Nicole: 
Drobo
Storage for the rest of us
As an early gift for my birthday I received a Drobo "Storage Robot." This is a little USB 2.0 storage device that holds up to 4 hard drives, but is seen as only one drive to your computer with lots and lots of storage. Plus, it has redundancy so that if a single drive fails, your data is still there. "Ah, RAID" you're thinking. Yes and no. Usually with RAID you're stuck with a fixed size disk. If you use 250GB drives x 4, and one fails, you can only replace it with another 250GB disk; do so with anything larger and it's wasted space. The Drobo lets you use a combination of different sized disks and when you start getting low on space, simply remove the smallest disk and replace it with a larger one - and it's space is instantly available.While still a little pricey, it's a zero maintenance solution that can grow as your storage needs do. I could have (and had!) done my own RAID system and was maintaining it just fine, however when I had to grow the storage it was always a pain. I'm starting to value my time over tinkering with hardware and Drobo just works so I can do more important things.
Roomba Revolution
The little vacuum that could
Based on a trustworthy recommendation and some research, we purchased a Roomba, made by iRobot. It is quite possibly the most useful gizmo we've ever purchased. This little robot vacuum is a wonder. It is about 15" round (a good size dinner plate) and about 6" tall. It can do almost everything your normal vacuum does for cleaning a floor, and here's the list of what it can do above and beyond that:
With the included "Lighthouses" is virtual wall mode you can confine it to areas where you don't want it to go, or put them in lighthouse mode and they'll keep the Roomba confined to the first room for about 35 minutes, then allow it into the next room you want cleaned for 35 minutes, and so on.
Cleaning it is a snap, and even with a shedding dog, emptying is only needed once per run. I suspect as we will eventually schedule it to clean automatically, emptying will be every few runs as it will stay on top of the build up. Oh, and when it is done it homes in on it's recharge dock on the floor and starts to charge itself for the next day. Groovy.
- Because it is basically a 6" roving disc, it can get into plenty of places that your regular vacuum can't easily. Under the bed, in and around tight spaces, and under anything taller that it's height.
- It has really decent edge cleaning. It has a brush that sticks out of the right hand side that spins and knocks debris in front of its main pickup. Part of its algorithm is to detect edges and run that "sweeper" along them.
With the included "Lighthouses" is virtual wall mode you can confine it to areas where you don't want it to go, or put them in lighthouse mode and they'll keep the Roomba confined to the first room for about 35 minutes, then allow it into the next room you want cleaned for 35 minutes, and so on.
Cleaning it is a snap, and even with a shedding dog, emptying is only needed once per run. I suspect as we will eventually schedule it to clean automatically, emptying will be every few runs as it will stay on top of the build up. Oh, and when it is done it homes in on it's recharge dock on the floor and starts to charge itself for the next day. Groovy.