Continue reading Compact Stress Meter provides checkups from the comfort of your cubicle (video)

Compact Stress Meter provides checkups from the comfort of your cubicle (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who loves basketball? Well, there are really tons of people who do not only follow the game but also play the game. And that is why basketball courts are very easily seen everywhere. It can be said that this is one of the most popular sports in the whole world.

And if you are one of those basketball fanatics (or just a simple fan of the game), why do you not try to bring this game back with you at work? Sure you can have with you a mousepad that is made to look like a basketball. Or you can also have your computer’s desktop showing a favorite basketball moment. Or you can also choose to post posters or photos of your favorite basketball heroes. But that is not the only thing that you can do with your favorite game.

All you would need to quench that thirst for basketball is to bring it to work with the USB basketball. No. This is a basketball that you can plug in to your USB port and it inflates and you can play with it in the office. Nothing of that sort. The USB basketball is actually a USB gadget that is offered at Gadget Epoint and it allows you to shoot some hoops while working on your cubicle or desk.

If you go to arcades, you would most certainly think that the USB basketball is a miniature version of that basketball game you play there. And so just imagine all the fun you would have with this USB gadget which just needs to be plugged in to your computer. It even has a scoreboard that has an LED display which would make you feel like you are playing the real thing. And yeah, it also has a time limit so you would feel the pressure and that rush of adrenaline that comes with each real basketball game.

You like bacon? Who doesn’t?! Howsabout popcorn? Yes? If you find yourself short on time every day, perhaps you could combine bacon and popcorn by using BaconPop. Each bag is filled “with delicious, buttery, bacontastic popcorn,” according to ThinkGeek.

“Damn your tempations, Aamoth!” you scream. “I only eat Kosher food! I can’t eat bacon!” Well this has no actual bacon in it, just bacon flavoring. Although BaconPop NOW WITH REAL BACON CHUNKS! might be the next, next logical step for both bacon and popcorn.

Five dollars gets you three microwaveable bags and a whole lot of weird looks at work as you moan with delight inside your cubicle.

BaconPop – Bacon Flavored Popcorn [ThinkGeek.com]

Awhile back, in preparation for Halloween, we asked CNET readers to send in their tales of tech terror–and we got some doozies. From creepy crawlies in the machine to large-scale backup disasters and close encounters with sharp objects, the submissions spooked us out more than (almost) any blood-drenched zombie ever could. Here are a handful of our favorites. And thanks, readers, for sharing the scare.

The PC and the poison pen
When I had an internship last summer, I received a brand new IBM ThinkPad laptop, along with an optical mouse, an LCD monitor, Ethernet cord, and laptop dock. My cubicle was located a floor below my immediate manager’s cubicle.

Well, during the internship period while working on a project, I got a notification through e-mail that I had to come upstairs to have a progress report. I closed my laptop with the presentation file and everything, put it in the laptop bag, and headed to the meeting room. About 15 minutes past the meeting, I said I have the demonstration to show and took out my laptop to find out…my laptop’s screen was completely broken!

What happened was I mistakenly put a pen between the keyboard and the screen and closed it and put the laptop inside the bag. The result was a laptop with
black, cracked screen. Fortunately, my manager was kind enough to give
me a desktop, though lower in performance, for me to continue to work on my project while the laptop was sent to the repair shop. To get the laptop fixed, I had to wait about one week and kept talking back and forward with the help desk. I later received the laptop back like new, but I definitely learned my lesson.

–Ji Son, Austin, Texas

Oh, rats!
I got a call from a friend asking if I could come take a look at their computer, as it wasn’t powering up. They said they had a burning smell and all of a sudden the machine turned off and wouldn’t power back up. I assumed it was a power supply issue and headed over. Once I got there, I pulled out the tower to find a fried/dead rat that had chewed through the power cord running to the power supply. An easy fix, but definitely gross!

–CNET reader “idlehand326″

Gecko in the machine
My boss brought in his home PC because it was booting up with a strange crackling sound and apparently there was a funny smell coming from it. OK, let’s take a look at it. I plugged it in turned it on…”BANG!”–a flash and all the lights and power in our section of the office went down. Smoke and noxious fumes were emitting from the PSU. It was safe to turn off the machine–the fuse had tripped.

Unplugged the unit, took out the PSU, a nice expensive Antec, hmmm now why would one of those blow? Peered inside, the smell was revolting, putrid even. Lo and behold, one severely fried and dead gecko inside!!!

–CNET reader “Mikeybabes”

Curse of the black cat
Our vehicle has automatic safety door locks that engage at about 20 mph. As I was driving home, a black cat crossed my path about four car lengths ahead of me…I got a good look at it, all black. I heard the automatic door locks engage at that very instant that I saw the cat. The rear passenger door has not opened since. It refuses to unlock.

I’ve tried everything, hip-checking the door, disassembling the handle mechanism etc., all to no avail. The dealership wants over $400 to repair it. This would not have happened if that black cat had not crossed my path. It worked perfectly for years until that very moment.

–CNET reader “digipixx”

A real cutup
Back in the day when I owned a computer storefront, a client came in and bought a brand new desktop from me. I offered to install it for free (how things change) but she informed me that she knew how to do it and had owned a computer for years. She paid in full and was on her way.

About three days passed and I get a phone call from her. Her old system used 5.25-inch floppy disks and her new system only had 1.44MB 3.5-inch disks. She told me she had a book she had been working on for 25 years backed up on floppy and that the reason she got a new computer is that her hard drive had died. I told her it was not a problem, that I had an old 5.25 floppy drive I could install and would even be happy to transfer the data to the 3.5-inch disk free of charge (again, how things change). She thanked me and stated that she would be at my office shortly.

About 30 minutes later she walks in carrying a large box. My first thought was, “Oh man…what the heck did I just get myself into? That’s going to take me days to read if that box is full of disks.”

She sits the box on my desk and thanks me once again for my help, explaining that it was her life’s work and that she was almost finished with it. I opened the box to find a huge pile of cut-up floppies. In horror, I asked her what happened. She stated that she figured she could just trim the edges of the disks off so they would fit into the smaller drive and it would work fine. I asked her if she still had the old computer but she had trashed it more than a week before.

About two hours later I was able to get her husband on the phone to come pick her up from my office. She was so shaken she was not able to drive herself home and so stunned she could not even tell me how to get to her house (now we have GPS…more evidence of how things change).

–CNET reader “Nyteblade”

…

You can define a cool job from a very subjective point of view. It will depend on the persons personality and this job will have to allow a person to express it, it will have to be something you really enjoy almost love doing and at the same time to get paid for.  The last part is the most important one because otherwise it will all be a hobby. The same conclusion reached the famous researcher David Rosen which has a book out there with this same topic.

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Everyone that loves the job that they do does not mean that will love another job that somebody else loves as well so this really means that the coolness is very subjective and it will only depend on the needs of that person. There are many jobs that seem quite cool for the majority out there, those kinds of jobs that will make you destroy your cubicle and run from your office screaming and we have gathered some of them just to see how loud you can actually scream.

A cowboy is a very cool job to have for the ones that love the outdoors and it’s a dream to some just to live a rural life but it is quite pricey because you would have to have some land and animals. Otherwise you can look up a position of a farm or ranch manager. There are some people that hate the city and love to be outdoors, just to smell the fresh air and have the old country side as their partner.

This will suit best a calm person, which does not like the fuss of the big cities and prefer the calm village life. Also you would have to like animals a lot because you will have to deal with them daily. If you think you are this person maybe you should apply for such a job. It is quite cool after all and in no time you will say to your friends that you are a real cowboy. From this job researchers stated that you can earn between $20 000 and $30 000 an year but this in the cases of big farms or ranches.

Another cool job may be becoming an actor or a singer. If you know you have the talent you could really give it a try because you could never know what or where you may end up to. But also you would like to keep in mind that it is a very tough business out there and not many people make it. There are many actors or singers that have second job just to sustain themselves as assistants, teachers or even waitresses and there are almost 50 000 Americans that are looking to hit the big scene.

Nevertheless you should try it if you think you have the talent because every dream is worth fighting for and we all know the stories behind every celebrity that lay. Most of them tried as an average person and just had a lucky break, so maybe yours is out there somewhere. A piece of advice would be to have a ground to stand on if this would not work out for instance another field that you may like to work and may advance in.

A brew master is the dream that every boy in collage has. It’s a very fun job, it will be entertaining and surely you will do what you love. Look up the University of California at Davis because there you can go to the Institute of Brewing and Distilling. There are almost 400 members there that are trying to make this dream reality. If you are passionate about this job you could give it a shot. At a local brew pub you can earn $25 000 and if you hit a large corporation you score will go much higher then this. It all depends on how much you really want it because there is nothing impossible and who knows the next time your friend will ask a beer you will be the one there to give it him and then chat about how wonderful you life is.

If you think you have nerves of steel and you love playing golf then maybe becoming a professional golfer is the best job for you. There is only the need for talent and skill because in this filed that is all that it takes. You will travel a lot and combine the passion for traveling with the passion for sports. The average winning fee will be $237 587 a year and maybe who knows you will leave even a mark in history. This is a great sport but the ones that are weak hearted will not resists because it will take patience and calm and also talent to get far in this field. You can search the internet for more details on how to become golf pro and also how to get there.

A cruise director is the one that will be multitasking when you are at sea. He or she will organize shore excursions; have guest speakers, scheduling all the entertainment for the people on that cruise and other organizatoric things. If you are a very organized person and you like planning and also you love traveling by sea then maybe this is your dream job. You can earn $ 45 000 an year and also you will have the luxury of traveling in style. It is not that hard to find such a job because the market is full of offers and you will surely make a great candidate.

If you like to exercise and love to live healthy maybe you should teach others how to do so. You can become a personal trainer and work at health clubs for this type of job and help many people that will be out there on the look for some counseling. It is the best job of you fit into the first requests and also you will have the satisfaction of helping others.After this maybe you can sell you very own methods of exercising and being healthy because we all know that health is the most important thing that we should preserve.

An academy awards ballot counter will get to be back stage and count the votes that are for every category and every award. You could that this is quite a cool scenario because you will be the first to know who wins what before they know. The average compensation for such a job $ 461 000 an year but you will have to sing a non disclosure document because all in all if you ruin somehow the ballot you may end up with a law suite against you. It is a very critical job but at the same time quite cool. If you are a organized person maybe this is your dream job. Just think how cool and important it sounds. It actually is.

Another job where you will need the nerves of steel is the broadcast reporter. If you are ok to speak freely to a camera and do not have stage fright maybe this is the job that was waiting for you. You will have the opportunity to find out top quality news, meet interesting people and also get paid for. For an average journalist the main salary an year will be of $50 000 but you could go for the printers reporter that mainly will keep you out of the spot light but also have an entertaining time at the office with the annual fee of $ 40 000.

If you are courageous and love to help people then you could become a firefighter. This a very thought job and the competition will be fierce. You will need physical fitness, mechanical aptitude and some experience as an emergency responder to get a good job in this field. It will be a thought job as well for the point of view of the fact that you will surely see some horrifying things out there and you need to have the guts to go into a flamed house and save some one if you have to. It is known for its heroic features and also for the neediness that it presents.  If you succeed to score such a job you will be averagely be paid $40 000 an year. It is a risky job but if this is what you are looking for then we strongly recommended because your best reward will be changing other peoples lives.

A cool job will be the one of a flight attendant because you will instantly have the perk of flying free of cost and traveling around the world, experiencing many new things, peoples and cultures. The average salary for such a job is $20 000 and if you consider yourself as a free and calm spirit then this is the job for you. We said calm because sometimes you will have pesky people on you flight that will surely get to your nerves but do remember that the customer will come first.

The best advice that we can give you if you are not satisfied with the work that you are doing now is to take some time for yourself and find out what you are really good at and what you would like to do. There is a saying that we have only one life which is worth living and you should go get your dream job if you think that you don’t have it already.