Current mood:

angry

Gamera is really neat, he is full of turtle meat, we are eating Gameraaaaaa
Consumer Reports, Mostly Grumpy Edition.

1. My eyeglass frames just broke for the third time. I have replaced them twice. The first time fell under warranty, the second did not, and I'm damned if I'm going to do it a third time.

These are wire-rim frames, and they have broken at the same weld each time. Bad engineering or bad industrial production, I don't know which, but something is baaaaaad.

Public shaming: Ralph Lauren's Polo Classic VI Flex. Booooo! Booooo! Shun! Tar and feathers, and ride 'em out of town on a rail!

I am so unhappy, I'm switching away from wire-rims for the first time in, oh, 25 years. I'm moving to tortoiseshell. Well, not real tortoiseshell from real tortoises. Artificial, plastic tortoiseshell from artificial, plastic tortoises, with cybernetic brains and laser eyes, I'm sure.

2. BatteryXtender doesn't work. I found this gadget in Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. Cool Tools ought to be a great resource, but it isn't always, because it's just one person saying how they like a gadget, and sometimes... they're wrong.

They were wrong about BatteryXtender which is supposed to recharge alkaline batteries. Whoa! No need to buy expensive NiMH batteries, just recharge the cheap alkalines you buy at the store!

Only it doesn't work. You get one or two half-assed recharges, then the damn battery starts leaking, and if you're unlucky, leaks all over what ever gadget you're powering with it, possibly destroying the gadget. I just lost a cheap-o D-cell flashlight, but it could have been much, much worse.

Okay, I thought, I'll use to to recharge my NiMHs, then. It charges more slowly than my old NiMH charger, but doesn't heat up the batteries, which always made me nervous. I had had my previous set of NiMH AAs for almost a decade, and they were wearing out, so I bought a new bunch.

The stupid BatteryXtender took half a day to charge 4 batteries so that they held a charge for all of five seconds before conking out. WTF? My old, fast NiMH charger charged them appropriately.

So, this thing's going in the trash. It's good for nothing. Shame! Shame! Shun!

3. At last, good news! Francesco Rinaldi Certified Organic Burgundy Marinara pasta sauce is great!

And if you're one of those people who think that anyone who buys bottled spaghetti sauce is a schlump without taste, sorry, I ain't slaving over a hot stove all afternoon making spaghetti sauce. FRCOBM is pretty darned good. I'm used to doctoring bottled sauce with olive oil and herbs, but this stuff doesn't need doctoring. You can really taste the olive oil and burgundy, and they're excellent.

There are other Francesco Rinaldi sauces, but they're not as good. I wasn't impressed by their vodka sauce, and although I love garlic, FR's roasted garlic sauce was way too harsh.

But their Burgundy Marinara is excellent.