Imagine an hour without your television, lights and (OMG) your computer. Could you handle it? The city of St. Louis is going to unplug at 8:30pm on March 28 for the World Wildlife Foundation's annual Earth Hour. According to the Suburban Journals

The Gateway Arch, Busch Stadium, Tums Building and St. Louis City Hall, as well as the Lawrence K. Roos Government Center in Clayton, will turn off non-essential lights for the second annual effort to raise awareness of global climate change.

The question remains, though, could you imagine unplugging for an entire hour? Sure, at 8:30pm the government centers will be closed anyway, and the Card's season hasn't even started yet so it is easy for them to say they will flick the switch. The rest of us have Drive By Truckers shows, fashion shows, an Elite Eight game (I am hoping for Purdue vs. Mizzou) and of course other parties and assorted debauchery that will just be getting into full swing right about that time. Would we really be able to unplug from 8:30 until 9:30? I mean, sure the earth is important and all, but...

Nothing could have prepared me for the scene ToastedRav was met with at Chaifetz Arena for the 2009 FIRST Robotics Regional Competition. Huge robots were dueling, fans in matching neon attire were doing the wave and everyone was wearing incredibly attractive safety glasses (including yours truly). Throw in a little Beyonce remix and you have yourself one of the largest and craziest gatherings of America's future engineers, which thanks to the St. Louis Science Center, includes 42 teams of the area's high school students.

This unique and challenging sport of sorts all started out a few weeks ago with a video objective, and teams of high schoolers had only a short time to build a robot that was the best at completing that objective. As you can see, this year it was all about baskets and balls. The 20-year-old organization was designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting a future in engineering can be. From what we saw at the competition, our future is in good hands.

For a look at the dueling robots and the future engineers behind them at this year's FIRST Robotics Regional competition, click on [tab:trav_video].

Like horoscopes and palm-readers these little cookies have rituals behind them, too. Some people make a habit of keeping every paper strip they get, and other people (like me) selectively preserve their food foretold destinies. I still have my favorite "prophecy" in the clear plastic window of my wallet, "If you are a lover of words, you should write a book." There are even rituals associated with selecting your cookie, such as if you aren't picking up the tab you had best not be picking up that first cookie.

There is an online site that shuns all of these rituals and lets you just enjoy the sheer fun and randomness that is a fortune cookie. Meiwah Restaurant in D.C. has a page where you can get your fortune on their website. This little eco-friendly time waster let's you run through a list of fortunes to your heart's content or until you find the perfect phrase to tack "in bed" to the end of... kind of like this little gem I found today:

The fun of a fortune without the mouth caking and after-taste.

If you, or someone you love is as big of a fortune cookie fan as I am, you might like the customizable, giant fortune cookies that actually look delicious from St. Louis based company Presentville.com. The football sized fortune cookies have a one foot message inside that is ripe for just about anything you want to say.

Looking for a 100% calorie-free fortune cookie? St. Louis ceramics maker Lindsay Brenner makes life-sized ceramic fortune cookies that you can have glazed in you favorite color and customized with a message inside...

... because we all love a good fortune cookie.

When a teenager leaves the house to hang out with friends, a parent typically hopes, with fingers crossed, that their anti-drug lectures stick with them. Now there is a way to give kids a subtle (and really neat-looking) reminder to use their noggin. 

With the help of bracelets developed by The Sound Advice Project, parents can have their own personal message recorded and their waveforms developed into a three-dimensional bracelet to ensure their words stay with their kids.

The Sound Advice project encourages positive reinforcement, giving message suggestions like, “You mean the world to us,” and “I believe in you.”  

According to their website, a parent’s words do make an impact; those who talk to their kids about drugs are up to 50% less likely to use than of parents who don’t.

While this company is designing these as a means for drug abuse prevention and a display of trust between a child and parent, the message can also be something you want to say to a loved one every day or something you want them to remember when you’re not around.

So what’s the he coolest feature of the bracelet? Since no two voices are alike, each bracelet is entirely unique. After recording the voice message, you can customize the color of the beads and cord for a one-of-a-kind wrist accessory. 

The bracelets are $18, and all net proceeds of the funds are to be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to drug use prevention and awareness.

While new to me, the concept of waveform bracelets wasn’t founded by The Sound Advice Project. I found someone selling them here on Ponoko (for quite a chunk of change.) 

I'm definitely thinking about getting one to remind my significant other that Tuesdays and Thursdays are trash days. It's like discretionary nagging that I foresee being a win-win for the both of us. 

We thought it would be a never ending struggle in the same vein as Mac vs. PC, but does a recent survey of company social networking policies finally put to rest the debate of MySpace versus Facebook? KSDK.com is reporting that in a survey of 152 St. Louis companies

47 percent of the companies allow their employees to access Facebook during work hours and 50 percent of the companies allow their employees to access MySpace.

There was no mention about the best, local social networking site (*cough* ToastedRav.com *cough*), but based on the results you can either assume that this means the suits think MySpace is better than Facebook, or the folks making the decisions haven't yet been asked to get to know 'bAbY_gRrRl_69' better.

The corner office's preference for the Wild West of the internet, also known as MySpace, might be surprising, but the fact that 70% of companies surveyed let people jump on LinkedIn during work hours makes a little more sense. After all, in the grand social networking scheme, LinkedIn is the business lunch to Facebook and MySpace's happy hour.

Meh... just stick with us on ToastedRav.com; we'll rescue you from enduring the cubicle banter of LinkedIn and we will never rarely ask you what you are wearing. Problem solved.

With its advanced technology, Google Earth is not just used for looking up land masses anymore. It's kind of like an advanced version of Where's Waldo, except you can fly from place to place, looking for hidden odds & ends. You can discover things you would never expect to find, like Jesus' face in Peruvian plains. 

I've made a list of some neat things you can find on Google Earth and have taken a snapshot of each one for your viewing pleasure. 

6. Pacman Land. (Nom, nom, nom!) This is actually a common occurrence across the Earth, formed by irrigation circles. 

5. Fun Google Earth challenge: Finding planes caught in mid-flight. Here is a snapshot of a C-17 Globemaster III in flight over Kuwait. 

4. The Door To Hell. This is a natural gas crater from the result of a Soviet gas exploration accident. 

3. Jesus' face on ground in Peru. Just looks like shadows to me, but you be the judge. 

2. The small (not deserted) island where the 2000 movie, Cast Away, was filmed. The island is called Monuriki, which is off the coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. 

1. Bob the Builder in Australia. I couldn't find much information on what it really was, but it's an interesting find!

If you do not have Google Earth downloaded onto your computer yet, get with the times! Click here to download the latest version. Your first assignment is to find the rock you've been living under. 

The latest feature to hit Google Earth is the ability to time travel. You can now view historical imagery to see how places have changed over time. Definitely use this feature and look at how St. Louis has changed through the years. You can go as far back in St. Louis as April 6, 1988! (Tip: Search your childhood home or your old stomping grounds, depending on your age.)  

Any other interesting finds on Google Earth? 

A few years ago, MIT grad student Gauri Nanda created an alarm clock that would rock the world of snooze-button abusers everywhere. It's called a Clocky, and it will get your butt out of bed. As soon as it goes off, this alarm clock on wheels rolls off your bedside table and moves around your bedroom like R2-D2 on red bull. To turn the dang thing off, you have to get out of bed and hunt it down, and by the time you've succeeded in shutting it off, you're up and at 'em. Nanda's original version was rough and carpet covered, but Clocky has come a long way since then. It's sleek, polished and available in several colors.

And as much as I want to go right out and buy one right this second, I can't. After calling every electronics store in St. Louis, I have discovered that nobody actually carries this novelty wake-up call. Instead, you'll have to head here and buy one from Nanda's site. If you'd like to see it in action before you drop the dough for one, click on [tab:video].

It is almost a full time job; a recent study found that the average teen spends about 31 hours a week online.  What are they doing on cyberspace?  Probably a lot of the same stuff you are - they chat with friends for about 3½ hours, they are clicking through pregnancy and family planning websites for around 1½ hours and they spend about an hour and forty minutes checking out the dirty (and I am not talking about the celebrity gossip site).

It's one giant stride in the struggle to bring teenagers and adults closer together and to end the gap that divides the young'uns and the old folks like us.  We are all the same when it comes to internet surfing deep down inside, but does the older and wiser generation rule the net?  Where do you stack up against the teens and their interwebs usage? 

Due to increased employee lollygagging on their internal email system, Nielsen, a usually sensible and reputable data research company, came up with one of the most off the wall solutions to employee inefficiency: delete the reply-to-all button. 

(Sarcasm forthcoming): You're right, the reason people in your company aren't working 3 out of 8 hours a day is because they are just overwhelmed with inbox clutter. Come on, now, those funny inter-office emails only burn a few minutes a day, tops. 

Arguably, the Nielsen labor force should now be more discouraged to work in the sense that every single coworker's email address will have to be manually inserted when they go to answer that Flushing Kitty You Tube video forward. Think of the time it will take to enter each co-worker separately. Realistically, they just made their employees more inefficient. 

When I do actually work versus goofing off, I have found the reply-to-all button to be a necessary and efficient tool in my work day; the removal of the button just seems absurd. 

And to think, I would have suggested a company-wide firewall to limit internet browsing (the real culprit) to boost efficiency. (I can see why I haven't climbed to the top of the corporate ladder... silly, senseless ideas.)

Way to go, Nielsen. Hope you didn't spend last year's fiscal earnings on researching this little gem. Your employees will now be sure to forward even more mail out of spite.

Perhaps it's time for Nielsen to question what their efficiency experts, a.k.a. "The Bob's", really do...

Our pain has been prolonged for another four, long months. Just when we thought we couldn't endure another commercial questioning our readiness for the big, bad digital television switch, Congress has decided that we can, and shall, withstand more. Yesterday the apocalyptic deadline for television viewers has moved from February 17, a day which will be forever burned into my brain, to June 12.

The government ran out of converter box coupons and now we must suffer through more commercials and "special reports." While I understand the voucher waiting list is literally millions of people long, I am not too proud to beg for one small concession in all of the DTV mayhem. Please, since you all have to remake the commercials because of the date change anyway could we get something a little less like a warning about a Homeland Security Threat and more like... I don't know... a Snickers commercial?

I was lured into such sites back in college, where just a few years ago, status updates did not exist. It was simply a profile page of what you were doing in your life as a whole, not a play by play of your day.

Due to my habitual Facebook/MySpace loitering, I know the second Sally, a frenemy from the Class of '00, finds out she's pregnant, how many peanut butter cups Jenny inhaled during lunch and how much Bob really hates his boss (a lot). 

Do I really need to know every Monday that Tim has a 'case of the Mondays?'

In all fairness, I am guilty of updating my profiles anywhere from one to three times per day, but I've always wondered how many updates are socially acceptable? If you are up to ten a day, do you just look like a complete nerd who has no life?

If you have the time to update your status repeatedly throughout an entire day, have you really conjured up enough life experience to translate into a post-worthy update? 

I understand most of us use these sites to help pass the time at work and get the low-down on who's who, but we must establish here and now the cyber norms for updates. 

One per week? Three a day? Every hour? 

Just for your reading pleasure, here are some random yet interesting status updates taken from my network of friends, which shall remain anonymous for their my protection. Make of them what you will. 

_____... can't believe it's not butter. 

_____... wishes she had a money tree. 

_____... is sad because I almost ran into a parked car tonight. 

_____... is amazed at Sam's life... pants and tanning beds, how do you do it?

_____... is counting down the days until Mardi Gras!

_____... is glad the snow has a weakness.

_____... has been eaten by the homework beast.

_____... is pissed off. 

_____... is ready for this damn recession to end.....seriously.

_____... is so close I can taste the Lion's Choice....

_____... is currently skydiving. 

Without my cell phone I would be lost - like Oceanic Six lost. Without my contacts list I can't even remember my Mom's phone number, so how am I supposed to remember the numbers for a work phone, a home phone, and a cell phone? The answer is: I don't. I have no clue what my direct line at work is and I don't have a landline phone in the house. Yeah, it's a pain when I have to fill out forms at the doctor's office (they truly can't grasp that I use my cell as my primary number), but I also don't pay out the wahzoo for the ability to only get telemarketing calls during dinner. I am not alone in my anti-landline stance, about 18% (or one in six) homes are using only their cells.

That's probably just what the cell phone providers want: to take over the world telecommunications market. But those commercials are right, the fatal flaw in the plan is that there are a lot of dead zones out there, and a lot of people have them at home. Instead of installing more antennas (out of laziness or regulations, I dunno) top wireless providers are passing the buck onto the consumer with new wireless signal boosting gadgets called 'femtocells.' Here's the skinny on the femtocell technology and what it means to St. Louis cell phone users.

• Sprint: Sprint was one of the first companies to introduce their femtocell product; iIn August they released the Airave. Coming in at around 100 bones for the device and a $4/month monthly service fee, the Airave uses your broadband connection to let you chat on your celly.
  
  Sprint's cost breakdown: If the average home phone bill comes in at about $588/year, then the Airave saves you about $440. If you have broadband access and less than ten cell phones in your house, we are talking about saving a decent amount of dough with Sprint's Airave.

• Verizon: The company that claims to have you covered everywhere must have realized that they really don't. They are poised to offer their new femtocell product to reception starved customers next week. For between $199 and $249, you can put this little black-box thingy in your crib and use your broadband reception to make calls from your cell.
  
  Verizon's cost breakdown: The only cost to customers is purchasing the device, and without the monthly service charge (like what you have to pay for Sprint's service) this an excellent deal for the frugal Chatty-Cathy.

Snags? The devices use broadband access to run... hmmm, if you are in an urban dead-zone it would be worth it to ditch the land line and get a femtocell, but a lot of rural folks out there who can't get a cell signal and probably can't get broadband are still left in the cold. That also means many Missouri folks, who are cursed with some of the lowest net speeds in the country, may be stuck waiting for companies to install new cell towers before they make the cell-only switch.

This baby is what may or may not be the result of crazy Cruise and a squirrel. I do not promote this type of mating, but it's Tom "freaks-out-on-Oprah" Cruise, so you never know. It does freak me out that the wee child is making his father's stupid hand signal though.

In another one of my favorite combos, I have mated Eminem with Ms. Green M&M herself. Surprisingly, their child is pretty cute, which is not something I would have expected from a green piece of chocolate-covered candy and a sullen, bleached-hair rapper. Of course, this is assuming he has more room on his arm for another kid's face.

And you can always use the site for what it was actually intended for, too. Here is the little whippersnapper that me and my beau could make if we chose to do so. It's just a website, so don't get any ideas!

And not that I'm paranoid about my identity being stolen or anything, but before I submit so much personal info about myself, I want to know what I'm getting myself into. Unfortunately, the pages and pages of legal jargon and mumbo-jumbo on the site didn't really help me out. I would much rather hear from someone who knows firsthand (or secondhand or thirdhand) what the deal with these free laptops is. Any insight?

Finding a $20 game for the Wii is like digging through the $1 movie bin at Wal-Mart; the chance that you get anything you have ever heard of or anything that you will like is virtually null. Over the weekend I bought such a game, Cooking Mama: Cook Off, thinking it was worth a shot. Since I like the free Wii Sports games that came with the console a cheapy game couldn't be that terrible, right? To my surprise and delight the game is awesome and completely addicting.

The concept behind the game is that you have a book of recipes that you virtually chop, slice, stir-fry, and bake your way through. You have to get the recipe right within a certain amount of time or this little Manga style character pop up and scolds you. When you do get it right and beat the buzzer you get a gold medal, a new recipe to try for your cookbook, and the little character pops up and says, "Wonderful. Better than Mama!" I have to be honest with you all, this little animated lady with the kerchief in her hair scares the crap out of me: when she says I need to try harder her eyeballs turn into flames and when you do really, really well she turns into a dragon.

Cooking Mama turned out to be a good gamble as far as games go; I have been playing it non-stop since I picked it up. Perhaps it is because virtual cooking plays into the same psychological drive for order that made games like Tetris, Dr. Mario, and Rubix Cubes so addicting, or maybe I am driven by fear of the crazy fire eyes. Either way, Cooking Mama is completely addicting and a steal as far as Wii games are concerned. Not everything can be a Halo or a Guitar Hero, but for a light and fun game Cooking Mama is a double win.

Melody + video games + food + a good deal = love.