The Dyson DC41 Review (Flawed)

This is a great product and is probably the best vacuum out there. But that hasn't stopped me from noticing a few defects. There are really 2 major ones that nearly made me return this product.

The first issue is that they got rid of the foot lever that typical vacuums have to engage the beater bar. Instead you just force it down and start vacuuming and when you are done you just put it back up and it latches and stays upright. This is pretty neat but when you are putting it upright there are 2 distinct things that happen, it engages the wand hose and then it engages the lock that holds it up. The switch for the hose is much louder and happens first so this leads you to believe the vacuum is upright and to let go when it is not latched properly causing it to fall over if you are not quick enough to catch it. This makes me respond by putting it upright much more forcefully then I want to do to something I’ve bought for nearly $600.

The second main issue is the path the air flows to the motor. There are 3 zones in the canister. The air goes from the outer to the inner getting cleaner as it progresses. The outer one is for big debris and dust, and then air flows through those tiny cyclones on the top and deposits its finer dust in the middle zone. Finally after leaving those cyclones the air goes through the filter (accessible though the top of the canister) and down the inner zone to the motor then finally out through the filter in the ball. The problem with this is that when you empty the canister the dust can and will cross contaminate from the other zones and into the post filter, inner zone. This means next time the vacuum is started it will suck in that dust into the motor and the ball filter.

So here is the story of how I found out about this defect: to test out the DC41 I took it to a house that was very dirty (some parts had not been vacuumed for a year) and vacuumed nearly the whole house. I had to empty the canister 3 times. After the 3rd time the vacuum got clogged (A peppermint in the narrow hose tool) and it activated the thermal cutoff. After learning about the thermal cutoff and what it meant, I took apart the vacuum and cleaned out all the access ports. Also looked at the post motor filter and saw that it was absolutely filthy but the filter in the canister was still white. So the dust was bypassing the canister filter somehow. So I figured it was when I dumped the canister the dust plume went everywhere including back up into the part of canister that is meant to be dust free. That amount of dust can’t be good for the motor.

Here are a few more nit picks:

It feels a little harder to navigate then the DC25

I wish it had a light and something to automatically rewind the cord.

Sometimes it feels like it’s about to break in my hands.

It does not have a spot for all the tools.

The hose wand sometimes doesn’t extend all the way out of the hose and sometimes causes the airway to be blocked when used. I think the DC25’s wand was better.

The reason I decided to keep this vacuum is the active base plate, I have a lot of wood flooring in my house and I want to get as much dust up before I use the Swiffer. Using this vacuum I now only have to use one pad each time I clean with the Swiffer instead of several.

And the DC41 will not be facing that dirty house again so it will never be that full of dust again.

Here are few good things about it:

It has great suction.

It survived that dirty house.

Its cord is long enough that I can plug it in anywhere and vacuum the entire floor.

Ultimately I think this is a great vacuum but for $600 I expect the best with no flaws and this has 2 too many flaws for that price. Unfortunately I can’t find a better vacuum so I’m stuck with this one.

Review of Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

I just read starship troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. It was definitely not what I was expecting, but I enjoyed it. It’s completely different from the movie. He spends like 60% of it in boot camp the other 30% in officer training and 10% in combat. During most of the time while in boot camp, he has flashbacks to his social and political class. And during his officer training they talk mostly about social and political stuff. So this is political and social essay hidden as a science fiction book. Considering this was written in 1959 it seamed like he was talking about today’s society. He was spot on with a lot of subjects. I would recommend this book.

Review of The Circle by Ted Dekker.

I just read the first three books of the circle series by Ted Dekker. I was quite disappointed. The first book had a good hook with the main character living in two worlds. When he falls asleep in one he awakes in the other. This was very interesting. One of the worlds was loosely based on the Bible where in one generation they go from the Garden of Eden to the equivalent of crucifixion of Christ. The other is modern day where some baddy is trying to take over the world with a virus. The mechanics of jumping between worlds and seeing his version of the bible was the only thing that kept me reading. Other then that the characters are just too simple, and the plot is rather weak. He kills off and brings back characters so often that you expect everyone who dies to come back. The events in the modern earth are so unlikely and insulting to my intelligence that in the last book I just scanned though them so I can skip ahead to the bible world, which itself was very predictable. So my conclusion is that I would not recommend these books to a friend.

But here are books I would recommend:
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jorden and Brandon Sanderson,
The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson,
The Honor Harrington series by David Weber,
The Banned and the Banished series by James Clemens,
The Gaunt’s Ghosts series by Dan Abnett,
The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson,
The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks,

Smudge proof Touch Screen password screen.

The current problem with touch screen password screens is that smudges can give away what your password is if you don’t clean them right after you log in. The smudges reveal where you put your finger to press the numeric touchpad or the pattern you put in.

The simple solution is to randomly change the location of the buttons each time the screen is presented. This only works for numeric touchpad’s though and has the issue of people expecting numbers to be in order. So I recommend using colors instead.
Here are examples of what it would look like:



This would eliminate the issue of smudges giving away passwords making a much more secure way of protecting cell phones.

Robot Beauty contestant?

If you read the transcripts of Miss California’s interview with Greta Van Susteren at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518574,00.html

You will notice her answers are very odd, almost idiotic. Then reading them it made me realize that her answers seem to come from a version of ELIZA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA


So they must be building robots now and putting them in beauty contests!

Publicly displaying IQ tests.

I think of all the quizzes on facebook the IQ test is the worse. In a nation where we are taught from childhood and whose declaration of independence states “that all men are created equal” the action of publicly displaying an IQ score is destructive. It states that we all are not created equal; assaulting a core cultural belief. It causes resentment in those who score lower and arrogance in those who score higher. Even though an arbitrary measurement like IQ shows that we are not equal; it’s just downright rude to mention it or display it is like some badge. No good has ever come from utterance of the words: “I’m better then you.”

The project file ‘ ‘ has been renamed or is no longer in the solution. In Silverlight.

Recently one of my projects at work was moved to a different SCM. After the move a message box that said “The project file ‘ ‘ has been renamed or is no longer in the solution.” would appear every time we tried to compile the solution. After a while I figured out how to fix this. The solution has a silverlight project; somehow the web app that hosted it got corrupted. The fix was simple right click on the project and click “Properties” and under “Silverlight Applications” tab remove the blank silverlight project and add the intended silverlight project. The code now compiles.