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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

WAR OF THE ROBOTS

Steve Cole reports: Leanna and I bought one of those robot floor-sweeper things (called a Dirt Dog) and set it to work in the den. We had fun watching it drive in circles for a while, but then it's little robot brain sent it off in a random direction. We noticed it go under a cabinet beside the TV (the cabinets are on rolling wheels) and thought that this was good as it would clean that hard to reach area. Then we heard a strange noise and the entire television system went dead. The Dirt Dog had gone behind the TV and unplugged the cable box and Tivo unit! It took us over an hour to pull out the cabinets and the sixty inch television and trace through all the loose and unplugged cables. Our TV is connected to the low-band cable, the high-band cable box, the DVD player-recorder, the Tivo unit (which is networked with two other Tivos in other rooms), and the old VHS system, and all of them are cross-wired to each other so we can record from one to another. The Dirt Dog had plowed through these cables like a Roman war galley through the oars of a Carthaginian war galley, unplugging a dozen different connections. Clearly, the technology of all those home electronics has outrun their ability to connect with each other, let alone get along with each other.