Well, it’s been an eventful few weeks, of sorts. I’m not sure where to begin. I’m starting to get a disturbing amount of SPAM for direct mail order brides. I wonder if they ship UPS or FedEx? I can picture it now – a box in the mail w/ holes in the top and “fragile. this side up” plastered all over it. i would think that some sort of cryogenic freeze during shipping would be the idea solution.
Anyways, in other news, I gave The Spork of Happiness (TSoH) to someone this week. I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited to do that (well, I can … about 2 weeks). And the winner is … Karmel! The poor dear was having a bad day and when I whipped TSoH out everything took a turn for the better. For those of you that aren’t in the know, TSoH is a Spork (imagine that) from Bojangles. I carried it around in my jacket pocket for about two weeks in hopes of meeting someone that was having a bad day. Then I’d whip it out and give it to them, making them promise to give it to the next person having a bad day. It spreads the love – kinda like the flu, except better. So, anyways, now I need to go back to The Bo and get another one. Karmel has been intrusted with “The Original TSoH” so I hope she takes lots of TLC with it.
Now, on to the part about robots. So, I’m sitting at my e-mail yesterday when this e-mail pops up:
i am a grade 9 student .my school is conducting a science fair .it will be conducted in the next two weeks.
so , i wanna make a robot and i dont have any experience of making it.i just need an idea from you on how to make a robot .i just wanna complete this project with in a 100$s.
I preserved the grammar and editing to give you the full effect. He then went on to request pictures and directions. Now, I don’t know about you, but 2 weeks seems to be pushing it a bit much. Not being up on the public grade school education system I’m not one to say if that’s procrastination or not, but I tend to think it is. One also has to wonder if this guy has heard about the wonderous invention called the spell checker (sometimes I forget about it … but this is a bit different).
Yes, so enough of that.
Then, today I get this other e-mail:
I
work on the For Dummies series. I’m currently in search of an author for a
book entitled Robot Building For Dummies. Is this something that interests
you?
Oy! A book offer … things are looking up. I actually really wish I could help them out. But, being a full time student … with a website I think writing a book (which would require hundreds of hours of research) is a bit much. Half of me says to go for it, but the other half says I’d fail miserably and make a complete fool of myself. You see, the real truth is that most of the time I just act like I know a lot about robotics. Being rather busy with other things tends to inhibit my constant aquisition of new knowledge in the area … unfortunately.
Other good news – My websites (GoRobotics.net, RobotDirectory) were in PC Magazine in an article they had about robotics. I need to get one off the newsstands. Mega kudos to Tyler for showing it to me! Unfortunately they visited GR.N while it was disabled from the cracker (no, not a hacker … I’m a hacker. They are good. Crackers are the bad ones) so the little blub on the site mentioned it was disabled. Oh well. I estimate I’ll break 250,000 visitors by the end of March. So, think are going well for my dream of the best robotics site on the ‘net.
Other random thoughs: Have you heard the OperaBabes? They are rather Josh Grobanish/Charlottle Churchish … better than Church, not as good as Groban. They have some pretty nifty tracks on their album. You can pick it up on Amazon for about $11. I figure I’ll pick it up just as soon as I get a job … I’ve got two in the works. I want to do both but it might kill me.