The Robot Co-op

When I tell people I’m working for the Robot Co-op, sometimes they ask if we make robots. I’ve had to explain that we actually make websites, but we got our long-awaited Roomba yesterday, so now I can say we own one at least.

We put it together yesterday, watched it buzz around the office, chased each other with the remote control mode, and asked it to find its way home to its dock. Not to neglect the actual cleaning functionality, we programmed it to run early this morning. The first question we all asked when we came in was “how is the robot?” (answer: it got stuck on one side of the office because we forgot to turn on the Virtual Walls).

Looks like there’s competition for the title of Chief Janitorial Officer.

This weekend our new sysadmin Chuq will be visiting Seattle and we’ll finally get to meet him in person. He’s been a very active user for some time and has worked closely at the DNC with an old colleague of ours, so we look forward to hanging out. After familiarizing Chuq with Seattle, the Robot Co-op office, the all-important baristas at Cafe Vita, Credit Card Roulette, and our systems and technology, our top priority is to teach him the dark magic of the so-called Cheer Goblin. As we’ve expressed before, this infamous algorithm is shocking in its simplicity…but awesome in its mysterious powers.

Sorry, but Chuq will be sworn to secrecy.

We’d also like to thank everyone for the nice holiday cards we’ve been receiving. We do appreciate it. It is natural that people would be thinking of the Robot Co-op and our sites this time of year, though. Despite the fact that he’s never written a single entry, the top subscribee on 43 People is God.

The mail a postcard to The Robots from one of my 43 Places goal went up a couple weeks ago and we’ve already received 4 postcards from users. So far 6 people want to do this, but we’re hoping to get more 43 Places users to start sending postcards in from around the world so we can plaster our white walls.

Our first postcard writers:

• Laurel wrote from Mt. Rainier, Washington
• Linda wrote from Boston, Massachusetts
• Gabriel wrote from Tecate, Mexico

On the way to coffee today Josh mentioned that we should start asking 43 Places users to send us postcards from the road. How ‘bout it? Here’s our postcard address:

The Robot Co-op
1122 E. Pike Street
#1461
Seattle, WA 98122

We’ll tape your postcard to the office wall. If we get a few we’ll take a picture of the wall and post some pictures. Ideally you’d send us a postcard from one of your 43 Places destinations. Wish you were here!

There’s a pear and three apples on our new desks. Things continue to roll at the Robot Co-op.

New internet hookup plus Airport Extreme plus Airport Express plus 3 PowerBooks with between 10-30 gigs of music on them each plus new rocking stereo equals excellent music for robots.

The first full song I played: Metric’s Succexy.

This is the office on the first morning that I showed up for work. Josh and Daniel will be here soon, and I’m listening to Scissor Sisters and reading chapter 5 of “Programming Ruby”.