/life/Man vs. Nature
This morning at about 3am, I went to the kitchen to grab a snack, and saw a little furry quadruped skitter across the counter and down behind the couch. "Something must be done!" I thought to myself, and then went to bed.
Today, I've put together a humane mouse trap from instructions
I found on the internet. Mine is a little simpler -- instead of the wooden board for stability and weight, I just
wedged it into a corner. I used twist-ties instead of heavy-gauge wire, a Chris
Tindal pin and a Bic pen instead of a drill, and a knife on my bike tool
(which I once accidentally brought through airport security — oops!) instead of an exacto blade, and
oil-on-a-paper-towel to slick things up. I'm a little skeptical that the original hole is big enough for a mouse, but
I'm sure I'm wrong.
Speaking of "vs", I wrote a little webapp using Google App Engine that mimics a game we used to play on the whiteboard, and it's called "versus". At the risk of nerding out, I can't really explain how excited I am about GAE — it's definitely the coolest thing Google's done since Google Maps, and possibly even cooler. The time to develop a reasonably sophisticated app, and be able to nearly "deploy and forget", not having to worry about rotting servers, overloaded MySQL databases, etc, is incredibly powerful. It probably divided by 3 or 4 the time to get that app running, and over the next year it will probably divide the time to keep it running by 10 or 100. (Note that "versus" is mostly a proof-of-concept and learning tool, and not actually that exciting of an app.)
Don't worry, dear reader, I'll be sure to let you know the result of the epic struggle of man against nature.
