Who Wants a Pleo?

I spend considerable time at HowStuffWorks.com. One of the articles featured on their home page today is all about Pleo; a robotic camarasaurus-like toy. I spent the morning learning about this innovative piece of complex machinery. Yes, I want one. No, I won't be getting one. At least, not soon.

The HowStuffWorks article had only a little bit more details than the official Pleo website, PleoWorld. I won't be getting one because I have live critters as pets, the Pleo has a hefty $350 price tag, and a mere one hour of power on a fully charged battery (that takes four hours to charge). This thing is really amazing, and I'd love to have one. But I'll wait. If I wait long enough, I'll either forget about it, or new developments will make the price come down and the battery power go up.

If you want to create a cog-making machine, your first batch of cogs is going to be expensive, because they also have to pay for the machine. But, once that gets paid for, all subsequent cogs will go down in price, because they don't have to pay for the start up anymore. That's a simplified way of how innovation works. Once the Pleo is not so new, its price should be less. True, I don't need one. But I'm quite happy to support those awesome developers who came up with such a thing!

The truth is, I'm talking about this thing because I have nothing else to talk about, and I'm bored at work so waiting until I get home to find something isn't going to work. At least blogging about unimportant things is keeping me awake.

I attempted to hook up a VCR to the one TV in the house that gets cable, so I can record Tin Man because it comes on too late to watch. Sunday night didn't work. That's ok, I got to watch the first third of it last night and try the recording again. I don't know if it recorded anything, but the tape was run all the way to the end and it had ejected on its own from the player. Great. I was really hoping to do something else with my evenings (that's the point of recording something, isn't it, so you can watch it at a time that is more convenient to you?). I don't have work tomorrow because of a dentist appointment. I could spend four hours in front of the TV to watch the rest of the series, or two hours today and two hours tomorrow, and then have a little bit of time tonight (this will not create time tomorrow night because I have to go back to work on Thursday). It's all the fault of the SciFi channel and its two-hour-a-pop mini series. Though, I am quite thankful that I have so many opportunities to see this show, that looked exceptionally interesting from the first commercial I saw weeks ago.

I do like the show, at least the first two hours of this six hour thing hasn't let me down.

That's it. I've talked about nothing enough for now!