Finals week reprieve--Roomba

This is Roomba. I love Roomba. Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner that you set up and walk away from and it cleans a room in about a half hour. Now that may seem like a long time, surely a regular human directed vacuum is faster. And it is, but you have to push it around. Roomba on the other hand, pushes itself around and does a thorough job leaving you to go do whatever you want.

This is how it works: You take "light towers" and place them to set up a perimeter that Roomba stays within. You set Roomba down and push the button that blinks and plays a little happy chime. "Do do de DO" and it starts cleaning.

It is such a cool thing. And its totally mental, we had a vacuum already that worked pretty well--a fancy one. Roomba was about the same price and Kevin pushed for it, "Think about it, you set it and forget it, no more pushing a vacuum around. You can read while it cleans your house." That is what sold Mom I think, she likes reading.

We have a lot of animals, half of them have fur. Our house is always furry, so we vacuum at least once a week, usually on the weekend.

But Roomba does it for us. We are free to do something else, anything else. Its really great and I recommend it to you because vacuuming is lame.

Don't watch Roomba! You will go mental. Roomba doesn't clean like a human, it goes all over, seemingly at random but it moves in the most energy efficient manner.

We liked Roomba so much we got Scooba. Scooba mops the floors, by itself, without human interaction. We cook a lot and make messes a lot and our dog Nina can't seem to keep her mouth closed after drinking and slops water everywhere. The kitchen gets dirty fast and Roomba gets all the dry stuff like hair and rice and whatever else, and Scooba gets the sticky, caked on stuff.

Together they keep the house clean, so we don't have to.

The coolest thing about Robot house cleaners is how sophisticated we feel about it.

"Oh you still push a vacuum around do you? People still do that?"

If Roomba gets stuck or sucks up a sock or something it stops and emits a sad, tragic chime: Bee DOO.

It is the sadest two tone noise I have ever heard and fit easily into our regular conversation.

"Has anyone seen the left over Steak from last night?" asks Dad.

"Oh, I ate it for breakfast," says Kevin.

"Oh, Bee DOO," says Dad

And Bee DOO has popped up in other owners vocabulary as well. Its the epitome of sadness and helplessness and all things tragic.

When Roomba hits a wall it stops, turns and trys another direction and can fit under cupboards and navigate obstructions.

Do your family a favor and get a Roomba, it's worth it.

And finally, Jazzy cat doesn't like Roomba and runs and hides from it, which makes this video of "Roomba Driver" that much more funny.

Enjoy! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-jv8g1YVI