Sunday, January 27, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Hopping from gotcha to gotcha
Maybe, maybe not. As long as my TP gotcha had me at Wal-Mart yesterday anyway, I thought I'd see if I could find an upgrade for the cheapo hand held vacuum I've been unhappy with. There wasn't much to choose from but I picked up a little Dirt Devil Power Reach that looks like it will do the trick. It looks to be more powerful, easier to empty, and more versatile than the cheap little thing I've been using. So far so good. I gave it a test run when I got back to the park and it works pretty well with good suction and the hepa filter catches the dust instead of letting half of it blow on through like my old cheapo vacuum. The crevice tool could have a longer hose but I think it will be ok as a tradeoff I can work with.
So here's the gotcha
When I went to Amazon.com to get the links to put this paragraph together I found the consumer reviews there almost universally pan the Power Reach. Gotcha - I should have read the reviews first.
But then again what do I care? My needs are different from those of the average consumer who seems to be largely unhappy with the short hose for the wand and a lack of power to the rotating brush. Aside from those shortcomings, which I think I can live with, the thing seems to be pretty well built and there is little on the market to choose from in the handheld vacuum category these days that is not cordless. I don't think I want a cordless vacuum for the RV.
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
Alex Can Spell
Not very long ago, Dr. Pepperberg began trying to teach Alex and another gray parrot, Griffin, to sound out phonemes, which are the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent. English has forty phonemes altogether. She and her colleagues wanted to see if the birds understood that words are made out of letters that could be recombined to make other words, so they started training the birds with magnetic refrigerator letters.