Paper Moon -- Nachos Thumbs-Up

Last night one of the hams and her boyfriend "the Warrior" invited Hambone and me to Nachos at Paper Moon, which is one of their favorite hangouts.

I have to give Paper Moon's presentation a thumbs-up for real cheese and delicious guac. They lost a couple of points because the salsa was from a jar and the chips were pretty broken up at the bottom of the pile of 'good' chips. Maybe our plate of nachos was made from the last few in the bag or something.

The other thing that's cool about Paper Moon is that it's decorated with something like 50 mannequins. And little army toys. My personal favorites were the ceiling fans that had hundreds of tiny buttons glued to the blades.

Me Gusta Paper Moon. Yay!

Adventures with the Roomba

So the bloom is off the rose with the Roomba as far as Hambone is concerned. He thought the idea of buying it was silly from the get-go, but I still have faith.

I have found that using the Roomba is much like hiring a relative to vacuum for substandard wages. If you're sitting there watching, then they do a good job. As soon as you leave for work, look out.

When I leave, the Roomba finds unfathomable things to get hung up on for long enough to drain its battery. Yesterday afternoon it was a sock stuck in the brush. Last night it was tangled in Hambone's Atari cords. God only knows what I will find it tangled in tonight.

At one point, the Roomba shut off right at the top of the stairs, ominously claiming another of Maggie's favorite haunts. I feel a power struggle coming on.

Branding through MS Word?

Have you ever noticed that Microsoft Word tells you every time you have misspelled one of their brand names? For instance, if I type powerpoint into a Microsoft Word document, it puts the squiggly red line below that indicates a misspelling. When I ask it for suggestions, it always recommends PowerPoint, which is the branded typographical spelling of PPT.

I have always found that strange.

I started goofing around and realized that Microsoft Word also helps to brand Google as a proper noun. Everyone knows that a google is also a number (1 with 100 zeros behind it) so why does it show as Google the proper noun in my editor? I mean, it says I've misspelled it if I leave it lower case.

Ironically, Microsoft does not know its branding for the MSN content network online. If I type "msn" into Word, the program doesn't flag it as misspelled at all.

Any ideas?

Anyone else see this going on?

Re-Dysoning

If you will recall from my other blog, I have had a love affair with my Dyson Animal and their telephone support lady, Diane, for about a year now. I have picked up drywall dust, hair, nails, and even some surprisingly large rocks with my Dyson and haven't had more than the passing complaint.

Hambone has recently confiscated my Dyson and brought it to his construction company for their new-construction home cleaner to use.

I was sad about that for a little while, until Hambone bought me a new one this weekend. This one has a furniture attachment, so as soon as Hambone brings our furniture back from display in his model home, I am looking forward to testing it out.

=)

Dyson Rules.

Why is my blog here now?

I bet a bunch of you are wondering why I sold out and went to Blogger instead of continuing to host my own blog.

I'll tell you why -- there is a dirty rat scoundrel hacker out there, who for some COMPLETELY UNEXPLAINABLE REASON hacked my blog down to its underpants and not only deleted the whole thing, but broke the code so badly that when I rolled the server back to the last time the blog worked, the server kept breaking the blog.

Not only that, but there were some spam robots installed that instantly posted 450 comments on the blog as soon as I posted any new entries. AND those comments only showed as "14" on the first page of my blog. The server was swarmed.

So you dumb turkey, I am over here now. If you start spamming me here, at least it's not on my server.

Jerk.

Adventures in Vacuuming

This weekend I cajoled Hambone to by me a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner. After our success with the Dyson, I am optimistic about new innovation in vacuuming.

The Roomba is a cute little thing that beeps cheerfully when you set it to do the most mundane task in the house (next to dusting, but so far there aren't robots for that). It reminds me of the game "Simon" from the eighties. Happy sounds, blinking lights, what's not to love?

I put the Roomba down in the middle of the living room, in view of its infrared docking station where it can recharge itself and then immediately start vacuuming again. I went outside and had a glass of wine, and when I came back it was still happily roaming the floors.

Its suction isn't much, but it was very successful picking up the tumbleweeds of dog hair littering the living room. I liked that very much.

Maggie is a little less in favor of the Roomba and eyes it with great suspicion. When it runs, she likes to perch on the very top step and watch it to make sure it doesn't cause us any harm.
Yesterday I set it to run all day while I was at work, which was a little... less successful. Evidently, it got stuck on Maggie's favorite rug and ran until the batteries wore out. This made Maggie so upset that she threw up. The barf ran all down the stairs, which ironically the Roomba can't clean.

Ah well. I still like the Roomba. Today I am testing it upstairs.