Column: Chew On This; My job is cooler than your job
Today my column comes to you from inside a tractor.
And it’s not just any tractor either. It’s an 18,000 pound vehicle, which is roughly as heavy as 81 newborn elephants or 40 sumo wrestlers. Or one really obese killer whale.
But the size really isn’t what is neat about this tractor.
For one thing it’s green.
Oh, and it’s also a remote control tractor.
Today I’m not driving the tractor, because I don’t have to. The same computer upon which this column is being generated has the ability to drive this tractor wherever I desire.
I could till a field from the comfort of my recliner. I could mow a 100-acre lawn while I’m asleep at night.
But more importantly, if you upset me, I could drive it into your living room during primetime television programming.
Yeah, and when news crews show up to cover the big “tractor story,” everyone in the whole state will find out that, based on the last image burned into your TV before collision, you have a secret crush on Randy Jackson. Bwah ha ha ha!
But I digress.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that my job is cooler than yours. Where I work, we take perfectly good vehicles like jeeps, ATVs, and tractors and turn them into unmanned machines.
Machines that, like I said, could end up in your house somewhere between the coffee table and the rhododendron.
At this point you must be thinking,
“But I don’t even know what a rhododendron is!”
I know it sounds a lot like what a giant flying rat-like enemy of Godzilla would be called. However, according to internationally-renown botanists, giant rats do not have wings. And there you have it.
More importantly, you are probably also thinking,
“Does your company make those nifty robot vacuums that I’ve seen on TV?”
The answers to both your questions are, no we don’t, and yes you do stay up way too late watching infomercials.
Those so-called “robot” vacuums really suck. They are what geeks in my office call “algorithmically challenged.” They should occupy the handicap parking spaces of the robotic world.
Basically, all those fancy vacuums really do is scratch and dent your walls while perpetually missing that one important part of the floor where Fido sheds. However, they do occasionally harass the cat, and boy that is pure comedy.
While I am on the subject of the unintelligent design of vacuum cleaners, I must remark that aside from the feeble attempt at automation, evolution in this technological field has not come very far.
For example, I still see headlights on vacuum cleaners. Years of study and research has shown that A.) nobody really vacuums, and B.) if they did, they certainly wouldn’t vacuum in the dark.
Even though our company currently hasn’t cornered the house-cleaning market, I think we should try. We develop and make all sorts of neat things already, so why not a couple devices to help around the home?
We should make an automated spider killer. Laser and video will scan the walls and other flat surfaces in your house. When an anomaly is detected (i.e. a spider, or hopefully your pesky little brother), a disrupter will fire, annihilating the pest and aerating your walls just nicely.
Do you have messy children or roommates? An automated machine that loves to “pick up after them” can follow them around, retrieving forgotten objects on the floor. Then by a Santa-based behavior-checking algorithm, the machine will either place the things “back in their proper place” or incinerate them.
Well maybe on second thought our company should stick to what we do best. We’ve automated surveillance, demining and target vehicles. Oh yeah, and big tractors like this John Deere 7820.
I hope someday we automate my car so I don’t have to be awake to show up to work in the morning.
Even so, my job is still cooler than yours.
Garrett Wheeler is a second bachelor’s student in technical theatre design. Send comments or proof that your job is cool to wheel@cc.usu.edu.