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Here Come the Groceries

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Ooops. My apologies for the late post, Baboons. It was ready to go but I forgot to push the right buttons – perhaps the whole process should be automated.

It feels like some of the impossible stuff we used to enjoy in movies is, in part, coming true. I’m sure I’ve already seen this image of a pilotless cargo pod docking with the space station in one of the Star Wars movies.

But this really happened last week – 7 tons of supplies just showing up, all bright and futuristic-like in something called an Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV-3. Welcome, mechanical stranger. Meet R2D2 and C3PO. They say the space station crew stayed up late to watch this operation unfold, and who wouldn’t? The beauty of space plus the sophistication of the technology plus the colorful lights and gas jets plus the tension of wondering if it will really work plus we get to have a new flavor of space food sticks on board FINALLY because I’m getting tired of Banana Nut!

And here’s a surprise – the cargo pod is disposable. According to the Christian Science Monitor report, the Space Stationites are supposed to fill it up with garbage and then release it to burn up completely in the atmosphere on an uncontrolled re-entry. It’s history’s most expensive Hefty bag, and not all that different from what my dad liked to do in his burning barrel out in the side yard. Bring out your junk! Anything that leaves here in a wisp of smoke is forgotten. Isn’t that how we got into this climate change mess?

They say the space program is a preview of coming attractions here on Earth.

Would you trust a drone to deliver groceries to your door?

71 thoughts on “Here Come the Groceries”

  1. At this age in life my brain is less trustworthy, so yes I would.
    Off to the MORA today and the MOA and doing some Blicking.

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  2. Hiya, fellow Baboons! I’m back from Our Nation’s Capitol. A quick scan of this site in the past week proves that you guys did beautifully without me . . . so well, in fact, that I should probably stay away. But I ain’t gonna.

    Dale’s question today sends me back to wispy memories of interesting times. I was a college administrator in those early days of incorporating computers into the critical functions of collecting and organizing information in colleges. One horrible early assignment I had was supervising the changeover that led to each college course having a distinct computer name and number.

    I remember the extreme, reflexive hostility most of us–especially those of us in the liberal arts–felt toward computers. T-shirts said “Do Not Bend, Fold or Staple Me: I’m a Human Being!” A standard joke was “To err is human but if you really want to f*** up, use a computer.” Academicians of all stripes were outraged by the way “the computer” limited their freedom to teach courses in the loosely organized way they always had.

    We thought we hated “the computer.” What we actually hated was stupid programming, which was the fault of humans, not “the computer.” That remains true today.

    So, would I welcome a computer doing my grocery shopping and delivering it to my door? I sure would if the programming were flexible and intelligent. It is hard to believe that a computer couldn’t do that better than I can, and I don’t especially treasure the moments I spend lugging bags of V8 from my garage to my kitchen.

    I missed you guys.

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      1. Had a great time, thank you for asking. And my health continues to be weirdly good. I wasn’t able to hike around DC, but I enjoyed touring in open-topped buses (even when I got smacked on the noggin by tree branches). We mostly did story-telling.

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    2. Welcome back Steve!
      I gave a laptop computer more time and energy than it deserved last night and it still wasn’t working right when I after I called it all the names I know. It was all I could do not to smash it with a large hammer. I just walked away. But it put me in a foul mood the rest of the night.

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      1. Ben, I think you and I have been having a similar experience with lap top computers. I have been having series of conversations with technicans who I think are located in India. I thought it was very funny when I heard one of them quietly comment “how simple is that?”, apprently thinking I couldn’t hear him. I was having trouble following this guys instructions, but there was a problem he didn’t know about that was keeping me from doing what he asked me to do. I wasn’t as dumb as he apparently thought I was, but he wasn’t too far wrong.

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  3. Absolute confirmation; ads would be far, far better than no trail at all. I don’t need coffee (can’t stand it actually) but I need a Babboon fix to get the day off to a good start.

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  4. No drone leaders on Trail Baboon. Preferable to have a real person who occasionally forgets to push the button, but is humble in the process!

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    1. Wish we could have droned bill kling.ike is doing the best human drone possible on radio heartland and honestly if we had t had dale start it up I’ll bet I’d think it was perfect. Sorry mike taint the same. Awful good though

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  5. It wouldn’t work in our household, since my husband is so very, very particular about the dishes he prepares and WHAT IF THEY BROUGHT THE WRONG KIND OF PINTO BEANS?!!! We would have pouting and brooding and fuming and whining, and the fusspot spectre would haunt the house because the dish he had planned wouldn’t be quite right and only he would think so but I would have to put up with his discontent and disappointment. There would also be terrible anticipatory anxiety waiting for the drone to arrive, with worries about the accuracy of the delivery.

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    1. I’ll bet he’d figure out how to make it screw up proof after a time or two. As for worrying about delivery, he’s gonna worry about something anyway let it be the beans

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      1. Perhaps, but the fact that it wouldn’t match what he imagined it to be causes distress. It would be a missed opportunity for pinto bean perfection. That is what is intolerable for him.

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  6. Good morning to all. I guess I would be okay with some drone deliveries. Mostly I think I wouldn’t want them or need them. I think most things should be bought by going out to the stores, or wherever you are shopping, and interacting with the people providing the products. Anyway, by the time we get drone service to our homes, if we get it, it will probably only be a service for the wealthy. Of course, if things change and the wealthy are no longer so wealthy, there might be a way all of us could have drone service if that is what we want.

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    1. But consider, Jim, how it would free up your time if chores like shopping were automated. You would lose the human contact with the checkout girl who smacks her chewing gum while running your cans by the scanner. And then you would have more time to communicate with truly intelligent, complex, admirable people–people like me. 🙂

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      1. You are right, Steve, about avoiding trips to the super market and the extra time that would make for visiting with people like you. However, I am hoping for a shopping scene in the future where we have a lot of small food shops like I saw in Paris on my only trip there and a future where we have very few super markets.

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    2. Drones would deliver only to those huge hummer homes in the suburbs. But the people would have to pay them in advance for the delivery. Because people in crass houses shouldn’t owe drones.

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        1. Or the customers might live on yachts, if the grocery warehouse was just a drone’s row away.

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      4. Amazing Linda. That’s like watching Superman leap over a tall building without a running start – just two economical lines set up that classy pun. Well done!

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  7. Maybe just the DELIVERY.. Renee’s fussy chef-hub and others of us who don’t mind shopping could carefully select what we want and go home empty handed and light on our feet. Shortly thereafter, the drone could deliver the goods (including the heavy V8 cases for SiSP) and, more importantly for me, PUT THEM AWAY.

    I have tried the earth-bound delivery services and haven’t enjoyed the “shopping” process. I’d rather walk down an aisle to find what I want. Also, they were too heavy on the packaging, wrappnig a single pepper in plastic and/or styrofoam.

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    1. For a short while, we had groceries delivered and I know what you mean, Lisa. The goods didn’t look right – smaller than I imagined, somehow. I think I needed to see them in the store first – for context.

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  8. Life at our house is too variable to let a program sign us up for groceries. Just because I used four pints of whipping cream last week (tea and scones that weekend) doesn’t mean I want four pints this week.

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  10. How does a person buy fruit and vegetables without seeing, squeezing, sniffing? And one of my pure summer pleasures is the farmer’s market. I’m sold on the European/Asian mode of shopping for fresh food daily (or almost daily). Even though food can over-accumulate in our refrigerator, we’re trying mightily to minimize that tendency. It may be easier if you live in the city near coops, grocery stores, outdoor markets. Also we don’t plan ahead or use fixed recipes. If we don’t have black beans in the pantry, supper morphs into something with garbanzos. If the weather turns cold overnight we cook something hot, and visa versa.

    I don’t know if I trust someone else to choose my cantaloupe 🙂

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    1. I will admit to being totally spoiled living in my city neighborhood where I have a good grocery store a block away. I rarely shop for what I need to make dinner more than 24 hours in advance (I might shop tonight for what i plan on making tomorrow so I don’t have to shop and then cook after getting home from work – but planning further in advance than that confounds me). Guess I can’t ever move to the ‘burbs (or another neighborhood), too spoiled by being able to walk over and grab a missing something or other…

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  11. Frankly, Husband does most of the grocery shopping these days, which is almost like having a computer do my shopping. He does the physical shopping, but I have to provide a detailed list. When I go it’s usually because i want to browse for produce or haven’t decided yet what I want to make for dinner (or lunch or whatever) and want to wander the store for inspiration.

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  12. Makes me think of the mailman who delivers everything to the native tribes in the bottom of the grand canyon. Ypu could always move to the burbs but erma bombecj is dead and the best buy on the corner is starting on a death spiral. Maybe drones are the answer. I know if I could get them to handle the honey do list my life would be aimed more in the direction I aspire to, mail stuff tasks… Heckake me the drone quartermaster. I’ll handle job assignments for the first hundred all by myself. I wonder if drones-r- us.com is available?

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    1. Dronemaster would look good on a business card.

      You should never let them go bowling, though. I’ve heard that a bowling drone follows no boss.

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  13. I have a tendancy – which has become more marked lately – of forgetting to put certain things on my list, or putting them on the list and then forgetting to buy them when i’m in the store, even though there it is in black and white right before my eyes. This has caused me to become better at changing supper plans or substituting or doing without ingredients.

    One of the most stupid of those “oops’ moments is when I went to Trader Joe’s – not an every-week trip for me because of the distance- and at the end of the list was “Gift Card for Middle Daughter” (she’s in art school in Philly and her birthday was coming up). One of the main reasons I went to TJs that week. Got to the end of the food items, folded up the list and stuck it in my pocket, checked out, and drove to my next stop. As I was walking into the co-op, it dawned on me – no gift card! Would a drone help with that? If so, sign me up.

    I do not want a drone to go the Farmers Market for me – too much fun to see what veggies are looking good that week and to spontaneously splurge on something healthy, plus I go to a small market and while I’ve never told any of the farmers my name, some of them recognize me not just from week to week, but from the previous year.

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    1. Edith, if I have a list with 3 things on it, I’ll forget at least 1. I’m easily distracted!? And then there’s that thing where if you’re trying too hard, the thought disappears? So I have to let my brain wander around till the thought sneaks in the back door. It’s a variation on going upstairs and then forgetting why you went there in the first place. Now you all know how far I’ve travelled down the road to oblivion. Soon I won’t care because I won’t remember why I cared or that I even cared in the first place.

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      1. Well, I do eventually remember most of those items on the grocery list…but usally it’s as I walk into my house after shopping, or when I start to fix supper.

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  14. I think my neighborhood would be a no drone zone, if not, I would certainly lobby to make it one. Grocery shopping for me is not a chore. The Farmers’ Markets are the top of my list all season long; the rest of the year I spend more time at the Mississippi Market, Hmong Town, Shuang Hur
    Oriental Market, Caspian Sea Market, and El Burrito Mercado. I can spend hours in each of those
    places without considering it a waste of time. Now, if they had a drone cleaning service, especially one that also does windows, sign me up!

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    2. a drone cleaning service? sign me up. Oh, to live life without having to dust or, in reality, not having to watch as layers of dust accumulate.

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      1. OT – Just back from the orthopedist. Good news, I’m healing like a teenager; calcium is beginning to form around the fractures. Range of motion in arm has increased significantly, beyond what they would have expected at six weeks from the injury. Same is true of hip an pelvic injury. I’m going to celebrate by skipping the narcotic pain killer and have a glass of wine instead.

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        5. great news pj. glad to hear the proress is coming along so nicey. hold off another couple weeks for the 3 meter high dive though.

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