Originally, I had thought of this as a luxury item. We have a regular vacuum and this was just something we thought would be ‘cool.’

We’ve just moved into a new condo building. Three new buildings are being built nearby and the net result is a lot of dust. The floors in here are hardwood, with carpet in two bedrooms. Every day we were sweeping up just to keep up with the dust and dirt. Top that off with a pet cockatoo who creates a lot of dust and is a virtual feather factory and you end up with a fair bit of dirt on the floors.

Started off with Roomba in the main living area. Pressed clean and off it went, moving around in a chaotic random fashion. But it seemed to do well, circling around on any areas it found particularly dusty. Very cool.

So now I thought we would try the scheduler. Programming it was easy. Press Schedule, choose the day and the time. Done. That was quick. The Roomba 560 comes with two ‘lighthouses’ that will keep Roomba in one room until it is clean and then let it move into the next room. This allowed me to set up three areas (kitchen/foyer, living room/dining room, master bedroom).

So far, I’m impressed. So is my wife. The cleaning so far has been fairly easy, but this unit does get pretty dirty. However, it’s easy enough to disassemble and cleanup is reasonably quick.

My concern is: Will it continue to clean effectively as it ages, or will a general level of ‘dirt and buildup’ cause it to slow down. How about when the batteries deplete enough that it can’t get to all three rooms anymore?

Until that time, it’s nice to come home to clean hardwood floors and carpets with little random vacuum tracks on them. Sure, it takes over an hour, but it’s an hour that I can do other work with (although it is fascinating to watch the robot at work).

My wife thinks its a great device too. It gets under the bed and the furniture in most places and does a fine job. When it is done, it goes back to its base and recharges itself. We hid the base underneath a bench at the front door, so with the exception of the little lighthouses, there is no evidence that we even have a roomba.

I’ve also heard that the spinning side brushes break easily. I hope not, as it seems very important to the process!

If you are making a decision between a regular vacuum and a roomba, get a regular vacuum. You can vacuum much faster and do furniture as well. However, for day to day maintenance, the roomba is a great choice.

Next question… should I get the Scooba - the floor scrubbing version? I’ll wait and see.

I’m also interested in writing another review of the Roomba in a few months time. We’ll see if I’m still impressed and what sort of problems I’ve encountered in that time.

Want to see some videos of it in action… Well, the visitors to YouTube have a pile of them on there. Click here to search for Roomba 560 Videos.

Are they a scam or real?

They seem like a scam to me.

I have 5 other servers (Two file, one PBX, one firewall, and one Windows machine)

I moved my Windows XP machine onto one of my file servers - flawless.

I put Fedora Core 8 on my new server and put VMWare server on it, along with a 4 port network card. I installed pfSense to act as my firewall and I installed Trixbox to be my PBX, each in their own virtual machine.

Setup-wise, it set up nicely. I was able to isolate my firewall from the other machines and funnel my lan traffic through it. Traffic shaping was turned on and it seemed to work well.

However my PBX was very weird. Outgoing calls were perfect. Incoming calls were really weird. Either very choppy or people heard my IVR talking really slow. I was unable to isolate the problem. Bottom line - unusable. I’m not sure if it was my Virtual machine firewall causing traffic flow problems or my Virtual machine PBX.

I have re-installed my server as Ubuntu and installed VMWare from the apt-get command. It is supposed to work better for Virtual machines.

In the meantime I am back with a real firewall and real pbx machine. Until next time I try to install it and see how it works.

To top it off, I sit here and watch the stock options I purchased continue to decline! Come on VMWare!

Pros:
- my work is at last getting done
- accounting work is being finished… that isn’t much fun I’ll admit.

Cons:
- not on my time zone
- not doing 40 hours a week
- roadblocks cause serious problems.

I don’t know, but it just seems that the amount of time taken doesn’t really match what I think… but it could just be that. Maybe I just happen to work fast.

I illustrated this with an employee several years back. Our company provided tech support to advertising firms before I sold out to my business partner (and within 6 months everyone had lost their job… but that’s another story).

I had one employee who was particularly slow. He had been reprimanded about this several time and didn’t see how he was slow. I told him “We have a software update to do on all machines. You can do half the agency, I will do the other half.” Long story short, it took me half a day, he gave up on the challenge after 3 days.

Even more interesting was the fact that when I told the agency I was going to fire him, they were upset. I said, “OK, I’m not going to fire him, I’m just going to stop paying him for his work.” He was a contract person with me and he was at the end of his contract. It was an easy parting. I let him know that on Monday he would no longer be paid. Monday he showed up… the agency hired him. Turns out he was a good drug connection for many employees at that agency. 3 months later when they realized he did not work, they had to fire him… but as a full time employee he demanded severance and extended benefits and more…

It’s too bad there wasn’t someone who noticed this in the first place!

But the things I need done from my VAs are:
- obtaining art gallery show bookings for my work
- updating existing accounting entries
- currently sourcing business affiliate partnerships for another project

I’m taking a trip to Vegas in the next week or so (hopefully), but I’m not ready to leave the arrangements to my VA.

I had a discussion with a few people about my problems in offshoring and I mentioned having hired an assistant (who, one week in, is working out great so far!). Plus I’m considering adding a second one to the mix - virtualmaster, who posted a comment in a previous blog, is starting his own KPO firm.

Anyhow, it was interesting to see some people actually upset. “Why didn’t you hire me?” one asked. Well, you didn’t apply or show any interest in the position or discuss it with me in any fashion. I guess that would have helped.

But more interesting was what I got from another person.

This had actually occurred about two years ago. I had mentioned, before the hiring, that I was searching for an assistant and that they would be working from home. Immediately, this person, who hadn’t worked in 10 years said that she could do the job. Currently she filled her day with internet chats and daytime television. She was very excited thinking she could be doing this work.

First off, I wasn’t offering the job. I was mentioning what was happening in my life.

She followed it up with “This would be perfect. I would love for someone to pay me to sit at home all day and do nothing.”

Did she just hear what she said? She was thinking she could do nothing, and was telling the person who was doing the hiring that was her plan? Suddenly, Dr. Phil did one of his “So how is that working out for you,” and the crowd erupted in a burst of applause.

Anyhow, I let her return to her world of daytime television and backed away slowly.

Fast forward two years. Now she gets alimony payments, child support, government child allowance and is working towards finding a disability claim (to augment her income). One that won’t be frowned upon by others, but perhaps one that is more socially acceptable.

I guess sometimes you can get what you want! As much as I didn’t think she had long-term goals… I guess she did work towards them and I guess she did succeed. Put your mind to it and you can accomplish anything.

Weird world folks.

As you lose respect for someone, is it possible for respect to be a negative number? Or can it only go down to zero?

OK - I really should have learned my lesson my now…

But apparently, I haven’t!

I hired my second choice from my Craigslist Bangalore post. I’ve given him access to my task manager and VNC access to my accounting machine.

We shall see how this unfolds… by this point I should say ‘unravels’ but I’m hoping this is it! Let’s move ahead.

At this point, it’s almost to the point where these other companies are charging so much per hour now, that it makes sense NOT to outsource and to hire someone local. Well, I’ll give this person a month and I’ll keep you informed of progress so far.

Day 1: One blog posting, 6 lines long, improper link, and no google adsense block.

Well, it’s only been one day. Edison tried and failed how many times while making the light bulb? I’m hoping ‘experiment 5′ proves to be a success!