Greg In The Desert

My favorites from the most recent Rants and Raves of the Rio Rancho Observer. Perhaps the second parents kid was having sex with the first parent’s kid.

“As a parent of a senior at Rio Rancho High School, I am in shock to have just found out that my daughter and her boyfriend have been having open sex in the hallway during lunch. Apparently there are no cameras or monitors of any kind! As a concerned parent for the safety of my children, I guess I was more focused on weapons being taken to school, drugs being sold to my children and gangs trying to recruit unsuspecting prey. Never would I have ever thought that sex in the hallway could go unnoticed, especially by staff or students.”

“Why I wouldn’t shake the hand of the Rio Rancho High School principal: My daughter is a blended student and takes a class at Rio Rancho High School. One day she called me in tears to pick her up early. She had been dropped for minor infractions. I tried to talk to Principal Richard VonAncken that Friday but found out he was too busy to talk with me. I went Monday to talk with him. I was never given the courtesy of a phone call; He would not see me on Friday. I learned that my daughter was no longer allowed on Rio Rancho High School’s campus from a police officer. The only paperwork I got was a trespassing warrant. I pay taxes; I served in the armed forces for 23 years. Is this how the schools treat people?”

It’s hard to believe but as much effort as I have put into my home automation system I have not had an automated vacuum cleaner. I have always been skeptical of the Roomba’s ability to clean floors adequately. That mostly came from a few friends and reviews I read online.

I have been considering trying one out for myself for sometime and when woot.com had a refurbished Roomba 530 model for $129 I decided it was time give it a try.

My skepticism was unfounded. The Roomba 530 does an excellent job of cleaning my floors. I have been amazed at the amount of lint the Roomba has picked up (no more lint tumbleweeds floating across the floor). It also cleans up all the pieces of plastic and twist ties that the cat uses as toys. I am also impressed with how well it handles itself across uneven surfaces and untangles itself.

It probably helps is that my floors are all solid, no carpet or rugs and my house is pretty small. So far I have been able to have it clean the living room, kitchen, part of the hallway and bathroom in one cleaning session, or mission as the Roomba users call them. I think that the Roomba could also clean the guest bedroom across from the bathroom but so far it has some difficulty finding it’s way.

I have an automatic cat that kills all the bugs in the house and now I have an automatic vacuum that cleans up after the cat. Since the Roomba 530 model doesn’t have scheduling capabilities, I plan to purchase a serial port bluetooth module that will allow me to remotely control the Roomba from my home automation computer. The computer can keep track of how often the Roomba cleans and send it off on cleaning missions when the house is unoccupied.

Boing Boing had this today

I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.

I made a comment on that post that the exact same thing happened to me.

This happened to me when i was in PDX a few weeks ago. I was leaving the secured area after getting off a plane, i was near the screeners but not yet through. The TSA people started yelling and did the same thing you described and had everyone freeze.

It only lasted a few minutes for me.

My tax dollars at work. Whatever.

Last year it started with spiders. Big scarry looking spiders. All harmless. Then I had Scorpions. 7 to be exact. I had big gaping holes between the door jamb and wall leading out to the garage. I filled those gaps with expanding foam. I also weather sealed the front door. I’ve had no further problems spiders or scorpions since then, but that was near the end of summer.

This summer I’ve only had a few spiders, nothing like last year and so far no scorpions. But I have had crickets and crickets and more crickets. My weapon of choice is the Dyson. For several nights in a row, I vacuumed up around 6 crickets at a time.

The thing about crickets, they seem to hang out where they came into the house. I was finding most of them coming from one area of the living room. After a few days, I started looking around and found a big crack between the fireplace and the wall. There were even crickets in it. I filled all the cracks around the fire place with expanding foam. This has blocked off the main cricket highway.

Now I’m finding a few in the hallway. I’m finding at least two a night under the refrigerator. The other thing about crickets is the male makes the chirping noise to attract the female. Whenever a male is chirping, there’s almost always a female nearby.

Maple Desk – I love this desk and a absolute bargain at $149. I wouldn’t be able to fit it down my hallway.

• Antique Dining Room Set in Santa Fe Looks nice but not cheap at $800 (but still may be a bargain)
• Sectional Couch – This freaked me out, my ex-girlfriend and I had an identical couch and spent way more than $700.
• Antique Sofa – Nice looking antique for a $100.
• Maple Chest of Drawers – Antique, not bad for $280.
• lawyers table – I love this, it comes apart! $129.
• Tiger Oak Dresser – A little rough and a perhaps a bit pricey at $169.