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Dilbert's Ultimate House

angkor writes "Dilbert's Ultimate House (DUH) is the product of the combined wisdom of thousands of Dilbert readers, plus the help of real world experts, and it's online for viewing at dilbert.com/duh. Are you tired of tripping over the cat's litter box in your bathroom? Dilbert's house has its own bathroom just for the cat. Do you hate dragging a Christmas tree into the house every December just to throw it away in January? Dilbert's house has a huge closet off of the Great Room where he stores a fully decorated artificial tree on wheels..."

39 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Cat bathroom, but.. by grunt107 · · Score: 3, Funny

    where is ratbert's toidy?

  2. Not applicable to /. readers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It has an excercise room. Sorry.

    1. Re:Not applicable to /. readers by Kenja · · Score: 5, Funny
      "It has an excercise room."

      It has to have an excercise room, otherwise you couldn't not use it.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    2. Re:Not applicable to /. readers by wizatcomputer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also, the patch panel for the netwrking is way too neat. In the true engineer-style, it should be at leaste somewhat messy. Also, that's way too few hook-ups. How can you plug in the interent-enabled fridge into such a small patch panel? Or what about the auto-heat toilet seat cover? Where is it going to plug in? I think that the wiring needs just a little more "geekness".

      --
      What's the point of a sig?
    3. Re:Not applicable to /. readers by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      It has an excercise room. Sorry.

      I'll have you know I regularly ride a bike over 100 miles each weekend. It's amazing how much you can totally geek out on GPS/HR monitor/Cadence/Altimeter, etc. Check out out he HAC4.

      My ultimate apartment was next to the hardware store, within walking distance of grocery and many restaurants and across the street from a theater with stadium seating. Too bad it was about 40 miles from all the cool electronics shops in Silicon Valley.

      Three most important points to consider when buying a house (or renting an apartment):

      Location

      Location

      Location

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  3. Kids, Wife? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kid's bedroom? Wife's bathroom? this can't be dilbert we are talking about.

    1. Re:Kids, Wife? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Absolutely. He likes to be prepared but sadly cannot self analyze himself enough to be able to know that they are futile.

    2. Re:Kids, Wife? by datastalker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When Scott Adams put this project out to the DNRC, he said that it had to be a house that could *eventually* hold a wife and kids, and remarked that it was, after all, Dilbert.

      He also suggested that we (I'm a member of the DNRC of course ;) ) might make the house so wonderful that Dilbert could use it to attract a potential wife.

      Since it's a no maintenance house and has separate areas for the pets and kids, it may stand a chance of achieving that goal! ;)

    3. Re:Kids, Wife? by cpt_rhetoric · · Score: 5, Funny

      The trick would be to make it wonderful enough to attract, but not so wonderful that she wants it during the divorce proceedings years later.

    4. Re:Kids, Wife? by mikewas · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Naw, marriage wasn't the intent. It's just that by the time an engineer has figured out what's going on they're already married.

      This could be a poll question. If you're married, what was it that you really wanted:

      A. laid

      B. blow job ...

      I can't believe how many times I've heard a newlywed engineer say: "All I wanted was ".

      --

      "Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
  4. What do you get... by me98411 · · Score: 5, Funny

    What do you get when thousands of Dilbert readers put their minds together and design a house?

    slashdot effect? :)

  5. As with all things that belong to Dilbert.... by Viceice · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... soon to become Dogbert's Ultimate House...

    And does Bob and his brood still live under the couch?

    --
    Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
  6. soil by fiftyLou · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Come on.
    That greenhouse needs a good hydroponics system if Dilbert's looking to get any quality chronic.

  7. Luxury! by daveho · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

  8. Never heard of that. by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Are you tired of tripping over the cat's litter box in your bathroom?

    People keep their cat's litter box in the bathroom? Might as well keep it in the kitchen or your bedroom. Why keep it in a room where you spend a lot of time? Do people like smelling cat shit? I keep mine in the basement. If you don't have a basement keep it somewhere where no one goes.

    --
    Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
    1. Re:Never heard of that. by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 4, Insightful
      If you don't have a basement keep it somewhere where no one goes.

      As someone who has lived in his share of one bedroom apartments, I can safely say that a good chunk of cat owners don't have such places in their residence.

      Bedroom, living/dining room, kitchen, middle of the hallway, bathroom: take your pick...

      --

      Obliteracy: Words with explosions

    2. Re:Never heard of that. by Anonymous+Writer · · Score: 4, Funny

      People's cat litter boxes smell? Use the correct litter box sand, please.

      What kind of sand would that be? Quicksand?

    3. Re:Never heard of that. by chainsaw1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do NOT remove the box. Taking a shower and watching a cat torn between staying in a box it just crapped in and leaving through a torrent of water has it's positive moments!

      --
      - Sig
    4. Re:Never heard of that. by nordicfrost · · Score: 3, Funny

      When I had a cat (May he rest in peace), the litter box was in the bathroom, because it was near the toilet for disposing lumps 'o crap. It was a really bonding experience to go to the bathromm, the cat following behind you and taking a huge dump together. Needless to say, my logs always beat his, thus he was a moody cat...

    5. Re:Never heard of that. by Steve+B · · Score: 4, Funny
      How about not sharing your house with a member of another species?

      That has occurred to them, but they need somebody to work the can opener.

      --
      /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
  9. And all this time I thought... by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After reading through the stacks of Dilbert cartoon books in my college apartment's bathroom I was under the assumption that Dilbert's house looked something out of a third grader's art class.

    Turns out I was completely wrong and it looks like something out of Art 453, The CGI of Star Wars and how it can be applied to comics.

    I guess I preferred living in a world of Simpsons where I didn't have to mentally map out the entire episode based on a "fact" or look at Dilbert's house in anything except black and white pencil.

    That's just me though.

  10. the problem with unconventional houses by WormholeFiend · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is that in some areas, you simply cannot build them, because your neighbours might complain that your house makes their house's property value go down.

    I live in such an area. :(

  11. Aaaaauguggggh! I was Dilbert in the 80s! by Speare · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I will have to drag out the pencil sketches of a house layout I drew as a teenager in the 1980s. It has a LOT of similarities to the DUH, including a tower and interior patio horseshoe floorplan.

    Instead of a motif of elongated curvature, though, I was working with hexagons, and mine was a split-level, not a flat ranch. My movie theater was above the two-car garage.

    The tower wasn't a plain observatory, but a hollow tower designed for evaporative cooling: a good way to cool the central patio in the summer is to have a high evaporative "swamp" cooler at the top of a hollow tower, and let the cooled air fall down and into the patio area.

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
  12. Junk expands to fill the space available. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you aren't organized, having a giant house won't help you. The closet for the Christmas tree will get filled up with other stuff and you won't be able to get at the tree when you need it. One of the first rules about labor saving devices is that labor saving devices don't. They mostly just occupy space.

    I have spent some time on ships and have always been impressed by how neat and orderly they are. Everything aboard is necessary and gets used regularly because there is no room for unnecessary stuff. (Unfortunately, I am surrounded by 'stuff' because I didn't learn from the experience.)

  13. Re:Dogbert by justkarl · · Score: 3, Funny

    assuming you'd realy call Dogbert a pet

    I don't know...He does so much, he's practically an associate.

  14. 6000 sq. ft. house for a single geek? by hattig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    hahaha, it includes a "kids room" ... like that'll ever happen.

    And as for the exercise room, yeah right.

    Home theatre, yes. Home office, yes. He doesn't need a double bed.

    And yes, 6000 sq. ft. in the area of Silicon Valley too ... lol.

    Still, it looks pretty and is more sensible about making areas of the house that will be used rather than not used.

  15. I know someone who does that by tomhudson · · Score: 3, Informative
    Dilbert's house has its own bathroom just for the cat.
    I know someone who has the cat litter box in an unused room. The only problem is, "out of sight, out of mind". So the damn thing doesn't get changed often enough. Uggh!
  16. Nice for Scott and his family by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nice house that seems to reflect the owners tastes and desires without going overboard. Some might disagree due to the turret paying homage to the character that paid for it, but its nice to see a celebrity's home that doesn't try to match Aaron Spelling's mansion.

    myke

  17. Not quite ultimate by BrK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IMO, the ultimate house has no cats, but thats just me.

    The exercise room is woefully inadequate. And the "Wiring Center" is pitifully small. My home theater room alone has more cables than that. I have an entire wiring closest that is about 8'x 10' with many dozen runs of Cat5 and RG6 coming into it (for a house that is not yet 100% wired, and only about 70% of the size of the DUH.

    --
    -This sig intentionally left blank
  18. That is truly .... by Windscion · · Score: 5, Funny

    the dork tower.

  19. Well, he did have a girlfriend... by devphil · · Score: 4, Funny


    ...and after they'd been dating for several weeks, Scott Adams drew one strip where Dilbert shows up to work with his necktie completely flat.

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  20. Where's the damn price tag ? by elpapacito · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Beautiful house, very much approaching an engineer mentality...but hey no matter what I couldn't find a cost extimate or a decent cost analysis.

    Point being...my dear Scott, Dilberts out there probably will never be able to afford that house considering the rabbit exponential breeding rate of pointy haired bosses.

  21. Wow. by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Remembering the seventies energy crush, there was plenty of designs for underground houses (go to the library and peruse old Popular Science and Popular Mechanics back issues from that era).

    Building underground makes sense; where I live, there is also an extensive downtown underground network (in light gray on this map;interconnected city blocks are in pink) which everyone raves about (especially during winter), so it's not that silly an idea.

    However, the most striking feature of the house is the master closet adjacent to the master bedroom which leads to two bathrooms. I've been reading an interesting series of books about the evolution of the architectural distribution of rooms as social customs evolved. A long time ago, in France, posh houses had precisely that, dressing rooms adjacent to the bedroom that led to bathrooms (the only difference was that the husband and wife had separate bedrooms). The setting makes a lot of sense.

    And it proves that history repeats itself... There is a lot to learn from the past.

  22. Its so artificial by GabrielF · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This might not be a popular opinion here, but this house looks so cold and engineered and artificial. There's something to be said for the aesthetics of a lawn that isn't astroturf and a house that hasn't been built entirely around the principle of energy (and everything else) efficiency. Of course I'm not currently living in a drafty two-hundred year old monstrosity with leaky plumbing, I might change my mind if I was, but I get the feeling that such a house would be infinitely more livable than this thing.

    1. Re:Its so artificial by bhima · · Score: 4, Funny

      You do realize that the whole thing is CG... YES?

      --
      Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
  23. Credit where credit is due by nosredna · · Score: 3, Informative

    Generally, when you quote from someone else's work, such as how the entirety of the submission in this case is quoted from yesterday's Dilbert newsletter, you mention that you're doing it and enclose it in quotation marks.

    Here is the original from which the submission was directly quoted:
    http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/htm l/newsletter57.html

  24. It doesn't matter what they WANT! by Medievalist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I assume you don't have kids?

    What they WANT is nothing that is practical or good for them, at least until they are teenagers (then, they still don't want healthy practical things, but there is no longer any point in trying to fight the tide).

    What you need is things they don't INSTANTANEOUSLY DESTROY. That's the parent's guideline, take it from me.

    For example, in the "kids bathroom" of the DUH there is a sink cantilevered out from the wall. BRZZZT! No fly zone!!

    If you actually construct this thing with a support system that will prevent kiddies from ripping it off the wall (something involving huge stainless steel beams and multi-ton weights, I think) when they and their little friends start doing the mambo on the countertop, then somebody will split his little forehead open when chasing his (shorter) sister through the room and not ducking fast enough. If you pad the edge, it will get ripped apart the first time said little sister passes through the room carrying a cat frantic to escape the Tea Party of Doom. The cat will be leaving gouges a quarter inch deep in the mouldings, so you can kiss your padded bolster goodbye.

    The towel rack off the front of the sink, that's a GREAT idea, though. It'll soak up at least a tenth of the fifty gallons of water any four-year old spills while "washing his hands".

  25. Cat room no good. by temojen · · Score: 4, Informative

    The cat won't use that litterbox. She can't see the whole room from it, the window above is a possible avenue for predators, it's not sheltered, and it's too close to the food bowl.

    Move the box behind the door, away from the windows and food/bed, and your cat will stop pooping all over the house.

    Also, cats don't need a stairway to climb 2.5 feet unless you have kittens.

    1. Re:Cat room no good. by Kineticabstract · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Methinks you're over-thinking that just a tad. I have two cats - their litterbox is under an open spiral staircase (fails two of your criteria, since they can't see the whole room from it, and the open staircase it rests under is prime for predatorial leaping), and it sits directly next to the food bowls (though it faces away from them, of course). The male tends to sleep directly above it on the stairway, because that's the best possible location for tripping the humans. I've never had an issue with out-of-the box cat poopage. And the 2.5 foot stairway? You'd like the poor kitty to have to jump with a full bladder? Bad enough they have to go to the loo in a box of dirt, now they have to perform gymnastics to get there? tsk tsk.