For years I have seen the commercial for Roombas on TV, and honestly, I thought it was a scam. I always thought to myself that these things don’t clean good, or they won’t clean the entire floor. I had a lot of doubt in the product and never really considered getting one. I reconsidered at Christmas time when I bought my mom a refurbished Roomba. She has problems with her hands, and I thought it would help her keep her floors clean. What I didn’t expect was that it would actually do such a great
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I was watching my Roomba making its rounds around my living room today. I picked up mine last month during the last Woot off. So I got it at a great deal and it’s still an interesting contraption to watch. People always ask if Roombas work or not. Well, they do - but for reasons you probably wouldn’t expect. You would think all the great reviews on Amazon are a result of the Roomba’s sheer… ******************************************************** **** You are subscribed to the summary ****
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Pioneer says goodbye to plasma manufacturing Posted Mar 3rd 2008 6:42PM by Richard Lawler Filed under: Displays, HDTV We wondered why its so hard to find one of Pioneer’s award winning Kuro plasmas on shelves these days, and here is the answer. The Nikkei is reporting that Pioneer plans to stop producing plasma panels altogether, and only put together HDTVs with panels purchased from other sources. Panasonic and Hitachi remain as the only Japanese plasma manufacturers, Pioneer already has a dea
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Six Months in the Inside - Am I evil yet? Posted in Microsoft | Musings Yikes, I got an email from HR today that said “Congratulations on your 6th month anniversary at Microsoft!” Has it been that long? Apparently so, although it feels like maybe three months, tops. I learned a lot about the culture in the first three weeks. There is a lot of groupthink and echo-chamber type behaviors from folks that have been there a long time, but most people I’ve interacted directly with are always re-
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Robots do the work Japanese won’t do…. Faced with an aging population, Japan is banking on robots to replenish its dwindling workforce. Robots are already a familiar sight in many factories across the country, but scientists are experimenting with new technologies—like the ones that allow this humanoid robot to respond to facial cues—as robots make their way into daily life. {snip} “To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks,” said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meij
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Filed under: Robots Get ready, battlefields, as yet another iRobot is gearing up to take you all by storm. Announced today, the aforementioned outfit has received an award under DARPA’s LANdroids program which will enable it to “develop a new portable communications relay robot that is small, inexpensive, intelligent and robust.” The resulting creature will reportedly be used in “dense urban environments to rapidly deploy and maintain a vital communications infrastructure,” and better still, t
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In an effort to save some money, I went to couponsurfer dot com, (Hey!  Google recommended it, and I just don’t want to live in a world where I can’t trust Google.) clicked on a couple of coupons I would use, downloaded the printer, printed them out, and voila!  $1.00 off yogurt and a BRAND NEW COMPUTER VIRUS that is popping up ad websites all over the place for no reason whatsoever. Be smarter than I was.  Don’t go there.  Don’t do it.  This virus is pretty “smart”, too, it puts up ads (like
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(…or perhaps it’s just “Information Overload”) My weekend was both wonderful and disappointing! Story of my life… (see Dichotomy entry), nothing is ever cut and dried in Peg’s life. It’s always “this and that”, “either/or”, “asi asi” but never just plain GOOD. On Saturday, I spent the morning at the Clinic/Institute because the current 6 Month Massage Class was graduating and I wanted to help out. I feel somewhat responsible, although I really didn’t have anything to do with THIS class. I
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We dropped off the boys (I know, it’s weird that we board Toby even overnight, but he is destructive when we go out and aren’t back within an acceptable amount of time) and drove to the bed and breakfast I found Saturday. It was actually very nice; it was located right on the main street in a historic town. We walked around the whole weekend, looking at all the shops, had a great dinner, and just hung out together. It was so nice. I definitely could have used two days there, but….I’ll take wha
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In an ideal world, I would have something like $10,000 dollars in order to achieve Rambling Hal Happiness. Ok no, wait, make that $20,000. Actually, you know what? I owe some people some money. How about $50,000? Yes, in an ideal world, I’d be presented with $50,000 any day now. I would then be able to go nuts online, and shop to my heart’s content from J Crew online, Victoria’s Secret online, and of course, my trusty Amazon. I would not hesitate to buy the following: 1- The iRobot Roomba, for
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