[Bulk] Re: Roomba and H.A.

[Jerry]

Pardon my hogging electrons today.  The darn pinched nerve in my back  
has me bored to tears and putting my laptop on my chest to type keeps  
my dogs from jumping on me all day.  ;)


Owen,

I think we're in the "realm of technology junkies" here.  It's not  
needing to vacuum but to be able to say to friends... "Yeah.. I have  
a robot vacuum everyday for me."  I think your friend who won't get  
off the couch is not from the same vein and the people here do not  
run the Roombas because they're lazy.

Seriously... I either get introduced as "The guy whose house talks to  
him" or the "Guy who has a computer in his car."  We do it because we  
can and it's a learning process to do so.

I originally bought my Roomba at a reduced price because of our cats  
who shed like Fall leaves.  I was trying to help out the wife who  
assigned herself the role of vacuuming the house.  Now, I find that  
the Roomba can't handle that much cat hair and winds up in the  
rollers and i can't use the device any more.  We still vacuumed once  
a week but having the additional help wasn't just cool, it was  
limiting our allergies each day.

You could say that those of us that have automated sprinkler systems  
in their lawns could be lazy, not dragging hoses around all Summer  
too but I think it's a bit more when you attach your computer to the  
wiring and program the cycles yourself.  There's always the feeling  
of creating a "living" thing that operates on his own with logic you  
supplied.

No laziness in that... IMHO.

Jp

On Nov 9, 2006, at 1:32 PM, Owen Rubin wrote:

> SIGH!
>
> While not aimed at anyone here in general, I am amazed at how lazy  
> we have become as people  that
> pushing a vacuum around the house once in a while is too much work!  
> As is, it now seems, moving
> a few items off the floor so our work saving robot can do its workl.
>
> I am all for home automation, and stuff like Xtension add security  
> and automated lighting, which,
> in my view, does not fall into trying to be more of a lazy slug.  
> But we have become lazy people in general.
> I was at a friends house recently, he could not find the remote  
> control for the TV, but getting up to push
> the buttons on the TV was too much work for him, so he said, "Screw  
> it, we will just watch this." I
> got up and changed the channel! He had, by the way, one of these  
> annoying robot vacuums running about
> the house the whole time we were there.
>
> Come on people. Do you really need a vacuum that runs around the  
> floor for hours on end, using more
> power overall than you would doing the same job in a 10th the time,  
> to vacuum your floors? Once a week
> is not such a chore, and takes me all of 10 minutes, and for some,  
> I suspect, was all the
> exercise they ever really got.
>
> Sorry, maybe I am just seeing tooo many overweight laze people  
> around where I live. This thing does
> have a coolness factor, but one will never be seen in my home.
>
> -Owen-