SWMBO rarely expresses an interest in electronic devices, and has even given me the stink-eye when I come home with some new electronic gewgaw. Much to my surprise, she was intrigued by the Roomba vacuuming robot from iRobot. She expressed this interest a year or two ago, and we just neglected to acquire one.

We’re having new carpet installed here at Casa TBBS in a couple of weeks, and to aid in its maintenance, I bought her a Roomba Scheduler this year for Christmas. I’d half-expected it to be more of a toy than a serious cleaning appliance. Man, was I wrong. This thing really gets after the dirt; it’s smart enough to know what areas of the carpet need extra attention, and covers those parts multiple times. It does an excellent job getting close to walls, much better than SWMBO or I can do with the Oreck. It knows when it’s low on power, and drives itself back to its docking station to recharge.

Our particular model comes with a remote control scheduler, where you can create a cleaning schedule and beam it to the robot. Then while you’re at work, asleep, or whatever, it will fire up and clean the floor. We’ll try that out when the cat isn’t in the room. Yesterday, the robot saw the cat, and I swear, charged right for him. Our cat knows little fear, but I think the robot would have a decided advantage in a confrontation.

With all the IR signals bouncing around this house, SWMBO and I will probably light up like pinball machines, and pay off in silver dollars.

-k-

We named the robot Puck; looking like it does, the moniker seemed to fit.

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