Please disregard, bring on the watch, bring on the pain!
Remember all that bullshit I said yesterday about me not feeling the need to get one of the new Roombas anytime soon? Remember how I said that they seemed cool but I didn’t feel compelled to get one since I like my new Pet model just fine? Um yea, scratch that. I have a new Roomba 535 on order from of all places Home Shopping Network! Ok let me back up a little and explain.
After I posted about the new Roomba I made the mistake of digging a little deeper into them. Then I saw the video of it in action. The second I heard it talking the hooks were in! So now my mind was racing, how can I swing this? I am not fiscally irresponsible enough to just throw dollars to the wind and charge it on my credit card with no thought of the 240 bucks I just dropped on the Pet model. However after pouring through my favorite Roomba support forum, I saw a post from someone saying how they just bought a Roomba a few weeks ago but they were returning it to get one of the new models. Irobot has a 30 day, no questions asked, return policy, if you aren’t satisfied for whatever reason, send it back. Pop, the light bulb went off in my head. This was my out.
Well the return along with a sweet deal that someone posted on the same Roomba site from HSN. The new model sells for 299 on the Irobot site but HSN was selling them for 249 with free shipping! Plus it actually was a special model, the 535 which has capabilities the 530 that is sold for 299 on the Irobot site does not have. Plus for 35 bucks I snagged an additional 2 year warranty on the unit. Anyone that owns a Roomba knows that this is a BARGAIN. So anyway, what this equated to was for about 50 bucks, I was able to exchange the Pet model for the new model and tack on a 3 year warranty to boot. Very sweet.
So what are these new features that made me crazy to get one? Let’s see, aside from the very cool voice demos and error reporting the Roomba 500 series is chock full of upgrades from the prior model, addressing the majority of the complaints we dedicated Roomba owners have been voicing.
It has a bigger, 6 legged corner brush instead of the small, two legged brush, allowing it to do a better job of cleaning along walls and into corners. It has a bigger dirt bin to hold more junk. The interior of it is sealed up now which does two things. It runs quieter and also prevents the area above the brushes from becoming an unintentional dustbin like the older models. Dust and hair would get up in this area and cause all sorts of problems with the Discovery models.
The parts are now modular and user replaceable. If something does break it is MUCH easier to fix. The brushes have been redesigned to do a better job and to be easier to clean. The vacuum part of the robot supposedly offers 100% more suction power, pulling more dirt from the floor.
The home base unit that the Roomba docks with to charge when the battery runs low is now found via RF instead of IR. What this means is if the Roomba is in another room or around the corner behind some furniture it still can find it’s way back home with the RF signals. The old IR home base required the Roomba to have a direct line of sight to “see” it.
The bumper system now has “sight”. The old Roomba would go full speed into obstacles and bump off it via sensors in it’s bumper. The new 500 series has IR eyes that can see upcoming obstacles and it slows down as it approaches it, reducing the chances of damaging the obstacle or the Roomba itself.
The brush system has been designed to no longer choke itself if it runs over tassels on a rug or cords on the floor. If something gets pulled up into the brushes, instead of spinning and further tangling the item, the brushes stop and the unit moves forward until it is clear and then it fires the brushes back up.
There are even more tech goodies included that I could go into but you get the point, this is some cool, cool tech. Did I mention it talks? 🙂
I found a way to make the 300 work out even more brutal, wear a watch. As I have been doing the routine for the last nearly 4 months I haven’t done any official timing. My breaks I counted off time in my head, I looked at the clock 80 feet away at the gym a couple times to get a rough idea of how long it was taking me but that was about it. Wow, what a difference running a timer makes.
The watch becomes your taskmaster, your personal trainer. Before I started today my goal was to finish everything in under 25 minutes. I just squeaked by, finishing the last pull up at 24:50. I quickly discovered the 1 minute or so breaks I thought I was taking between most exercises was actually significantly longer. The 10 second mini-breaks I would take were probably at least twice as long as I thought. I added all the time information to the workout progress page. Under each exercise is the time the exercise took followed by the amount of rest time I took before starting the next one, down to the second. It puts an entirely new perspective on things. I tried to generally keep the breaks at a minute. In between box jumps and wipers I had a full 2:30 break because I had to move equipment around, at that point I certainly can use the extra time. Going that fast took it’s toll on my final pull up set. Even getting 15 was a major struggle. My Timex watch is going to ramp things up to an entirely new level, now I am not only pushing for rep numbers but competing against the never yielding competitor, time.
This weekend will be quite busy as it is our last one before the trip. I have a bunch of things to get done and I will have a lot of things to do in the days leading up to the trip as well. Over the weekend I am going to give the party van a bath and also pull out one of the captain’s chairs in the second row to give us more room for “stuff”. Ali is going to have to go into work sometime this weekend and I have my fantasy football draft on Sunday afternoon so that will fragment up the time further. I am anxious for our trip, it will be cool to step out of the box for awhile, waaaaay out of the box.
The whole mining, blasting thing has come full circle. I sent out my nasty email to the commissioners asking that they don’t endorse the proposed expansion, I talked to a lady reporter at the local paper and then finally I talked to one of the managers at the mine. He was surprisingly friendly, surprisingly accomodating and amazingly interested in making sure he addressed any concerns I had. I talked with him on the phone for a good 25 minutes and afterwards I felt much better about the situation. I do plan to take a look at the pictures that were taken of the various cracks in the house before blasting commenced and compare them to today. The guy said he would be happy to come out and take a look at the house and also invited me to come check out the operation they were running myself. Supposedly there will be a story about this running in the August 31st edition of the paper, I believe I will be named and quoted in the article. Exciting. In retrospect if I talked to the mining guy first, the other two contacts would probably have never been made.