Shop-Vac

[Sylvester]

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/

Feb 9, 2010 | General Nonsense | Permalink

Now that I have a manly garage, with a manly workbench, I was delighted to receive for Christmas a Shop Vac. It's a magical device that sucks up all sorts of debris, even liquid. It has attachments for everything. I think one attachment is for haircuts, but I haven't tried it yet. The Shop Vac is gray and black and reminds me of R2D2 so much that I expect it to jack into my breaker panels and reprogram my DVR.

My point is that my Shop Vac is totally awesome. That is, unless I try to move it. It has wheels, but at the first sign of movement, the Shop Vac starts squirming and tossing off attachments like a balloonist heading into a volcano. The hose becomes like a spastic elephant trunk. It will find all of the loose objects in your garage and fling them one-by-one into oil spills and darkened spider nests. If you focus your attention on the flailing vacuum hose, the power cord will wrap itself around your legs and try to trip you into the pyramid of old paint cans. And the screaming. Good lord, the little wheels scream on the concrete floor. It's Shop Vac language for "LEAVE ME ALONE! DO NOT MOVE ME! I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY TENTACLE!"

The worst of it, if I can pick just one thing, is that the situation totally ruins my manly vibe. I live in fear that Shelly will come into the garage and see me losing a cage match to R2D2. That would totally suck, ironically.

Anyway, I've developed a truce with my Shop Vac. Now I sweep the debris from wherever it falls all the way to where the Shop Vac lives, and directly under its waiting nostril. I gingerly press the ON button along a direct vertical line so I don't awaken the tentacle of death. I still plan to use the Shop Vac for haircuts, but I'll have to put the kids on towels on their backs and slowly drag them towards the Shop Vac's waiting hose and hope for the best.

I searched the Internet for what I imagined would be the obvious set of third-party add-ons for the Shop Vac, but found none. What I want is some sort of pole attachment from the top of the Shop Vac upon which I can drape the power cord and hose while moving the Shop Vac against its will. Sort of like an IV drip scenario, but with a power cord and vacuum hose. Would one of you go invent that and get back to me?

[Eric]

...It has wheels, but at the first sign of movement, the Shop Vac starts squirming and tossing off attachments like a balloonist heading into a volcano. The hose becomes like a spastic elephant trunk. It will find all of the loose objects in your garage and fling them one-by-one into oil spills and darkened spider nests. If you focus your attention on the flailing vacuum hose, the power cord will wrap itself around your legs and try to trip you into the pyramid of old paint cans.

Hilarious.

I seem to have the most trouble when I try and put mine away after using it. The power cord comes flying off once I get to the very end of wrapping it up neatly, and the hose & attachments never seem to want to stay put in their holders.

Damn you shop vac!

[Naya]

We had a shop vac for a while that was decent.

Then Luke's dad said "Oh I want yours, you can have this nice new one I just bought."

About two weeks later (after I tried using the damn thing and ended up with a power cord whip mark on my leg and black marks all over the hallway walls where it scuffed) I then told Roger "Thanks for the crap-ass shop vac. How much did you spend on it? Can we have our old one back?"

He said no So we're stuck with Black/Yellow R2D2. I'm convinced ours is claustrophobic because it spazzes out when it's in the hallway or laundry room.

[Chadwick]

I like mine. It self-discards attachments just like the rest of them. I don't have power cord issues tho. But one thing i might add is that the casters used on these damn things stop working and lock up completely after about 0.32 seconds of ownership...

[PhantomBear]

Yeah, I never understood why they made these things so "industrial", but the wheels are so small they can't even roll over its own cord...

And yeah, whoever designed the appliance/tube holding areas should be exiled to the desert like they did with Mad Max in the Thunderdome movie...

[Trany]

I need a new one, my old one had asthma, and couldn't do its job.

[Klaus]

I have this one that you are supposed to mount on the wall, it's tall and thin with a long long hose. But if you decide not to mount it all you have is a tippy POS with a hose that gets wrapped around everything. Horrible.

[Sylvester]

It does suck up live mice quite well though.

[Klaus]

And we used it to suck up 500,000 caterpillars at my cabin that one year. The whole thing was full of those bastards to the top.

[Hauser]

Dont you have cats to suck up mice Brad? lol