What will he bring home next....

It’s no surprise to anyone that my husband is a Gadget Geek (as I’ve mentioned on a few occasions before in my blog). He recently acquired some additional items and thought it would be a good idea for me to share them with everyone. He purchased these items on 11.11.11 which I just learned (thanks to Rob) this date was officially named “Nerd New Year.” (He started talking about binary codes and he completely lost me). Rob specifically asked me if I could blog about these two new “technologies” so he could spread the word of how cool these gadgets are. Who knows, maybe one of them will make a good Christmas gift for the man in your life.

First up – the Jawbone UP Band (http://jawbone.com/up)

This little bracelet will run you about $100. After listening to Rob talk about its capabilities, I decided it is pretty cool. (Although, I am not ready to run out and buy one for myself). The wristband is something that you use in conjunction with an iPhone app (of course) and it will track your steps, distance, calories burned, pace, intensity level, active versus inactive time, GPS routes and more. You can also program the band to vibrate on your wrist to remind you to move when you've been inactive for too long. I think the feature that got Rob “sold” is the sleep tracking function. Rob is obsessed with his sleep patterns and always complains to me that he always gets a crappy night sleep – now he can try to prove it to me. You put this bracelet in sleep mode and it will automatically track your hours slept, deep versus light sleep, awake time and overall sleep quality. Below is an overview of Rob's sleep quality from last night. He only got 4 hours of deep sleep.

This gadget also has a food journal feature. You can keep track of what you eat, but you can also take a picture of what you are eating and answer various prompts about how each meal makes you feel. Over time, it will use his responses to help discover which foods make him feel his best. Overall, Rob thinks this is really cool. You literally plug the wristband into your iPhone to download your data. Rob wanted me to mention this thing is waterproof and you can wear it in the shower and while swimming.

The other gadget Rob purchased was the "Nest." Ultimately, the "Nest" is a thermostat. What on earth is cool about a thermostat?  I have no idea where he even found/heard about this gadget, but he found this video and made me watch it. http://www.nest.com/#videotour He was convinced this is something that we needed and immediately purchased it. I have no clue what this little thing cost.

This is not your ordinary thermostat. The Nest thermostat looks like a hockey puck and can learn from your behaviors, preferences and surroundings. It is designed to learn your temperature preferences and then create a climate schedule. We have the Nest connected to our Wi-Fi at home, so we can change the temperature, adjust our schedule and check local weather from anywhere. So if we have unexpected weather changes (like we always do in Chicago) it will automatically adjust the temperature in the house. So for example, if it was 50 degrees one day, but it jumped to 85 degrees the next, it would automatically adjust so it was comfortable in the house. It can be controlled using your iPhone by using an app. It is cool because Rob can log in to nest.com when we are not home and adjust the temperate. It also allows you to track your energy usage. The guy that created the i-Pod is the Co-founder of the Nest Labs, the company that make this thermostat. I am pretty sure it does other things too, but not sure of the specifics. My head starts spinning after about 20 minutes of him talking about this thing. He mentioned something about it changing colors, but I don't know what that means. 

This thing was due to be delivered on Wednesday of last week. Rob called me on his way home from work (because he was so excited) to see if it came yet. When I got home, there was a Fed Ex note on our door indicating they left the package with the neighbor. Rob was annoyed because we don't know our neighbors and this meant he had to go march over there to get it. He did go pick it up and wasted no time installing it. At first I was a bit concerned because I saw all of these wires hanging out of the wall. Rob did come through and had the thing working in no time at all.

I know I poke fun at Rob's inner geek, but it is all in good fun. If it weren't for him, I'd probably still be rocking a razor phone and a big ol boob tube TV.

A picture of our office at home.....who needs all this stuff!?!