Retrospective: Pippin and the Roomba

In 2008 I got a roomba in an effort to help my housekeeping. This was ultimately a failure, since the roomba doesn't replace weekly vacuuming, and mine had a defect where one of the gears would fall out of place and to make it work again you'd have to take it apart and put the gear back. And I couldn't glue the gear back to keep it where it belonged because it had to be able to rotate. So I eventually gave up and put it away, and years later I gave it to one of my nieces who programs computers for a living so she could play with its programming. I understand that's a thing, now.

But during the time I had the roomba, Pippin had to get used to it.

At first he had to follow it around and make sure it behaved itself.

Then he decided it could probably be watched from a short distance.

Really it would be more comfortable if he wasn't on the floor with it.

Because it was a very scary roomba sometimes.

Perhaps it was better watched from around a corner.

Nah, it's not scary at all. He'll just sprawl out and ignore it.

And actually, although he got used to it, it was noisy and still bothered both of us, so I set it to run late at night in the living room (the biggest room) while both of us were tucked away in bed behind a door that hid a lot more sounds than I ever thought, given that it's a simple hollow door interior.

So after the first few times of running it, Pippin never actually saw it moving again. I think he was relieved!