One of the continuing "moving in" goals this weekend was to clear enough floor space so that we could run the vacuumming robot. Yes, we live with a robot named Roomba. We started him up this weekend and let him do the bedroom. Ok, how filthy-yuppie are we for sitting on the bed and watching him clean? For over an hour. While we sip coffee and lift our feet away from the floor when he buzzes under the bed. I'm watching my vacuum for fun.
But, the trial run was a huge success, he did a nice job on the bedroom and got into places you'd never go with a vacuum like under the bed, and at some point he disappeared into the closet and we could hear dust and little bits of stuff rattling around inside him. So he found something in there he liked. Next we set him up in the hallway and closed the doors to the rooms, except left the bathroom door open to see if he could get over the threshold and into there. It took a couple of tries, but he finally jumped over it and got in there. He knew there was dirt in there and he was getting it no matter what.
He's incredibly determined, and got stuck under a chair in his next room. He really really wanted to get under there, kept trying and finally made it most of the way under, where he got stuck. Then he made the "uh oh" sound that he makes when he's in trouble, and beeped a string of five beeps to get our attention. I now know how Luke Skywalker could listen to string of beeps from R2 and respond with "No Artoo, I'd rather not do that". I know now that five beeps mean "Help, my wheels are being pushed up into my body and I can't move." Three beeps means "Help, one of my wheels is off the ground."
We had a dog once that would chase bottle rockets down, step on them and bite them. The fireworks would then, of course, burn his mouth and spray his face with sparks. He'd bite them even harder, rinse out his mouth with water, and get ready for the next one to fly his way. Roomba is a lot like that puppy. I find myself thinking "What's it going to take for you to learn???" I ended up jamming eight shoes under the sides of chairs to keep him from going under there again. I'm sure in time, my response to five beeps will be, "Well maybe you should have thought about that before you went under there, dumbass." At this rate he's going to earn himself a new name. Here's the first few options that come to mind : "Rascal", "Trouble", "Diggity", "Scrappy". Any ideas?
