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It’s hard to screw up Italian food.  Some pasta, some oregano and other appropriate spices, some white or red sauce, some meat, and you’re done.  Nothing to it.  Walk down the soup aisle in the grocery store and you will see at least 100 companies think that they know how to make spaghetti sauce.  Sampling most of these would, of course, would be a study in mass-produced blandness but they probably wouldn’t be bad.  Not actually bad.  And you might overcook or undercook the noodles or put too much garlic in the sauce but the end result would probably be edible, right?

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The rumors of Roomba’s death have been greatly exaggerated, it seems! 

After performing a heart transplant (swapping out the Dirtdog battery with the Roomba one) the Roomba woke up just fine.  I swapped the batteries back and placed Roomba on the charger instead of plugging it directly into  into the power port on the side.  A few hours later the green light was on and it is now going about its duties as if nothing had happened. 

I think religions are started this way…

You can read my reviews on Roomba, Scooba, and Dirtdog by doing a search on those terms.  Enjoy!

I wrote some more stuff about the Elevated Garden project today (Laying the Stone) .  You can get to the description here. 

 Workstation/Treadmill to Turn Work Into Toil

This reminds me of the “coming of age” scene in Conan the Barbarian, but more smiley.  I hope there is an option for a chair - some people don’t like to be forced to death march 20 miles a day.  And maybe a shower attachment would be nice.

The Prize and Charity Pool are both at $1.00 now.  Donations make the pools grow faster and keep the site running.  A lack of donations makes baby angels cry.  Go to the Contact Us or the FAQ page to find out how to donate.

  NASA Forced to Search Files for 1965 UFO “Incident”

What a great use of FOIA and other federal resources.  Wait… Do you hear that noise? That’s the sound of everyone on the receiving end of this lawsuit rolling their eyes in unison.  I wonder how often they (the government)  have to deal with stuff like this.

Folks, I have some sad news to report.  Our Roomba is on life support and will probably not make it through the night.  The POWER button no longer functions and the red heartbeat light refuses to turn green.  We thought that we had hope because does not the Good User Manual say “From the Factory thou camest, and to the Factory thou shalt return - assuming thou art still under warranty”? But, alas, under warranty it was not. 

 Roomba Discovery was a good Roomba.  He toiled nearly every day so that his family could have a little more time to watch TV and play with the XBox 360.  He seldom became wedged under the entertainment center and often did not attempt to destroy errant cell phone chargers.  Although we would often neglect to turn off the IR walls for days at a time, he made no effort to escape to the kitchen or the laundry room. We will remember him as a good little gadget - one that we recommend to all our friends. 

We will move on.  We will heal.

In the meantime I am looking forward to the Roomba Autopsy in my garage.  Maybe you think I am playing God, but I think I have a shot at bringing him back.  Stay tuned.

I finally updated the Eighty’s Movie Haiku page with some new artwork.  Send in your haikus, and I will post and create artwork for the best ones.  How? Post your haiku as a comment on this post.  Just keep the language “1980’s TV clean”, please. 

Don’t forget, Puzzle 04 is up.  The prize is already 75 cents (and the corkboard) , so what are you waiting for?  What am I talking about?  Click here.

Ok… Enough with the rain already.  In the past four days we have gotten nearly 7 inches of rain in my area.  Well, we were 16 inches under where we should have been so why should I complain if we get several months worth all in one week?  Sort of like saying ‘if drinking a glass of red wine a night is good for you then pounding back three bottles in one evening should cover you for the next two weeks.’  A least the rain has stopped this morning.

If you have noticed a definite downward trend in the quality of my spelling, punctuation, and grammar please feel free to blame my new Treo, on which I am typing this now. I needed a new phone since the other one wasn’t a bleeping, blooping, all-singing, all-dancing gizmo and people stared and pointed whenever my old-school phone would ring with dignity and decorum.  Besides, it had been in mid-disintegration for about a year now, what with me bounce testing it every time I would get out of my car. It had no camera, Bluetooth, or music ability. Thanks again to jimmydunes for suggesting the 700wx.  Now I can do all of the things I could normally only dream of doing during mental downtime like bridge lifts, traffic jams, and normal working hours.

 Bigalow Aerospace to Offer 760M$ for Cheap Space Transport
 
This tops the 500M$ COTS Prize  offered by NASA for a commercial orbital space system.  And Bigalow wants it (not PowerPoint presentations describing how it can be done) before 2010 so people can dock with his inflatable space structures.  I wonder if it can be done.  I mean, Scaled Composites willed a sub-orbital space program into existence in about 2 years and $20 million dollars.

 Turkey Bombs Targets in Northern Iraq
 
At what point does a war officially become a World War?  I know that, according to movies and TV,  WWIII is traditionally supposed to start with a nuclear strike, but that seems like a rather arbitrary convention.  It’s gotta be more like the number and origin of the protagonists. Does the recent strike by Israel on a Syrian “nuclear facility” count for anything?  Probably not.
According to Wikipedia, the term WWII was first used by Time magazine in a June 12, 1939 article.  This was two and a half months before the invasion of Poland. So mid January 2008 could be the start of the new one.  Right in the middle of winter with already record high oil prices.  Of course, that’s probably the tinfoil hat and the booze talking… 

 FEMA Holds “Fake” News Conference
 
Some FEMA employees posing as reporters as tossed some softball questions at the guy on camera.  You can see some of the Q&A here, too.

Puzzle 04 (the Corkboard) has been posted!  You can see it by following the link on the right or clicking here.  The Prize Pool is currently 25 cents (and the corkboard) and the Charity Pool is 25 cents.

The charity tied to the Charity Pool is the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network.  Their mission: To obtain and efficiently distribute nutritious foods and other products to member agencies while developing programs and partnerships to help eliminate hunger.

Good Luck, Everyone!

 At Least One California Wildfire Caused By Arson

It seems to me that the pattern of fires looks a little too symmetrical to be caused by chance.  As a matter of fact, there appears to be suspicious gaps in the burn pattern that suggests 1) arson teams did not space themselves out “properly” or 2) teams were unsuccessful in setting all the fires they intended to. Remember, the 2007 fire season was kicked off with an intentionally torched Honda Civic…
And what is up with the huge disparity between the acreage reported by the National Interagency Fire Center and the press? (NIFC: 409,456 CNN: 462,415  AP: more than 482,000 ABC News: about 482,000 Reuters: nearly 800 square miles (512,000 acres))

 Florida Town Considers Ban on Chinese-Made Goods

Good idea.  Looking forward to the next headline: “Short-sighted Florida Town Has Worst Christmas Ever, Populace Starves”.

 Comet Holmes Brightens by a Factor of 400,000

Interesting article, but the author needs to lay off the ‘Oh, wow, groovy, man’ writing style…

  Daylight Savings Time Messes with Circadian Rhythm

Well, this gets my “No duh” vote.  At least “research” like this keeps people employed and off the streets.  I hope they follow it up with a study linking jet travel with that “lagging” feeling you get from rapidly changing time zones.

 Thanks to Agmorion (a reader and friend) for providing the inspiration for this one…

There are two camps: one that says global warming is here and it is man-made and another that says 1) it doesn’t exist or 2) it is part of a larger natural cycle.  I don’t know what camp I belong in.  I am not an atmospheric scientist.  I just look at the data that is in front of me and make my choices from there.  Unfortunately, the “data” I am presented with comes in the form of easy-to-digest sound bites and blurbs through Internet and TV news channels. 

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Hey!  New Poll!  It’s on the right.  You can thank Agmorion for the inspiration for that one (and for the next big post).

 First Baby Boomer Applies for Social Security

One down, 76 million to go…

  Drought Really Bad In SE US.

I have a problem with the use of the word “exceptional” when it comes to droughts.  “Spectacular” and “awesome” would be technically accurate, too, but those words don’t quite convey the importance of the problem, either.  Try “horrific” instead.  Kerr Lake in Virginia is 6 feet under its usual level.  That doesn’t sound like much but there are areas of formerly underwater shoreline that are now 40 to 50 yard wide swaths of grass and other plants.  It’s pretty impressive to see.  Oh, yeah: Lake Lainier in Georgia has only 3 months of water left. 

 Made in USA Stages a Comeback  

“Why did you get beaten up at school today, Billy?”