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During Thanksgiving shopping, we had bought a Bissell 35951 CleanView Revolution Plus Upright Bagless Vacuum. It is not expensive, about $100 from Fry’s. Among all the 12 amp vacuums there, it has the most cleaning power, thanks to its well designed front brush. It has 7 levels of blanket cleaning, plus one level for floor cleaning, which protects the front brush by turning it off. The following graph demonstrates how effective it is to clean up carpet (click for bigger picture).

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It is bag-less so that it will save you both money and hassle on dirt bags. Amazon provides more pictures on how to use this power machine.

Vacuuming the carpet

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Vacuuming the wood floor

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Finally, let’s talk about the bad part: it is noisy and heavy (17lbs), and generates diesel-like smell after every usage. Its heavy weight probably makes it the best household quipment for both cleaning and weight lifting. Further, it might be hard to find filter replacement. Check out before you buy.

Two months ago, I ordered a 40-hour TiVo machine. The reason? Well, I hate to catch 60 minutes by cut short of my regular Sunday evening shopping trip. I was happy ever since. I have recorded series from Tripping the Rift, Firefly, Twilizone, Mad Money and 60 mintues. At beginning, it took about 30 minutes for TiVo to download schedule through phone line. Now, it connects to the network via a 108.11g wireless network adapter, which I bought from Tivo.com. TiVo Desktop 2 helps me download recorded programs to my PC so that I could keep as many programs as possible as far as I have enough disk space. Last but not least, TiVo remote control has the ability to control TV sets. It is commanding my SONY TV.

Underneath the cover, TiVo is just a hundred-dollar Linux box. It takes several minutes for it to reboot. These days, people are talking about quiet computing. However, TiVo machines make annoying noises so that they are NOT suitable for bedrooms. The control panel is not that user friendly, which took me a while to understand. It is hard to set up wireless network, especially because of TiVo’s limitted support of wireless adapters. After try and failure, eventually, I bought the netgear one from Tivo.com to save troubles. TiVo Desktop 2 is still buggy. I have to re-install it twice since TiVo box was not accessable during the first installation.

Would TiVo stock fly? The technology behind TiVo is NOT that advanced. Microsoft Windows Media Center or any PVR could cut into its revenue. As a small company, it could be overtaken by big players once the market is fully developed. Recently, DirectTV starts to offer its own digital video recorder, which caused TiVo stock to sink. Unlike Netflix, Tivo is not profitable yet.

Please check out the blog site for futher Tivo information.

It is obviously that we have an oil bubble, which is set to burst.

China and India are NOT the cause of oil price hike. China has bypassed Japan last year, as the second largest oil consumer in the world. However, Beijing relies on overseas producers for one-third of supplies and accounts for ONLY about seven percent of world oil demand. The truth is that we have to wait as late as 2025 for China to double its oil import, which would be 14% of this year’s oil consumption world wide. India consumes less than half of what China does. It would keep in that way. That’s why Steve Forbes said that increased demand from China and India counted for only a small part of oil price hike from $25-$30, 3 years ago.

In the meantime, oil inventories are built up. US Energy Department said in Nov 2 that commercial crude oil inventories rose 2.7 million barrels last week to total 319.1 million, which is 12% above the level a year ago. Gas price would go down as refinery capacity recovers. It has been gone down from $3 per gallon to $2.55 per gallon in gas stations near my home.

In its World Energy Outlook 2005, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that oil price would drop back to $35 in 2010 and would rise a little bit to $39 in 2030. The recent high oil price is the direct results of underinvestment in oil production and the refinery sector. For 29 years, there is no single refinery ever built in US.

What would happen after oil bubble burst? We would have another stock bubble a decade down the road. This time, remember to cash everything out in time!