short talk as we are walking along together. However, on some occasions, those little short talks can spawn into a longer conversation. Can't you see the dilemma here?! I have no idea where the other person sits! I have no idea where he is going? One day on a similar situation, I kinda got stuck to this "little more than a short talk" conversation from the front door as we are approaching the first big intersection of hallways. I needed to turn left but as for him? I had no idea. I didn't know if I should slow down or stop to complete this conversation that isn't going anywhere. Eventually, he went straight and the conversation just ended with him muttering something as I physically removed myself from the conversation to the left. Another time, I was walking with an intern having a somewhat lengthy conversation. I thought we had the same destination until I made a right turn as he went straight. I didn't even realized he was gone until I was almost halfway down the hallway. So I suppose I was talking to myself from the turn on to the point of my realization (how embarrassing).

Wouldn't it be nice to have a conversation pacer. The pacer will somehow know of your destination and be color coded relative to the distance between you and your destination, let's say red means "getting closer". So the next time you walk into the front door, just look for the green lights and walk with them instead. In fact, you can talk your little heart out with the greens but as for the reds, I wouldn't even bother to say hi to them. Also, if you can see their lights are slowly turning red, then you know it is your queue to wrap things up in order to avoid a dropped conversation just as I have experienced.