Seems I haven’t had much to say lately, and what I have, I’ve been saying via facebook statuses. I guess I’m finding it useful, or at least diverting, after all.
New on the home front, a Roomba 560. I got it on Thursday and it cleaned three times on Friday (I started out with it restricted to a single room on the first two passes) and once yesterday. Yesterday it actually finished for the first time without making its "Uh-oh!" sound, which was kinda cool.
I did have to move things around a bit upstairs. I discovered that one of my rocking chairs has its legs too close together for the Roomba to fit through, so I moved it around to that area would get cleaned. And I consolidated all the boxes in the library (that aren’t books and are waiting for me to figure out where they go) into one pile so all the rest of the floor could get cleaned.
So yeah, it’s taken some getting used to. And the upstairs still has enough hairballs hiding in various places that I need to empty the bin every time the Roomba runs, but I’m generally liking it. The 560 transitions from the hardwood floor onto the oriental rug I have in the library, and onto the carpeting in the hallway and bedroom with no problems. It can climb a half-inch bump if needed, and it hasn’t fallen down the stairs yet. And it hasn’t tried to eat that tassles on the end of my oriental rug or any of my extension cords. Seems to be capable enough for the job.
So I’ll probably be buying a second one for the ground floor in a few weeks. Between now and then, I’m going to be working on picking up the clutter and trying to make the downstairs more robot-friendly.
Also of note, on Friday I went down to the Eagles’ Club for the Auto Body gig. Shot a bunch of photos I’m relatively happy with during the first set, and then called it an early night.
And that’s what passes for excitement in my life lately. So you can see why I haven’t been blogging a lot.
- Bummer. Mystery author Donald E. Westlake dies at 75. No more Parker or Dortmunder novels for me to read. [metafilter]
- As I was ripping my backlog of CDs over the holiday break, I kept being frustrated by classical music. Then I read this article on Classical Music on the iPod and iTunes and saw that if I joined the tracks before importing, all was well. Yay!
- This Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that the reason he’s been losing weight is because of a hormone imbalance that he’ll be correcting by eating different stuff. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought SJ should have a steak. [boing boing]
- Wanna compare type-faces? flipping typical has a cool browser-based way of doing it with your fonts. Their about page explains. [nack]
- Smashing Magazine has The World From Above: The Beauty Of Aerial Photography, which includes a photo from our very own MNKiteman. Pretty pictures from above.
- There’s also this photo gallery of freezebubbles, i.e. bubbles that were blown upward on a cold night, and then photographed as they froze in the air. It’s supposed to be cold enough this week that a guy could try making freezebubbles.
- According to Mike, This is no joke, and they’ve got to be saying “Oh Shit.” ATF is running out of form 4473s, and has authorized FFLs (dealers) to photocopy their existing forms. Seems demand for firearms has been running a little higher than expected since the election. That matches what I’ve seen first-hand at gun shows around here. Nice to know it’s not just a local trend. [endwar]