In the two weeks since my daughter started college I’ve learned to be nearby the computer whenever we talk. She’ll say: “Mom, remember that ruffled silk top you loved at J Crew but wouldn’t pay $88 for? It’s now on sale for sixty bucks. Here, I’ll send you the link.”
Or: “Did Dad add money to my debit account? I wanna do my laundry today and the machines use the university’s debit cards. Here’s the link where he can transfer money.” How convenient.
And then my favorite: “Did you know that our laundry facilities are hooked up to LaundryView?”
“What’s LaundryView?”
Ping, here comes another link. I cracked up when I clicked the link. My daughter can view an animated graphic of any laundry room on campus and see which machines are busy. Busy machines are red and quake in a happy cartoonish way. Never mind the eerie resemblance to Sims graphics, this is truly useful.
She can view the progress of each machine:
If all machines are busy, she can opt to receive a text at first availability.
“It also reports on how much water we’ve saved so far. We’ve already saved two million gallons of water!” I like hearing the “we”; she's bonded with her university.
I haven’t gotten the report on the reality versus LaundryView correlation, but I’m sure I’ll hear about it.