I had a Casio DataBank Telememo 30 watch (was really jealous of its calculator cousin) which let you add names and numbers to it laboriously with a toggle switch on the front face. Freshman year of high school I had a quiz in Physical Science in which I had to write out from memory the first 50 elements. I spent the night before entering them, and double-checking them as I went to make sure I had them in order (used the phone number part for the atomic number), but when it came time for the quiz, I realized I’d accidentally memorized them all in order from all the slow text entry, and didn’t use the watch. It’s about 16 years later now and I’ve never forgotten them. The secret to remembering anything is to use a terrible text input system to write it out.

Credit: gfixler @ reddit

I don’t like telling this story too much. In fact, my brain doesn’t even like to wander into those memories too much, so whenever I tell it, it feels like I’m telling something I heard somewhere rather than something that actually happened to me. Here it goes.

Back when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old, I was allowed to walk home all by myself. It was a looong walk; school ended at 3pm and if I walked at a normal pace, I’d be home in maybe 40 minutes to an hour. You see, the way home from school involved walking past a huge empty field that had previously been farming land, which was then sold to developers who were busy building ‘insta-suburbs’. My home was in one of the newer developments at the far end and my parents decided I’d go to school on the other end of town because they knew the teachers there. And back then, all a child needed to know was that cars kill people and not to talk to strangers — so it was OK to walk by ourselves. (more…)

There was no doubt about it: I had discovered The Next Big Thing. Like Edison and the lightbulb, like Gates and the pc operating system, I would launch a revolution that would transform society while bringing me wealth and fame. I was about to become the first person in America to sell condom key chains.

I first encountered the condom key chain while working in Bangkok. Faced with a warehouse full of soon-to-expire condoms, the ingenious leaders of a Thai community development organization took the aging prophylactics, sealed them in plastic and attached a key ring with a tongue-in-cheek logo: “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass.” They couldn’t sell them fast enough.

My belief that the condom key chain would quickly eclipse the legendary success of the Pet Rock was confirmed by a simple market survey. I showed one to my mother. “Robert,” she said, “these are the funniest things I’ve ever seen! Get me 50. I’m going to give them to all my friends.” Mom loved it. She thought all her friends would love it. America would love it. What more did I need to know? (more…)