New additions to the family, Xmas in April, rolling video
I was a dumb ass yesterday and totally neglected to mention that my half sister Meghan had her first child, a beautiful girl named Cadence late Monday night. It marks the 4th time I have been indoctrinated into Uncletude. Meg and her husband Paul are both really good people and I have no doubt they will be terrific parents. Congratulations to them both.
I also had a robotic addition to the family yesterday, a Braava Wetjet 200. It joins my large fleet of home cleaning robots that include a Roomba, two Neatos, a Scooba and a Braava 380.
The wetjet caught my eye because of it’s small size and it’s ability to spray water before scrubbing with it’s vibrating cleaning pad. I found it odd that this device cost less than the Braava 380 which has no spraying capability or vibrating cleaning head. When I looked at the cleaning pad system the 200 uses I understood why.
Irobot is following the classic inkjet printer model. Sell the hardware cheap and then make a killing on the back end with consumables. The Wet Jet utilizes single use cleaning pads that are designed to be used and then tossed. They have three types, one for dry sweeping, one for damp sweeping and one for wet mopping. When I saw this I was about to write off the robot as too expensive to use on a regular basis. Luckily I saw Irobot also sells washable cleaning pads that can be used upwards of 200 times or more, making the purchase decision once again feasible in my mind.
The WetJet is small in size and not designed to clean huge areas of floor real estate. It does not utilize a navigation cube like the more expensive 380 and has a smaller battery which means less run time. The small robot is ideal for cleaning things like bathrooms where it’s small size allows it to get into areas most robots would not fit. I gave the 200 a test run last night. It uses the same cleaning pattern the bigger Braava does when mopping. The difference is before it does, it backs up and squirts some water. It was fun watching it work it’s way systematically around the kitchen. I plan to let it loose in the bathrooms tonight.
It has been a little like Christmas lately. Hell it’s better than Xmas. A new truck and kitchen appliances are far better than Santa has ever delivered. In addition there has been a pretty steady stream of boxes at the front door in a very December-like manner. Yesterday in addition to the Braava I received a new set of toners for my color laser printer, and two Qi compatible charging adapters for the iPhone.
The new Tacoma has a Qi inductive charging pad that allows you to charge compatible devices by simply laying them on the pad. The iPhone does not natively support this unlike the Samsung Galaxy line. However you can buy adapters to allow your i-device to take advantage of this technology. I hooked up my iPhone 6 last night and tried it out. Just like magic the phone showed it was receiving charge as it laid in the truck.
I also messed around with the built in GoPro mount in the Tacoma, hooking up my camera to it. The mount is located on the passenger side of the rear view mirror so I utilized a few mounting brackets to get the camera down far enough so the mirror didn’t obstruct it. When Toyota decided to adorn all Tacomas with a permanent GoPro mount it was probably with the assumption that off roaders would like to shoot footage out the windshield instead of flipping the camera around for vlogging purposes. Regardless it seems like it will work out pretty well. I shot some more footage on my way to work. I have to see how it turned out with the background noise.
If my night wasn’t busy enough I also changed the oil in the Prius since the MAINTENANCE REQUIRED light had been on for a few days. Cindy lent a hand, changing the air filter and refilling the crankcase with fresh oil while I dealt with the dirty end of things on the ground.