Painting And Robots
The wife and I have been in the house for 5 years now. Well, 5 years in May 2005. So, apparently it's time to paint the inside of the house again. Violet went to the Home Depot to buy some paint and paint supplies on Friday -- enough to paint 4 entire rooms of the house. Her plan was to paint Mia's bedroom pink while Mia spent the weekend at her grandmother's house, and since she was painting, she might as well knock out a couple more rooms too. The wall paint was 3 years old since the last time it got properly slathered, so it was obviously well overdue.
While at the big orange store, she noticed a special going on the iRobot yeah-that's-right, we're-too-lazy-to-even-vacuum-our-house Roomba. She picked one out and brought it home.
Like any gadget geek and tech dork, I have been facinated with robots since, like, forever. I remember going to The Epcot Center back when it first opened and I was 8 years-old. My favorite exhibit/ride was "The World Of Tomorrow" with models of real-looking homes with robots doing the housework and pristine cities with cars hovering silently along manicured streets. No pollution and no hunger. Hippies. I must have gone back to that ride a dozen times. We lived just a couple hour drive from Disney World & Sea World, so nearly every birthday party, family vacation, etc. would be held there. I wasn't a fan of the magic kingdom, but Epcot I could really enjoy.
So, the Roomba is basically this little red hockey puck shaped robot, about 18" in diameter that has a fairly intelligent way of cleaning your floors. Charge him up, put him on the floor, and push the "Clean" button. The little guy goes right to work and when it's finished, it'll shut back down to hibernate. We have these Pergo floors for almost the entire downstairs portion of the house, plus we're pretty lazy about getting out the vacuum and cleaning more than once every couple months, so it seems like a perfect fit for us.
Since Violet's studio was slated to get some paint, we moved everything out of that room in to the living room. Along with the furniture already in the living room, this didn't leave a whole lot of space for the pilot run of our new little robo-vac. I was skeptical that it would even be able to get under & around the random obstacles we'd set up for it.
I charged the device, put it on the floor, and pushed the "Clean" button. It beeped happily at me and then drove off in search of dirt. I like that they just went ahead and built the thing in with R2-D2 sounds every time you interact with it. After a few minutes, the Roomba started beeping excitedly about something. I went to find out what the problem was. He had gotten tied up on a shag rug I had left on the floor. Nothing major, since he just moved back off of it and continued cleaning. I picked up the rug, shook it out, and then put it on the stairs. Roomba came back over in a couple minutes, alerted to the new dirt on the floor, and promptly power-cleaned up after my mess. Awww... so cute.
That's when I realized that soon as it beeped at us and moved off around the house to be useful, we assigned it a personality. It wasn't just some random appliance anymore. Roboticists engineer their creations to have some form of personality so that humans will accept them more readily. Kick ass. So, as soon as the thing flips out and goes all ED-209 on us... I'll have a different opinion about that.
The knocks I have on the Roomba are few, but here they are. First of all, it's not nearly as quiet as I expected it to be. Yes, I know... it's a vacuum cleaner and is going to be kinda loud. I just imagined a semi-silent robot moving around cleaning up after me. It's not as loud as say, our normal vacuum cleaner, but you do have to turn the music up a few notches when it's running. The other thing I didn't like is there's no good place to store the Roomba while charging unless you want to buy an official Roomba Wall Mount Charger. It would have been nice to get something simple included with the basic package. Lastly, just like if you were going to vacuum, you have to go around and pick up loose toys, shag rugs, etc. that you don't want Roomba to mess around with. That's a minor one, but it's still something you have to think about before running the thing.
The nice things are that it does a nice job cleaning. That's what it's made for, and it performs well. Hell, it even cleaned under the couches. The accessories you can buy include a docking unit that it can go back to when it runs low on power or finishes cleaning. It does an awesome job of navigation, since all the obstacles we had in the living room were all cleaned around and under. Another nice thing is the ability to get unstuck on stuff. Roomba has yet to get stuck on anything, but we do a decent job of picking up anything which might cause it problems.
So, the Roomba has become one of the family. Hooray for robots. Oh, and the dogs hate it -- bonus.
While at the big orange store, she noticed a special going on the iRobot yeah-that's-right, we're-too-lazy-to-even-vacuum-our-house Roomba. She picked one out and brought it home.
Like any gadget geek and tech dork, I have been facinated with robots since, like, forever. I remember going to The Epcot Center back when it first opened and I was 8 years-old. My favorite exhibit/ride was "The World Of Tomorrow" with models of real-looking homes with robots doing the housework and pristine cities with cars hovering silently along manicured streets. No pollution and no hunger. Hippies. I must have gone back to that ride a dozen times. We lived just a couple hour drive from Disney World & Sea World, so nearly every birthday party, family vacation, etc. would be held there. I wasn't a fan of the magic kingdom, but Epcot I could really enjoy.
So, the Roomba is basically this little red hockey puck shaped robot, about 18" in diameter that has a fairly intelligent way of cleaning your floors. Charge him up, put him on the floor, and push the "Clean" button. The little guy goes right to work and when it's finished, it'll shut back down to hibernate. We have these Pergo floors for almost the entire downstairs portion of the house, plus we're pretty lazy about getting out the vacuum and cleaning more than once every couple months, so it seems like a perfect fit for us.
Since Violet's studio was slated to get some paint, we moved everything out of that room in to the living room. Along with the furniture already in the living room, this didn't leave a whole lot of space for the pilot run of our new little robo-vac. I was skeptical that it would even be able to get under & around the random obstacles we'd set up for it.
I charged the device, put it on the floor, and pushed the "Clean" button. It beeped happily at me and then drove off in search of dirt. I like that they just went ahead and built the thing in with R2-D2 sounds every time you interact with it. After a few minutes, the Roomba started beeping excitedly about something. I went to find out what the problem was. He had gotten tied up on a shag rug I had left on the floor. Nothing major, since he just moved back off of it and continued cleaning. I picked up the rug, shook it out, and then put it on the stairs. Roomba came back over in a couple minutes, alerted to the new dirt on the floor, and promptly power-cleaned up after my mess. Awww... so cute.
That's when I realized that soon as it beeped at us and moved off around the house to be useful, we assigned it a personality. It wasn't just some random appliance anymore. Roboticists engineer their creations to have some form of personality so that humans will accept them more readily. Kick ass. So, as soon as the thing flips out and goes all ED-209 on us... I'll have a different opinion about that.
The knocks I have on the Roomba are few, but here they are. First of all, it's not nearly as quiet as I expected it to be. Yes, I know... it's a vacuum cleaner and is going to be kinda loud. I just imagined a semi-silent robot moving around cleaning up after me. It's not as loud as say, our normal vacuum cleaner, but you do have to turn the music up a few notches when it's running. The other thing I didn't like is there's no good place to store the Roomba while charging unless you want to buy an official Roomba Wall Mount Charger. It would have been nice to get something simple included with the basic package. Lastly, just like if you were going to vacuum, you have to go around and pick up loose toys, shag rugs, etc. that you don't want Roomba to mess around with. That's a minor one, but it's still something you have to think about before running the thing.
The nice things are that it does a nice job cleaning. That's what it's made for, and it performs well. Hell, it even cleaned under the couches. The accessories you can buy include a docking unit that it can go back to when it runs low on power or finishes cleaning. It does an awesome job of navigation, since all the obstacles we had in the living room were all cleaned around and under. Another nice thing is the ability to get unstuck on stuff. Roomba has yet to get stuck on anything, but we do a decent job of picking up anything which might cause it problems.
So, the Roomba has become one of the family. Hooray for robots. Oh, and the dogs hate it -- bonus.
3 Comments:
At 6:12 AM,
tony said…
The wall paint was 3 years old since the last time it got properly slathered, so it was obviously well overdue.Three years old is obviously well overdue? What's your idea of an adequate repainting schedule? And by using the word "obviously" are you implying that all of us should be repainting the entire interior of our houses, what, once every freaking year? Have you gone retarded in your ding-dong? Once a decade is a little more realistic.
One of your problems is that you're buying paint from Home Depot. Behr and Ralph Lauren and all that crap is just that - crap. Pony up the extra cheddar for Benjamin Moore or Duron. It covers better (fewer coats), resists stains, and lasts longer, so the extra cheddar is really only an upfront expense. Also, use anything you can made by the Muralo company and their subsidiaries. You will thank yourself.
At 7:59 AM,
Unknown said…
I thought my extreme overuse of adjectives & adverbs would properly highlight the sarcasm in my statements relating to how "nutso" my wife is in the paint department. My idea of painting one's house innards is to pick one color the first day you move in and coat every surface of the house in that color. Then, don't ever move houses again.
I'll forward on your paint recommendation, but I'm not in charge of the paint purchasing detail. It sounds like a great idea to buy great quality paint if you're a normal person, but given our re-painting schedule, I don't know that we can afford fancy paint.
At 12:45 PM,
tony said…
Ah, sarcasm. I see. My Native American name is Dense Like Rainforest.
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