I was just looking for something on YouTube (as you do) when I ran across this video posted by someone whose mom is a chess grandmaster. The mom sneaks into a chess tournament in London and ends up playing the unsuspecting guy shown in this video.

It turns out there’s a host of YouTube videos on this sort of thing, such as experts trolling chess hustlers into thinking they are playing against beginners. This is an entire video genre of which I was previously unaware.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about in this blog (sorry).

I still remember watching Alien at the cinema when it came out in 1979. Everything about that movie was awesome. But the part I’m thinking about now is when Ripley tackles the Alien using the Power Loader.

The reason I mention this here is that my chum Jay Dowling just pointed me at the ToolNut website. Now, I’m a tool nut in general, but Jay was pointing me at the FesTool ExoActive Exoskeleton in particular.

“O-M-G,” is all I can say. There’s no way I can afford this at ~$3,500 (the way my finances are at this moment in time, I couldn’t even afford a model of one LOL), but I can dream…

(Click image to see a larger version -- Source: Festool)

One of the tasks that’s racing toward me is the annual pruning of four gigantic Rose of Sharon bushes next to our back porch. Every fall I cut them back to be about 8-feet tall. Every year they grow back again to be 12-feet or more.

I balance precariously on a ladder to perform this pruning using my 32-inch-long hand-powered shears. When I start, I’m full of vim and vigor. By the time I get to the end, I can barely lift my arms over my head, and I have no option but to leave the ladder in the garden until I’ve partially recovered the following day.

I can only imagine how much better I would feel if I had one of these FesTool ExoActive Exoskeletons to help me. I can also only imagine the envious stares of my neighbors, which would almost be worth the price of admittance LOL.