Vacuuming

Vacuuming. It's one of those things that no man really wants to do. And yet, being the harrier and generally more slovenly of the species, it's probably something that we should do more than women. That's where the Roomba comes in. It's a way cool robot vacuum cleaner that you can place in a room and forget about. You turn it on, tell it how big the room is (small, medium, or large) and it does its thing. I'm not quite sure what its thing is every once in a while, as it seems to run for a long time some times, and a short time other times. One might suspect that it's analyzing the dirt in the room and running for the appropriate amount of time, but I think that's only a feature of the new Roombas, and I have the original no frills model, so I don't think so. But, none the less, it does an admirable job of giving my room a vacuumed look (judging by the carpet tracks) and it certainly picks up a lot of stuff (judging by its little dust bin). If it only had a charging station that it could go to automatically so that I could just leave it running all the time, it would be perfect. Well, the latest model has a charging station that the Roomba can plug itself into, but I still don't think you can give it free roam of your house as it doesn't know where the charging station is (it just starts following walls until it "sees" it), so it could easily become lost in a distant room and run out of juice. Still, the Roomba I have is so cool that I'll probably buy the upgraded model when it ships later this month. It lacks the automatic dust bin emptying capabilities of the $1400 models from other companies, but for only $250, it's hard to fault it on that point.

Saw Alien vs. Predator the other night. I'm a fan of Aliens, and have enjoyed most of the Alien series. I figured this would be entertaining, and I love getting the back story of characters I like. It was very predictable, but decent in a mindless sort of way. Good action, though not a lot of aliens. The back story of the Predators on Earth was interesting, but not long enough in my opinion. I was hoping for more about them. The ending wasn't unexpected, though somehow I don't see a sequel in our future. As much as I would have expected this to be a big screen kind of movie, I'm sure you'll be just fine renting it.