{"id":288,"date":"2007-04-29T15:01:26","date_gmt":"2007-04-29T19:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=288"},"modified":"2007-04-29T15:37:13","modified_gmt":"2007-04-29T19:37:13","slug":"the-roomba-my-new-pet-vacuum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2007\/the-roomba-my-new-pet-vacuum\/","title":{"rendered":"The Roomba: My New Pet Vacuum"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 19 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

How can I put this?<\/p>\n

As I write this, I’m vacuuming. (Well, that’s not entirely true.)<\/p>\n

As I write this, my home is being vacuumed, and I’m the only one home. (Well, that doesn’t feel so true, either.)<\/p>\n

As a write this, an artificial intelligence robot is running amok in my living room, gobbling up everything in its sight. (Yes, that’s it.)<\/p>\n

\"iRobot<\/a>I bought an iRobot Roomba Scheduler<\/a> (not an affiliate link) from Woot.com<\/a> as a birthday present to myself. I set it up today and am equally impressed and entertained. It’s so cute, running around my floor going “gimme! gimme! gimme! gimme!” to all my dirt (no, it doesn’t actually have sound effects — I just feel so connected to my Roomba after the first twenty minutes that I believe we now speak the same language).<\/p>\n

(It just found my kitchen — look at it go on the linoleum floor! How long has it been<\/em> since I’ve swept<\/em> over there?!)<\/p>\n

Every creative genius has an Achilles’ heel. Housecleaning is mine. Still too stubborn to admit defeat and hire assistance for the task, I tend to just let the dirt just pile up. I can already tell that the Roomba and I are going to be great friends. This model comes with a scheduler, which means I can program it to clean every day<\/em> (or less often, if I’m feeling lazy) while I’m at work. And since vacuums can’t clean under scattered laundry, this will force me to pick up more regularly, lest I anger my new AI roommate. Hey — double victory!<\/p>\n

(Right now it’s navigating the underside of my futon, choking on electrical cords and freeing itself from the madness without crying for help.)<\/p>\n

The other thing I’m proud of — I bought this puppy for $130 when it retails for $330. Have you heard about Woot.com<\/a> yet? (If not, don’t feel bad — I just found out about it last week). It’s a geek-oriented shopping site that only sells one item per day. “One Day, One Deal” is their motto. The item is almost always super cheap and super cool. They’ve got an impressive business model:<\/p>\n

A) Negotiate with companies for a low price on a really cool item that you can guarantee to sell a lot of in a really short period of time.<\/p>\n

B) Build a community around a promise to provide the coolest, cheapest products on a daily basis through a really user-friendly and focused website.<\/p>\n

C) Put non-obtrusive ads on the site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re a twitterer, you can find out about the latest buys on woot via tweets<\/a> (wow, out of context, that sentence sounds really strange<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Expect a more critical review of the Roomba after I’ve played with it more. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a heckuva lot better than what I had going for me before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heads up, this content is 19 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.How can I put this? As I write this, I’m vacuuming. (Well, that’s not entirely true.) As I write this, my home is being vacuumed, and I’m the only one home. (Well, that doesn’t feel so true, either.) As a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}