Ep. 427: "Mapping Run"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: How's it going with you?
John: Good.
John: It's actually going really good.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: What makes it really good instead of just regular good?
Merlin: Can I speak candidly?
John: No one's listening.
John: It's just you and me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My goddamn family's out of the house.
Merlin: Whoa!
Merlin: How did you do that?
Merlin: Well, they knew I had to do this.
Merlin: So sometimes when I'm doing a thing, that's good timing for them to do things, especially the kind of thing where I go, you know, like I do.
Merlin: So they're doing a hike at my wife's alma mater.
Merlin: They're going down to Santa Cruz and they're hiking.
John: But you're not in the house.
John: You're in the office anyway.
Merlin: I'm in my private studio right now, but that has not stopped me from doing – I have a running list of the things to do when they're not in the house, and I get to do all of those filthy, dirty things that I love to do when they're not in the house.
John: So you're having a daddy day.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I am power-puttering now.
Merlin: You know, when I was a younger person, I would have utilized that time to, you know, commit the sin of Onan in an elaborate way.
Merlin: But now I use it to, well, number one, top of the list, you know, cast iron pans.
Merlin: It's a hobby.
Merlin: Yeah, they need to be seasoned, though.
Merlin: It's a smelly process.
Merlin: You try and explain that to people and then they still use soap on it.
Merlin: Well, thank you for cleaning it, but don't.
Merlin: So I'm seasoning.
Merlin: Don't touch daddy's pans.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Title.
Merlin: So this is my opportunity to run the oven really high, break it down a little bit, season them back up nice.
Merlin: Yeah, you know what I mean?
John: Yeah, the whole place smells like acrid burning metal.
Merlin: And believe me, I hear about that.
Merlin: What's burning?
Merlin: It's what I use to prepare your food.
Merlin: And I also can run the robot, the vacuum robot.
John: Oh, no, iRobot, yes.
Merlin: My iBot, it updates, does mapping runs.
Merlin: I do all those things.
Merlin: Hold on, hold on.
Merlin: Tell me about a mapping run.
Merlin: Oh, well, anyway, so just to close that parenthesis, yes, they're out of the house and I can do those things.
Merlin: So the iRobot is...
Merlin: really smart in a lot of ways it's a robot but one of the things that it does that and you can you can imagine the time that i spend on this is it's got multiple sensors well as soon as i heard you say mapping run oh yeah which doesn't sound cool which to me it does it meant it meant that you have a robot vacuum and
John: But it sometimes will take trips where the point is not to vacuum.
John: Oh my God, you get it.
John: And so what I need to know is what's that all about?
John: Can you track the run in real time on a virtual map?
John: Can you make adjustments?
Merlin: I need to know all about this.
Merlin: Can I put a stake in the ground?
Merlin: Please remind me to talk about dirt events.
John: Okay, yes, I do want to hear about that.
Merlin: So what it does is you get your robot, you set it up, and you say, let her rip.
Merlin: It gets charged up and starts running around the house.
Merlin: And you're thinking, oh, it's going to fall down the stairs.
Merlin: It doesn't fall down the stairs unless you've really screwed up because it detects when there is too much of an edge and it can't do that up or down.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: OK, there's that stuff.
Merlin: But basically, it goes through your house and keeps bumping into things.
Merlin: And it's it's using its internal smarts to learn your house.
Merlin: It learns it learns that.
Merlin: So basically, you help it out.
Merlin: You work together with your robot and you say, OK, go run through your house.
Merlin: You say, OK, that area you found here, that's that's the kitchen.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But how are you telling that?
Merlin: After it is completed, a few runs where it goes and cleans or maps, and we'll come back to maps, because this is actually fascinating, is that then you say it draws a map for you.
Merlin: It says, I'm done with my run.
Merlin: And we got one of those ones that empties the bag into a container.
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: It empties the bag?
Merlin: Oh, it empties the bag.
Okay.
Merlin: How?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: It's got a hopper.
Merlin: It's got a hopper.
Merlin: And each time it goes back, it says, do I need to empty my container?
Merlin: And if it does, it goes, and it goes into a bag.
Merlin: And when those bags empty, I replace the bag every month or two.
Merlin: I like to cut them open and look inside.
Merlin: And I can see all of our sin.
John: And it's all packed and stacked.
Merlin: Oh, it's packed and stacked so freaking hard.
Merlin: And it's stuff like carpet powder.
Merlin: I can come back to carpet powder and how I use carpet powder to like that arm and hammer pet powder.
Merlin: I use that to help determine where it thinks areas are.
Merlin: I use science.
John: John, this is a whole episode.
John: You're using carpet powder.
John: Yes.
John: Which is a deodorizing powder.
John: Yes.
Merlin: It's basically baking soda with stink.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you're using it to track your robot.
Merlin: I'll send you some photos.
Merlin: What I do is, after it's done lots of these runs, I realize I'm a little all over the mapping run here, but it's done some runs, and then you say, okay, it thinks it knows where the kitchen is because I helped it.
Merlin: I went in and said, okay, that's a door, and that goes into the kitchen between the kitchen and the hall.
Merlin: You've been to our home many times.
Merlin: Yes, but you don't say this out loud to it.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: How do you say this to it?
Merlin: Use it on your telephone.
Merlin: Your telephone lets you go in and say, this is a room.
Merlin: This is a zone.
Merlin: This is a special zone, like where the cat drops a deuce a lot.
Merlin: Or this is another zone where I want you to stay away.
John: Well, so now here's my experience of a robot, and you can explain to me what happened.
Merlin: I would absolutely love to do that.
John: What my experience is is that it comes and it cleans around the chair and then it goes away for a while and then it comes back and it cleans around the same chair again and then it goes away for a while and it comes back and it cleans around that chair a third time.
John: Oh, but it always thinks that chair is chair.
John: Well, it bumps.
Merlin: It bumps into this.
Merlin: It bumps into that.
Merlin: It bumps and turns.
Merlin: It does a bump and a turn.
Merlin: It does a bump.
Merlin: And then it says, uh-oh, there's something here.
Merlin: Is it something new or something different?
Merlin: Can I learn from this?
Merlin: And then it does a little sweep around.
Merlin: It kind of goes around, and it determines.
Merlin: It learns, John.
Merlin: It learns what your house is, and then it learns what your house becomes, like Aristotle talked about.
John: It seems like it hits a chair, and then it goes back and to the left.
John: Yes.
John: And then it goes back and to the left.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And so what I'm hearing from you is that you and the little fellow.
John: Yeah.
John: Her name's Rosie.
Merlin: Pretty much everybody names her as Rosie.
John: You just walk around together.
John: Like you're not sitting and reading and every once in a while she appears.
Merlin: Oh, I'm reading.
Merlin: I'm reading.
Merlin: I let Rosie go do her thing.
Merlin: This is the thing, John.
Merlin: There's no I in team, but there is an I in robot.
Merlin: And in this instance, you let the robot go and learn, and then you say, let me help a little bit.
Merlin: So one thing I do is after it's done some runs, I'm going, hmm, I'm not so sure you really understand where the kitchen is.
Merlin: What I'll do is I'll take the carpet powder and I'll go, zhugga, zhugga, zhugga.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And then I can go and in the app, I'll see what's called a dirt event.
Merlin: And a dirt event is when Rosie has found what she thinks of or they think of as more dirt than usual.
John: Oh, an event.
John: I see.
John: So like you were potting a plant or somebody came and kicked their shoes.
Merlin: It could just be the area under where I sit on the couch, which is always one of the sandiest and foodiest.
Merlin: It'll be little bits of tortilla chips and stuff like that, but it'll go like, I detected much dirt here.
Merlin: Yes, it could be from potting.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: So anyway, you help it out.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: So you're creating artificial dirt events to test Rosie.
Merlin: I want to see where Rosie thinks the kitchen starts.
Merlin: Because I can see on the map as a dirt event.
Merlin: And you see it as these little darker green dots, little squares that says this is where a dirt event happened.
Merlin: But to your point, though, it learns and it learns good.
Merlin: But there's currently not a way to say here is – let me in general put down an architect's drawing of my house.
Merlin: So my house, I'll send you a photo.
Merlin: It's real jaggy because sometimes it thinks this box that's always there is wall.
Merlin: And then other times it gets confused and it thinks the cat litter is in a different hallway.
Merlin: But anyway, you can go in and then improve upon that.
Merlin: Now, the best way to do this is what's called a mapping run.
Merlin: Here's the thing about mapping run.
Merlin: Mapping run, you just say, Rosie...
Merlin: pretty much act like you've never been here before and just go bump into things for hours.
Merlin: And on top of that, here's the beauty part.
Merlin: Don't clean because cleaning takes more battery.
Merlin: Just map.
Merlin: So think about it.
Merlin: It's iRobot recognizance is how I think of it.
John: I see, I see, I see.
John: Okay, so don't clean, just map.
John: Just go bump into things until you learn more about the house.
John: I feel like I throw up that protocol on myself.
John: Probably seven out of ten times.
John: Oh, my.
John: That never occurred to me.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I'm always out.
Merlin: You're always on a mapping run.
John: You're just bumping into things.
Merlin: John, is that part of, I mean, apart from your OPSEC, is that part of the reason you never take the same route twice?
No.
John: Yes, that's the only reason I never take the same amount twice.
Merlin: It's a mapping run.
John: Because it's always a mapping run.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Because when it's time to clean, when it's time to lean and there's time to clean, I have the map.
John: You have the map.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I don't want to be cleaning off the map.
Merlin: Because if you didn't bump into things occasionally, you wouldn't know that's not a coffee table in life.
John: Exactly.
John: And sometimes there's a dirt event.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And then I've...
Merlin: I have the framework.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You've taken the best of the AI and machine learning world and applied it to your own Weltanschauung, if I could say.
John: What I don't have is my own Merlin, my own extra large Merlin.
John: Where we can work together, yeah.
John: Yeah, nobody's putting carpet powder down that I think is dirt.
John: to see where I think the kitchen starts.
John: In life.
Merlin: And that would be religion if I had it.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So I would be a sort of a Catholic father figure who would be able to say, are you sure you really know the best way to get to the airport at 4 p.m.?
John: That's right.
John: Because the thing is, does the robot know that you are just one life form up?
John: No, the robot thinks that you're Zeus, that you live in the mountains.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: I'm one robot over in some ways.
Merlin: I love this, John.
Merlin: I've learned so much from – it's so funny you should say that.
Merlin: I've learned so much about my Roomba, about life.
Merlin: And I keep wanting to talk about it on Back to Work, but I think Dan's not into it.
Merlin: But I've learned a lot about life from the Roomba.
Merlin: I've learned a lot about myself, if I'm being honest.
Merlin: So I was given a Roomba.
Merlin: Shut your mouth.
John: And I turned it on, and I went through the process of figuring out the app, and I turned it on, and I watched it go around.
John: Okay.
John: And I was pretty thrilled about it.
John: But then my Roomba needs to be emptied.
John: It doesn't have a place where it goes.
Merlin: It doesn't come with a dirt tower.
John: No.
John: And so it went and emptied, or I emptied it, and then it went around some more.
John: And now, so I haven't turned it on.
Merlin: Because that's a lot of work for a robot.
Merlin: It would be like if you had to clean out its poop a couple, it would be like having a cat.
Merlin: It's a cross between a robot, the worst aspects of a robot and a cat.
John: It's a combination between it's not as cuddly as a cat.
John: It's not as dirty as a cat.
John: But you do have to clean its box.
John: So I haven't turned it on again.
John: So what I do is I walk around the house and I see little dirt events and I go, oh, the Roomba is going to take care of that.
John: I just haven't turned it on.
John: So the Roomba doesn't know to take care of it.
John: Okay.
John: So the Roomba and I are in it.
John: I like the Roomba.
John: Yeah.
John: But right now the Roomba is mostly a virtual friend.
John: I haven't spent the time.
John: We haven't had any mapping runs.
John: I didn't even know that was a thing.
John: There's just so much that I need to learn.
Merlin: The nice thing about it, and I think you, I know.
Yeah.
Merlin: Shit dog.
Merlin: You love maps.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: If you were to flip it on, if you were to flip it on and say, do a mapping run.
Merlin: And because, I mean, now if you're going to get into this world, you're going to be real in this world in a way that in my case has really put off my family.
Merlin: And I can only really do these things when they're hiking at Santa Cruz.
Merlin: But then you do another mapping run and maybe another mapping run, and you're going to have a real interesting map.
Merlin: Now, here's a neat thing.
Merlin: I don't think these are yours.
Merlin: With mine, you can identify, like I say, zones.
Merlin: So I have an area called litter box, and it goes, and I can say just, I can even say this to my voice assistant, tell Rosie to go clean around the litter box.
Merlin: And then any of the, you know, the sand that gets kicked out gets picked up.
Merlin: Or in our case, the kitchen counter, I can say, just go do the kitchen counter.
Merlin: And that's as a result...
Merlin: Wait, your robot can get up on the counters?
Merlin: No.
John: What kind of magic robot is this?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: There's probably an aftermarket thing for that, like a Japanese parking garage or something.
Merlin: But no, no.
Merlin: No, and I have to help it.
Merlin: It's like an old lady.
Merlin: I got to help it get in the bathroom because there's a small step.
Merlin: You remember our bathroom with the door that wants to stay open?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: And so anyhow, but the things I wanted to say to Dan, I'm just going to say quickly here, is one thing I learned from my Roomba, it takes time to learn.
Merlin: And you can add in life, the way you say in bed for a Chinese fortune cookie, it takes time to learn in life.
John: If there's time to learn, there's time to clurn.
John: Clurn.
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John: I'm looking at my app, and I'm not sure it's...
John: There's a big button that says tap here to start cleaning, and then there's some other things.
John: I don't see where you can – this says vacuum everywhere, but I don't see any mapping runs.
Merlin: It varies.
Merlin: There's so many different models.
Merlin: Right now, Rosie says partial charge, job paused.
Merlin: The robot will resume in 27 minutes is what it says.
Merlin: um let's see i think what you do is if you click on is it you know you click on the hamburger and then you go to history clicking and if you go to new job is there a mapping run function in there there's a thing here that says your opinion matters rate your overall irobot experience
Merlin: Try this.
Merlin: Try this.
Merlin: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
Merlin: This is Roderick on the line.
Merlin: It's a Frank and Candid weekly call with John and Merlin.
John: It's in the philosophy section at iTunes.
Merlin: We changed that after a week.
Merlin: Oh, we did?
John: What is it now?
John: Sports?
Merlin: I was a little over my skis.
Merlin: I think I put it in comedy.
Merlin: But we might be in society, but I feel like we're in philosophy.
Merlin: Nobody looks at that stuff.
Merlin: So do this.
Merlin: Do you see map with the little map marker?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: So you see a picture on the homepage-ish thing, and you see your robot.
Merlin: Do you see that thing that says map?
John: No.
Merlin: Oh, you might not have mapping.
Merlin: John, we don't make a lot of money from this show, but I would encourage you to expense it to the show.
Merlin: I think you need to get an extremely modern, let's be honest, very costly, iRobot with a tower, because this is going to be maps.
Merlin: It's going to be mapping runs.
Merlin: Maps!
Merlin: Maps!
Merlin: They don't love you like I love you, right?
Merlin: You're going to go through.
Merlin: My Angus, please stay.
Merlin: You're going to be going through and you're getting maps.
Merlin: You're getting zones.
Merlin: You're getting stay out zones.
Merlin: You can say, oh, that's, oh, John, John, if it goes over a cord, it goes over a wire, it encounters a cable.
Merlin: It figures that out and then like kind of spits it out.
Merlin: But it does sometimes pull over things.
Merlin: The one time Rosie fell down the steps was a shoelace.
Merlin: Oh, a shoelace.
Merlin: It was just bad timing.
Merlin: Wrong time, wrong place.
Merlin: Because Rosie hit one of my daughter in her freaking shoes.
Merlin: Her Doc Martens were unlaced near the steps.
Merlin: And Rosie caught a shoelace, tried to spit it out, but then did this.
Merlin: It goes, robot version.
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: And then went, all the way down.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Yep.
John: A lot of steps.
John: So here are some issues.
John: God, I'm glad my family's out of the house.
John: So glad.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: It's so great.
John: And I wish I were there to smell your cast iron pans burning.
Merlin: Oh, I had to turn it off to come here.
Merlin: But you're welcome anytime.
Merlin: If you want to come and do power puttering with me, I think it would be good for both of us.
John: I've been doing a lot of that lately.
John: You know, somebody sent me a...
John: one of those carbon steel pans that apparently... Oh, did you get the made for one?
John: The made for, yeah.
Merlin: See, we ordered the stick, the non-stick, and then I instantly regretted it.
John: Oh my God, because I've always wanted one of those.
John: Well, the reason I ordered the carbon fiber one was... It's bulletproof.
John: As I read about it, I was like, which one of these types of pans is the most persnickety requiring the most...
John: constant maintenance and that has the greatest potential.
Merlin: That's like buying an MG.
John: You basically bought an MG.
John: Yeah, it's just like, which one of these pans has an electrical system that might go bad?
Merlin: Anything with a wiring harness.
John: Yeah, it's got Lucas Electrics.
John: So I went and I looked into it and I was like, oh, okay.
John: Carbon steel pan is...
John: is the best, but also the trickiest.
John: I heard you can screw it up pretty easily.
John: Is that true?
John: Screw it up?
John: Yeah, it'll rust.
John: It'll leach carbon fiber into your omelets.
John: Oh, no.
John: But if you season it, this is the thing, it needs to be seasoned.
John: It doesn't need to be seasoned quite like a cast iron pan.
John: It needs to be seasoned like a carbon fiber pan.
John: Okay.
John: And then...
John: And then eggs just slip right off.
John: It's just like your eggs are on a skating rink.
John: Okay.
John: They just slip right off.
Merlin: Now, the cast iron pan people, the cast iron pan men, the pan men, will say, oh, I've got my grandma's skillet.
Merlin: Kiss the pan!
Merlin: Kiss the pan.
Merlin: Only English people can fly.
Merlin: He's gone now.
Merlin: I'll be back in 10 minutes, because I have to take a shit.
Merlin: Anyway, I still watch that a lot.
Merlin: We'll cut that out.
Merlin: That's what they say, though.
Merlin: And it's true, because there are people like our friend John Sarkozy, where he doesn't do any of this fussiness, and his pan is fine.
Merlin: Yeah, he just buys a pan at Walmart, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I guess.
Merlin: A lot of people say, ah, don't worry.
Merlin: You don't need to do all those YouTube videos for seasoning.
Merlin: Just use it and clean it out and blah, blah.
Merlin: I've got the chain mail for cleaning it the whole nine.
John: Yeah.
John: No, my cast iron pens are – I've put more work into them than I put into college.
John: as I think I've told you before.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: And I try, sometimes I start over.
Merlin: I do the trick where you cover it in easy off and leave it in a bag overnight.
Merlin: You start over.
Merlin: No, you can go really deep on this stuff, and I don't know if the results are worth it.
Merlin: So I guess what I'm saying is the cast iron pan men will often say that thing.
Merlin: It's like a mirror.
Merlin: Eggs slide right off.
Merlin: Like a mirror.
Merlin: But if you take care, can I ask what goes into seasoning your carbon fiber?
Yeah.
John: Well, here, so I should confess something.
John: Okay.
John: Which was, you know, my grandfather, my father's mother, my mother's father, my mother's father had an egg pan, a cast iron pan, that she said he never washed.
John: When he was done making his eggs, he wiped it out with a rag.
John: And she said that no one else in the house was allowed to touch his egg pan.
What?
John: And it was a cast iron pan.
John: What do you know?
John: Oh, for sure.
John: She said that when she would touch the egg pan, she would get in big trouble.
John: And of course, it's all she wanted to do was touch the egg pan.
John: It's a natural curiosity for a young girl.
John: Yeah.
John: So he would wipe it out.
John: Soap never touched it, but also nothing touched it.
John: And she said that the pan was...
John: You could see your reflection.
John: Jesus.
John: And also, you couldn't even keep an egg in it.
John: You put the egg in it, and the egg would get out of there.
John: It's like a magnet.
Merlin: There's a north and a south.
Merlin: North is pan, south is egg.
Merlin: Get out of this pan.
Merlin: You're done.
Merlin: You're done.
John: You're cooked and done.
John: Just like that, that fast.
John: And I don't know, you know, somebody else inherited that egg pan because I never saw it.
John: Oh, geez.
John: But I had, as you may recollect, quite a collection of cast iron pans.
John: And when I moved here to the new house, I did what some people might consider unthinkable, the unthinkable.
Okay.
John: Which is that all of the ones, all of the cast iron pans that I had that I could not positively locate as a product of the 19th century, I gave them to the thrift store.
Merlin: There's always a lot of pans at the thrift store.
John: There's a lot of pans at the thrift store.
John: And I decided, you know, I had one of every size from 2 to 72.
John: And I was like, you don't need that many pans.
Yeah.
John: All you need is a couple of good pans.
John: And so I just kept the ones that I needed.
John: Any pan that had the word lodge on it.
John: Lodge.
John: That's everybody's go-to Walmart pan.
John: And what I kept are only the ones that look like they were made in a campfire.
John: But now I have a carbon fiber one, and honestly, Merlin, I just took it out of the box.
John: I have not seasoned it yet.
John: I don't understand it.
John: I have to do a lot of research.
Merlin: Is this your new carbon fiber one?
John: This is the new carbon fiber one.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Okay.
John: I'm looking at a map here.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I sent John some screen grabs of maps.
John: Okay.
John: Your map looks like a gerrymandered legislative district in a southern state.
Merlin: Yeah, basically I live in Dan Crenshaw's district, for sure.
Merlin: Thank you for your service.
Merlin: But yeah, so what I think the first one you got is that's just what, that's the in situ what it thinks the house is.
Merlin: And you can see, for example, look at kitchen.
Merlin: Yeah, look at kitchen.
Merlin: And you see where it's gotten confused about doorways.
Merlin: That's not really, so the door to the side hatch is not actually on a diagonal.
Merlin: But you see, and that's where over time there's been a disconnect between the intelligence of Rosie and me helping.
Merlin: And then, you know what, though?
Merlin: I mean, one of the lessons I learned is it takes time in life.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It does take time in life, yes.
Merlin: Oh, wait, what was my second point?
Merlin: Because it's important at this point.
John: Oh, wait, Rosie is a Jetsons reference.
Merlin: Yeah, everybody does it.
Merlin: Even if you go on Amazon, they even have like Rosie stickers for Roombus.
Merlin: It's one of those deeply...
Merlin: So what I said was point number one, what I learned from my room, but number one, it takes time to learn, which I think is true in life.
Merlin: Number two, but you also have to update in life.
John: Okay.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Just because you learned it once, good, doesn't mean it won't change.
Merlin: Or let's be honest, you won't change.
Merlin: And in this instance, Rosie learns, I try to help, but then the thing is, what is learning?
Merlin: Learning is change.
Merlin: And sometimes it thinks the door to your side hatches a diagonal.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And then you got to go in.
Merlin: And you do it.
Merlin: And that's why this is a hobby.
John: There's so much here.
John: There's so much here.
Merlin: And do you see, though, for example, so you can see, like, for example, I bet you can guess by looking at the room called Master.
Merlin: You could probably guess where our bed is.
Merlin: And you could probably guess where there's usually a big bunch of boxes and stuff.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You see the holes, the jaggy gerrymander holes?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Now, what I want to draw your attention to, if I may, John, the second map is a cleaning run that I did yesterday at 8.42 p.m.
John: This isn't a mapping run.
John: This is a cleaning run.
Merlin: It's a cleaning run.
Merlin: I said, please go to the lounge and clean the lounge.
Merlin: And then if you look at the third one, please look in the top left corner.
Merlin: Do you see the green squares, the darker green squares?
John: In the third one here.
Merlin: In Lounge.
Merlin: Those are dirt events.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: See?
John: So it says there's a dirt event.
Merlin: Are those dirt events that you created or are those dirt events?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Dirt events, dirt events that Rosie detected.
Merlin: And the thinking is, Rosie notes when there's more dirt than usual and then works a little harder there.
Merlin: I think that's from leaves from a ficus.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: That would do.
Merlin: But it's true for all kinds of things.
Merlin: And again, you could see the benefit if I did a sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle on nominally the area of where the side hatch door actually is.
Merlin: And then I'd see that on the map and I could say, huh.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: We work together.
Merlin: We're, you know, we're like, we're in the drift, as they say.
Merlin: We're two minds controlling, you know, one Jaeger.
Merlin: And we're able to work together on that.
John: So one of the challenges that I have here in trying to integrate a robot into my life is I have several different floor environments.
John: The vast majority of the house is made out of floor.
Merlin: The part especially that you walk on is floor or flooring?
John: It's mostly floor.
Merlin: Do you have a sunken living room?
John: No.
John: That was another place you looked at.
John: Yeah, I tried for that.
John: And that would be a challenge in this situation.
John: But no, this living room is just made of floor and it's all floor.
John: But what I have done is I have raised up certain parts with different carpet textures and styles.
John: Good for you.
John: I think that's eclectic.
John: Well, so one room has floor, and then there's a not too fuzzy, but fairly fuzzy carpet on top of it.
John: That's sort of an asymmetrical pattern that if you were to suffer from, say...
John: A kind of OCD.
Merlin: It would be difficult to know how to walk across the carpet.
Merlin: Sorry, real quick.
Merlin: So, okay, first of all, real quick, real quick, real quick.
Merlin: What's the pile like?
Merlin: Is it a low pile, high pile?
Merlin: It's not a full-on California shag or something, right?
John: Well, now this is what's difficult.
John: For someone, I'm just speculating about what somebody that had a very mild case of OCD would experience when they encountered this carpet.
John: It isn't just that the pattern...
John: is full of random events.
Merlin: Like a casino floor.
Merlin: Like at a casino or a hotel, you ever notice they got weird flooring?
Merlin: And what you may not know is a jaggy-ass pattern stimulates dopamine.
John: You're saying that a jaggy pattern on a carpet stimulates dopamine, and that's why they put them in casinos?
Merlin: And hotels.
Merlin: Think about this.
Merlin: There's scholarship on this, John, that if you're a person who has ADHD, like some people I know, go take a walk in a place where there's lots of trees and grass because those patterns of leaves stimulate dopamine.
Merlin: This is true.
Merlin: Now, that's why when you go into a casino, also it hides stains, let's be honest.
Merlin: But you think about those crazy patterns on a carpet, that's because that stimulates dopamine.
Merlin: Now, if you got OCD about carpeting, dopamine is probably the last thing you want.
Merlin: see what you're saying do you know what i mean yeah so it's got a pattern and it's got is it one of those like old school i think about the the we had a weird weird cheap carpeting in my house when i was a kid and like the slightly fancier version was it had slightly raised areas slightly lower you know what i mean like it's is that what you've got well so what it is it's a carpet that was made in uh in the nation of india one of the great nations of the world oh terrific country
John: They got a lot of people there, a lot of people.
John: They do.
John: There's a lot of people there.
John: And it's made out of, you know, tufted wool, natural wool.
Merlin: This sounds like a challenge.
Merlin: Like they would do this at the iRobot labs to see, let's see how smart Rosie is.
Merlin: Can she handle the Indian flooring?
John: But here are a couple of other distinguishing characteristics.
John: The whole carpet is just black and white, so it's...
John: But it's like natural – the white is not white.
John: It's like natural unwashed, unfiltered wool color.
John: Okay.
John: Light.
John: And then the other is like blacky gray.
John: But if you put it up on the wall, what it would look like is – you know those old pictures of someone's – where their genes have been mapped?
Yeah.
John: And you've got all your, oh, a chromosome map, where you've got all your chromosomes on a single page.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: You know, little chromosomes.
Merlin: I think I do, where it's like lots of like vertical lines of different lengths.
John: Yeah, different chromosomes in a grid.
John: Okay.
John: And if you imagine the chromosomes are all black and the page is white, and then you imagine that the white
John: fur the white uh pile is raised and the chromosomes are not so the carpet is like so the darker parts the chromosome parts are a little deeper they're like they're dug out a little bit yeah they're dug out that's right and so so if you were down on the ground say playing with a with a hot wheels if you had a
John: you would find there were infinite numbers of different roads and streets that your hot wheel could go on, but they wouldn't connect with each other because they're chromosomes.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: And it's a little bit like, it looks like a little bit like some kind of a notional over-minimalist map of the London subway where nothing connects.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: It looks, it's very much.
Merlin: The Victoria line, it doesn't go anywhere.
John: It seems like it could be Braille if Braille were done in wool.
John: Okay.
John: and as a carpet.
John: Okay.
John: So in terms of walking across it, if you were looking for a path...
John: Because you had a condition that made it difficult to walk across random surfaces.
Merlin: For example, you like to take always exactly six steps and step only on the Victoria line.
John: Exactly.
John: If you don't want to step on a crack and break your mother's back, if you only can make one diagonal move for every two forward moves, this is a very difficult carpet to get across.
John: I see.
John: The Roomba has experienced this carpet and seems to have found a way...
John: to clean this carpet.
John: But there are two other carpet environments in the house, each one more challenging than the last.
Merlin: Wow, it's almost like the movie Saw, but for a vacuum cleaner.
Merlin: Like, ha, ha, ha, how are you going to get out of this one?
Merlin: You've got to tear out your own teeth to find the key in the butt or whatever.
John: Right, you have to cut a pound of flesh out of your own butt.
John: Exactly, a pound.
Merlin: To raise the portcullis.
Merlin: Exactly, yes, I understand.
John: So the second carpet environment is...
John: Something that you and I would recognize as a serious orange wall-to-wall shag carpet.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: Oh, that is a dad carpet from the 1970s.
Merlin: It is a dad carpet from the 1970s.
John: Is it like a burnt umber kind of thing?
John: I target this carpet.
John: It's closer to a candy orange.
John: And I look at it and say, this is, in 1967, there were six flavors of candy, thick shag carpet you could get.
John: This is the orange one.
John: I went to great lengths to find it.
John: everywhere that i went said what do you think this is 1967 and i said okay you're gonna have to get a time machine and go back to halston salon i said okay well guess who's checking your business off my list yeah and i finally that tells you a lot about that person that tells you a lot about that company and how they operate the thing is in the companies that recognized it was from 67 were way ahead of the ones that were like
John: are you sure you don't want this beige?
Merlin: Or like, are you sure you don't like, like maybe you're confused and you get like, like you do sometimes where you get something reversed.
Merlin: Did you actually want us, did you want us to remove that and put in a good carpet?
John: Exactly.
John: They were like, are you having a stroke?
John: You realize now, of course, that in modern, in the modern world, all things are only beige and white and black, right?
Merlin: Including cars, cars, cars and carpets all the way down.
John: So I found a company somewhere in America that is willing to make bright orange shag, heavy shag carpet.
John: And I bought some and I had it put in this bedroom.
John: Okay.
John: The robot comes to the threshold of this bedroom and stares in...
John: to what I'm sure it thinks is a room full of lava.
John: Oh, it's like a Nietzschean abyss.
John: It's a Nietzschean abyss.
John: That's right.
John: Is the carpet so tall I can't get in?
Merlin: As Jakob Smirnoff says, sometimes the carpet vacuums you.
John: Or if I cross this threshold, will I fall forever?
Merlin: Will I ever get back?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: God, when you said this, I wasn't so sure.
Merlin: But now this is Herculean.
John: It's Herculean, right?
John: So I have kept the door closed so that the Roomba doesn't experience confusion.
John: Okay.
John: I get it.
John: But then the third carpet.
John: Uh-oh.
John: They call it the final boss.
John: This is the final boss.
John: That's right.
John: If you've made it through everything, this is where the carpet sings the song.
John: Your kung fu is no good.
John: The carpet says, you have killed me, but I'm still alive.
John: Uh-huh.
John: The cake is alive.
John: This carpet.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Is a wool carpet that's basically a sheep.
John: And it's giant.
Merlin: Would you say it's fluffy?
John: Oh, fluffy.
John: No, none of those are the right word.
John: Okay.
John: It is just...
John: It's Harry.
John: Yeah.
John: If you were in Afghanistan and you and your friends all had horses and you were playing a game where there was a little friend that had died and you were just going to ride around and try and grab it from each other and throw it around.
John: If you took that little friend, the dead friend, and you turned it into a carpet that was 14 feet by 14 feet, it would be this carpet.
John: Oh, my.
John: This carpet is a thing where if someone two blocks from here has a pebble in the sole of their shoe, it will find a way into this carpet.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: I mean, robots or otherwise, that sounds like a challenge to keep clean.
Merlin: What color is it?
John: It's also, it's basically the color of goats.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's not the orange one.
Merlin: The orange one's the other one.
Merlin: This one is more like a, is it a, oh, what's that wonderful word?
Merlin: Like a sisal?
Merlin: Is it like a kind of an off-white?
Merlin: It's an off-white.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And so what I did when I bought this carpet was I thought it looked great.
John: Because it looked like I was Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: He's so hot in that.
John: He's so hot.
John: And I had a bunch of super good carpets in my tent.
Merlin: Okay.
John: But then I also had this carpet that was just made out of goats.
Okay.
John: I see.
John: And the problem is that it appears to me I've been living with it now for about a year, and I believe that it is uncleanable by any method.
Merlin: That sounds plausible, John.
Merlin: I bet you've tried.
Merlin: I can't imagine a way to clean it.
Merlin: Well, it's like, it's like combing our cats.
Merlin: We're like, if you comb the cat all the time, you know, you, you could comb the cat.
Merlin: If you don't comb the cat all the time, you will never be able to comb the cat.
Merlin: And in this case, how would you even keep up with that?
Merlin: With your, with your active lifestyle?
John: I feel like, I feel like combing a cat is what, is what my problem is here.
John: What I have is a 14 foot square cat that I haven't combed for a year and
John: And when I look down at it, I mean, you haven't been living there for that long.
John: I know part of the time that this carpet was here, it was just here for the for the drywallers to get stuff in.
John: It was like a drywall trap.
John: There are burrs in it that I know are only from plants that appear in the southwest.
John: And I don't know how these burrs got here.
John: I haven't been to the Southwest in over a year.
Merlin: You mean like a little stickum?
Merlin: What do they call those?
Merlin: You mean like a little hitchhiker?
Merlin: Like a hitchhiker.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Damn.
John: And so I have this thing.
John: I put my feet on it every day because it's right here.
John: And as it gets more and more sort of matted and it just feels like the type of carpet that would be
John: in a stoner's house oh god like a bond water from you know bond water would get in there well i you know i wish bond water would get in here because i love her but oh sure is that ann magnuson yeah and magnuson you know i i mean i don't i mean magnuson and i followed each other on twitter back when i was on social media is that right yes i always like you know what i always thought she was a pistol
Merlin: She's a pistol.
Merlin: She's a pistol and she'd do different things and she'd be fun.
Merlin: And she was kind of like our indie rock Bette Midler in a lot of ways.
John: I really feel like if I had lived in New York in 1980, I would have only wanted to have been friends with Ann Magnuson.
John: And I wouldn't have wanted to do any of the other things that were happening in New York in 1980.
John: I just would have wanted to be friends with her.
Merlin: You wouldn't get a slice or something?
John: No, I hate New York pizza.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: But John, this is a special holiday for veterans.
Merlin: I don't want to be – I don't want to create problems for myself.
Merlin: John, that is a carpet that in my estimation, long distance, sight unseen, you could reach a point of no return with that carpet.
John: Am I right?
John: That's what I'm worried about.
Merlin: It's a cat that's never been really properly combed, let alone combed recently.
John: I'm worried that I bought a carpet that
John: um that no one should buy that the people that own the people i'm it's basically a situation where i bought a carpet that had been bought by thousands of people before me and those people somehow didn't have the the capacity to organize speaking of pets you've got a rescue you got a rescue carpet you had a you have a carpet that nobody else could keep in their house you got it as a rescue i don't want to bag on pit bulls it could be anything it could be people don't like a bulldog that farts although i think that would be kind of adorable um
Merlin: But, you know, is that one of those high sweet farts?
Merlin: But, like, in this case, right, it's a rescue in some ways.
Merlin: You're like, they maybe should have said, are you sure you want this in your home?
John: I feel like there should have been an alert that came up on my phone that's like those tsunami alerts that you get when you're in Hawaii.
John: Yes.
John: Tsunami alert, tsunami alert.
John: And it never ends up being anything.
John: So when there's finally a tsunami in Oahu, everyone will die because no one pays attention to those tsunami alerts anymore.
John: That's totally fair.
John: Yeah.
John: But there should have been a carpet tsunami alert that said, you're about to buy a carpet that cannot be cleaned.
John: And here are testimonials from thousands of people before you that had this carpet in their house for a year until it got full of burrs and drywall powder.
John: Oh, dear.
John: And your Roomba can't clean it.
John: And nobody could clean it.
John: Even real Rosie couldn't clean it.
John: And so what's going to happen is eventually one day it will either – well, so also the other thing it does is it creates –
John: It creates little avatars of itself.
Merlin: Oh, we get that.
Merlin: The one that we've got in the lounge, it's a kind of carpet a lot of people got.
Merlin: It's a Target, big carpet, but it's one of those rough-hewn woven carpets, like rugs, that eventually falls apart.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: And basically it puts off pubes.
Merlin: It puts off black pubes, especially when you first get one.
Merlin: There's just pubes everywhere.
Merlin: So like when I go through Rosie's bag, you know, with consent, I go through there.
Merlin: There's so many pubes.
Merlin: There's cat food.
Merlin: There's wrappers from things.
Merlin: There's rubber bands.
Merlin: But there's so many pubes from that.
Merlin: And you're saying a similar thing here, which is this thing is shedding.
John: It's shedding and it's just cloning itself.
John: This thing isn't made out of pubes, though.
John: What this thing does is it sheds like wizard beard.
John: This carpet is so long that every three days it sheds an entire Angora cat.
Merlin: If you went on a vacation and came back, you might find new recolonized areas where the guy bomb of the cat rug would have basically colonized other rooms and guy bombed it.
John: If it wasn't for Roomba, there would be rabbits.
John: in the house because i think this i don't think this thing is made of rabbit fur but it is made of no there'd be goats is basically what i would have a herd of goats so here's what so i don't know i really don't know what well i know what i was thinking i was thinking that it was that this was a kind of luxury that
John: That only James Bond would understand.
Merlin: But James Bond probably has people.
Merlin: Well, that's the thing.
Merlin: They could send MI9 to come in with their tools and really, really go to town on that.
Merlin: But in your case, you're a grown man.
Merlin: You're living in a house.
Merlin: You're just trying to have a life.
Merlin: You were not warned about the rescue.
Merlin: And now you're standing there with the carpet in your hand.
John: Well, this is what it is, right?
John: I believed that I was ready for this amount of luxury, even though this was not an expensive carpet.
John: And I think it was not expensive because expensive carpet purchasing people recognize that this is uncleanable.
John: Even people that have people were like, I got other things for my people to do.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You can afford people to come sweep your driveway, but you...
John: in fact, hire them to come do it with an electric broom because you have other work for them to do.
Merlin: You know, one thing I keep thinking about, John, is, as you know, before I buy something, I do like to do my research.
Merlin: I like to read up.
Merlin: I read reviews and then reviews of the reviews and all that sort of thing.
Merlin: I feel like one thing you hear a lot about consumer goods, people say, how hard is this to clean?
Merlin: Is this thing difficult to clean?
Merlin: Can I drop this in the dishwasher?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And I used to go look at that and go...
Merlin: Like, that seems like a real normie, you know, neoliberal way to look at life.
Merlin: But let's be honest.
Merlin: Now I'm a man who has to chase the family out of the house to clean a pan.
Merlin: That's not sustainable for every item in my life.
Merlin: But the thing is, so that's the worst.
Merlin: This is the boss.
Merlin: The final boss is this particular goat carpet.
John: And I thought having a robot was going to eliminate this.
John: It'll figure it out.
John: It's a robot.
John: But what the robot needs is a rake, basically.
John: It needs a carpet rake.
John: And so I'm going to come home one day and the robot's going to have purchased itself a leaf blower.
John: And the last thing I want is another leaf blower in this neighborhood.
John: You know what I mean?
John: And it's just like, what are you doing?
Merlin: Because it's already probably sentient.
John: Yeah, and then it's going to have headphones on so it won't be able to hear me when I'm shouting at it.
Merlin: What are you doing?
Merlin: Can you turn that off right now?
Merlin: I'm doing a podcast.
Merlin: I'm doing stuff in here.
Merlin: I mean, do you... Let me ask you this.
Merlin: It doesn't beg the question.
Merlin: It raises the question, which are different things.
Merlin: It raises the... Stop saying beg the question when you mean raise the question.
John: Beg the question is a phrase that should either be dead or we should agree it means something different from what it means.
Merlin: It does mean something different.
Merlin: It's a rhetorical phrase, but it does raise the question.
Merlin: Okay, it raises the question.
Merlin: Do you think the...
Merlin: Do you think it wants to be clean?
Merlin: This carpet?
Merlin: I don't think it does.
Merlin: I don't think this carpet ever was clean, and I don't think it intends to be clean.
Merlin: You know how it is with movies and other objects in life?
Merlin: You want to find a thing that knows what it is.
Merlin: I referenced the movie Pacific Rim.
Merlin: Some people don't like it.
Merlin: I love it, because I think the movie knows what it is.
Merlin: If this carpet knows what it is, do you think it trends entropically toward not just colonization, but difficulty in cleaning?
Merlin: Does it want to be a dirty boy?
John: So in the course of the entire time I lived at the farm, the farm was mostly a shoes-off house.
John: But that said, if I came running in the front door of the farm because I had to go upstairs to get something and I was wearing my shoes, I would just wear my shoes upstairs.
John: It wasn't a thing where it was a shoes-off house where I stood there like a little nanny.
John: You can wear your shoes around the house.
John: Who cares?
John: Well, it's up to you.
John: I took my shoes off when I came in because I like to pad around with my stocking feet.
John: Yeah.
John: But what's happening here in this house, which is made mostly of floor, there are becoming places in the house that are not the front door where you take off your shoes.
Right.
Merlin: And what I've discovered is... Well, we've seen there's a no-shoe area inside the nominal no-shoe area?
John: Yes.
John: So you walk in the front door.
John: Normally, you would take off your shoes in a normal house.
John: Okay.
John: That would be true here, too.
John: But if you make it into the inner... Sanctum sanctorum, yeah.
John: That's right.
John: If you make it down the hall, if you walk on down the hall...
John: and you get to the end of the hall there's another layer of take your shoes off down here because you live in a video game because you can't and the thing that's exactly it is a video game because if you fail to take your shoes off down here you're never going to find the key that opens the magic door
John: And that's the trick, right?
John: That's the missed trick.
John: It's not about finding the key.
Merlin: Because it's almost like the SAT.
Merlin: You didn't really read the directions.
Merlin: If you read the directions, you'd know this is the only way to find the teeth and the key.
John: You had to leave your shoes in the room before the room.
John: The penultimate room.
John: So I don't think this dirty boy does want to get clean.
John: I think what this dirty boy is asserting is that there's a no-shoe rule two rooms away.
John: You never even get to meet the dirty boy.
Merlin: As you stipulated, it picks up hitchhikers from other districts.
Merlin: So it's sending signals in and out.
Merlin: It's putting out genetic material to recreate its goat in different rooms of your home.
Merlin: But on the other hand, it also seems to somehow, in an almost unholy telepathic way, collect things from other areas that one would have to imagine.
Merlin: Everything eats and everything shits, right?
Merlin: So this thing eats hitchhikers and shits babies.
Yeah.
John: The problem with me, as you probably also know, I know for a fact you know, is that I collect burrs on other parts of my body besides my shoes.
John: Is that right?
Merlin: You're participating in an area very actively.
John: That's right.
Merlin: If you're out in the ravine or you're out in that thing that's kind of like the woods, if you're out there, you're going to come back and you've got more hitchhikers than a child molester.
John: That's right.
John: What I don't realize is that I had a pine cone in my hair.
John: Okay.
John: And so I come in and I'm wondering, I took my shoes off.
Merlin: I think it's all figured out.
John: You didn't comb out your cone though.
John: That's right.
John: And I've got a pine cone in my hair.
John: I've got pollen in my beard.
John: I've got all this other stuff that gradually falls to the floor.
John: And then I'm like, how did I get a pine cone in here?
John: You're a carrier.
John: And I think that the room has squirrels, but in fact, it's me.
John: I'm the squirrel.
John: You're the squirrel if you don't know who the squirrel in the room is.
John: That's right.
John: If you look around the room and you can't tell who the squirrel is, it's you.
John: And in this case, you know, most of the time it's just me.
John: So there was only one option anyway.
Merlin: So you're a little bit like, I don't know, like a Grubhub biome.
Merlin: Like you're bringing various ecosystems into other ecosystems and cross-pollinating, cross-breeding.
Merlin: It's, you know, sort of animal husbandry for home furnishings in a lot of ways.
Merlin: And I think also you did stipulate your house is mostly made of floor.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Yeah, mostly.
Merlin: The floor park is at least.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: So the Roomba and I look at each other across a crowded dance floor, and I say, I'm ready to do a map run with you.
John: I think you and I have – this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
John: I want to do some mapping runs where no cleaning is involved just so I can show you around the place and explain all the different colors and textures.
John: I don't think I have the right Roomba for that.
Merlin: And John, would you also want to talk about expectations?
Merlin: Because I feel like if that were a house sitter, you'd have no problem –
Merlin: A normal person would have no compunction about saying, here's my expectations.
Merlin: Like, please check the mail once a day.
Merlin: That means don't check it every nine days.
Merlin: You don't need to check it 12 times a day.
Merlin: That's just about mail.
Merlin: In this case, you want to walk alongside your Rosie and say, hey, listen, I know this one's going to be a little bit of a thistle.
Merlin: So just get, as we used to say at McDonald's, time to lean, time to, just get the big stuff, they used to say.
Merlin: When you go out, you got to go do lobby.
Merlin: And they say, just get the big stuff.
Merlin: we'll really do a good job tonight, right?
Merlin: Isn't that part of it?
Merlin: You say, here's the room, here's the expectation, Hakuna Matata.
John: Yeah, read the room is exactly right.
John: Read the room is so important.
John: This is what I need to know.
John: Is there a room in the house that in a mapping run, we just leave the door closed?
John: It looks like nothing to me, yeah.
John: What are my expectations in terms of, is this one of those sci-fi cowboy movies where when you talk about
John: uh the cowboy movie to the cowboys they suddenly don't know what you're talking about exactly yeah yeah i don't see a door yeah i don't see a door what are you talking about and the door is right there yes because the door's right there not to not to a cowboy though but like that would be so smart programmer it turns out to be is a programmed cowboy so what what i need to know is can't expectations managing expectations of my robot can i ask her slash it and
John: To her slash it slash they to to find a way or are we going to hold hands here and solve a problem by closing a door?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But that diminishes the value.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: If you can't just, because part of the idea of this whole thing, and again, the way you drive your family nuts is being so into the mapping runs that you're just doing it all the time.
Merlin: And finally, my wife has to say, I'm trying to get to sleep.
Merlin: Could we not have Rosie doing the mapping run now?
Merlin: And I say, of course.
John: Right.
John: Well, what your wife does is say, we're going to go on a hike in Santa Cruz, making it seem like it's a fun thing they're going to do.
John: But really, they're looking at each other and saying, let's get away from Daddy for a day.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: It's a break for everybody.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Daddy's going to burn his pants.
Merlin: If I didn't have this studio, I would be in a shallow grave, for sure.
Merlin: The last year would shallow grave me super hard.
Merlin: Right.
John: But you remember the old joke about the cleaning ladies from the 1960s where they didn't do windows, right?
Merlin: I don't do windows, they'd say.
John: I don't do windows, they'd say.
John: But that's in their managing expectations.
John: Well, but we were all meant to understand that that was a persnickety cleaning lady that somehow, you know, like, oh, she didn't do windows.
John: That meant something.
John: If you read that in a little one-panel comic in a Playboy magazine from 1972, it was meant to communicate something.
John: Is that considered a flex?
John: Well, that's what I don't know.
John: What she's implying is that you have her there, she's there to clean the house, but she doesn't do windows.
John: So A, you either need to hire a second person that only does windows, or you hired a cleaning person, but then you need to do the windows yourself.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: So it's one thing, if a sex worker says, I prefer not to do butt stuff, that's different from a priest saying, I prefer not to do...
Merlin: So the point being, you set the expectation, you close the doors, love is an open door, and then what you're trying to do is say, how do we both get the, let's be honest, how do we get the most value out of each other?
Merlin: Because I'm going to be the I in your team.
Merlin: We're going to work together.
Merlin: We're going to hold hands and Thelma and Louise into this goat room, and we're going to do what we can to help one another.
Merlin: And if there's something where we can't help each other...
Merlin: You should learn this in relationships.
Merlin: You can save each other a whole lot of frustration and sometimes, you know, real acrimony by saying, you know, this is the goat room is not a room we will enter together.
John: Right.
John: And in developing this relationship with the iRoomba, the question is like,
John: Does she do butt stuff?
John: Is this a situation where... Is it okay to even ask?
John: Is it okay to ask, right?
John: And so did I get a cleaning lady and I need to get a second one for butt stuff?
Merlin: Do I have to do it myself?
Merlin: Or a clergyman.
Merlin: No, I totally understand what you should do yourself.
Merlin: It keeps you in practice.
Merlin: This also leads to, I think, my third and final point of things I learned from my Roomba.
Merlin: And it's an interesting thing that happens.
Merlin: If it's been a while since Rosie's done her business and she's on a cleaning run, a full-on cleaning run, she could run around the house.
Merlin: She maybe gets confused.
Merlin: There are a lot of ways, as you can guess, there's a lot of ways that you can get very confused in their errors.
Merlin: And it's pretty good help with that.
Merlin: Keep moving boxes around is one thing.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I don't like the way I am.
Merlin: But then Rosie goes back to her tower and plugs in, and then, boop, your telephone pops up, and there's an error.
Merlin: And you know what that error is?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You get a memory error.
Merlin: She sends you an error.
Merlin: She sends me an error, and she says, I just had a memory error.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Because I have too much map.
Merlin: Did she lose some map when she has a memory error?
Merlin: She dropped some bits because there was too much in Rosie's memory.
Merlin: I unintentionally asked or allowed too much of Rosie.
Merlin: And now that run, there's not going to be like, you basically need to go and you need to push some buttons and tell Rosie, take a little nap, start over, boop, boop, comes back up.
Merlin: But that's the thing.
Merlin: And this is true in life, John.
Merlin: Memory error, too much map in life.
Okay.
John: But wait, doesn't she sheave off some stuff into read-only memory?
John: She doesn't have to be constantly editing.
Merlin: Sort of an auto-archive.
Merlin: You go to the salt cave with Rami Malek.
John: Once you map the kitchen, now you're only trying to map the – then you put the kitchen map into some –
John: Like, you know, you port it over.
Merlin: It goes into – I see what you're saying, first in, first out.
Merlin: Well, you know, I'm not – It goes from RAM to REM or whatever.
Merlin: ROM or REM.
Merlin: Yeah, it goes to – sure.
Merlin: But, you know, here's the thing.
Merlin: You know, I'm not a programmer.
Merlin: I used to be a seasoned technologist.
Merlin: But one thing I'm familiar with is the idea of being, let's say, overwhelmed or overstimulated.
Merlin: Like let's say you go somewhere and you haven't realized yet that you're kind of introverted and you're so overstimulated that like you get cranky and tired.
Merlin: I think what happens is Rosie is capable.
Merlin: I really don't want to talk out of school.
Merlin: Rosie is so capable and so smart, but I don't think Rosie has endless amounts of memory on board.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So before it's even gotten to shunt it off onto my phone, which is kind of the Rami Malek cave in some ways, it goes, and it just says, sorry, there's just too much map.
Merlin: I had a memory error.
John: So I don't understand this because it's not like you're carrying Rosie to SFO with you every time and saying, oh, now you need to map an entire airport and clean it.
John: Rosie lives in the same environment.
John: Rosie could have three levels of memory.
John: When you're doing a multi-track recording on a computer and you've got 400 tracks of your bass player just trying to get the part right, and over time the memory starts to get bogged down because all of these are editable.
John: It is a bass player.
John: And it's a bass player.
John: But what you can do is you can click...
John: a lot of the tracks and say, okay, these are no longer editable, but they're here.
John: I see.
John: It requires more power to leave them.
John: John, is that because your RAM got full?
John: Your RAM got full and you needed to switch over to RAM.
John: You had to shunt it off to RAM or somewhere else.
John: I get it.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Your REMBA got full and you needed to switch to your ROMBA.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: This is the help page for what's called Error 66, which I think is a Star Wars reference.
Merlin: Error 66.
Merlin: Error 66 means your robot has run out of memory during a cleaning mission.
Merlin: You may see the robot return to its home base and reboot itself.
Merlin: The light ring will swirl white and the robot will beep.
Merlin: If this error occurs, ensure that your robot is provisioned to the iRobot home app before starting a cleaning job.
John: It's provisioned.
John: It's like it has a donkey and it's going out prospecting.
Merlin: Oh, 100%.
Merlin: They're the ones that make all the money.
Merlin: It's the donkey salesman.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Sure.
John: I do 100%.
John: I do 100%.
John: This was the whole problem with the gold rush.
John: I was just reading something about this the other day.
John: Oh, it was the...
John: It was the mulberry bushes, the fad of the mulberry fad.
John: The mulberry fad?
John: Yeah, it ended up the guys that were selling the mulberry bushes made all the money, and the people that were trying to make American silk, they didn't have the patience to unspool the little silk.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah, but that's why there's a mulberry street in every town in the East Coast.
John: The devil you say.
John: Yeah, somebody made a lot of money selling those bushes.
Phew.
Merlin: You know, it's always the lawyers and the provisioners that really get the money.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: That's right.
John: And who's the provisioner here?
John: I mean, am I the provisioner?
John: Is the robot the provisioner?
Merlin: Is the goat carpet the provisioner?
Merlin: It's the goat carpet that's really the provisioner.
Merlin: John, you need to get this nicer iRobot.
Merlin: I feel there's very little question in my mind that you need to buy this probably today, at least order it today.
Merlin: But my question is, John, what is your—
Merlin: What?
John: Here's the thing, Merlin.
John: You suggested that I charge it to the show.
John: I didn't know that was an option.
John: Have we ever charged anything to the show before?
Merlin: I mean, that would be pretty much what we make over like a month and a half.
Merlin: We've been doing this show for 10 years.
Merlin: I keep making less and less money from it.
Merlin: It's the oddest thing.
Merlin: But, John, it's so important that you get this.
Merlin: And my question for you, what's your go-forward strategy, robot or otherwise?
Merlin: What are you going to do about the goat carpet?
Merlin: Are you going to just keep living with it?
Merlin: Are you going to let it turn into like a planet of the apes where everything's all overgrown?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, what is your plan?
John: Here's the thing.
John: You know that I'm very suspicious of having a doorbell that's also a video camera.
John: I was not 100% sure that I wanted my garage door opener to be part of the internet.
John: Look at Matt Howie.
John: He still can't get in.
John: He can't get in.
John: He's sitting out in front of his house right now.
Merlin: He lives in a hotel lobby, but he can't get the door to open.
John: Because, you know, anybody could stuxnet your garage door opener.
John: probably Israel let's be honest that's right it's always going to be Israel but here's what happened the other day somebody came and put a garage door opener in my house so the garage door would go up and down and it's connected to the internet no did they not ask well they all are now and so I you know when Matt Howie connected his to the internet which has kept him out of his house for the rest of his life he hasn't seen his daughter in three years three years well you can see her through the window I love you daddy
Merlin: Ha ha ha!