Niece Is Born! (Also: I'm going to be a Jetson! Vacuum Cleaner Costumes! Drama Meme.)
ETA: Niece arrived today (10 May, approx. 5:45 PM), is named "Johanna Christine" (had to verify the spelling). Hooray! Better my sister-in-law having the baby than me, but apparently all is well. (This also means, officially, that Johanna Christine beat the Roomba.) Way to go, baby! Cheers!
Ask anyone I've lived with, and you'll find out that vacuuming is not high on my list of priorities. The noise aggravates me, and I have a crappy back, so bending and pushing and pulling even the lightest vacuum around makes me sore and irritable. As a result, there has to be visible debris before I am bothered to break out the vacuum to tackle it. I don't like this, particularly, and when I lived alone and had a younger and sprightlier back, I vacuumed my singleton flat with vigor each weekend, but, to be frank, this was in part because there was little else to do, I hadn't managed to acquire 16,000 books yet, and I had no Internet or cable TV.
It wasn't any more enjoyable then, but it didn't make me sore and miserable for hours afterwards.
My mother has no such issues with vacuuming. She loves it, and fails to grasp why I might be less than excited to spend several hours a week pushing a suckbuster around and lugging it upstairs to the second floor and downstairs to the basement. What's not to love, SHE thinks. Me? I'm thinking I'd rather try to juggle cacti.
I think I have found the perfect solution.
Meet ROOMBA!
Roomba is very cute, yes? And my 1337 Photoshop skills make it even more kawaii!
(Actually, I just thought that putting crappy cartoon eyeballs on a Roomba would be funny. Did it in about five minutes on a laptop while outside smoking stinky clove cigarettes and discussing zombie movies with undergrads. Yay for Photoshop! Yay zombie movies! Yay cloves!)
Roomba vacuums your room for you. YES! You plug Roomba in, and go do something else, and Roomba sings a little song, and then starts making erratic little dancy movements across your floors (and will attempt to brain itself by taking a header downstairs if you fail to set up virtual walls or close the stairwell door), and it sucks up ALL THE CRAP ON THE FLOOR. Even the crap you can't see. And, most importantly to me, as I am tired of picking up dead palmetto bugs every time the exterminator comes by on schedule to spray the house, Roomba will SUCK UP ALL THE DEAD BUGS. I do not like roaches. They scare me, dead or alive. Getting close enough to one to pick it up? Omigawd. Heart palpitations.
Roomba will remove the dead roaches FOR me. Even the ones hiding under the couch. If there's anything worse than picking up bug bodies, it's having to get on your hands and knees and really work to reach one that's far up under something. That's aggravating AND disgusting. As you can imagine, I have adopted an "I can't see it with my glasses and the overhead lights both off, so it does not exist" policy with regard to dead things that are way up under heavy furniture items.
Don't get me wrong, I like that we have a scheduled exterminator. I never see a LIVING roach. But I see plenty of huge dead ones, and there's nothing that can ruin my day in quite the same way as having to see one while on my way to the kitchen to make brekkers.
Even better, I don't plan to let my mom in on the secret of Roomba. Not right away. She'll come over, and the carpets will have little Roomba marks in them, and she'll wonder why I went in crazy scribbles all over the carpet to vacuum it instead of sane straight lines. I am getting tired of her coming over and immediately making an ass of herself by complaining about the rugs. Hello, I live here, and I don't have TIME to deal with your anal-retentive houseproud traditions...AND, hey, all you have to do to make the house look 500% better is turn the lights off...see? Rugs are clean. Yey!
Best of all, in my mind, of any tricks a Roomba can do, will be the possibility of no more "surprise! ROACH!" horrors, because Roomba can be scheduled to work WHILE I AM OUT OF THE HOUSE, and I can look the other way when dumping the muck it sucks up out..
YES!!
I don't have to get a sore back from 'hidden dust bunny, crouching vacuumer' games, or get grossed out by bug corpses, or get deafened by a vacuum motor.
I haven't even gotten the damn thing yet, and I am GLEEFUL, y'all.
This may rank among the top ten best ideas I have ever had. Why I didn't think of this sooner, I don't know. It's not like there aren't 4000 commercials for Roombas every holiday season. I just figured it was a gazillion dollars.
It's not!
Get a refurb, and it's much less than a gazillion dollars! (It's only a half a gazillion! Totally within my budget. Sort of.)
Reviews at Amazon go two ways. People say "I LOVE Roomba!!!eleventyone!!" (the majority) or "My Roomba got farkled, WOE!" (the minority, many of which apparently did Dumb Crap that thwarted poor Roomba). I hope my Roomba will love me and stay healthy and happy long enough to vacuum my rugs at least a bazillion times.
Pets love Roomba! People write in to describe how their animals interact with the little sucky-pucks. Dogs are intrigued, or try to eat Roomba. Cats are disdainful, or try to nap on top of Roomba. Ferrets try to wrestle Roomba. Babies try to beat Roomba to the crunchy dead bugs in the corner, however, so Roomba should get first dibs on insect carcasses.
Students love Roomba! It's Battletanks without the battle! It's a toy, it's a chore, it's a toy that does your chores!
Crazy people love Roomba! They make Roomba outfits. (Would I kid you?)
They say: "If you own a Roomba, you know what I am talking about. Have you ever:
If you answered yes to any of the above, you are a prime candidate for an original RoomBud Roomba costume! At least one RoomBud is being adopted every day by loving Roomba owners ... but this is not fast enough! With over 1,500,000 naked Roombas out there in the world, it will take 4,109 years and 215 days to clothe all those cold, shivering, embarrassed Roombas at this pace. Please do your part and help us. No more naked Roombas!"
God no, think of the children! NO NEKKID ROOMBAS, OK?
Okay, this is stupid-cute, and no Japanese people came up with this idea (there's hope for Americans and our sense of whimsy yet):
Roobit the Frog
Roor the Tiger
Toothy the Killer Whale
FooFoo the WereRabbit
Holy crap! (There's more, but the cuteness was killing me.)
Grandmothers love Roomba!
Dads love Roomba! It's a robot, man!
Kids love Roomba! It sings when it turns itself on and off, and it dances around on the carpet!
Moms love Roomba! It gets the nitty gritty kitty litter up out of the kitchen tile grout! It goes on dust bunny foraging expeditions under beds and sofas and cabinet edges! It scoffs at sand! It vanquishes cedar chips from the hamster's cage! (Alas, it also eats tennis shoe laces, but maybe the damn kids will put the shoes away so as not to distress poor little Roomba. It can be a game: anything that will make Roomba sad must be picked up. 1, 2, 3, GO! If Roomba makes the sad "I'm stuck, save me" song, the responsible party loses a point.)
I think I will learn to love Roomba as well. though the name of the manufacturer is a tad....worrisome.
The manufacturer is iRobot. I'm just sayin'. Not necessarily the best association one might make with a robot you have to coexist with.
AP NEWSWIRE: Woman found sucked halfway into a small, frisbee-shaped robot vacuum. Detectives were initially baffled.
After forensics experts were called in to reconstruct the crime scene, a theory began to emerge. Police now speculate that the woman was sitting on the edge of her bed and leaning over to brush her long hair, at which point the Roomba snuck up and started to try to eat her head by sucking up all her hair. She counterbalanced while trying to free herself from the Roomba, fell off her bed, and broke her neck. Then the Roomba apparently tried to drag her under the bed to its lair, for purposes as yet unknown. It's a strange death, but no misadventure is suspected.
When questioned, the small, frisbee-shaped robot innocently whistled a merry tune and shut itself off.
And I do worry about whether I will start to talk to it and consider its feelings. ("Roomba, would you mind vacuuming the upstairs today, too? I know, I know, it's a lot of extra work, but ti would really help me out, okay?") Will I spend more time watching Roomba vroom all around the carpets? Man, I hope the novelty wears off quickly enough that I don't blow off my thesis to watch a vacuum cleaner. ("Dear Professor, I got a Roomba this week, and I have been unable to feed myself, sleep, bathe, leave the house, or write my term paper, because I am so fascinated by it! My Roomba is Awesome!")
I suspect I will be a tard and name my Roomba, simply because if I do not, someone else will. Since I am getting a refurb, the colour of my Roomba is a Mystery, but I'm leaning towards one particular name.
ROSIE!!
Rosie the Roomba. YESSSS.
If only Roomba did the dishes and laundry, too.
Now all I need is a flying car and I'll be a full-fledged Jetson. I am so psyched.
Roomba has also gone virtual.
Here is Mooba and one of his Roombas in Second Life. SL has been getting quite a bit of press lately so we decided to check it out.
Of course we had to create a SL Roomba or SLoomba. The SLoomba was programmed using the scripting language in Second Life, LSL with algorithms based on those in Joe Jones' (one of the original Roomba creators) book "Robot Programming: A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics."
The SLoomba acts very much like a real life Roomba. Its motion is not pre-determined at all so you can place it in any environment and watch it vacuum!!
If you have a Second Life account, look for Mooba (there is only one in SL), and we can go Roomba a room or two.
("We" = the RoomBud kids.)
In Meme News this week, greyduck72 namedropped me in an LJ meme and caused me to temporarily question my sanity.
" thassalia said they wanted to go to the movies but
washable wanted to do something else :-(.
Why does
grabbingsand keep posting images in their journal?! I keep telling them I'm on a modem! I'm going to unfriend them to teach them a lesson!!!!!!!!!!
Hey and know what? I am so going to kick
zanna_voodoo out of the house. They keep on stealing my beer!
Tuesday was my birthday and nobody noticed or gave me presents or wished me happy birthday :-(. Oh and
extyger told me that
runbread told
levesquelegacy and
simfulacts that I got caught talking to
stnuke and backstabbing
cyanidefish . What a crock! Don't let me hear about that again or I'm gonna kick some heads!
It's so not fair that I have this afternoon off but nobody, not even
merchgirl1 wants to do anything :-(. I'll just sit home alone and wish I was dead. And also I went to gaming group with
rfjason the other day but the game master is totally playing the NPCs to his own liking. That ruined my day!
I feel so drained!
divinexmissxm told me that
justanotherg33k told people that I got caught talking to
arielography and dissing on
crevette .
I am so bummed!
improbable added another meme to their journal. GOD I HATE THAT!!!1!one!"
Make your own drama: WANGST!!
Oh. Last word on Roomba? It may be a mixed blessing.
Roomba is great, but...
Eh, whatever!
Yes, Roombae are known for having a little bit of difficulty comprehending what, say, chair legs are, but they are also fairly (electronically) smart and eventually spin and accelerate and herky around and get out of most jams. They don't like fringed carpets or electrical cords, but neither do traditional vacuums. I think I will be able to deal with Roomba's eccentricities as long as *I* do not have to vacuum the goldurned rugs *myself*.
I can't wait!
I mean, my sister in law is having a baby Any Day Now. And I'm getting a robot that vacuums.
You can see where my priorities are, huh?
I am going to be such a kick-ass auntie.
I'll even let Roomba suck up all the Cheerios and zweiback crumbs up.
I wonder if Roomba can babysit?
On a serious note, the niece was due two-three days ago, SIL is in the hospital (she's fine, it's just About That Time), the baby is apparently a lot bigger than eight pounds, and they are going to send in a spelunking team if she doesn't decide to come on out already. Soon. My mother is mad because I won't blow off my classwork to drive her up to Atlanta this weekend. Note that her car and her arms and legs all work fine.
I refuse to go into panic mode until my brother tells me I need to panic. My mother's gauge of what constitutes a need to panic and spazz is not reliable at ALL. My brother spoke to me a few days ago, he was calm and chipper, all was well, so I'm going to go with that.
All is well. See edit at top of post. Obviously, women have been birthin' them babies since the dawn of time, and it goes right far more often than it goes wrong, so I was correct not to give in to panic and angst until told otherwise.
I am already being pressured in the nicest possible way to create ART for the baby's quarters. If digital art is acceptable, they'll get it a helluva lot faster than traditional paint or Prismapencil or even pen and ink. :)
Suggestions for Baby Art are welcome!
Ask anyone I've lived with, and you'll find out that vacuuming is not high on my list of priorities. The noise aggravates me, and I have a crappy back, so bending and pushing and pulling even the lightest vacuum around makes me sore and irritable. As a result, there has to be visible debris before I am bothered to break out the vacuum to tackle it. I don't like this, particularly, and when I lived alone and had a younger and sprightlier back, I vacuumed my singleton flat with vigor each weekend, but, to be frank, this was in part because there was little else to do, I hadn't managed to acquire 16,000 books yet, and I had no Internet or cable TV.
It wasn't any more enjoyable then, but it didn't make me sore and miserable for hours afterwards.
My mother has no such issues with vacuuming. She loves it, and fails to grasp why I might be less than excited to spend several hours a week pushing a suckbuster around and lugging it upstairs to the second floor and downstairs to the basement. What's not to love, SHE thinks. Me? I'm thinking I'd rather try to juggle cacti.
I think I have found the perfect solution.
Meet ROOMBA!
Roomba is very cute, yes? And my 1337 Photoshop skills make it even more kawaii!
(Actually, I just thought that putting crappy cartoon eyeballs on a Roomba would be funny. Did it in about five minutes on a laptop while outside smoking stinky clove cigarettes and discussing zombie movies with undergrads. Yay for Photoshop! Yay zombie movies! Yay cloves!)
Roomba vacuums your room for you. YES! You plug Roomba in, and go do something else, and Roomba sings a little song, and then starts making erratic little dancy movements across your floors (and will attempt to brain itself by taking a header downstairs if you fail to set up virtual walls or close the stairwell door), and it sucks up ALL THE CRAP ON THE FLOOR. Even the crap you can't see. And, most importantly to me, as I am tired of picking up dead palmetto bugs every time the exterminator comes by on schedule to spray the house, Roomba will SUCK UP ALL THE DEAD BUGS. I do not like roaches. They scare me, dead or alive. Getting close enough to one to pick it up? Omigawd. Heart palpitations.
Roomba will remove the dead roaches FOR me. Even the ones hiding under the couch. If there's anything worse than picking up bug bodies, it's having to get on your hands and knees and really work to reach one that's far up under something. That's aggravating AND disgusting. As you can imagine, I have adopted an "I can't see it with my glasses and the overhead lights both off, so it does not exist" policy with regard to dead things that are way up under heavy furniture items.
Don't get me wrong, I like that we have a scheduled exterminator. I never see a LIVING roach. But I see plenty of huge dead ones, and there's nothing that can ruin my day in quite the same way as having to see one while on my way to the kitchen to make brekkers.
Even better, I don't plan to let my mom in on the secret of Roomba. Not right away. She'll come over, and the carpets will have little Roomba marks in them, and she'll wonder why I went in crazy scribbles all over the carpet to vacuum it instead of sane straight lines. I am getting tired of her coming over and immediately making an ass of herself by complaining about the rugs. Hello, I live here, and I don't have TIME to deal with your anal-retentive houseproud traditions...AND, hey, all you have to do to make the house look 500% better is turn the lights off...see? Rugs are clean. Yey!
Best of all, in my mind, of any tricks a Roomba can do, will be the possibility of no more "surprise! ROACH!" horrors, because Roomba can be scheduled to work WHILE I AM OUT OF THE HOUSE, and I can look the other way when dumping the muck it sucks up out..
YES!!
I don't have to get a sore back from 'hidden dust bunny, crouching vacuumer' games, or get grossed out by bug corpses, or get deafened by a vacuum motor.
I haven't even gotten the damn thing yet, and I am GLEEFUL, y'all.
This may rank among the top ten best ideas I have ever had. Why I didn't think of this sooner, I don't know. It's not like there aren't 4000 commercials for Roombas every holiday season. I just figured it was a gazillion dollars.
It's not!
Get a refurb, and it's much less than a gazillion dollars! (It's only a half a gazillion! Totally within my budget. Sort of.)
Reviews at Amazon go two ways. People say "I LOVE Roomba!!!eleventyone!!" (the majority) or "My Roomba got farkled, WOE!" (the minority, many of which apparently did Dumb Crap that thwarted poor Roomba). I hope my Roomba will love me and stay healthy and happy long enough to vacuum my rugs at least a bazillion times.
Pets love Roomba! People write in to describe how their animals interact with the little sucky-pucks. Dogs are intrigued, or try to eat Roomba. Cats are disdainful, or try to nap on top of Roomba. Ferrets try to wrestle Roomba. Babies try to beat Roomba to the crunchy dead bugs in the corner, however, so Roomba should get first dibs on insect carcasses.
Students love Roomba! It's Battletanks without the battle! It's a toy, it's a chore, it's a toy that does your chores!
Crazy people love Roomba! They make Roomba outfits. (Would I kid you?)
They say: "If you own a Roomba, you know what I am talking about. Have you ever:
- Named your Roomba?
- Talked to your Roomba?
- Spent more time watching your Roomba than it would take you to vacuum the room(ba)?
- Bought a second Roomba so your first would not be lonely?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you are a prime candidate for an original RoomBud Roomba costume! At least one RoomBud is being adopted every day by loving Roomba owners ... but this is not fast enough! With over 1,500,000 naked Roombas out there in the world, it will take 4,109 years and 215 days to clothe all those cold, shivering, embarrassed Roombas at this pace. Please do your part and help us. No more naked Roombas!"
God no, think of the children! NO NEKKID ROOMBAS, OK?
Okay, this is stupid-cute, and no Japanese people came up with this idea (there's hope for Americans and our sense of whimsy yet):
Roobit the Frog
Roor the Tiger
Toothy the Killer Whale
FooFoo the WereRabbit
Holy crap! (There's more, but the cuteness was killing me.)
Grandmothers love Roomba!
Dads love Roomba! It's a robot, man!
Kids love Roomba! It sings when it turns itself on and off, and it dances around on the carpet!
Moms love Roomba! It gets the nitty gritty kitty litter up out of the kitchen tile grout! It goes on dust bunny foraging expeditions under beds and sofas and cabinet edges! It scoffs at sand! It vanquishes cedar chips from the hamster's cage! (Alas, it also eats tennis shoe laces, but maybe the damn kids will put the shoes away so as not to distress poor little Roomba. It can be a game: anything that will make Roomba sad must be picked up. 1, 2, 3, GO! If Roomba makes the sad "I'm stuck, save me" song, the responsible party loses a point.)
I think I will learn to love Roomba as well. though the name of the manufacturer is a tad....worrisome.
The manufacturer is iRobot. I'm just sayin'. Not necessarily the best association one might make with a robot you have to coexist with.
AP NEWSWIRE: Woman found sucked halfway into a small, frisbee-shaped robot vacuum. Detectives were initially baffled.
After forensics experts were called in to reconstruct the crime scene, a theory began to emerge. Police now speculate that the woman was sitting on the edge of her bed and leaning over to brush her long hair, at which point the Roomba snuck up and started to try to eat her head by sucking up all her hair. She counterbalanced while trying to free herself from the Roomba, fell off her bed, and broke her neck. Then the Roomba apparently tried to drag her under the bed to its lair, for purposes as yet unknown. It's a strange death, but no misadventure is suspected.
When questioned, the small, frisbee-shaped robot innocently whistled a merry tune and shut itself off.
And I do worry about whether I will start to talk to it and consider its feelings. ("Roomba, would you mind vacuuming the upstairs today, too? I know, I know, it's a lot of extra work, but ti would really help me out, okay?") Will I spend more time watching Roomba vroom all around the carpets? Man, I hope the novelty wears off quickly enough that I don't blow off my thesis to watch a vacuum cleaner. ("Dear Professor, I got a Roomba this week, and I have been unable to feed myself, sleep, bathe, leave the house, or write my term paper, because I am so fascinated by it! My Roomba is Awesome!")
I suspect I will be a tard and name my Roomba, simply because if I do not, someone else will. Since I am getting a refurb, the colour of my Roomba is a Mystery, but I'm leaning towards one particular name.
ROSIE!!
Rosie the Roomba. YESSSS.
If only Roomba did the dishes and laundry, too.
Now all I need is a flying car and I'll be a full-fledged Jetson. I am so psyched.
Roomba has also gone virtual.
Here is Mooba and one of his Roombas in Second Life. SL has been getting quite a bit of press lately so we decided to check it out.
Of course we had to create a SL Roomba or SLoomba. The SLoomba was programmed using the scripting language in Second Life, LSL with algorithms based on those in Joe Jones' (one of the original Roomba creators) book "Robot Programming: A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics."
The SLoomba acts very much like a real life Roomba. Its motion is not pre-determined at all so you can place it in any environment and watch it vacuum!!
If you have a Second Life account, look for Mooba (there is only one in SL), and we can go Roomba a room or two.
("We" = the RoomBud kids.)
In Meme News this week, greyduck72 namedropped me in an LJ meme and caused me to temporarily question my sanity.
" thassalia said they wanted to go to the movies but
washable wanted to do something else :-(.
Why does
grabbingsand keep posting images in their journal?! I keep telling them I'm on a modem! I'm going to unfriend them to teach them a lesson!!!!!!!!!!
Hey and know what? I am so going to kick
zanna_voodoo out of the house. They keep on stealing my beer!
Tuesday was my birthday and nobody noticed or gave me presents or wished me happy birthday :-(. Oh and
extyger told me that
runbread told
levesquelegacy and
simfulacts that I got caught talking to
stnuke and backstabbing
cyanidefish . What a crock! Don't let me hear about that again or I'm gonna kick some heads!
It's so not fair that I have this afternoon off but nobody, not even
merchgirl1 wants to do anything :-(. I'll just sit home alone and wish I was dead. And also I went to gaming group with
rfjason the other day but the game master is totally playing the NPCs to his own liking. That ruined my day!
I feel so drained!
divinexmissxm told me that
justanotherg33k told people that I got caught talking to
arielography and dissing on
crevette .
I am so bummed!
improbable added another meme to their journal. GOD I HATE THAT!!!1!one!"
Make your own drama: WANGST!!
Oh. Last word on Roomba? It may be a mixed blessing.
Roomba is great, but...
Eh, whatever!
Yes, Roombae are known for having a little bit of difficulty comprehending what, say, chair legs are, but they are also fairly (electronically) smart and eventually spin and accelerate and herky around and get out of most jams. They don't like fringed carpets or electrical cords, but neither do traditional vacuums. I think I will be able to deal with Roomba's eccentricities as long as *I* do not have to vacuum the goldurned rugs *myself*.
I can't wait!
I mean, my sister in law is having a baby Any Day Now. And I'm getting a robot that vacuums.
You can see where my priorities are, huh?
I am going to be such a kick-ass auntie.
I'll even let Roomba suck up all the Cheerios and zweiback crumbs up.
I wonder if Roomba can babysit?
On a serious note, the niece was due two-three days ago, SIL is in the hospital (she's fine, it's just About That Time), the baby is apparently a lot bigger than eight pounds, and they are going to send in a spelunking team if she doesn't decide to come on out already. Soon. My mother is mad because I won't blow off my classwork to drive her up to Atlanta this weekend. Note that her car and her arms and legs all work fine.
I refuse to go into panic mode until my brother tells me I need to panic. My mother's gauge of what constitutes a need to panic and spazz is not reliable at ALL. My brother spoke to me a few days ago, he was calm and chipper, all was well, so I'm going to go with that.
All is well. See edit at top of post. Obviously, women have been birthin' them babies since the dawn of time, and it goes right far more often than it goes wrong, so I was correct not to give in to panic and angst until told otherwise.
I am already being pressured in the nicest possible way to create ART for the baby's quarters. If digital art is acceptable, they'll get it a helluva lot faster than traditional paint or Prismapencil or even pen and ink. :)
Suggestions for Baby Art are welcome!