February is the time of year when San Jose develops "Shark Fever". All over town teal blue signs with sharks and the slogan "THIS IS SHARKS TERRITORY" pop up. I was dubious about it until the arts community had a shark attack. Even KQED, the local public broadcasting affiliate, got in on the act. During one pledge drive, they were offering this "radio shark" as a premium, free with your $90 (or whatever it was) donation. As you can see, I got one. I use it a lot. It made my Macintosh into a glorified radio, which I use it for a lot more than I thought I ever would.

After I had it for a while I figured out that recording radio for later listening is also a useful feature. When it's recording the light in its fin turns red. When it's just listening to whatever is out there, the light glows blue. For a while I thought those were the only two "states" the thing had. Then I looked at the political maps of the USA, all broken down into Red States and Blue States. I looked at my shark again, and realized that the green state is the one where it's not using power, what is commonly called "the off state". It pleases me that the green state is the most sustainable of the three.