Here is a list in somewhat chronological order of what the last 5 years of my life have looked like.

• Bought a business
• Bought a storefront in the town where I grew up.
• Did a full rehab on the storefront
• Moved back to the suburbs of Chicago
• Built up the business like 10x over 3 years
• No longer liked the business I was in or my position in it and decided to sell the company.
• Sold 80% of my business and stayed on as a partner.
• Paid off House!
• Had a friend die who was only 38 years old. Maybe a year older than me at this time
• Decided to move out west.
• Sold my condo
• Got Married
• Bought a new house in Oregon
• Rehabbed the house in Oregon
• Tree Fell on the house in Oregon
• Bought into a few interesting businesses.
• Moved to Oregon
• Took up Crabbing and foraging (mushrooms & berries).
• Sold my share in those interesting businesses
• Sold/Forced out of the remaining 20% stake in the business and got stuck w/ a 3 year non compete.
• Started a new company w/ a partner.
• Bought out partner.
• Took on a new partner.
• Felt like a turd and had some self doubt for about 2 years, but did not realize what was going on.
• Had a handful of other friends and internet buddies die over the years
• Got back into fishing
• Removed partner
• Gotten pretty good at site development
• Went on a bunch of hikes, but no where near what I should be doing since I live so close to all this natural beauty now.
• Turned 40 fucking years young and experienced some of the rebellion a body will make when you sit at a desk for 25 years.
• Finally hit a stride w/ the new business after lots of ups and downs
• Trying to get some other areas of my life in order.

I wrote this once and wordpress shit itself and I lost the list and post.

The first one was a little bit better and had a better conclusion.

I have lots of hindsight on all of the above things and may make some longer posts about certain parts.

What have you been up to?

This about sums it up: My prized werty.net coaster stuck to my glass the other day and fell and shattered. How sad. That is similar to this site.

Not sure I will update it… I have been working a little bit on GeorgeKepnick.com. Enjoy

Mine had poor drainage so water would sit on it, collect and eventually rust the metal. Parts of it were starting to flake so I knew it was time to get it taken care of.

I looked into some options for having someone come out and do it, but I heard that the handy work could be hit or miss. Since I actually like doing construction and DIY stuff, I decided to give it a shot.

It was pretty straight forward, but I had to buy some new equipment and tools. Which I am always happy with getting more gadgets!

What you will need:

• A stiff wire brush Or (preferred) a angle grinder with wire brush attachment
• Safety goggles
• breathing mask/dusk mask
• ear plugs
• broom
• hopefully a shopvac
• primer
• paint
• rollers/pans/etc
• I also would recommend kneepads since kneeling on a diamond plate deck is not going to be fun, and when you start grinding you are kneeling on hunks of hard paint and metal. FUN!
• Good Weather!

You will want to watch the weather and try and plan for a nice few days to do this. I did mine last year around the 4th of April, and I got pretty lucky with the weather. This year there is no way April would have worked. I had to rush on the final day and it ended up getting wet the day after it rained, but it did not seem to cause any problems. Either way it has held up for a year now, and looks like it should have at least another good year in it.

Here are the steps.

1. Remove everything off of your deck
2. Give it a quick sweep
3. Pick a spot and go at it with the wire brush. I tried doing mine by hand and gave up after a few minutes, so I headed over to menards and picked up a angle grinder and metal brush. The grinder I bought was a cheap Black & Decker and it overheated and died on me in about 10 minutes. It was garbage. Stay away from that brand. I had to go return it.
4. Use the angle grinder with wire brush. Make sure you have glasses / earplugs and a breathing mask because stuff will be flying everywhere and is loud as can be.
5. You will probably need to do a few pickups while you are doing the grinding/sanding phase at it can be messy.
6. When you are done, sweep everything, vacuum if you can, and then wash it all down with soap and water. When this is done I did a rinse with the hottest water I could get.
7. Let it dry.
8. Prime it / Let it dry
9. Paint it / let it dry.
10. Enjoy your new deck.

All in, this project took probably 6 hours over the course of 3 days. I would totally do this again, and may help my neighbor do his since I have all of the equipment. It took me a bit longer because I had to run out to menards to return the crappy grinder that broke, but while I was there I picked up a shopvac and some other items.

The total cost was about $180 and that is with the shopvac and the angle grinder. So now if I were to do it again, it would cost me paint (30-40$), new paint rollers/brushes and a pan ($10). So like $50 and my time which is priceless

If you have a metal deck that is chipping and rusting, I 100% recommend refinishing and repainting it yourself.

Also note, that there are other ways to strip this… using chemicals, sanding it, maybe even a pressure washer. I cannot speak about the other methods, but feel free to leave your questions and comments and maybe someone with more experience can answer them.

I waited around for a good deal to appear on woot or another shopping site. When I gave up hope one finally popped up as the Amazon gold box deal of the day. It was more than $200 off its original price and ended up coming out to be $179.99, with free shipping. Not too bad, and at that price I figured it was well worth a gamble and it would allow me to write a detailed review.

Background:
For those of you that do know, Roomba is a robotic vacuum from the company irobot. Yes it sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but the technology seems far less advanced then that. iRobot has been making these cleaning bots for years. They are not limited to just the Roomba Vacuums, they also make the Scoomba floor cleaner/robo mop (lol), a robot gutter cleaning device, and a few different pool cleaners, and that is just at the consumer level. For industry I think they make some far more advanced robots that do some very specific tasks. Anyhow, for this review we will only be talking about one product, the iRobot, Roomba 550 with 2 lighthouse towers and docking/charging station.

First Impression:
Since I got my Roomba from Amazon, and it was the goldbox special, there was a short 2 or 3 week wait for the unit. As every day went by I got more and more excited and wondered how robotically clean my little 1000 square foot condo would be. I would think of the good time my robot and I would share and how spotless my floors would become. I figured the Roomba would replace my need to get a dog as an assistant to clean up spills and drops in the kitchen.

When the Roomba finally arrived, it was well packaged from amazon. The box was somewhat awkward when it opened and I ended up with an upside down robot and a few C batteries scattered on my floor. Whoops. I flipped through the instructions, find a nice little home for the Roomba and plugged the Roomba 550 in to charge.

A few hours later the color of the light on the top indicated the roomba was ready to go, and hit the CLEAN button and the magic happened.

The little robot took off down the hallway where I hope he would not enter. He then made a turn and came right on back. He zagged and zigged, zigged and zagged all around my kitchen and living room/office area. I was pretty impressed. He seemed to go over everything a few times, and seemed to do a pretty good job. Around my desk he attempted to grab a cord or two, but got out of any sticky situation.

I stood around with my arms crossed, like a proud father watching his son win the big game. I was blown away. The Roomba really worked. It even made its way back to the charging cradle. I emptied the little guy out and was amazed by how much dust and other crap he picked up. The future was now, and the robot revolution has begun.

My Second Impression:
I started to use the scheduling options on the Roomba 550 and would set my robot to clean the house every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3pm, so that when I got home from the office I could eat off my floor (a popular habit of mine). This would require me to empty and clean the little bugger quite often.

It would seem like it was almost necessary to clean the Roomba’s brushes, dustbin, and anything else you could after he ran. This would take maybe 5 minutes, still better than going around cleaning everything manually.

Well one day I came home from work, I was hoping to see my kitchen spotless, as it has been, but today it did not look like anyone cleaned it. Thought it was a little bit odd. I looked at the Roombas charging / docking station and he was no where to be found. I called his name. No reply.

I looked high, and low for the guy but he was no where to be found. I started to get a little worried. I then looked in my family room and saw some tire tracks in my carpeting. ODD, where could he be? I followed the tracks and eventually found Roomba under my couch. He was hiding out like a scared child, hiding from the thunder. Somehow he bypassed the virtual walls and got to where he does not belong.

That was the first issue I noticed. He sometime just goes wherever he wants. The other problem I have been having is if I use the roomba on carpeting it takes a lot more maintenance and cleaning than you would think a high tech “robotic maid” would require.

After months of normal use:
I played around with various uses of the roomba for months, and even stopped using it for a bit. Now I set up my apartment so that the roomba only cleans one of the rooms, the great room. It is a pretty open area, with very few cords, or distractions, and now carpeting to clog up the brushes. It also contains my kitchen and an eating island with stools. So it gets messy pretty often and the roomba is scheduled to clean it 3 times a week.

Ever since I went to this single room option I have been very happy with my purchase. I can go well over a week now without having to empty the roomba out or take apart the brushes. It seems like it was carpeting and rugs that were causing the majority of my issues. That said I still have some hilarious moments when I see what sort of trouble my roomba creates.

About a week ago I entered my living room to a xbox 360 controller by the door, a rug bunched up in the middle, and the roomba nowhere in site. Somehow it got caught up in a rug, pulled my xbox controller from the xbox and carried it across the room, and then got itself into a big mess of cords in the corner, where he gave up hope and called it quits.

So from my months of owning one of these robotic vacuums, is that 1, you need to keep your cords tidy. 2, the roomba hates lightweight rugs (like the cheapo ones from ikea), 3, the roomba can clean carpeting, but you will need to clean the brushes all the time if you use it for cleaning carpeting, and it leaves tons of weird “tread marks/patterns” in the carpet.

Customer Service:
The only real issues I have had are due to the cords. The one day it seemed like the side brush quit spinning, I could not figure out how to get it to work. I called support and within minutes they had the problem solved. I needed to unscrew 1 screw then clean hair off the side brush. Since that day I have made taking apart the side brush as regular maintenance.

I was impressed with the customer service, and after looking at some of the help online, it seems like the roomba is pretty well made. It is quite modular, so it is unlikely that you whole unit will ever just go bad. You may loose function in one are, but it should be painless to fix if one of the motors quits working or something like that. It seems well thought out in regards to replacement parts.

While the roomba may not really be as smart as I had hoped I find it helpful. I am convinced it just runs for 25 minutes doing whatever it wants rather than somehow mapping the room. The one thing I wish it had was a sensor that could tell when there is an object above it, so it never stops in the middle of a cycle under a bed or couch. I think it would pretty easy to add that feature.

The Actual Performance:
I always am surprised with how much dust and such the roomba manages to pick up. It seems to gather really fine dust that brooms and other vaccums may miss. On hardwood floors the roomba is great, whenever I empty the bin on my roomba there is probably a half cup of really fine dust that gets thrown out.

Summary:
All in all, I am happy with my purchase. It may not be perfect for everyone, and in some instances it may be more of a hassle than a helper if you have to constantly clean the brushes due to long hair or carpet fibers. If you have hardwood floors, are fairly tidy, and keep things like cords off your floors the roomba may be a helpful time saver that can help you cut down on your chores. If you fit those three criteria I think it can be a great purchase. If you have lots of cords or mostly have carpeting, I do not recommend the roomba for your use, but rather a non robotic dyson vacuum.

PS: I started to write this like a year ago only a month or so after owning the roomba, and now it has been about a year and I finished it up.

Usually American Express blows me away, but today their “Accept Pay” service failed me miserably. First of all I signed up online for the demo so I could see what features this service had versus the existing invoicing system that we use for business. This went fine. Then maybe 20 minutes or so later I get a call from their customer support. It was a guy who was “here to answer any questions I might have about the service”.  Well I must have asked him the unheard of “how much of a percentage do you take to process a payment”.

He replied with something like “I am not able to answer any of questions regarding the pricing, let me get you a blah blah support rep”.

Well I am transfered to that guy and he is not allowed to tell me how much it actually costs until he finds out what industry I am in. I tell him consulting / search marketing, and he tells me they do not accept that. End of the call.

So these 2 asshats, already knew what industry I was in when I signed up for AMEX (4 years ago), know which industry I was in when I signed up for their demo an hour ago, yet call me and bug the shit out of me to get a sale to a service they do not support. LAME. Amex you failed me on this one. Tighten up your forms and your data between departments and do not waste my time. I will use paypal, since you do not seem to offer anything I cannot currently get right now.

So that was 10 minutes of my time today. Yesterday I bought a new car, which should take what an hour or two at the most to buy. It took me 4 fucking hours. I have no idea what took so long other than the 20 minute pitch to get me to buy some rust / dent / ding protection? Nuts to that.

Anyhow today I had to call a place I ordered floor mats from CarID.com – 800-505-3274 – I had to change the address on file since the shipping will take a few days longer than expected. Anyhow the hold message at this place is ridiculous. It is some dude talking about these various trivia and other bullshit. Things that are good luck like a spider falling on you. Just really weird stuff. He threatens about if you complain about the message it will take twice as long the next time you call in. It is interesting and something different than what you normally expect. Anyhow it is like a “down home” american male talking. I wait on hold for however long and it is totally a call center in India or somewhere. Bait and switch on the tech support, but they handled the issue once I got through and the dude was nice.

If you run an ecommerce store and do tech support give this number a listen to see how weird the message is: 800-505-3274

Lastly I have been using a new email filtering service because my email has been HAMMERED with spam. It seemed like it started out fine and then it went to shit. Well anyhow I call DNA Mail up today, and I get this rocking piano solo loop as the message. It is terrible. It sounds like an angry person just smashing the keyboard and it is looped. It is fucking terrible. So I threw my phone on speaker phone and typed this thing up while I waited. I could not handle it anymore and left a message. So DNAMails way of handling customer support is to delay the customer support action to a point where you either A) no longer need their help or B) the fire/urgency of the problem has died down by the time you call.

Hopefully these Jamokes will call me back while I am not busy doing anything else.

So here is todays customer support Scorecard:

1. American Express Accept Pay – F- you wasted my time, did not help, and do not even serve my kind. Your credit card department is usually great, this one; not so much!

2. CarID.com – B+ – You kept me entertained while I was on hold, and then you bait and switched me to an offshore company, BUT it was pretty quick and you handled my issue.

3. DNA Mail – Worse than an F. You play terrible music, keep me on hold forever and then force me to wait for a returned phone call. I am your customer and you treat me like shit. Might be time to change companies.

This is crazy it is not even 2am here.

I made a similar observation years ago in this post about birds singing early, but that was at 2:45. They are getting earlier.

Are the birds singing earlier by you too?

If you know me, you will know that I love a good checklist, and last year I decided to make a checklist for 2009 rather than some simple New Years Resolution like “be healthy” or “be nicer”. My brain does not work like that. Instead I had to make numerous tasks and put a quantity that I needed to do. The goal of this was to improve my life.

I did not get everything completed but I did finish quite a few. Some of the more important ones last year were to start dating again, so my goal was to go on 24 dates. I actually did do this and met a nice lady in the process. There were some about travel, reading, camping, working out things like that. Overall I would say it was a success, but I did fail to meet many of the goals, just because I started really late in the year (I think I made the list in March) so time was already crunched, and it is hard to jump into some of the items without proper planning.

Here were my tasks for 2009:

• Read 12 Books
• Work out 120 Times
• Go On 24 Dates
• Try 12 New Restaurants
• Try 12 New Bars
• See 4 Other Countries
• Go Swimming 3 Times
• Go Camping 1 Time
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint 4 Paintings
• Make 24 Drawings
• Take 24 Great Photos

And here is my actual list and what was completed:

Pretty good, right? Well at least enough for me to get one together this year, and start checking things off. Here is what I need to do / Plan on doing in 2010:

• Work out 104 Times
• 36 Blog Posts
• Frame / Hang all art work
• Hang out with friends 16 times
• Do 12 Cheap Things In Chicago
• Take 4 Classes
• See 4 Other States
• Go Swimming 1 Time
• Go Camping 3 Times
• Have People Over for Dinner 6 Times
• Paint/Wallpaper 2 Rooms
• 6 Art things
• Volunteer 4 Times
• Read 4 Books

Based on my experience from 2009 the major changes were to get rid of the art projects, reduce the workouts from 10 a month to 2 a week, replaced international travel with camping, more socializing, less reading (since I never find time to read), and added the volunteering and classes.

Even though I have been sick a week this month I did get the following done: 7 Work outs, 3 rooms have been painted (kitchen, bathroom and my office wall). I am looking forward to it warming up and hanging out with friends again. I hate doing anything in the winter. Looking forward to biking again and longer days.

What are your goals for 2010?

Maybe a year and a half ago I started to drink soda water with a lime. I would get it whenever I would go to a bar and then started to crave it at home. My options for that were to buy 1 or 2 liter bottles at the local grocery store. If I needed it in a bind I would get a liter at the 7-11 for about $1.79! This started to get expensive so I researched what my options were to make my own seltzer water online. It seemed like there were really only 4 options:

1. Get an old fashioned Soda Siphon – You know like the 3 Stooges would use to spray each other in the face. While these are stylish they are not all that practical. First off they contain a few parts which need to be cleaned out, and second they need disposable CO2 cartridges like you would need in a paintball gun or mini bike inflator. You can get a Soda Siphon for about  $40 online, and the Co2 cartridges run about 50 cents each in bulk. Each liter requires one cartridge, so about 50 cents per liter. I liked this option but did not like all the waste it would generate.
2. Build my own carbonation system using a bulk CO2 tank. This is the cheapest solution in the long run, but it requires a bunch of extra equipment and is a but bulky and industrial. You need a larger CO2 tank, that you can get a beer brewing store. You also need regulators, some hose, and you need to hack some soda bottles. The initial cost for this is probably around $150-200, but you can do it with a 5-50lb co2 tank which means YEARS of bubble water, for pennies per liter. I am not an expert at this, but here are some nice tutorials (found here). In the end it seemed like a lot of work and equipment for my already cramped house.
3. Get a commercial soda system. This is what they would use at a restaurant or bar. This would probably be the coolest system, but also the most labor intensive and expensive. It could easily run into the thousands of dollars, and take some serious hacking of my kitchen to get it installed. The plus side I would have a bad ass soda gun and an unlimited supply of bubble water. It would also require all the equipment in the homebuilt method, plus a compressor, and more. So I did the following:
4. Get a SodaStream Soda Maker. The units range from non offensive to pretty cool looking. The starting price is about $100 and should have enough CO2 to carbonate around 100 liters of water. So it is about $1 a liter to start, but when you get refills it is about 25 cents per liter. To me this seemed like a great compromise; little to no waste, a decent price, and no crazy equipment. Here is my review.

I love my SodaStream, there I said it. This is a product that works like it is supposed to. It is a relatively simple product, with a really specific purpose, but it does a great job. The first unit I ordered was the “Fountain Jet Soda Value Kit”. I would not recommend getting this kit if you only want to make seltzer / soda water at home. It comes with a bunch of things that you do not need. Anyhow this kit cost me I think $130. It now is at $149, but there are coupons available.

It took maybe a week for the kit to arrive and here are my unboxing photos:

You can see that it came with 2 gas tanks, the soda maker and a bunch of soda mixes. Now when I mentioned I would not recommend the “Soda Value Kit” it is based on all those soda mixes. I am not really a fan of them. I like just plain old soda water myself, so if you are drinking just soda water, get yourself one of the Seltzer kits instead of the soda kit.

Now you might be wondering how the SodaStream actually works. It is pretty easy, and there are not really any moving parts. You have one large tank of CO2, a sturdy plastic bottle, and a button to dispense the gas into the bottle and a little tube that goes into the water in the bottle.

You pretty much fill the bottles with water, refrigerate them, then take the cap off, put it on the machine, and hit the button. Here is a video I made myself, filming it with one hand while making soda with the other. It is really that simple!

Like I said, I love having a Soda Stream at home, and have given them as gifts.To date I have actually purchased 3 Soda Steam machines. I have given one to my sister as a gift, my old one to my girlfriend for her office, and a beautiful orange one for myself.

I think I have now ordered 10 tanks of gas which last me about a month each, less in the summer since I drink more than one liter of soda water a day. My next project will be testing various ways of refilling the tanks myself to further reduce the costs. It will be interesting, and costly, but it should pay for itself in the long run, as well as lower the cost of making soda water to all the people I know who have gotten themselves a SodaStream.

Now that you see how it works, and why you should get one, all you need to do is order one. You can get a SodaStream directly from SodaStreamUSA.com, but be sure to try out a few of these coupon codes if you are planning to buy a machine or gas:

SodaStreamUsa.com Coupon Codes:

BESTFRIENDS – This will Save you $10 Off  a new machine
SAVEBIG – This will save you 10%
MAKESODA – This will save you  $10 on a new machine
FREEMIX – This will allow you to get a free soda mix, you should be able to stack this with another coupon code, just enter this one in first and make sure you have a soda mix in your cart
Code MIKE or PATRICIA – should give you free shipping.

Do you own a SodaStream? What do you think of it?

I must have been a good boy this year, because the nice folks at Dyson gave me an early Christmas present of a Dyson DC31 Animal Handheld Vacuum cleaner.

You would think this is the first hand-held vacuum that I have received as a Christmas gift, but as I child I actually asked and received a Black & Decker Dustbuster, in I am guessing 1985. I was a special kid. The Dustbuster was a pretty cool, little vacuum, but it had some serious issues; it would fill up quickly and quit sucking, the filters were not washable and needed to be emptied and/or replaced, the battery life did not last too long, it was not that powerful even when empty. I also remember picking up things like screws and them falling right back out the second you stopped the motor.

I would say until recently (Or October 12th, 2006 to be exact) this was a common problem until Dyson released their first series of handheld vacuums, known as the Dyson DC 16 Root 6. The DC 16 addresses many of the issues that the Dyson full size vacs did when they came out. The DC31 is an even better version of the DC16 and has some unique features that will set it apart;

The DC31 Is even smaller than the DC16 weighing in at 2.9lbs, and is more balanced. There were some complaints that the DC16 was too heavy, and hard to maneuver. The DC31 should take care of that.

• They have added 2 power modes to extend the battery life. 10 minutes at lower power or 6 minutes at full power.
• They have included a motorized brush on the Animal version of the DC31
• It has a new “Digital Motor” which is lighter, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient than a standard motor.

Well since none of this matters unless the vacuum can pick up a mess here is my review of the Dyson DC31 Animal:

As usual the Dyson packaging was impressive. It is not as amazing as apples, but it seems to be designed nicely, well packaged and pretty easy to open. The first impression I had of the unit when I saw it was that I loved the color. The DC31 Animal comes in this amazing metallic purple color. The feel of the unit was that of quality. The outside is made entirely of plastics, but they do not feel brittle or flimsy in the least. The unit feels solid.

Now comes the part that surprised me. Well I guess for 2 reasons. It was charged out of the gate, which I found surprising. The second and more important reason why I was surprised is that when I hit the trigger it sounded like a jet engine mixed with a dentist drill. I would say that this is the Ferrari of handheld vacuums. It just sounds really powerful and neat. (I will post a video so you can hear it soon)

Since my house was pretty tidy the first thing I did was dump some flour on my counter and suck it up. It did not stand a chance. The DC31 snorted it up like Scarface with cocaine.

The next thing I went after was my girlfriends couch. It is a plush couch and it seemed pretty clean. I put on the brush and went to town. Tons of really fine dust came out of the cushions and a bunch of the hair that was once on Sarah’s head. Sarah loved that you could see what was sucked up inside the clear canister portion of the vacuum.

I tried all of the attachments and did not find anything that it could not handle. The battery did not give any signs of dying, but Sarah reminded me that it was a bit late at night to be vacuuming the house. So I figured out how to empty it and put it on the charger before going to bed for the night.

The next morning I heard some commotion coming from the kitchen and asked what was wrong. A little coffee bean spill. I jumped out of bed and started seeking them out. Whole coffee beans went into the DC31 like it were a shop vac. It was awesome.

I installed a closet this weekend and used the DC31 to clean up drywall dust where my dc14 failed. This little handheld is powerful.

The other way I used it was to clean up my hairy mess after I shave my head. I am also looking forward to using it to clean my keyboards!

After using it a handful of times it has easily become my favorite vacuum in the house. My apologies to the DC14 and my Roomba 550.

The biggest complaint I read about was battery life. I did not see an issue with this, but I could see me trying to clean my whole car or house and running out of juice after 10 minutes. I think if you use it as intended you will never have a battery issue.

Overall I think this is a great vacuum. If you have a pet or a kid you should get one of these. It would be way faster then taking out the full size vacuum and do a better and quicker job then a broom.

Here is a quick summary:

Positives:
Small, Powerful, No Filters, No loss of Suction, Good attachments, Great for hair/fur, Excellent feel and quality, Beautiful color, Awesome powerful sound, 2 year warranty.
Negatives:
Expensive, Short battery life if you want to clean your whole house, Too loud to use at night.

All in all I recommend this to anyone who thinking about buying it. It would make a great Christmas gift to those of us out there who actually like receiving useful gifts and tools!

What I would really like to see changed with this handheld vac are the following:

1. My old dustbuster had a charging cradle/wall mount. I would love to see something like this for the DC31 because it does need to be charged and plugged in. The battery is removable and can be charged while removed, but an all in charging cradle would be useful. I guess the best way to describe my feelings are I need to have this item at the ready. I want it in a place where I know it will be ready, and I can go and grab it, know it is charged, and choose my accessory and get back to the spill/mess and get it taken care of.
2. I am not sure if it is possible, but I would love to see an option to charge/power the item with a longer cord. That was I could run around my house and vacuum the whole thing if I wanted. Even like a 12v cigarette adapter would appease those who want to do their car.
3. I did not really like the build in brush/other tool. I like the rounded brush tool I have with my DC14. I think a small round brush may be useful. I will know if it is needed when I clean my keyboards though.
4. Charge time. The card/instructions say 3.5 hrs. How come my ipod can do 80% charge in 1 hour or my power drill can do a full charge in 18minutes? I would like to see a speed charge mode, if possible.

None of the complaints are deal breakers. I am really blown away by this handheld vac, and it is light years better than my Dustbuster was 20+ years ago. It has 100x the power of that unit, and I would say almost close to the suction that my DC14 does. Dyson congrats on another great project/product, and thank you for letting me play with it!

I would love to see Dyson try building a wet/dry vacuum or shopvac, and a robot vac to compete with Roomba.

I wish I would have taken photos of my unit when it was clean… I will post what it looks like to the site shortly!

More to come… I am currently in Las Vegas on a crappy internet connection, but will be playing in a poker tournament where some of the winnings will go to a charity of my choice.