5/16/07

The Keed.

3683 Sanitaire Mighty-Mite canister vacuum-cleaner with telescoping wand.

-And so concludes the frenzied and difficult search for a canister vacuum-cleaner, a search that included hours of online searching, and many fruitless shopping-trips.
My wife was leading this effort — she’s the one that takes this cleaning-thing seriously, and has had all-too-much experience with pretenders.
Most at play is that our shop-vac is a disaster — lotta racket for no performance. It’s bagless, and its filter clogs with concrete-dust within seconds of turning it on, so that after that it’s useless — i.e. within seconds. The vacuum-salesman says that doesn’t sound right — that concrete-dust shouldn’t clog the filter; but it does, and that seems entirely predictable.
Other factors were at play here; like a) the bags on most small canister vacuums were too small; which would require frequent changing; and b) that bag-changing would get dust all over — like what was the point of HEPA-filtration when ya dumped dust all over just changing the bag?
Another factor was that tools and hoses were rather chintzy on small vacuums — and the unit we bought today (Wednesday, May 16, 2007; my brother Jack’s 50th birthday) has a hose that doesn’t pass muster.
The hoses on everything any more are cheap plastical fabrications that aren’t very flexible, so that they “knock things over” when being dragged about.
But ya can’t buy a decent hose any more. What we bought today is not as disgusting as the hose on the shop-vac, but it’s still a plastical hose.
Part of Linda’s Internet research led to various brands that weren’t available locally, and could only be purchased online — which means who knows what you’re getting until it appears? “I’d rather see it in-the-flesh,” she said. Which to me is quite reasonable; I too have had experience in getting some disgusting hairball without ever seeing it in-the-flesh.
So here we are at “American Maintenance Supply” in deepest, darkest Henrietta looking at a 3683 Sanitaire Mighty-Mite canister vacuum-cleaner.
We had already been to both Wal*Mart and Sears, where we saw units with HEPA filtration that disgorged dust all over when changing bags.
Wal*Mart had mostly standing floor-models, which we of course don’t want (how ya supposed to get a floor-model inside a car?). —Plus 89 bazilyun units that look like rejects from the Star Wars cantina set.
Wal*Mart had only two tiny canisters, both bagless; both of which evaluate horribly on the Internet.
Sears had more canisters, but they suffer from small bags, and other detriments — like a profusion of power-wands.
American Maintenance Supply is a supplier of commercial cleaning equipment, and the 3683 Sanitaire Mighty-Mite is a commercial unit.
“In-the-flesh” it seemed more sensible than anything else we’ve seen, but a) the hose was still plastic, and b) the bristles on the floor-brush seemed stiffer than what we’ve had in the past.
Our new central-vac is using the fittings original to our old Nutone central-vac, and the bristles on the floor-brush on that are softer — which may seem rather silly to an ordinary person, but not to a cleaning-lady.
So $134.95 for a 3683 Sanitaire Mighty-Mite canister vacuum-cleaner. They have a cheaper Mighty-Mite, but it has cheaper fittings (that don’t pass muster). Compromises are a) the plastical hose, and b) the too-stiff bristles on the floor-brush. But a) the floor-brush wand telescopes, so can be individualized in length, and b) our old Nutone floor-brush fits the Mighty-Mite wand.
So the only thing that doesn’t pass muster is the plastical hose, and Linda will try to find a better hose on the dreaded Internet.
Naturally we set the “new toy” up as soon as we got it home.
“How do you insert the bag?” Linda asked.
She inserted the bag and then began closing off a cardboard flap that covers the inlet to keep the dust in when removing the bag.
“You’re closing off the inlet,” I said.
Thank goodness for a Liberial-Arts education.

-We had a thunderstorm last night, which knocked the power off for about a minute.
The stand-by has a 30-second delay, so we were in the dark for a short while.
Well, no matter, the ‘pyooters were off, and we can live in the dark for a few seconds waiting for the stand-by to kick on.
But the new DVD-machine is a hairball. Kill the power at all and its clock resets to August 8, 2003, and drops back almost an hour. The timer also screws up its settings — it drops one, and adds another for the time it is, plus 10 minutes.
Um, our old VCR didn’t do that. Kill the power and battery backup held everything for an hour or so.
And there ain’t some preference I can set whereby it holds everything. There must be a battery-backup of some sort to hold the settings it holds.
“They don’t make things like they used to,” Linda says. The power dives and I have to reset the whole stinkin’ kabosh. Plus our old VCR had a “reality-regenerator” button.

“Jack” is my younger macho blowhard brother-in-Boston, who loudly bad-mouths everything I do or say.

“Linda” is my wife, the so-called “cleaning-lady.”

“Henrietta” is a crowded suburb south of Rochester. “American Maintenance Supply” was a low garage-doored facility along a crowded industrial strip.

My brother-in-Boston loudly excoriates me for a “Liberial-Arts education.” He claims the spelling of “Liberal” is “Liberial.” He trained as an engineer; and is therefore vastly superior.

We have a “stand-by” electrical-power generator.

The “DVD-machine” is a combination VCR and DVD player and recorder.

We never did know what the “reality-regenerator button” did, although we pushed it once and strange things happened at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked; and in Ashburnham, Mass., residence of a guy I graduated from college with back in 1966.