Thu, May 12, 2005
Awesome Invention Dept.—1:17 PM
Yet another of my brilliant ideas for improving all our lives: microwaves should come with a little TV screen (three or four inches would be enough) so you can watch a cartoon or a few minutes of SNL while you're waiting for your lunch to heat up.
This is particularly necessary in the office environment, where you can't really do anything while waiting – you have to stand sentry so you can take your food and free up the microwave for the next guy as soon as possible. It might be an excellent service for TiVo to provide, since everyone is (once again) predicting their demise. A hard drive as small as 10 or 20 gigs could easily store plenty of clips – and download new ones overnight. It could call up customized programming based on the length of your cooking, or it could allow you to select from a menu of your favorites.
You're just standing there, watching 3:30 tick down to zero – wouldn't it be more fun to watch last night's Top Ten list?
Brandon — Thu, 5/12/05 2:27pm
Great idea, but I can see employers being highly wary of something like this, because the potential for abuse is high. I would imagine they would be fearful of lots of "Hey, did you see last night's Top 10? Come on, let's go check it out!" moments that have nothing to do with waiting for food to cook. Which is not to say that I side with the employers, not at all; just playing devil's advocate.
Bee Boy — Thu, 5/12/05 2:48pm
True, true. You don't want employees wasting valuable time (and power) using the microwave for entertainment purposes. That's the reason marshmallow peeps are banned from my workplace entirely.