Zombie-Friendly Pick-To-Light Home Kitchen
The new father is a walking zombie. mornings are the worst -- i'm a stumbling dribbling dementia patient. Confession continues...
I get up in the morning and i make breakfast for the wife and i, but i'm fast asleep at the time. i wander back and forth in the kitchen, open the fridge and forget what i'm after.
I pick up the milk, walk across the kitchen, walk back to the fridge and put the milk back with ever using it. I take it out again, put milk in my coffee, put it back in the fridge before i've put milk on my cereal.
Waiting for the kettle to boil i fall asleep in the lounge room, wake up to find one of my shoes in the freezer, my watch is missing, i stagger around, uncertain where it is... i put off shaving for another day, put on a four minute timer to have a shower (there's a water crisis in brisbane) then fall asleep standing up.
My real wish is that i'd have a domestic robot to perform repetive little inane tasks for me, giving me just one more minute to sleep. but domestic robots cost too much.
In warehouses they use something called "pick to light" systems, so they can employ human zombies to perform simple tasks, without buying expensive robots.
"In a typical Pick to Light system, the operator scans a bar-coded address label attached to a shipper, carton, or tote box. Digital displays located in front of each pick bin tell the operator which SKUs to pick and how many."
(from here)
Every morning in this foggy state I vaguely wish for a Pick-to-light system in my kitchen.
First a light goes on in front of the kettle. So I pick up the kettle.
Now a light goes on at the tap -- so i walk to the tap and fill the kettle (still fast asleep)
A light goes on back where the kettle goes -- so i walk back with it and plug it in, set it to boil.
Now a light goes on where the cereal bowls are kept. I take them out. A light goes on above the cutlery drawer -- i open it and a little screen tells me -- "two teaspoons, two table spoons". I take them out. The fridge begins to blink "milk", i go and get the milk. a light blinks above the sugar bowl... and so on for twenty more steps.
Final step: a light goes on in my head. It's time to wake up for the day.
Of course, for any of this to work i'd still have to put things back when i'm done with them. i'm a "managed-runtime" developer -- we don't believe in manually deallocating the resources we acquire. so i need an automatic garbage collector to return the items to their rightful place when i'm done with them. my wife isn't willing to take on the responsibility. i'm sure not. maybe i can train the baby to put things away for daddy. clean up your toys, put away dad's empty beer cans, there's a good kid. who knows.
~~~~~~zombie dad.
(p.s. see also -- kitchen kan-ban, Why you need a domestic robot, Where's my damn robot and The Ezy Fridge)
(p.p.s. new idea: for every item in the house, attach a piece of string with the other end fixed to the item's 'home position'. Then, to find an item, just go to home position and pull on the string. This would be perfect!)
(p^3.s i gave a lecture on Zen Buddhism for Amputees but only one guy turned up to hear me speak. it went well. i got a standing ovation and the room was filled with the sound of one hand clapping.)
'Farmer Jeb' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:59:52 GMT, sez: Your morning sounds exactly like mine. Don't tell me you're also married to a redhead and have a little baby.
'Haacked' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 04:00:25 GMT, sez: So this is what I should expect come early June?
'Andrew' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 05:23:00 GMT, sez: Phil - oh God yeah.
Leon - welcome to fatherhood. Only 6-12 short months to go before you can get a bit more sleep. :) Fatherhood is a joy, though - remember??
'KristofU' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:22:27 GMT, sez: Two little ones here.
Lucky for us, both were pretty good sleepers and slept the whole night at around 6 weeks :)
'Mrs SecretGeek' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:53:06 GMT, sez: Me thinks you already have a system in place - wife nags you each step of the way all through a task the whole time you are home. and i think that i am that garbage collector robot!! Now get off the computer and clean up the babies bottles you lazy sod.
'Andrew' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:37:50 GMT, sez: Busted.
'Eric D. Burdo' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:07:48 GMT, sez: Just wait until the little tyke starts crawling.
Leon boots his PC.
Starts mission critical development.
*bwop* PC shuts down.
Leon thinks "Power outage? No, the lights work."
Baby giggles and flips the cool lights on the power switch again.
'lb' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:10:04 GMT, sez: @eric:
yep, my brother in law started complaining about this the moment his eldest reach crawling age.
said she had amazing aim when it came to power buttons -- yet couldn't feed herself for quids.
'aaron' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:40:18 GMT, sez: <roflmao>
Oh Leon...you poor, poor man. After #3 I said "no more!! I can't handle the year of sleep deprivation!"
And it doesn't let up. The eldest (now 7) and next in line (now 5) both went through about 1-2 year stretches where, 5 nights out of 7 they woke up 2-3x crying. And now the youngest (3) is starting a bit.
(bad dreams? No, I don't let them watch "attack of the sorority zombies" right before bed...maybe Barney is just a lot scarier than I'd thought...actually, one theory is that their brains are organizing/processing so much @ this age they're just leaking all over the place..)
It does get better. Eventually.
You will reach a point when you get FIVE _CONSECUTIVE_ HOURS of sleep, BOUNCE out of bed and say "wow! I feel GREAT!!"
And then there's walking through the front door and getting hit by high velocity carbon-based daddy seeking torpedoes.
(if you listen carefully, you can calculate their velocity and position via the doppler effect of "daddydaddyDaddyDADDY!" bouncing off the walls..)
That just totally rocks.
-aaron
'lb' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:44:20 GMT, sez: @aaron:
aww that sounds sweet
'Ted Jardine' on Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:33:45 GMT, sez: Re Aaron's comment...right now, through a combination of thrush, belated knowledge that my wife's milk supply wasn't enough (shocking because with our first, you couldn't stop it), constipation with any solid foods, we're ecstatic when we get two hour stretches these days with our seven month old (the last 2-3 months have been the most stretching months I've had in years). At least our three year old is sleeping through the night most nights now and the seven month old is getting to be her happy self again as we've finally figured out what to feed her (and would you believe she slept through the night for the first four months!?!).
And...ummmm..."somehow" number three is due 12 and a half months after number two was born.
Yes, it is shocking how good five hours of continuous sleep feels - miraculously rejuvenating when 12 hours barely cut it before.
'Goran' on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:19:23 GMT, sez: Here's something for all you geek dads :)
http://www.trixietracker.com/
'Peter the incredibly unsympathetic' on Tue, 15 May 2007 07:17:05 GMT, sez: There isn't a water shortage in Brisbane. There is a people oversupply. The population has doubled over the last twenty years. This has been actively encouraged to considerable financial benefit to the very people who now tell me I can't wash my car or have a decent shower. They didn't share the profits with me so I don't see why I should make the slightest effort to compensate for the effects of their larceny. When Brisbane runs out of water it will be amusing to leave the greedy to rot in a hell of their own making. For my own part I can always return to my hometown which despite the drought has so much water there are no restrictions on the use of untended sprinklers. Fortunately that town is too far away to run a pipeline to Brisbane. Why don't I go now? Personally I think it's a great idea. The company I work for could operate just as effectively from there, with lower costs. Maybe I'll start suggesting it. Nice place to raise kids, too.
|
secretGeek .:dot Nuts about dot Net:.
Just Wally
Complete secretGeek Archives
The Best Software Writing I
The Business Of Software (Eric Sink)
