Here at work, we've been asked to help plan for an imaginary scenario where a swine-flu epidemic causes the University to physically close. So far this has included figuring out which of our job duties we could potentially do from home (so we can still get paid), and updating contact information and such.

Right from the beginning I've gone into this pretending that I misheard "H1N1 outbreak scenario" as "'H1N1 outbreak' or 'Zombie attack' scenario".

It definitely makes the emails and discussions more interesting. What's even better is that my boss is even referring to it as a zombie attack now, rather than just this silly piggy-flu.

The Dr Pepper/7UP company has a new "energy shot" type energy drink called Venom Bite that they're giving away samples of. I'm a sucker for free things (as some of you already know), so of course I filled out the form to get one.

The Venom Bite itself is only 3oz, so it's a rather small bottle, which I assume is intended to be chugged rather than drank – much like the "5-hour energy" shots.

I took a few sips to get a general taste of the stuff before swallowing it all in one go. I wasn't sure what exactly "Arctic Blast" tasted like, and I still don't know – it had a minty-like cooling taste to it, which wasn't bad, but wasn't exactly great. It almost had a bit of a mediciney taste to it. Also, the consistency was a bit thicker, almost reminding me of drinking NyQuil. After determining that I wasn't likely to gag or get sick on the Venom Bite, I downed the rest of it in one gulp.

This little bottle has your standard "energy drink" ingredients – caffeine, guarana, taurine, B vitamins, etc – and as such, I got the normal "up" I would associate with drinking an energy drink. The difference is that I felt it faster, probably because the ingredients are more concentrated than in a larger (and more watered down) energy drink, and because I drank it much faster than I would drink a Red Bull, Amp, or RockStar energy drink.

So, what's my final take on Venom Bite? On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a 6. Aside from the minor complaints above, the main factor lowering my rating is the price. Right now it seems to only be available through their website, and it's priced at $2.50 a bottle. $2.50 for a 3oz bottle. Knock the price in half and I'd rate it an 8.

If you want to give it a try, you can request a sample of Venom Bite – Cold Blast from VenomBite.com. I think it took about 2 weeks to get mine.

Cactus Joe just posted sparxMind's 2,000th comment! YAY comments!

And a link to the comment…. comment # 2,000!

Work is killing me, so I have a lot less free time to blog, or think, or anything during the day.

Yuck.

Sometimes I wish I was an awesome carefree red panda!

Also, I wish I had a 16 volt, 1.5 (or more) amp AC power adaptor – it'd make for a more efficient design for my LED grow lamps.

I'm looking to build an enclosed hydroponic plant growing unit thing.
The main feature was supposed to be the LED growing lights that I'm going to build (since LEDs produce such a narrow spectrum of light, I can precisely control what wavelengths of light and how much the plants get, rather than wasting energy on parts of the spectrum [greens mostly] that are just reflected by the plants), but some other things have come up.

One being what type of hydroponics system I'm going to build and what type of enclosure to use. Right now I'm thinking of using a "video cabinet" type thing with doors that close, and the entire inside lined with mylar. The growing medium will probably be something like pea-gravel. And I'm thinking of using a system pressurized by an air pump to push the nutrient solution up to the plants.

Another issue is deciding what to grow. Ideally I'd be growing things that I could eat. Plants that don't get very tall, and don't creep or spread. Right now all I've come up with is lettuce and strawberries. I need some suggestions for other things to grow though! Any idea?

Ok people, there are tons of us. Almost 7-billion of us! I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that 1 out of every 100,000 people is actually a "superhero" – using a secret identity to fight crime in the spare time. That works out to ~70,000 (seventy-thousand) superheroes! Even if you assume that only 1 out of every 1 million people is a superhero, you're still left with about 7 thousand superheroes.

Are these people doing such an awesome job that we are truly completely unaware of their existence?

If you're a superhero, I would suggest contacting me. We'll need your talents and abilities when it comes time to fight the zombies!

You know what's good? Chocolate covered raisins. You know what else is good? Chocolate covered peanuts, strawberries, and lots of other things.

And what's just really awkward? That's right: chocolate covered gummi bears. I don't know who thought this crap up, but I wish they hadn't. It's a waste of chocolate!

I'm slightly-more-than-half tempted to suck the chocolate off of all of these, put them back in the little bowl, and then cross off the "chocolate covered" part on the slip of paper sitting next to them.