I have a 10 year old Phantom that has worked great for all of these years, but its a little old and it can’t get in small places. The roomba works awesome in picking up dust, hair, etc, but I knew I was missing the deep dirt.
So I ordered an ElextroLux EL 7055A”>ElectroLux EL 7055A from Amazon. I had bought one of these for my mother for xmas and she loves it - Lightweight, great cleaning, self cleaning filters, easy to use.
It arrives yesterday, I put it together in under 5 minutes and vacuum the living room. The powered head takes off and you have to work to pull it back, because it is so strong.
The canister is half full of powered dust. Yes, I had roombaed that morning. The stuff the Electrolux got was exactly what I was looking for - the deep, well ground in stuff. No hair, etc - The Roomba had done its job.
Due to the canister/head design, I can easily use the Electrolux on the stairs. 5 stairs, half canister of dirt. Yuck.
if you need to stand it up, just turn the handle 90 degrees to the left and the hose won’t pull it over. In the middle of a clean and want to use the duster? No problem - press the off button on the handle, detach the handle from the wand/head, attach the duster (its right on the handle) and off you go.
The upholstery tool shed from the first use and the red fabric is falling apart - I will contact the company about a replacement. However it got most of the hair off the couch (little white cat hair) except those stubbornly woven into the fabric.
Now to see how long this little wonder-vac functions, but for now, wow, its nice knowing that an entire grocery bag of fine dust is no longer in this house.
Sun exec Jonathan Schwartz said “Apple will announce that zfs has become the file system for OS X”
Now every website, blog and news agency has put words in his mouth by saying he announced it would be in Leopard.
Hold on, lets hear what Apple has to say.
First off, there is no way Apple is going to force people to ZFS. Its far too new and young. At best, ZFS will be an option when you format your disk and Apple will provide some sort of compatibility APIs for older applications.
I could imagine some sort of migration assistant that would back up your data, reformat your disk as ZFS and then restore, yes.
However, before ZFS becomes ‘the’ filesystem for OS X, I would think we’d want a little more than 2-3 months to get ready for it, no?
So my prediction is that ZFS is an option in 10.5 and maybe in 10.6 it becomes the de-facto filesystem for OS X.
Until I hear from Apple on Monday, I am not willing to translate Mr. Schwartz’s “OS X” to mean “Leopard”
I pulled the trigger and ordered a new MacBook Pro, vs a Mac Pro today. The differences will be:
Slightly slower hard disk (5400rpm vs 7200rpm)
Larger hard disk (160 over 100). I can now store my music and photos internally, and update to a larger/faster drive later.
LCD backlit screen - uses less power, more uniform lighting
Faster CPU - From 2.1ghz Core Duo to 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo
Faster video - The nVidia chipset sounds nice
Same RAM, 2gb, more potential. Apple is shippig with 667 RAM, vs the 800 the FSB can support, but crucial.com has the 800 ram for $539 for 2×2gb. Later I can double the RAM and get better performance to boot (and keep my old ram)
I’ve used SoniCare and Oral B’s for awhile, both effective and pricey. I’ve also used 99 cent toothbrushes, changing once a month for cleanliness.
I used to toss my old toothbrushes away but now I have seen the light.
I have nine old toothbrushes under the sink. Don’t use these if you ever visit.
Why am I keeping my old disposables?
Clean the SoniCare - The SoniCare can get gross down inside the base unit. An old toothbrush is the perfect tool for getting in there and cleaning it out.
Clean the couch - Did you or your child spill chocolate candy bar on your couch and smoosh it in? No need for chemicals, break out an old toothbrush, wash it, add a little water and the bristles will lift the candy out with a little swirling action.
Clean the sink - Ever had that grime build up around the basin where the grout is missing? A toothbrush will pull that out just fine.
Clean the faucet! The same goes for the base around the faucet. Or how about those cheap plastic handles with the inserts to hide the mounting screw? The toothbrush will get all of that gunk out.
Clean the soap dispenser - Do you have a refillable liquid soap dispenser? Know how the soap dries and gums up around the actuator, under the pump head etc? Again, your friendly neighborhood toothbrush will clean that right up.
Speaking of SoniCare, Kathryn gave me a great tip - Remove the hood from the head and put both the hood and the head (ok that sounds perverted) into the dishwasher. Not only will your SoniCare toothbrush be super clean, it’ll be disinfected by the boiling water. Just don’t put the base unit in the dishwasher
Since I had gotten some nice comments from random people whom I didn’t know, I decided to post my rebuttal on the iTunes scuttle to digg.com.
After several hours, there were about 20 diggs. That is what I expected. Elizabeth and I then went out to Gresham to look at the Honda Fit and when I got home, I had many more comments to approve and over 1,000 diggs!
I even got an email from my ISP saying they had blocked my domain because the Wordpress PHP was killing the server. Ooops.
I want to say thanks to all for both the comments here and on the digg.com article. There are many I agree with, many I don’t and that’s just how it should be.
Thank you all for responding and discussing this delicate issue!
You’d think we had started a war. Cory Doctorow, who I respect for his EFF work, has gone off the deep end calling iTunes 7.2 a “downgrade”. CNET quotes:
Songs available on iTunes Plus reveal users’ personal information. Privacy group suspects Apple goofed.
First off, did anyone think Apple was going to just sell plain raw bit unencrypted files? Come on!
Secondly, this is not an invasion of privacy at all. Songs don’t reveal any personal information. Giving those songs to others and having them hack out the data reveals your personal information. Keep your songs to yourself!
I am sick and tired of people who think they should be able to freely give purchased content away to others. Apple and EMI have gone out on a big limb and an even larger experiment. If sales plummet, guess what? The RIAA will be in SEE! PIRACY! mode and we’ll all go back to the dark ages.
I believe in privacy, I really do. However, Apple embedded your personal information in content that only you should have is no different than them saving your email address in a Mail application preferences.
So they didn’t tell people they were doing it? So what? Don’t pirate music and you won’t get burned.
Now you can back up this wonderful new iTunes Plus music and if the iTunes Music Store ever dies, it will still play. This is a huge benefit to users and those bitching about this are like little kids who got their Star Wars vehicle for XMAS but didn’t get each and every action figure. Its childish and this is exactly the kind of rigidness the RIAA and MPAA use to slap us with ridiculous restrictions.
Cory - Thanks for your work in pressuring companies to ditch DRM. Now back off. Have a drink. Take a nap. Go on vacation.
“There’s absolutely no reason that it had to be embedded, unencrypted and in the clear,” said Fred von Lohmann, a senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Some of the privacy problems, in light of this, is that anyone who steals an iPod that includes purchased iTunes music will now have the name and e-mail address of its rightful owner.”
Good! They’ll know where to return it. I know people who engrave their email address on the back. Now when the stolen iPod is recovered, I can prove its mine. Its not like the meth addict who stole it is going to need my email address, they already have it.
