pocket

October 15, 2006

Aibo Going Extinct

Well, these days it seems like everything is going extinct... even computorized robot dogs, Sony will no longer be selling it effective early 2006 but I'm sure eBay will! Meet Aibo (if you haven't already), I really wanted to buy this guy earlier in the year but with a $2000 price tag that's a bit steep for a college student.

Aibo can stream your email (reading it out loud to you), keep you up to date with calendar activities (once again... barking out commands like "pick the kids up from school damn it!!!"), and it can even be set for motion sensing + camera mode to protect the house and alert you at work via email if your house is being burglerized! If you're lucky, the thief might even take your $2000 robot companion (which will aleart you of it's exact position via GPS!) well, I made this last part up... but wouldn't it be neat? The robot dog is actually self sufficient and can find its way back to the charger and "take a nap" when the batteries run low. Yum Yum, so artificial... yet so intellingent :P

Yeah, I know all you "real life" doggy lovers out there are probably thinking "how stupid" and "I can't pet that thing" and "it can't lick my..." well, we'll just stop there, but studies show that robot pets actually have similar healing effects on their owners as real pets do! But... with Aibo going extinct I'm not sure how long those healing effects will last! I guess until the batteries run out?

here he/she "it" is, the Sony Aibo extinct robot dog! I've never seen a dog play dead quite like it?

You don't have to microwave this pooch to see what's inside! A friendly science lab made this nice x-ray for all of us to see...

The horrible screams that you hear at the end of this film were made by the experimenters, who were startled to see the dog attack the AIBO.

This was the first time that the AIBO was attacked, but it was not the last. During the course of the experiment, the AIBO was sometimes knocked over, bitten and chewed. It is still in perfect working order, and shows no visible signs of damage.

Nevertheless, we strongly advise you not to try anything similar with your AIBO. AIBO is strongly built, but it contains many delicate components that could be easily damaged. Your warranty will not cover you if AIBO is damaged in this way.

No animals were hurt or mistreated in any way during the course of this experiment.

Posted by pocket at 03:03 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2006

Corporate Training

Today marks the end of my corporate consulting training in Chicago. Let me just say, it's hot and humid here! and wearing dress up clothes can really drag you down... especially when you're working your a$$ off from 8am to 7pm every single day (plus half day on Saturday) for two strait weeks. Add the two hour time difference coming from San Francisco (equivilant to a 5am start each day) and you've got a recipee for success!

I'm not a huge partier, but we managed to squeeze in a few nightes of going out to bars, kareoke, bowling, and general drunken rowdiness. I'll post some pics when I get some time later this weekend.

We worked in teams like this... happy faces, lots of diversity.


Thursday nights were kareoke at Cadillac Ranch... Fridays were tough.


Yum, bowling!


Our Australian, playing pool.

Posted by pocket at 10:08 AM | Comments (1)

July 08, 2006

Friday Afternoon Focus Group

Another exciting Friday afternoon yesterday July7. It was my last day of training where I work (before I go on a business trip this weekend and do more training in Chicago) and I had planned on leaving early and having some fun. To preface this fun: earlier this week I was with my friend Alex hanging out in Palo Alto with his girlfriend who is running a lecrosse camp, we actually spent the night in the Stanford dorms and went to this pool party... I bought a bike, we even saw Superman (it was a big weekend), the point is, while we were out in Palo Alto I ran into this lady who was looking for participants in a focus group on video games. Well, I love the gaming industry so I signed up.

It just so happens that the company running the focus group was Lucas Arts! Crazy... I love Lucas Arts but lets be honest, most of their games suck, can you say say Star Wars Galaxies? Yeah, not good, but actually that project was run by Sony. Well, I can't say much about the focus group because I did sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), but what I can say is; the food was good.

So I had left work, headed out to the focus group (which was like an hour and a half away from my work) and on the way I passed some really cool sites. Motorola has a huge office complex right off the highway near where I was and I also passed Yahoo headquarters... These are some amazing companies and the buildings are very impressive. All of Yahoo's buildings match and they are on both sides of the street! p.s. Yahoo and Ebay have teamed up along with PayPal and Skype... I have friends up here in NorCal that work at all of these companies and it's pretty cool!

So the other really neat part about Sunnyvale (which is the town where all of this craziness is going down) is that it is right next to Moffett Field, which is now owned by Lockheed Martin (originally built by Goodyear... the goodyear blimp???). This so called "field" is huge and it contains two gigantic hangers, another rounded hanger for blimps, and an enormous wind tunnel. I tried to get in but the security guard told me it was all closed and honestly, you don't want to mess around with guys who build missiles and rockets all day :)

Arial View Moffett Field


Old School Pic of Blimp Hanger


Sucktastic Wind Tunnel

Posted by pocket at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)