Tag: home

Unboxing My New iRobot: A Weekend Adventure

January 12 2024

The new iRobot arrived from Amazon, but I delayed opening the box. Things were about to get difficult.

That old iRobot developed some bad habits. Like older people, it got cranky; sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. The situation was far more frustrating than the word suggests when the machine spun around in a circle and went home like a dog refusing a walk. So, it was time to get a new one.

There I was, examining the sizable box holding my new iRobot. When I receive a new product, I usually empty the box to see all the items sent and then look for the one-page instructions.

Assuming that the new one needed powering up, I plugged it in. I then consulted the instructions, but the print was too small to decipher. With a magnifying glass, I discovered that of the dozens of pages, only two were in English. The other pages had identical text in dozens of languages, each two pages long.

Besides the instruction manual, I found two cards with QR codes. I have an iPhone, so I had no trouble taking a picture of the codes and reading the instructions. But what if I had no iPhone?

No other instructions were provided beyond the miniature English text and QR codes. From the two pages of text, I learned to charge the machine until the swirling white circle around the start button stopped. The other and more critical instruction was to “pair” my iPhone with the iRobot. Once I paired my phone with the cleaning genius, instructions arrived.

The first command received was to give my machine a name. We discussed the name. We didn’t intend to imply cleaning is women’s work, but finding a gender-neutral name souncing good to both of us proved difficult. The current recognition of multiple sexes makes using “(he/she)” after names too lengthy. Our old iRobot, Matilda, has a namesake: our new iRobot.

Soon enough, my iPhone indicated Matilda was ready to clean. I punched the starter button, and Matilda came off her base. Then she took off towards the bedroom, changed her mind, and returned to crank around her base. After that, she seemed to meander aimlessly in different rooms until it ran out of juice, returned, and mounted her base for a refill.

I was disappointed by the short amount of time Matilda spent cleaning. At this rate, she will need three or four charges to clean the main floor. The old and faithful Matilda did the entire floor with only two charges.

By now, not knowing what to do next and in a frustrated mood, it was time to call customer service. Connecting with a very courteous gentleman with a foreign accent did not take long. A nagging question about his location tugged at my mind, though I felt no desire for interaction in my current mood. He told me to charge Matilda three hours before starting. I had charged it for less than an hour because my iPhone informed me Matilda was ready to dance. The swirling was slow, and my iPhone said Matilda was ready.

Another key information I learned from the representative was to press the “map” button first so Matilda could survey our house, measure the rooms, and map them in her memory. The first time around, she will not clean, he said. I asked where the map button was. I saw the word map next to the Google symbol for maps, but when I touched the symbol, Matilda jumped off the base and started cleaning. No, the customer service gentleman said. Just touch the words “map,” not the symbol. And so, we made friends with Matilda, and once charged for the third time, she cranked around the entire main floor, mapping our house without cleaning.

She mapped our house into her memory and even called the rooms by their names. For example, there was a living room, bedrooms numbers one and two, and so forth. She correctly identified our Christmas tree, calling it ” the Holiday Tree,” the accepted word for it by today’s standards. How the hell could she recognize it? The star-shaped footing for the tree may have given her the information around which she had to circumnavigate. Very smart. And if I did not find the floor plan realistic, I could correct it on my iPhone.

Now that Matilda had our floor plan in her plastic body, I could enter a ‘new project,’ check the rooms to be cleaned, and then punch the start button.

Opening the box, figuring out the instructions, calling for customer help, and waiting for Matilda to charge and recharge took most of the weekend. Now, with the floor plan in Matilda’s mind, I can still change. I understand how to use the new iRoboy and could retire old Matilda to the basement should she return to life.  

Phew! I relaxed and poured myself a glass of wine, celebrating success. Then the realization hit me: did we not get this model because it is not only self-cleaning but also “mops.” (Self-cleaning means we do not have to empty the dustbin. She does it herself by having a massive blow into the base when she finishes the assigned project and returns to the base). Yes, she does mop with water! Aha, that is why there was another gadget for mopping in the box, into which we put some water. Boy, I’ll need another weekend to figure out how to mop with Matilda! I’ll sit on it for a week before initiating another adventure with Matilda.

My Impressions of Three Frank Lloyd Wright Houses

December 1, 2024

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House in Buffalo, built in 1904, would inspire any young man seeking a career in architecture (Darwin Martin was the CEO of the Larkin company). Stepping from the entrance porch, sheltered by a low overhang, into the lobby with a much higher ceiling conveyed a sense of warmth as if coming in from the cold outside. A massive fireplace dominated the right side of the lobby. A pergola, visible through a stained glass window, pointed towards the coach house. Entering, the lobby was dark with the surrounding walls made of sculptured stonework, using local materials.

The house layout was logical and straightforward; the reception room for entertaining guests opened on the left of the lobby. On the right was a large and extended room divided into the dining area, the living room, and the library at the other end. What gave elegance to all the spaces were windows all along the walls facing the outside, with colored patterns embedded in them. The windows illuminated the rooms and allowed occupants to view the surrounding landscaping designed for viewing from inside. Walking through the rooms was very comforting; I wanted to sit in the living room and enjoy the view through the windows.  

FLW was a total architect, designing not only the outside but also the inside of the house with most of the furniture, sometimes conflicting with the client’s wishes. For example, he created the bed for Mr. and Mrs. Martin in the main bedroom. It was esthetically pleasing but so short that Mr. Martin remarked that he could use it only while lying diagonally across the bed. Mrs. Martin had real trouble with the bed and decided to move to another bedroom with a larger bed in a few months.

Another example of the architect pushing his ideas was the grand piano the Martins wanted in their living room. FLW demanded that the piano be made of a specific wood to match the room’s color scheme. The piano would have taken a long time to manufacture and was so expensive that the Martins decided to buy one from a store, ignoring its color.

The design of the library floored me, I didn’t see any books. The books were in casbinets, designed by the architect, that swiveled to provide access to the books. It also surprised me that the library was furnished with a large table in the middle, against which were two bench seats facing away from the table on opposite sides. It seemed as if the architect did not want people to face each other when reading.

Impressed by the Martin House, we saw another FLW design, “Fallingwater,” a summer home for the Kaufman family of Pittsburgh, of department store chain fame. Fallingwater is one of FLW’s best-known designs, with a waterfall running through the building, built in 1936. Expansive balconies overhang cascading water; used in a famous building picture. The Kaufmans had one son, and the humongous living room was the most striking impression I had of walking through the summer house, created for only three adults. It was a vast open space with a few chairs and a massive balcony up front overhanging the waterfall. Windows covered three sides of the room. Against the back wall was a dining table of ordinary size with four chairs dwarfed by the oversized living room.

After seeing the main level of the house, the guide took us upstairs. Curiously, the staircase leading to the bedrooms had bookshelves; I understood that the son loved reading and insisted on having open bookshelves along the stairway and in his room, a design the exact opposite to the one in the Martin House library. However, his creative furniture design was evident in all the rooms; FLW designed a lamp for the night tables next to the beds with a vertical V-shaped wood construction that could be swiveled to throw light on a book when one read in bed. Equal attention was paid to window design; corner windows could swivel to open to let in air from two sides of the house and let the sound of the waterfall in from below.

In contrast to the two large houses designed by FLW, the Martin House and Fallingwater, we visited a 2.100 square foot Kentuck Knob, close to Fallingwater, also designed by him. The project was built in 1956 for the Hagan family for $90,000, who made their fortune in the dairy business.

The critical elements of the typical FLW style are all here: the house growing out of the land, situated to take advantage of the landscape, bringing natural elements into the house, and using local materials. It has long horizontal lines with a large overhanging roof. However, the design style has changed; the house has hexagonal instead of rectangular rooms. Designed by FLW, a long bench runs along the back wall of the elongated hexagonal living room, facing a window wall that overlooks the valley below. Sitting on the bench provides an excellent view of the panorama below. There are a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs designed by FLW in the otherwise empty room. The long bench along the back wall was bizarre; would ten people sit side by side to watch the view in front? Not likely. A living room for me conjures up arrangements of chairs in a circle or in small groupings, where intimate conversations could take place.

Extending from the living room along the window wall, the dining room provides access to the kitchen and bedroom wing. The hexagonal kitchen features a twelve-foot-high ceiling and a skylight. The original design for the kitchen did not please Mrs. Hagan, who was an excellent cook and liked cooking meals (there were no servants in this household) and insisted that the kitchen be enlarged. The redesign narrowed the hallway connecting the kitchen to the bedrooms. The idea crossed my mind that FLW did not cook and did not have a high opinion of women to design such a miserly kitchen, especially without an outside window. That would be standard today.

Kentuck Knob is now owned by Lord Palumbo, a British property developer from London, England. Even at 89, he still visits the guest house on the property for a month every year. Today, according to our guide, this building, with a market price of three million dollars, would cost one million dollars to build. Kentuck Knob is meticulously maintained and in excellent condition, operating as a tourist attraction.

These buildings, and others designed by FLW, are national treasures, the product of arguably the most talented American architect. The architect’s ability to seamlessly integrate the last two buildings into the hillside, while capturing the best views of the surrounding countryside, really impressed me (in contrast, the Martin House sits on a suburban lot). The architect’s meticulous attention to detail, designing everything from the exterior and interior to the furniture, really impressed me.

Designing all the furniture came with some consequences, though. All three houses had surprisingly small bedrooms. As a result, the architect’s design, which included beds, nightstands, and built-in cabinets, made it impossible to use any furniture from the previous home. It’s not surprising that FLW’s strong personality caused friction with some members of his clients’ families.

FLW’s clientele consisted of three wealthy businessmen, all of whom had attained success in previous endeavors. Do people living in architecturally stunning homes experience greater success and happiness? We don’t. know. The only thing we know is that it was expensive to hire a renowned architect. After comparing architect-designed houses to basic shelters during my travels in Asia, the Middle East, and South America, I noticed that most people live in simple homes, making the field of architecture seem not so important in a global context.