This morning I did not want to get up. I had set my house to wake me up early for my appointment today so it started its routine at 6:30AM. Last night I turned on the emotion chip for my home. I awoke to my home saying this: "I think, I love you". Five minutes later,"You look beautiful today." Five minutes later,"You are so clever." It is rather amusing. I wonder if Holly heard my house profess her love for me? Maybe my house just loves me in a brotherly way. Yeah, thats it. I do know it has an insult mode as well. Should I turn that on too? Although waking up to "You look ugly today" would be weird as well.

Last night I set it for a random compliment every 5 minutes after 7AM, when I am home. The computer uses a bluetooth connection in my iPhone to detect if I am on the premises. If it detects me it will then know I am home. I can also set it up to tie into the door lock for all my friends. For instance I will give all my friends a personalized house code. When you come to the door to unlock it you use this code. Then the house knows you are there, at which point you will get compliments or insults from it, whichever you prefer. I could even have it turn on lights for you when you enter.

I wonder how far I am going to take this smart home stuff? As time goes on touch screen computers and web cams will get cheaper and cheaper. I can envision a panel pc in every room, with an embedded nightvision camera, microphone and speaker intercom system using a gps so it knows what room of the house you are in. Back in the day that was sci-fi. Now it is reality. I don't think about turning on lights in the morning because that is done for me. My computer does the following: lets me sleep to realistic waves, when I wake up it turns on the bedroom light and bathroom light, speaks a voice alarm for 30 minutes encouraging me to get up, speaks the weather forecast, speaks a daily joke, speaks a daily bible verse, speaks the traffic report for my route to work and turns off all of the lights when I am gone. During the day I can get on my phone and check the cameras in the house and turn on and off lights. Then I can activate the lock to let people in if they need it. I can control which music plays in which room - the bedroom, bathroom, living room and pool area. All that is left is for me to call it HAL and have it say "what are you doing Brian, this is highly irregular" when I try to unplug it. As long as I don't remove the humans from the system we should be fine. Maybe I should call it the WOPR. 2 points for the movie references.