New devices always are coming along to help us with calculating, and thus further automatizing, our lives.  Now I can easily tell:

When the garage door is open

When the garage door is opened, a remote beeper is activated.

When the pool is filled

The alarm sounds in the bedroom when the water level rises to the point where it drains through a tube in the pool's wall into a bucket containing a water sensor.

When the temperature of the pool is right for swimming

The remote sensor in the pool relays the temperature of the water to a unit on my nightstand.

When the amount of salt in the pool water is appropriate

A test strip dipped in an inch of pool water shows exactly how much salt I need to add to the water to make my saltwater generator work most efficiently.

The height of a tree

The Sighting Clinometer allows me to sight the top of a tree, and immediately get its height.  This measurement is added into my TreeMapLA calculations.

When my wife is on her way home

The Skylink app on my iPhone alerts me when her car has crossed a “fence” area a few minutes from the house.

I can ask Siri to do all sorts of calculations.  She can tell me the distance from L.A. to Mt. Rushmore, what roads to use, how long it will take to get there and, at 30 mpg, just how much I can expect to pay for the gas on the trip.  What next?  I’d like to be able to tell when I’ve written enough words for this essay.  BEEEP!

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com