Keepin' It Clean

Last Christmas I did a pretty good job at giving Cindy some good stuff. She got an electric mattress pad, a new stereo (with HD Radio!) for the van, and the one I was simultaneously most excited about, and most worried about, two Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners - one for upstairs, one for downstairs.

Well, nine months later let's see how they've held up!

The Electric Mattress Pad: It's been used a LOT! In fact, I never would have dreamed it would get called into action in August, but there were a couple nights this week that were cold enough that it came in handy. Of course, it has a fairly major design flaw, too. The junction where the controller plugs into the mattress pad should be located on the very end of the pad, so it's out of the way. However, on this pad it's right where our feet go. Incredible something like that made it through testing and quality assurance without getting caught. Oh, also, there are no heating elements down at the end either - fine for Cindy, whose legs are shorter than mine... but I spent much of the winter with freezing cold feet while the rest of me was toasty warm. Final grade: C+.

Car Stereo with HD Radio: LOVED IT!! It had some weird design issues too, but none that were as glaring as the mattress pad. Seattle has a great selection of HD Radio, most of which are commercial free, all music expansions over their traditional FM stations. A couple of channels really got me hooked. Oh, but then we traded the old van in on the new one with the built in SuperStereo with hard drive and Sirius Satellite radio. I love the hard drive in the new one. But Sirius is pathetic. Programming wise, there are some good channels, but the sound quality on EVERYTHING from Sirius is HORRIBLE!! Honestly, the best way I can think of to describe the sound of Sirius, is that it sounds EXACTLY like a "fast dialup" (remember 56k modems?) RealAudio stream from 1997. For real. I haven't bothered to look at the technical specs behind it, but I'm sure it requires similar data rates. EPIC disappointment because there are some channels on there I'd listen to if I could stand the sound. Oh wait, I was writing about the OLD Stereo with GREAT SOUNDING HD Radio. That one was great. A little quirky, but solid. I give it an A-.

Finally, the Roomba twins. I would like to introduce to you, Rosie and Vax.


Rosie is on the left, and is in charge of patrolling the lower floors of our house. That's where the daycare is. Rosie has proven herself to be worthy of such an illustrious robot name! Like the Jetsons' maid, she tirelessly sucks up all the crumbs left behind by 14 busy puddle jumpers, day after day.

On the right is Vax, who does an equally good job in the upstairs part of the house. He does a great job whether sucking up cat hair or kitty litter... He also gets underneath the stove in the kitchen for a thorough cleaning that would only happen twice a year if we had to pull the stove out from the wall, which we would have to do to compare to his regular cleanings.

I got the twins from Woot, who sells Roombas quite often. I highly recommend them! As I mentioned earlier, I was very excited and yet also a little nervous about giving these to my wife for Christmas. I mean, it's like a horrible stereotype for a husband to give his wife a vacuum, iron, blender, etc, for Christmas... But I thought about that - the TACKY factor comes up because those all require her to do work. They're not to help her enjoy her life. These Roombas on the other hand, let her push a button and forget about the floors. It made sense to me, so I went for it.

Christmas morning, Cindy was excited to get them, but I believe there was a touch of skepticism as well - I mean, cool or not, her husband got her not one, but two vacuum cleaners for Christmas. Is he trying to tell her something??

Luckily the skepticism quickly faded as she watched them roam the living room, leaving the carpet cleaner than they found it. By the time we went to bed on the 25th, she had already named Rosie, and was excitedly telling everyone who called or stopped by that she had a pair of robot vacuums!

But wait, before I hand out the final grade for the Roomba Twins, there's another factor to take in.

We have, over the eight-plus years we've been together, had a really rough time with vacuum cleaners. We've gone the cheap route with an $89 Bissell... We've gone the extravagant route, with a $600 Dyson. (We have been VERY grateful for Costco's return policy, too!) We've tried several in between, and finally decided to just bite the bullet and buy an Oreck XL. Wanting to just be DONE with the whole thing, we got the Oreck XL-21, with a 21 year warranty. That should set us for life! And it better, since it cost more than the Dyson!

The Oreck works really, REALLY well. But even it can't seem to break the curse put upon us by the Vacuum Overlords. For some reason, the belt on our Oreck breaks frequently. It's a quick and relatively cheap in-shop repair, costing about ten bucks. But lately that ten dollar belt breaks after only a few uses and we're back for more. Right now it's broken again. Has been for a few weeks... We're a bit fed up with the nickle and dime-ing.. or rather "ten dollar billing" it's been giving us. So the Twins have been called upon to do more work than usual... And they're doing a great job at it!

With all the extra work they've been putting in, they were looking a little dusty. Yesterday we decided it was time to give them a little spa time to reward their hard work.


There's Vax in the Spa. That nasty clump of fuzz in the middle of the picture? That wasn't in his bin. That was all pulled from his inner workings! These things pick up EVERYTHING!! Even with that much crap clogging his insides, his last run resulted in a full bin and clean floor. So we did a thorough cleaning on him, and then on Rosie, and then set 'em loose to play, kind of like how after washing a cat or dog, you let them run around to celebrate their making it through bath time.

Well, they both came through Spa Day in perfect health, and sounded much better running around without all the internal clogging.

In light of the facts, with our little Roombas doing the work that an Oreck can't keep up with, and trudging on while filled to the brim with carpet fuzz and hair, The Roomba Twins have earned a final grade of A+! Heck, they even put themselves to bed (on their charging docks) when they're done working for the night. Definitely straight A Robots!!

Only problem is, what the heck am I going to get Cindy for Christmas THIS year??