• One little cordless one (bad suction, battery dies easily)
• One hand-held corded one (awesome suction, but too annoying to have to plug in for small jobs)
• One upright bagless (works pretty well, but so loud I have to wear noise-canceling headphones, plus it it’s big/bulky)

We were in CostCo and saw this space-age looking thing:

It’s CORDLESS. Which greatly reduces the barrier-to cleaning. Which I seriously need. Because while my Virgo-ness makes me enjoy order and cleanliness, it does not seem to extend to making me enjoy the process of achieving order and cleanliness.

Oddly, Amazon only seems to carry the non-Animal version of the DC35 (which gets great reviews). But the Animal seems to be the same, it just has a purple head instead of blue and comes with an extra mini motorized brush that is optimized for removing pet hair from upholstery.

Long story short, I bought it.

You can vacuum for 15 minutes with a regular attachment, 13 minutes with the rotating-head variety of attachment, and 6 minutes on the “Max” mode for more suction.

Yay!

• You can attach the attachments to the hose as pictured above, or directly to the head to make a mini-vac. This is awesome if you want to vacuum your curtains, upholstery, car, or your pants (er, if your cat shed all over them).
• The lower barrier-to-cleaning thing is HUGE. When I got home, I took this nimble creature into areas of my house I hardly ever feel like lugging my big ol’ vacuum to. Without the cord, vacuuming is so much less of an investment.
• Personally I feel that the limit of 15/13/6 minutes you can vacuum isa good thing. It makes me feel like picking up the vacuum will always be a small job, because it can only last a maximum of 15 minutes.
• The recharging station neatly stores your attachments. Well, two of them…I guess the extra “pet hair” attachment wasn’t figured in to their plans when they built it.
• When I got it home, I had just vacuumed my big rug the day before. I scrubbed it with this thing and it picked up a lot of fur and looked a lot cleaner. And I didn’t have to wear earplugs to do it. =)
• For branding geeks…there is a cute booklet in the package titled “The Dyson Story” that details the history of Mr. Dyson and how he took the idea of bagless vacuums to major vacuum manufacturers and they were like, “Are you kidding? Those bags are recurring income!”. So he had to make his own.
• This vac has the full power of a corded one, which is pretty amazing. And it doesn’t wimp out slowly. It’s full on until it runs out of juice.

Hmmmm…

Overall, I give it an “awesome!”.

While there is a lot of Hmmmm…. here, I think most of it falls under the category of “pet hair is hard to vacuum” rather than “this vacuum is bad”. This vacuum has a lot of suction, and a good brush, and the rest is just physics.

I’m pretty sure that this will enable me to get rid of all my other vacuums. I certainly don’t need my two handheld ones anymore, and I think the upright can also go…if I had a bigger house, I could see wanting a big vacuum, but with 750 square feet I’d rather have the closet space back.

Links

Here’s another review that’s helpful.

They kinda grew up. They’re all, like, sophisticated and stuff. And they are going places.

They are actually the same boots I had originally used back in 2006…but retooled a bit. And they have legs now–excitement!

The new tagline is “notes from a UX geek”. UX = user experience (design).

My goal with the redesign is to give the blog a focus.

In 2011 I gained a lot of clarity about who I am and what I want to do. And it boils down to “UX”. UX for software, and UX for life. I’m an optimizer.

A few months ago I gutted the blog, removing most of the older posts because I wanted to establish new lines between public and private and eliminate the “processing out loud” aspect. I couldn’t see any value in them if you weren’t interested in my personal history, and I don’t like just leaving crap laying around.

But I still didn’t have a focus and it felt like this blog existed for no reason. Perhaps it had outlived its purpose?

Perhaps it has, but with this new design I am attempting to take it in a new direction and we’ll see if that pans out. =)

…

Note: my apologies to subscribed folks about the old post getting mailed out. I un-hid some old posts and FeedBurner decided they were “new” even though they are clearly not new at all. So it sent you the Easter Jesus one again…sorry!

Creating a billing system…sounds boring, right? But actually developing this project has been one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my life. What I’ve discovered is that software architecture and usability design utilizes new parts of my brain and soul, and it fully engages me like nothing else has.

There are many things I’ve dabbled in (and been obsessed with) over the years, and although it might seem like software development uses a very specific skillset, my role in the project was multifaced. I’m not the programmer (Emily is). But I’ve done programming, I’ve done design, and I’ve worked with data. I know enough about all the pieces of the software puzzle to enable us to collaborate in a unique way on the level of ideas and structure and user experience.

Not only that, but the methods we used to work together we also engineered as we went. Starting out from the classic development model of creating a spec and then trying to create software from it turned out to be hard. And dull. Documentation gets outdated quickly, and it’s hard to maintain; it doesn’t live.

Halfway through our project, we switched gears to an agile development process called Scrum. They have mottos like “discussions over documentation”. You work in “sprints” of one or two weeks, creating focus and clarity. The team all works together on the same part of the project and creates usable code each sprint, so you have an immediate sense of accomplishment and teamwork.

Scrum is more gratifying  than traditional ways of working. It increases happiness as a developer. And it releases you to improvise and develop software iteratively, instead of trying to match a spec that is months old and no longer reflects the great idea you had last week while chatting over coffee. It helps the project live and breathe. It produces better software.

This experience has opened a whole new world for me. I always knew that I wasn’t a programmer. As a designer, I’m good, but I’m not great. (for example, I am more of a font snob than a typographer). I like to write, but only when I’m inspired. Given how fascinated I am with personal growth, I’ve thought of becoming a coach or a therapist, but I’m not suited for it. I’m an ideator, a strategist, a creator.

This–being the idea part of software development–this I can be great at. This I dig completely. It brings in all the skills I’ve developed and all my strengths. And things that have frustrated me about myself make sense–like, why am I eternally annoyed at tiny inefficiencies in the day to day world that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things–oh, because I care about user experience! I don’t need therapy, I need to create software!

At the very end  of this project, we started creating a new project to help us work better. It’s nominally a bug tracker or a task management system, but it’s really a way to work in this Scrum style, which makes quite different assumptions than typical task trackers.

The billing system I had to build; this I want to build. I want to create something that helps people work happier. I’ve always believed work should be fun, but it turns out that it’s not as simple as “do what you love”. When you start working on teams, on large projects, doing what you love can quickly become awful. Structures matter: they can empower creativity or frustrate it. I loved the process of working on this project, and I want to help other people feel that way.

I don’t know exactly where this is all going, but I’ve never been so excited about work. I’ve always felt like a dabbler. I built Acorn Host so I could support myself, and that it does, and it’s a quality product that I’m committed to, but I’m not like, in love with web hosting. I have always felt like I wasn’t fully utilizing my brain, and yet I hadn’t found anything that fully engaged it. So this is a happy day for me. I’m not sure where it will lead, but I wanted to share that much with you.

But do you want to express them?

The Creator Archetype feels like this raw rush of wild energy. I want to make and make, write and write. I stay up all night creating something. I babble excitedly. My mind goes in a million directions. It feels like drugs.

But when it’s all over, I find my sleep patterns are disrupted. I’m tired, worn out. Cranky. Empty. Hung over.

Sometimes I have something cool to show for it. Sometimes I just have a long bunch of idea babble in my journal.

So I’m thinking maybe it’s time to have some boundaries with the Archetypes. I’m not your bitch, Creator Archetype! I’m  not going to surrender my will to take care of myself just because you have some great ideas you want to force through my mind/body. You don’t have a body, you don’t know what it’s like. I’ve got to take care of things, or I feel shitty. So you can just take a number, and I’ll do your bidding on my time.

I don’t want to be driven any more. I want to do the driving. This is my car.

I will probably do more with the navigation and sidebar at some point. But for now…eh.

What I’m loving about Tapestry: simple, tumbler-style design. Support for post types like asides and images. What I’m not loving: no Design Options page like Prose has (Prose is my usual go-to for new WP designs).

What I’m loving about Genesis: everything.

One of the archetypes she talks about is the Creator–and describes the need to keep creating over and over–and also to let go of the creations.

That’s where I’m at right now–letting go of old creations to make way for new ones. This has been my theme for the past year, and I’m only about half-way done. But I’m getting there.

My birthday is next week, but I feel oddly uninterested. It feels like I’m not done with this year yet – not done with this cycle of cleaning-up-clearing-out. My calendar is not speaking to me; I’ll celebrate when I feel complete.

This is the first blog I ever stuck with.

Which means it’s full of old posts. Almost 400 over six years.

And lately, it’s felt like I was carrying a big bag of junk around. I wanted to get rid of it.

So for the last few weeks it’s been shut down. I put up a nearly-blank theme with a link to Tao of Prosperity, which I recently redesigned.

And it felt great. Big weight, gone.

But then I kinda missed having a place to post random things. Things I like. Things I’m doing.

And I realized that it’s not so much that I want to ditch cheekyboots forever. It’s that I want to start over.

I’ve changed.

Six years is a very long time in Emma land. I am a different person than I was when I started this.

This blog is one way people can get to know me. And it felt like I was showing up to a first date with every old shirt I’ve ever owned. Eww.

So I want to rearrange how I show up. I want it to be accurate and feel good. I want to be able to move forward and not feel like I’m carrying ghosts around with me through cyberspace. I want to get current.

What I want to share has changed.

This blog has always been a mix of what I’m doing, and what I’m thinking and feeling. I’ve shared a lot of my personal process. Including a fair amount of depression, angst, what-does-it-all-mean stuff.

But over the years, I’ve found that my lines between public and private have shifted. I’ve developed boundaries (yay!).

I no longer want to process everything out loud, to anyone who might chance by on the interwebs. I don’t need to post my therapy notes on the internet. I’m in my thirties now for chrissake. =)

Actually it’s not about how old I am, or about oversharing. It’s about the container. As in, a blog is not a therapy room. It’s more like standing on an overpass shouting at the cars below about your mother. People see you, but it’s not their job to care. And you feel oddly exposed.

I’ve learned that you, my reader, are not my therapist, and I was getting uncomfortable treating you like one.

Plus, I got some really weird letters from readers sometimes.

So, I’ve gutted the place.

All my old posts taken down. New theme. New content, starting now.

If time and interest allows, I am going to go through my old posts and selectively display a few of them that I deem still useful or interesting.

In with the new.

Going forward, I hope to share shorter updates more frequently, more like a tumblelog (the new theme supports asides). A bit less philosophy. More art and creative projects.

Once this blog was a place that inspired me to share. I hope that with this fresh slate, it can be again.

And I’m sure it will evolve again. That’s what life seems to be about.

This is not an assertion; it’s an observation.

It’s been a gradual process.

I had a drive to find perfection; I failed. After repeatedly hitting my brain against a brick wall, I gradually recognized the flaw in my thinking.

Life is just a messy endeavor.

Seeking perfection was a way to keep hoping for a better, shinier life. One without so much mess and pain and confusion and uncertainty.

But that life doesn’t exist. And it’s somewhat less painful and confusing if you give up trying to get that shiny life and live in the present, content with the moment in front of you.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean up messes. Clean is good. Shiny is nice. Just don’t expect some kind of permanent clean and shiny. It won’t happen. And that’s OK.