Donna and I broke down, buying a brand new computer. We bought a HP a430n, with 160GB hard drive, a DVD writer and CD writer combo drive (DVD+RW/CD-RW); CD-ROM and up-graded to a HP printer/fax/scanner/copier. Even though we picked it up on Saturday afternoon, we barely had time to unpack the thing yesterday before we had other things to take care of. The plan is to put it together tonight and see what mischief we can get into. Yeah, the thing has more stuff than the two of us will probably ever need, but with Donna considering possibly working out of the house (at least part-time) we figured we were better off getting something along these lines. I'll be keeping you folks updated on how things go and what we discover as we play around. :-)

Seems the robot race in the Mohave didn't actually work out as well as some would have hoped. The New York Times has a dispatch (for which you may have to subscribe to read) detailing the problems that caused some of the entrants to 'go off track.' Hope does spring eternal with some contestants actually looking ahead to next year and another race. Personally, I think the whole thing is way cool, but I've already mentioned that I'm fascinated by robots and have been since I was a kid.