ideas

Post-apocalyptic Vacation

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Picture this:  You get off the plane at Detroit-Metro, get picked up by a driver, then dropped off in what appears to be an abandoned industrial park.  The driver gives you a paintball gun with 5 paintballs, then drives off.  It’s only you, whoever you brought with you, and all that you can carry on your back.

Welcome to your very own post-apocalyptic vacation!  There are food stores of grain and canned food hidden around, maybe a J.J. Abrams-like monster wandering about, and some “stray” dogs.  You spot another vacationer, but are they friendly?  Why are they pointing their paintball gun at you?  Where did you put your gun?  Did that shadow just move?  Can you hook up that car battery to those Christmas-lights like Wall-E did?

Costs: large upfront cost of renovating an abandoned industrial park to be safe, small maintenance cost of food caches, security, limited utilities.
Benefits: tourism for Detroit, use of abandoned industrial park, awesome place to vacation.

If someone makes this (cough, Dan Gilbert, cough), let me be the first to go!

Package Delivery by Plane

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Which would you rather do:  pay $50 to overnight a package somewhere, or meet someone headed to that city who could drop off the package for you?  Well, one costs $50 and the other gives you the opportunity to make a connection with another human.

Introducing FlyMe, or JetEx, or Airbound, or some other reasonably creative name that will fit easily into some sort of bubble font with clouds around it as a logo.  There are two users of the site: people who have a package they need delivered, or a package-holder, and people who are going someplace with spare room in their luggage or carry-on, or courier.  The package-holder goes to the website to find a courier going to the place they need their package delivered.  They send the potential courier a message saying what they need delivered, where, when and any other details.  The courier either accepts or rejects the mission.  If the courier accepts the mission, the package-holder meets the courier, the package is handed off, and the courier goes on their trip to deliver the package to the appropriate person or place.  Once delivery is confirmed, the original package-holder gives points or badges or a tip or a gift or a like or tweet to the courier, raising his courier-ninja rating on the website, and earning the respect from all the other couriers.  Like couchsurfing, only with packages.

Pros: it uses the wasted space on planes, connects people with people, and relies on the trustworthiness of man.

Cons: it relies on the trustworthiness of man, a critical mass is needed in order to find not only the right destination but originating city, and coordinating a meet-up in some places – like Southeastern Michigan, might be difficult.

The Way I Wish Recipes Were Written

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I’m fine with the listing the ingredients.  I use that list to make sure I have sufficient amounts of all ingredients needed (or suitable substitutes, like one cup butter in place of a tablespoon butter).

My problem is with the directions.  When reading the directions, I always have to look back up at the ingredient list to search through it to find whatever ingredient they are referencing just to find out the amount of that ingredient.  How hard would it be to put the amount needed of an ingredient right in the directions too?  A sample:

Toast
Ingredients:
– 2 slices bread
– 2 tsp. butter
– 2 tbsp. strawberry rhubarb jam

Directions:
1. Toast bread (2 slices).
2. Remove bread from toaster, spread butter (2 tsp.) and jam (2 tbsp.) on each slice of bread equally.

Eh?  Eh?  So much easier!  No rereading the ingredient list to find out how much butter or jam!  It’s all right there!  No going back and forth from directions to ingredients! Someone please write some computer code to automatically change online recipes to display this way.