Best. Review. Evar!

Craig found this litter box the other day and thought it was a great idea...

CatGenie-Self Washing, Self Flushing Cat Box (as seen on amazon.com)


Until he read this review:

An expensive way to smell poo
September 18, 2007
154 of 160 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
By N A "Cat Lover" (Tampa, FL)
Cat Genie takes the small unpleasantness of daily cleaning the litter and it saves it up and releases that unpleasantness as one big unscheduled, unpleasant inconvenience every week or two. Advanced monitors will ensure that the device failure will occur during the workday, as you prepare for your important meeting with your prospective client. Nothing like cleaning out wet cat poo in your nicest suit. Or, you may be pleasantly awoken in the middle of the night by the repeating three beeps of "there's poo and hair in the hopper." You will become more familiar with your cat's feces every day as the cat genie gently fills your home with the aroma of baking excrement. Plus, you get to pay over $300 for technology that was "designed" and built for less than $2. The "processor" unit was designed in 1967 and allows all the functionality of the most advanced microchip devices of its era. It has both on and off modes. (Note: off mode available only while unplugged.)

Actually, the real reason for the high cost of the device is to cover the costs of all the customer support that they must provide and to cover the costs of all of the returned units. The question is not IF, but WHEN you will find yourself hunched over your cat's feces floating in a pool of fetid water, picking small plastic pellets out of the opaque, pungent water with your fingers so that you can get the device put back together.

And your cats will thank you by depositing their love bundles beside the machine that's half filled with water and beeping away forlornly if you happen to be away when it fails.

We have three cats, they had no trouble adjusting to the machine over about a week. The small plastic pellets getting everywhere in the house is not really any big deal. Roomba takes care of most of them well. We've now had the machine for three months. We received a replacement base last week for a leaky drain hose. We've called their customer service line enough times that we now know the "secret" diagnostic techniques of their experts. We don't know if we're going to keep it or return it. If we keep it, we're definitely going to install an exhaust fan in the laundry room, and set it to a timer to go when the unit is on. For some reason there are little bits of poo that fall between the tines of the hopper, and they get slow baked every time the unit dries itself. The stench is really outstanding. It's hard to describe. I'm a doctor, and I've rarely ever smelled anything so bad.

My recommendation is to wait for the next generation cat sanitation solution. That device will need to be a complete redesign to solve the myriad of problems with this unfortunate device. To say something positive, the customer support line is manned by kind, well-meaning kids who really do feel badly that you're having a hard time with your mechanical poo soup maker.

If you do buy this device, get some thick rubber gloves and a couple of towels that you won't use for anything else.

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Guess i won't be getting it for him for Christmas!

So 5 means Special Needs

Writers are a very unique breed of people, I've found. Most of them seem normal on the surface (others not so much, uh, hello, Sonja?), but lurking underneath is a very strange creature waiting to get out.

You know those t-shirts that say "I MAKE STUFF UP"? Well, yeah, that's writers. By definition, writers are liars. Well, the fiction ones. And some others. Hi James Frey! Anyways, that means that you probably shouldn't trust writers.

Now, I'm not saying that writers are all bad. We're SPECIAL (and so 5). It just takes a little bit of practice to get used to us. For instance, a recent conversation I had with my father:

Me: Hi Daddy, have time to talk?
Him: Sure, sweetie. What's up?
Me: So, say you have this monster that was made out of electricity and he's holding somebody up in the air, they aren't getting shocked because they aren't grounded, right?
Him (mostly likely thinking "call the men in the white coats, my daughter has finally lost it this time," but what he says is: well, it depends on the voltage of the monster.

See? That's love. Accept your crazy writer for who they are. Love them, even though they're a little "tetched." Be patient when they call you for bizarre plot problems.

By the way, it's not curable. We're going to stay this way. And probably get worse. Sorry!

Also, Wikipedia is the bomb. Just so you know. I love researching random crap there. Don't worry, I don't take it all for granted- i know a lot of it is random people, thinking they know everything (when they really know nothing), but who cares if it's true when it's so much fun!

Another one of my fun facets of being a writer is my ability to get totally lost in research. I mean, yeah, the writing is the best part, it's what drives me. But I like knowing a lot about what I'm going to be writing about.

For instance: my current project, the Valkyrie thing. I looked up Valkyries on Wikipedia and promptly wandered off through the links into Norse Mythology, from there to Marvel Comics and from there... well, suffice it to say, 4 hours later and I still hadn't written anything. But i know a lot more than I did! If it's true, that is. :)

So another important job for those of you unlucky enough to love a writer is to dig your writer out of the research pit every once in a while and get us back on track. Oh, and you also might want to make sure we've eaten recently.

Best of luck, you special writers and those who love you.