We went and saw WALL-E again this weekend, and again loved it. Seeing the sleek, translucent look of EVE and the other robots got me to thinking about the relationship between Apple, Pixar, and the robots in WALL-E. It doesn't take much imagination to see striking similarities between EVE and the trendy line of Apple products.

As it turns out, there is. From Fortune: Apple's Jonathan Ive helped Design the heroine of Pixar's Wall-E.

"I wanted Eve to be high-end technology - no expense spared - and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous," Andrew Stanton, Wall-E's director, told Fortune. "The more I started describing it, the more I realized I was pretty much describing the Apple playbook for design."

BTW, if you've never experienced the joy of trying to make a website look presentable in the piece of caca that is, well, pretty much any version of Internet Explorer (but especially 6), just know that the natural reaction to doing such is strings of expletives, wanting to throw things violently, and further deepening of one's belief that Bill Gates is in fact the anti-Christ.

I'm sure by the time I take this screen shot and post this post, Twitter will be back up. Then again, I also thought that Twitter would have restored my account their server ate, but now 3 weeks later, they haven't been able to yet. In fact, they had drop-shipped me a mens small Twitter t-shirt (emblazoned with "wearing my twitter t-shirt," cleverly enough) even before I had a personal acknowledgment that yes, my account had been eaten during a database update. (Through several e-mails from Twitter and other deleted users, and through much time spent on the Twitter forums and GetSatisfaction, the story is that this is happening to lots of people--it's still happening in fact, and no one has had a successful un-delete of their account yet. I do think Twitter is trying, they just haven't succeeded yet.)

My old account is still no more, and while I've set-up a new one, I have yet to re-find all my friends (including private accounts, like the wonderful SwissMiss!). I know it's a free service, but honestly, between my iPhone and times like the screen shot above, I'm experiencing less and less service.

C'mon, guys, pull through this! Twitter is a lot of fun, most especially when it works...

As promised, a re-look at the thumb drive from my desk: Ninja Domo USB thumb drive, by Mimoco, from the Mimobot Domo series. Mimoco is a designer toy studio-meets-consumer electronics brand. Their mission is to "bring style and soul to personal tech devices and to inject interactivity into the underground Art Toy movement."

I picked up my Ninja Domo 2GB flash drive at SXSWi, but you can buy one from their site, and Ninja Domo is on sale at the moment.

And while I normally hate thumb drives that come pre-loaded with caca, but the Mimobot drive came preloaded with all sorts of fun icons and wallpapers and whatnot, that are just as fun as the little drives themselves.

If Ninja Domo isn't your style, check out the Star Wars and Halo flash drives.

Lately, I have seen very little of my loverly wife. I most often am finding her with her head tucked under the sewing machine, needle and thread whirring away, working with clock-like precision...but on what?

I have a theory that she's about to open her much-rumored Etsy store, and is trying to make sure that she has enough stock to sustain the madhouse of a rush that is going to happen once she opens her electronic doors.

But that's just a guess. I only live with her, so I may be wrong... =^)

I have been in Houston at an energy conference for the last few days, and am just about to pack it up and head home, which kinda makes me very happy. I love my little family and miss them so when I'm gone.

Disney / Pixar's Wall-e movie opens on June 27th, but we are ready for it now! Today, we're in to see Horton Hears a Who.

What are YOU doing this Memorial Day?

From left to right:

1. MacBook Pro
2. Domo Ninja 2GB thumbdrive (more on that later)
3. Light reading for work: The Future of Geothermal Energy - Impact of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) on the United States in the 21st Century
4. My acursed BlackBerry POS Curve
5. My blessed iPhone, in its Incase cover

The desk is normally not this clean, much to the frustration of my wife, I am sad to say. I am trying to get better at keeping it tidy, though. And while my desk gets tidier, my brain is going to get less tidy, as I continue to fill it up with all sorts of alternative energy information.

Who knew? Yet another compelling reason for us to install a soda fountain at work.

by Veronica Belmont.

Apparently, Jenni and Sarah are not the only ones who knit.

If you're stuck at work today and not able to run right out and immediately buy the much anticipated follow-up to Death Cab for Cutie's 2005 album Plans (cos you're not going to download this CD on iTunes, you're going to want the real thing), head over to music.aol.com and make sure you enjoy sucking up the entire bandwidth of the interweb pipes at your work, because The Narrow Staircase is one of this week's "Free Full CD Listening Parties."

And then, at 5:00, or right after they send you home for using the full T1 that they somehow still insist is good enough for 200 employees, swing by Target and pick up a real copy. Yeah, we're not album test-driving today, we're just tiding ourselves over until we can go to Target.

It's our first non-crazy Saturday in over two months, and we decided to spend it in one of our most favorite Fort Worth spots, The Modern Art Museum. The wonderful exhibit by Martin Puryear is coming to a close May 18th, and we wanted to go see it one more time.

What are you doing this Saturday?

We've had a lot going on lately, and one of the biggest life items was helping Mary Beth pack up her house, her bags, and her life to move to Uganda. She will be working there with established missionaries from her church, assisting them with various items, but especially the establishment of a new post-secondary school.

It doesn't begin to communicate how much we support her to say we fully support her going. We love her dearly and already miss her so much, but are so excited for her to get to see this lifetime heart's desire of hers be met.

While she is in a fairly remote part of the world, she will have access to the internet (on the days she has electricity!). So go visit her blog: mbsadventures.blogspot.com. She already has a post up, that she did in Heathrow! Leave her a comment and let her know you're reading and looking at the wonderful pictures...she's going to post. (At the moment, she's got it set to having to use a Google, Blogger, or OpenID login to post a comment, but that will probably change in a few days once she gets back online--she wants everyone to be able to comment).

We love you, Mom! Our thoughts and prayers are with you...

The stadium-packing Brit-rockers Coldplay are currently distributing the first single from their upcoming album for free on their website. An e-mail address is required, and you will receive a download link at the address you provide them.

The song, Violet Hill, is enough of a departure from the typical Coldplay sound to invite interest and enthusiasm for the new album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, from more than just their die-hard fans (say, people who bought the Japanese import version of the single Talk--ough-cough, ME). The single will actually be up to buy Tuesday, May 5th, with the full album being released worldwide on June 12.

Welcome back, fellas! We're looking forward to hearing the whole thing.