We just added “Grissom” to our household. He’s a very hard working fellow who can’t stand letting dust and dirt stay put. Grissom is the Discovery model of iRobot’s Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. About 2 million Roombas have been sold. Most people love them. I now know why.

The Roomba has a self-charger that it returns to when it’s in need of charging. As long as the charger is within four or five feet and the IR signal isn’t distorted in some way, Roomba will self-dock to recharge. Roomba holds a charge for 45 minutes to an hour depending upon the intensity of the cleaning it’s doing.

Having a Roomba in the house doesn’t mean dust and dirt is banished forever but it does mean that you can relax a little and let your Roomba do its job.

So Roomba can operate without problems, you’ll have to do some preliminary preparation:

• Make sure wires are elevated up off the floor,
• Remove strings and frayed edges from carpets and area rugs,
• Move tassled rugs out of Roomba’s way or tuck the tassles under the rug,
• Pick up strings, threads, rubber bands, and similar items so they don’t get caught in Roomba’s brushes.
• Confine Roomba’s movements to a specific area or room using one or more Virtual Walls.

The instruction booklet that comes with the Roomba package is small, quick to read, illustrated, and simple to understand. The Quick Start Guide is even simpler.

Because Roomba contains an electronic and software interface, iRobot encourages software programmers to come up with new functions for the robot. I’m not ready to tinker with Grissom’s programming just yet but it’s nice to know that if I do decide to change the way he operates, I have the green light from iRobot.

It isn’t that a Roomba cleans better than I can or that it’s completely work free. Its dust bin has to be emptied and, depending upon the degree of dust and dirt it’s exposed to, that might be at every charge. The brushes and filter also need to be cleaned periodically.

What the Roomba does so well is make vacuuming fun!

Made another move to grab media attention, that is. It isn’t enough that she’s dumped K-Fed and shown way too much while partying with best bud Paris Hilton. In the past two weeks, the mother of two has checked herself in to, and checked herself out of, rehab twice. Today, she went into rehab for the third time.

In one of her most impetuous and bizarre moves, she shaved her head after a Tarzana salon owner refused to shave it for her. Want to see the new, bald, Britney? Here she is at an L.A. tattoo parlor.

Want a lock of Britney’s hair? There are several eBay sellers claiming to be selling locks of her “actual” shaved hair. Another site was set up specifically so that one lucky person could buy it all for only $1,000,000.

Britney is a classic case of looks, money, and fame not buying happiness. All of that is superficial. What counts is what is inside. Inside Britney seems to be a very scared and confused little kid rebelling against the world. I hope that kid can get some help because there are two children who really do need their mother.

The investigative report, Starving for Perfection, is a two-hour television program that takes an indepth look at eating disorders — binging, purging, anorexia, bulimia. The personal stories are painfully told by the person with the addiction as well as family members. Anna Westin didn’t survive her addiction. Countless other victims of this addictive behavior will die every year.

At the commercial breaks, almost half of the advertisements were for weight loss products. After the program ended, the following program gave diet and exercise tips to lose weight and get fit in time for bikini season. The “before” models were normal size. The preferred “after” models were stick thin.

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As I type this, there are seven minutes left on an eBay auction with the title “35 Hermes Birkin Bag NEVER BEFORE! Blue Jean Crocodile.” There have been 10 bids so far, bringing the price to $40,900. As yet, the reserve price has not been reached.

This is not the most expensive Birkin being offered by the seller. A “Sexy Black Crocodile w DIAMONDS” has a Buy It Now price of $59,500 plus $150 shipping. A hot pink one is priced at $47,500.

Buying designer handbags online can be hazardous for buyers who don’t know that most any high-priced bag can be purchased as a “mirror” at far below the authentic bag’s price. Do a Google search for “mirror image replica” and see how many cloned designer bags you find.

Anyone can buy a counterfeit designer bag. They’re sold by street vendors in the middle of Manhattan. They’re sold on eBay and other auction sites.

Is it possible to buy an authentic designer bag at a bargain price on eBay? Yes, it’s possible. But, if the price is too good, and the seller has a LOT of designer bags at LOW, LOW prices, the bags might be mirrors instead of the originals.

Some counterfeit bags are virtually impossible to tell from the real thing. They’re excellent quality, have all the right hang tags, and sleeper bags. To the inexperienced eye, and sometimes the very experienced, they appear to be the real thing. That’s what a “mirror” is. A mirror image of the real thing.

I got caught up in a bidding frenzy a few years ago after catching sight of a beautiful, black leather, Mont Blanc carry-on bag. I knew such a bag would retail for more than $2,000 so buying it, new, with tags, on eBay for $225 seemed incredibly lucky. 

The quality of workmanship on the bag is excellent. The leather is thick and lustrous. The tags appear authentic. And, yet, I know I got hooked by a mirror of the real thing. If the auction had indicated “inspired by” or any of the other words that would have let me know I was bidding on a fake, I would have passed it by.

Bargain or not, quality or not, I thought I was buying the real deal. But, like most things that are too good to be true, it was.

And how did the auction for the Hermes Birkin Blue Jean Crocodile bag end up? It ended at $40,900 with no winners; it never went over the seller’s reserve price.

Another “Birkin” will sell in less than 24 hours. This one is listed by a seller with less than stellar feedback, unlike the other seller whose feedback is excellent and who specializes in high-end Hermes Birkin bags at high-end prices. This seller’s bag is up to $1,775, a real deal.

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Do intelligent people fall for get-rich-quick schemes as transparent as the e-mail scams sent to virtually everyone with an e-mail address? Scams such as the one I received yesterday and reprinted below? Unfortunately, people who live in a rural Michigan community know that not only do people fall for these schemes, they often lose huge sums of money that don’t belong to them through their gullibility.

Thomas Katona, the elected treasurer of Alcona County for almost 14 years, and an accountant, has been accused of embezzling funds from the county only to lose it to a Nigerian scam. The amount may be as much as $1.2 million from the county’s investment accounts as well as $72,500 of his own money. Auditors won’t know for a few months just how much he lost or how that loss will affect the county’s rainy day/capital purchases fund.

Katona is facing charges of embezzlement, attempted embezzlement, and forgery. He is jailed with a $1 million bail. As foolish and greedy as Katona was, he at least is alive, if in jail. Some people don’t fare as well, traveling to foreign countries to make contact with their investment partners, and disappearing without a trace. For a more indepth look at the Nigerian scams, visit this site. And be sure to take a look through the scams they’ve collected in their Nigerian Scam Letter Exhibit.

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From: Donarld Alagada (Dr)
Tel; +31-619-785-084
Fax; +31-847-200-671
Email; donarldalagada@aim.com

Dear Sir,

This letter might come to you as a surprise however, there is no need to worry, as we are using the only secured and confidential medium available to seek for foreign assistance/partnership in a business transaction. What is more important is that, the mentioned transaction will prove to be of mutual benefit to both parties involved.

Read more… »

According to an article in the latest issue of Red Herring (Vol. 4 No. 5), Sony’s PlayStation 3 game console is selling at a loss due to the popularity of the Wii console by rival Nintendo. A market research group, iSuppli, estimated “Sony could be losing as much as $241 on each PS3 it sells.

In most of the “civilized” world, a woman can’t be too thin. We worship thin, we abhor heavy. Not so the Hima tribe in Uganda.

I’ve just watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel about a young girl named Sheila whose family accepted cattle from a single neighbor in exchange for her as his wife. Once the cattle were delivered to her father, Sheila was put in virtual isolation for a four month fattening prior to her wedding.

The men of the Hima tribe like their women to be fat, very fat. Sheila spent four months eating and sleeping and gaining weight. The sad part is that Sheila wanted more from her life, she wanted to go to college, have a career, meet someone other than the man who her parents had agreed she would marry.

Instead of retelling it, here’s what another viewer said about this documentary when she viewed it last year.

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