"say hello to my little friend"

Another present from John (per my request for xmas), Roomba, or Mr. Roomba as Kate calls it. I have it programmed to clean every day after we leave in the morning. It goes around the house and cleans really remarkably well, then redocks itself in its charging station until the next day.

Today though I was just kind of trying it out. The twins didn't know quite what to make of "him", as they have decided he is.




I know, the only thing lamer than taking the time to video a little vacuuming machine is taking the time to post it on my blog, thus taking your time as well. Suddenly my blog has become a consumer report about neat little electronic gadgets more than anything else, but I don't think it's a trend that will last (much longer).

On the upside, the area of floor underneath the kids' beds have never been so clean. On the downside, Kate thinks it's fun to "feed the robot" potato chips.

iDinner

John got an iPhone for me for christmas because all I've done for the past several years, first with my Palm Treo, and then with my HTC Fuze Smartphone, is complain about how they work and how they don't work. I didn't complain about cell phones before I had the Treo, back when I had a simple no-frills phone that was only a phone, but since getting these supposedly portable computer/phones, I haven't been so impressed. I told John that I wanted an iPhone in maybe another year or so, since I only had the Fuze for a year, but I think John decided that he didn't want to listen to me complain about it for 12 more months. I'm glad he didn't listen to me. I love the iPhone. Not just like it, not just appreciate it, love it.

So of course in the past several days I've added a lot of iPhone apps (the majority of them free) and I've been having fun with them. I have an app. which allows me to make my own flashcards for my german class vocabulary (keeping track of my score and retesting me on the ones I missed) so I can test myself throughout the day, not just when I think to bring along my bag of regular flashcards. I have two apps. that are customized music stations, taking note of the bands I tell it I like and not only playing that music, but playing other bands it thinks I will like, and another app that can identify for me a song I hear playing somewhere. I have an app. that can scan the barcode of any item, then pull up the best prices for the same item online. I have another app. for coupons, one that is a german/english dictionary, and one that is a complete pharmacy reference.

One of my apps is for recipes. You choose a type of dish you want to serve, a main ingredient for the dish, your maximum prep. time involved and it comes up with recipes, with reviews and comments and suggested modifications by other users. I have a gigantic crock pot which I almost never use so I tried a slow cooking BBQ chicken recipe I found with this app.

This invoked an imaginative idiom from John,"We're eating iPhone chicken? iChicken?"

Today, after an industrious day volunteering at the girls' school, we stopped by the grocery store on the way home and I brought up another crock pot iRecipe, using pork this time. iPork.

"Is this another iPhone recipe?" John iNquired, "We're having iFood again?"
"Why are we having iFood every night?" Allison iNterrogated.
"It's not every night," John iLlustrated.

My iMpression of the application, of having a hand-held recipe book: iNspired, iNvaluable, iMaginitive, iDyllicly convenient. My iMpression of the resultant recipes: iNteresting, iNviting, fairly iMpressive.

John's iMpression so far: iNdifferent.