Final frontier, Toast my bread, Neato deado, blame Obama

So the final interior room that is still the blah builders white, the hobby room, is getting painted finally.  This room has been the dumping ground for stuff that had no other good spot like race timing gear, RC plane paraphernalia, exercise equipment and other various junk.

I pulled most of the loose items out and split the pile between the guest bedroom and the great room.  As I pulled it out I saw lots of sorting that needed to be done.  There are a lot of Ali items in there as well as stuff that can be thrown out or recycled.

I didn’t bother to put much thought into the color for the room, opting for the same pleasant sandy shell color that is used in the main living space and master bedroom/bathroom.

When the room is put back together I plan to do some major rearranging and optimizing.  It should be a nice facelift.

The only painting that is left on my to do list is painting the walls of the garage.  I always had this dream that it would look sweet in Eagles Midnight Green with silver on the back wall. 🙂

This morning I did my first real world video of my robotoaster in action.  It is simply incredible.  Hold on to your seat.

I forgot to mention some other robot news in my household, my Neato is getting replaced.  I mentioned that I had battery runtime issues a little while back.  I was only getting 10-15 minutes per run and was occasionally getting a “Please press OKAY to restart. Battery Issue (ooo2)” error.

I had a new battery set sent to me which I installed a couple weeks ago.  Well the new battery runtime has been steadily going downhill as well and the battery error has still been popping up randomly as well.  So I called Neato back and they told me they would send me a replacement unit, cool.

It’s too bad, up until the recent battery issue my XV-14 has been absolutely bullet proof. Doing it’s job well while requiring a fraction of the maintenance my Roomba army used to require.  The new bot should show up early next week.

So today one of my Obama hating friends asked me how I felt about Obama since the latest headline about Verizon phone records being collected by the NSA.  Of course my first reaction was to laugh out loud a little bit as I normally do when the “Blame Obama!” crowd attributes everything negative that happens in the government to Obama. They seem to believe he is directly involved in every email, text message, phone conversation and decision that is made within the geographic boundaries of Washington D.C.

Of course I think it is shitty that the government basically scrapes all communication that is made within the country and keeps it for safekeeping.  I read about the new underground mega-datacenter that was recently completed whose main purpose is to store, inspect and catalog mountains of communication, all in the name of keeping us “safe” thanks to those sweethearts at Homeland Security.  Yea that agency that was created by W along with the Patriot Act to protect us from “terror”, what a joke.

Do I think that Obama has stuck to his 2007 election promises that included protecting civil liberties? No, not really, but can you please give me a list of presidents that have delivered on the majority of their election promises?  I think you would be handing me a piece of blank paper.

If he is guilty of anything it is allowing the Homeland Security behemoth to keep rolling forward in it’s privacy smashing practices since it’s 9/11 era inception.  Does he have the power to dismantle the agency?  Theoretically yes, realistically no.

I really don’t understand the outrage or surprise with this story, to me it is old, old news.