I saw this little article and it rang some bells since my sister Whit actually has one of these defibrillators.  Apparently there are a few brands of these things that transmit wirelessly to a bedside device that then sends the data to the doctor every day.  Naturally some folks figured out a way to snoop that transmission, and even send commands back to the device.  The logical end point is to cause the defibrillator to malfunction, which they claim is possible to do.  The other side of this is the range on these things is very short, meaning you would sort of need a hacker to be camped out sitting on your chest with his laptop for this to actually work.  If you have ever seen the average hacker, these guys aren’t generally your fit types.  I’m thinking that the average heart patient would probably be squashed flat by the hacker’s ample buttocks.  Just a hunch.  Besides with the amount of time this would require, you would hear the labored breathing, machine gun typing and cheetos munching and wake up anyway.

So, Whit I think you are probably safe for now.  If you are still worried, here are some of the best ways to set traps to foil malicious hackers trying to upload code to your heart.

Pringles cans left on the floor will probably stop them for a while since they need to bend over to reach them, and then eat them.  Always leave the Pringles cans lying down, since that’s an extra few inches to the floor that most nerds just don’t have the flexibility to do.  This always works because nerds love Pringles, and the empty cans have lots of nerdly uses too.  Serve with cans of Red Bull. Another thing that will stop them cold is a flashing 12:00 on the VCR (which is surprisingly vanishing from the living room landscape, have you noticed?) they are physically compelled to stop and fix it.  Maybe a partially disassembled toy robot, oh man, that’s like crack for nerds.  This should give you enough time to actually wake up in the morning and gently shoo the nerds out the door with a broom.  They will take the robot and the chips, but will have completely forgotten they were actually trying to hack into your heart. 

Problem solved.

I saw a link on Neatorama the other day that I thought was especially appropriate for Nikki (who is always cold, no matter what the temperature is). It’s about a guy who can apparently withstand cold that would kill anyone else, and we aren’t talking about a little cold here, we are talking about chest deep in ice-water for over an hour with nothing on. He climbed Mount Everest dressed in a pair of shorts. That’s it. Crap. He is a living, breathing super-hero, really. This guy is hard core, I can’t imagine how he does it. The scientists are practially speechless:

“People are always looking for new firsts on Everest. It’s been climbed so many times now, people climb it without oxygen, they … they climb it with all different kinds of handicaps. But no one has come close to climbing Everest in those kinds of conditions,” Dr. Kamler said. “It’s … it’s almost inconceivable.”

It’s a good read, I recommend you check it out. Imagine the money I could save on winter clothing and heating the house if I could figure out how to do that….. You wouldn’t need clothes at all, actually. Well, maybe just for social reasons. He may be the Iceman, but I bet there’s no amount of willpower that can stop shrinkage.