It’s been a while since I last wrote something and to be
honest, it’s not due to a lack of ideas but more due to a lack of
motivation. I’d like to suggest it was
due to a lack of free time but that’d just be a gross exaggeration of my social
life. Today, something happened though,
something that I felt compelled to write about.
As I sit here on my Tuesday off - 2 loads of washing done, a vaguely edible
lunch constructed from stray foods in the fridge and all caught up on Oscars goss from last night; my
productivity (and patience) stands to be destroyed by one small circular
machine.
While similar in many ways, DTM and I differ on our feelings
towards one thing in particular – gadgets.
I am by no means anti-technology or anti-gadget, I am after all the one
with the science degree, but for me there’s helpful technology and then there’s
just an unnecessary waste of money. DTM
does not seem to be able to make that distinction or if he does he just doesn’t
care/it’s overruled by his need to have the latest most up-to-date everything
before it even reaches Australia.
Some of his gadgets are helpful – I get that for someone who’s
trying to really focus on their health, a watch that constantly measures your
heart rate and tracks your sleeping and does god knows what else might be
providing useful data. I’ll even concede
that the wifi scales are kinda cool, even if it did take me a year to realise
DTM wasn’t joking when he said he got weekly emails updating him on my weight, BMI
and body fat.
Then there are his gadgets which are kinda cool as a gimmick
but do not really justify the price tag. There are a lot of gadgets in our home
which fall into this category and often DTM will realise this after a while and
sell them on ebay. I’m still wrapping my
head around the point of google cardboard and don’t even get me started on why
someone who doesn’t drive would need a breathalyser keyring...
The gadgets I don’t know about are possibly the ones that
scare me the most. I recently told DTM
that maybe he should cut back on his internet shopping now that he’s quit his
job. He conceded this was probably a
good idea and yet I find myself coming home to slips in the letterbox every day
notifying me of a missed delivery. He tries
to tell me these things were all ordered long ago but I have my doubts. He recently showed me something on
kickstarter which he wanted to invest in/pre-purchase/support/I-don’t-entirely-know
and when I questioned why on Earth he would need it he thought twice and didn’t
buy it. I checked in a week later to
confirm that he had of course gone back online and bought it the next day. I shudder to think how many more of these
projects he’s paid for which haven’t even gotten off the ground yet.
But by far my least favourite type of gadgets are the ones
which are supposed to make my life easier but do the exact opposite. The first of these was the soap
dispenser. Not a super flashy expensive
gadget I'll admit, but one which DTM loved and I loathed. It was just a Dettol product which my
technology loving man was raving about.
He loved that he didn’t have to press down on the top to get soap out
or heaven forbid have to pick up an actual bar of soap. He told me regularly that he used so much less
soap this way and I can only assume that was because like me, he had trouble
setting off the sensors. This thing
drove me crazy, I would wave my hands under there like I just didn’t care and
nothing would come out. Nothing that is,
until I moved my hands away. I’m not
sure Dettol’s selling point of better hygiene applies when you have to wipe the
soap off the basin to get it on your hands.
And then of course, as you’re there wiping up the soap from all over the
sink, it finally detects your hands and you’re now covered in soap, trying to
simultaneously mop up the soap and stop it from dispensing more. One morning I woke up to a sink full of soap
after something had apparently set the thing off during the night. That was enough for me; I bought some normal
soap and threw that painful gadget away.
Another product which falls into this category is the air
freshener DTM recently bought. Not
content to spray one as needed or even have one of those plug in things which
is always on, DTM bought one which senses when you’re in the room and goes off
accordingly. That man loves a
sensor. He put it on a shelf in the
bedroom near my side of the bed. The
result is that every time I go to get something from my bedside drawers –
socks, underwear, jewellery etc, I am greeted by a loud puff of fragrance in my
face. On the plus side, I no longer need
to wear perfume as every morning without fail I get some Air Wick in my hair.
The gadget today which really tipped me over the edge, was
the robot vacuum. This little beast only
arrived yesterday but of course I’m assured it was purchased a while ago,
before we had our little chat about someone’s internet shopping addiction. He told me it’d be soooo handy and save me
sooooo much time vacuuming, I was going to love it. And it’s a robot!! Now because DTM is not great with instruction
manuals (in that he becomes weirdly illiterate at the very sight of one), he
asked me to figure out how to use it today.
Given the size of our one bedroom unit, I’ve never really had a problem
doing the vacuuming. DTM will even do it
on occasion. This was really a “problem”
which I didn’t think needed solving.
Nevertheless, I read the instructions, pressed the start button and sat
down to watch the robot do its thing.
3 times I rescued it from underneath the shelf – it could
fit enough to have a go at getting under there but would then get stuck and
just switch itself off. Twice I had to
untangle the power cords it was trying to vacuum up. I feel it’s worth pointing out that the cord
it was stuck on was the one connected to its own power dock and that unplugging
it while vacuuming is not an option. Multiple
times I watched it bash into a chair, rotate, try again, bash into the chair,
rotate and repeat a painful number of times before deciding it was time to try
elsewhere. When it wandered off into the
kitchen I started hearing a lot of strange noises before realising it was
attempting to suck up some plastic cockroach baits DTM had put out.
Now I’ll admit the patch in the centre of the room away from
any furniture and cords does look clean.
It can clearly suck up dirt and whatnot.
The thing is, it took significantly longer to clean a smaller area than
I would with a regular vacuum. It also
required my attention to restart it a good 7 or 8 times. It could not handle going between the chair
legs so there are squares of carpet it hasn’t attempted to clean. Sometimes when its technique of bashing into
things doesn’t work, it tries to mount them and it is currently stuck on the leg
of DTM’s desk. I’m also not entirely
sure how I’m supposed to know when it’s finished. So far, it’s turned itself off because it’s
gotten stuck underneath or on top of something or because it’s gobbled up too
many power cords. Each time I’ve
restarted it because its job was clearly not done. Unlike a human controlled vacuum, I am sceptical
it knows where it has already done and I feel like given the opportunity, it
would spend all day circling the room and bashing into furniture.
DTM told me at the time that this latest purchase didn’t
count as part of his spending problem because it was a present for both of
us. This beast has tested my patience
today and it has won. I almost lost my
lunch when it tried to vacuum my feet as I ate.
I am very concerned by what DTM will buy me for my birthday if this is
the kind of “us” present he thought would excite me.
To Top of my productive day I cancelled my blood donor appointment after eating some of the hepatitis berries 2 weeks ago and almost flooded the kitchen.
