I bought a vacuum cleaner today. That may not sound like a big thing to you (and it isn’t), but it is to me. We have (had) a central vacuum that came with our house, and for a long while I swore by it. It was a central vacuum, the ultimate in suck.
Unfortunately the vacuum may well have been original to the house, and our house is about 25 years old. Removing the dirt from the container was a pain, and it was losing the battle with Gus hair and the carpet. To clean our living room rug, we’d have to go down on our hands and knees with a lint remover. Seriously. Finally, Erin and I decided that one of our birthday gifts to ourselves would be a decent vacuum cleaner.
We bought a Eureka Whirlwind “Boss”, reconditioned at $99. It’s got 12 amps, it’s bagless and it has a nice clear plastic case that allows us (well, mostly me) to see the dirt whirling about. Best of all, it has a power head with a brush that just chews the clumps of fur out of the carpet and sucks it in. I could tell the device was powerful, but I didn’t quite believe it until we ran the thing over the living room rug, opened the canister and came out with a ball of dust and fur about the size of my fist, and a new appreciation of just how dirty our place had been.
The central vacuum? Well, I swore by it again. Or, more accurately, at it.
Non Partisans Now Not Homeless
The Blogging Alliance of Non-Partisan Canadians has been slowly ticking along, accepting its twelfth member today in the form of libertarian Jay Currie. I’ve also been able to mount a website which lists the members, provides the code you need to join up, and which also contains a feed of the latest posts of the various members.
There’s no RSS feed of the RSS feeds, yet. I had a hard enough time working with PHP, so give me a chance. Thanks to Stephen Taylor of the Blogging Tories for pointing me the way to CaRP, which powers the site.
If you’re feeling neutral or non-partisan, or if you just want to talk about something other than politics and if you are a Canadian, why not join up? You’re all welcome.
Second Call on the G-Mail Invite Giveaway
A couple of people took me up on an offer for an invitation to a G-Mail account, and then Google reset my numbers, and I have fifty invitations to give away. If you’re using Hotmail, now’s the time to switch to a far superior online e-mail system. Just drop me a line and I’ll send one over. First come, first served.