Meet Roboquad, twice shampooed

So my Roboquad showed up yesterday.  As you can see, his coloring is a bit different than the one I posted last week which was all white.  This one I got from the Discovery store, I guess they have their own special color Roboquads, Sharper Image sells red ones.

  Before I was able to slap batteries in him and play, I had to release him from the shackles of his box.  Getting the robot out of the box was the most annoying unpacking experience I ever underwent.  Roboquad was secured by 8 thick wires coated in plastic.  They were twisted in a way that you couldn’t undo easily.  After trying to untwist the wires unsuccessfully for 5 minutes I had enough and wielded the scissors.  The wires were so thick that I had to squeeze mightily with the scissors to finally snip through.  By the time I got all 8 wires off I had to unscrew it from a plastic base that had another 4 screws in it.  I bet I literally spent 15 minutes getting the damn thing out of the box.

So I throw some batteries in it, fire it up and the Roboquad comes to life.  He does some quick diagnostic tests accompanied with flashing led’s and R2-D2 sounding beeps and noises.  The controller for him is a bit confusing at first and remains somewhat confusing even after.  There are dozens of movements the robot can do but they are accessed through various combinations of buttons on the controller.  You really need a manual handy at all times if you want to put him through his paces.

Of course the first thing I did was the demo mode where the robot “dances” it’s cute.  Then I started messing with the controller a bit, walking the robot around the floor.  Nicki of course was scared of it and scurried away to hide even though I assured her it was “safe”.  There were two modes so far that I liked the most. Guard mode, where the roboquad scans for movement in front of it while remaining still.  If it spots movement it roars to life, making a racket, flashing lights and moving around, a great cat prank.  The other mode I thought was cool was the autonomous one where the robot roams around freely, scanning back and forth for obstacles and avoiding them.  The noises this thing makes would drive Ali mad in no time so he may wind up spending more time at work with me than at home, we’ll see.  By the end of the night Nicki had lost her fear of it and actually jumped in front of it doing a play bow with the Roboquad, acting like she wanted it to chase her.  It was cute.   I will probably wind up doing some sort of “hack” with it, that is what makes it fun.

Last night in the shower I had an Alzheimer’s moment.  I normally wash my hair first.  Last night, I washed my hair, forgot I washed my hair, and started to wash it again.  I was like “What in the F is wrong with me??!!”  My hair was extra clean last night.

I can’t wait to shave this beard off, it sucks.