Accidental Blogger

The Memorial Day weekend at the Paul household was TV and Internet free.  Early Saturday morning our cable service went out of commission and so did the two amenities dependent on it. Our cable provider Comcast blithely informed us that no technician could come out to restore connection any earlier than next Friday, the 30th of May. My extremely Internet dependent husband took matters in his own hands.  After hours on the phone setting up service with new providers and firing Comcast, he managed to get everything up and running by Monday afternoon.

By the time I turned on the TV and the computer, I discovered that some interesting events had taken place while I was cut off from 24/7 cable news and the World Wide Web. Among them:

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander touched down flawlessly on the red planet as planned and is now busy sending back photos. See the mission overview here.  The projected goals of the mission:

–Determine whether Life ever arose on Mars

–Characterize the Climate of Mars

–Characterize the Geology of Mars

–Prepare for Human Exploration

The international space station has developed plumbing problems.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The international space station’s lone toilet is broken, leaving the crew with almost nowhere to go. So NASA may order an in-orbit plumbing service call when space shuttle Discovery visits next week.

Until then, the three-man crew will have to make do with a jury-rigged system when they need to urinate.

While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to NASA. Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off.

Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally.

Russian officials don’t know the cause of the problem, and the crew has been unable to fix it.

The crew has used the toilet on the Soyuz return capsule, but it has a limited capacity. They now are using a backup bag-like collection system that can be connected to the broken toilet, according to NASA public affairs officials.

"Like any home anywhere, the importance of having a working bathroom is obvious," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said.

A financially beleaguered Japanese  train company has managed to turn its profits ledger from red to black by appointing a cat as the station master.

TOKYO (AP) — A money-losing Japanese train company has found the purr-fect pet mascot to draw crowds and bring back business – tabby Tama.

All the 9-year-old female cat does is sit by the entrance of Kishi Station in western Japan, wearing a black uniform cap and posing for photos for the tourists who are now flocking in droves from across the nation.

Tama has been doing such a good job of raising revenue for the troubled Kishikawa train line that she was recently promoted to "super-station-master."

"She never complains, even though passengers touch her all over the place. She is an amazing cat. She has patience and charisma," Wakayama Electric Railway Co. spokeswoman Yoshiko Yamaki told The Associated Press Monday. "She is the perfect station master."

Appointing a cat to turn around fortunes makes cultural sense in Japan, where cats are considered good luck and are believed to bring in business.

People are snatching up novelty goods – postcards, erasers, notebooks and pins – decorated with Tama’s photos. There’s even a special 1,365 yen ($13) book of photos of Tama called, "Diary of Tama, the Station Master."