Countdown, dry
The trip out west is rapidly approaching. Ironically both my dad and sister called yesterday to touch base and confirm that everything was still a go. We are starting lists of things we need to remember to take as well as things we need to remember to do before we leave. Two weeks is a long time to be away.
We are still waiting for Ali to collect her first check as a consultant. This is getting a bit ridiculous. Her former employer is dragging it’s feet in making sure the paperwork is processed to enable the corporate office to start paying the invoices that Ali is submitting. If I was in Ali’s shoes I would be on the warpath at this point. I would get the number of the person at corporate that needs to process the paperwork and get them on the phone myself. It seems the people at the local facility aren’t able to perform this function.
It continues to be incredibly dry for “wet” season. The grass in the front of the house on the mound is turning brown! I actually had to add the areas around the house back into the sprinkler schedule. I have never seen it this dry during this time in summer since moving to Florida in 2000.
The other day I was reading about yet another awesome use of robotics, robotic lawn mowers! I have heard of these before but assumed they were basically a novelty, only suited for very small yards and very light duty.
That is not the case. I was directed to this web site where I read up on how far these devices have come. The top of the line model can do up to 1.25 acres on a single charge and has all sorts of cool intelligence built in that allows it to customize the mowing schedule based on how high the grass is! How cool is that? Getting your yard ready for a lawn robot requires some legwork. You have to bury a boundary cable around the entire property. When the robot hits this buried wire it “bounces” off it, much like a Roomba when it hits a wall. Now as you can imagine, this is an expensive product although in line with the cost of a decent lawn tractor. No I am not buying one now, it is on the radar, maybe, someday.
In other robotics news, Irobot announced the next generation of Roomba yesterday. They totally revamped the design as well as improving the performance of the unit. I like the new look, it’s modern looking. On the performance side they redesigned the brushes for better performance. 
Supposedly it does a better job of cleaning along walls and into corners and also has been redesigned so it doesn’t get stuck on the rug tassels or cords it may run over. The high end model has some fancy scheduling device which is nice but I would never use it. They also talk about “light house” walls that somehow will contain the Roomba in one room until it has been cleaned and then allow it to go into the next space, again neato but nothing that would serve my purpose.
It looks like they did a nice job with this but I am perfectly happy with my collection of robotic minions at this point and don’t plan on adding a Roomba 500 series anytime soon.
I have been watching soooo much Texas Hold Em. It has supplanted MMA fighting as my preferred pre-sleep tv viewing. I am starting to know players names and can actually question certain plays that are made during matches. It’s amazing that watching people play cards could be interesting at all, but it is. Hence the immense growth in popularity of the event over the last 5 years.
I set up a little section of my web site for contestants of the Spartan Halloween 07 challenge to interact. So far only one contestant has discovered it. It’s just more of my cyber silliness.
Ali booked the flights for Vegas so we are all set except for a rental car which can come later. We opted for a red eye back in order to save $250 off the cost. That is an extra 250 to gamble with! It will be cool seeing Vegas decked out for Christmas.
Somehow the page counter on my blog and main web page got reset to zero so I set them back to approximately what I think they were at, I didn’t quite remember.