This past weekend we celebrated Christmas #4 with my wife's immediate family (parents, siblings, other relatives in the Chicago area). We do this because we spend Christmas with her extended family around the actual date. Both of her parents families live in Indiana (Evansville and Indianapolis).
Anyway, the real story... It seems that the theme for us this year for the final Christmas was stuff to help us with our house. We got tons of things to hang on the wall. One of the neat things was a framed Paint the Hall Orange poster--sorry Kenny, the dog chewed up the one you got me for my birthday.
The biggest thing of them all, and probably the most immediately helpful was the gift we got from her siblings. They got us a Roomba. For those of you that don't know what a Roomba is, it is an automatic floor vaccuum. It bounces around a room in a pseudo random pattern until it has covered every inch. It does a pretty good job, too. Much like a TiVo "changes the way you watch TV", a Roomba "changes the way you clean."
From a geek perspective it's fun to just watch the thing figure its way around a room. Yeah, it gets some places more than once, and doesn't do a perfect job in the corners (but it does pretty good considering that it's round), but it definately gets everything. Watching it travel along a wall reminds me of the car that I built in ECE 110 lab that followed a white track with sensors. It slightly bounced back and forth along the track as it went a little left or a little right.
Is this the next mass wedding gift for those that already have a TiVo (I think most of our unmarried friends have one now)? We'll find out...
