Someone gave me a helium balloon the other day and I'm amazed at how I forgot what I learned as a kid: Which is that playing with a helium balloon can be loads of fun and a great distraction. I liked giving it a nudge every time it inched close to my desk, only to watch it meander its way back in a minute or two.

Note to self: Tethering a helium balloon to your desk is not a great idea if you also have touch screens. I was AFK for like 10 minutes and come back and the thing had gotten my browser into quite a mess, and there were like 10 tabs open for various sketchy sites. Thankfully this was all in a VM, but just FYI: Balloons may look harmless, but they definitely have a mind of their own.

@briankrebs oh, does it cause confusing input on capacitive touchscreens at a distance? Nice
@recursive IDK why the touch screen is reacting to it, but it could be because the balloon is made of some type of shiny, metallic looking material? I'm pretty sure it's just plastic though.
@briankrebs @recursive, well… my phone's screen reacts to headphone cabling, USB cables, shiny metallic-looking sweet wrappers…