Nanci
Alien Lover
Choco sounds like she is a very amusing snake.
:-offtopic How well do those robot vacuums work anyway?
They clean very well. They are somewhat high-maintenance, though. If you don't keep them clean, they will die. I have four- I'm pretty addicted. They are all scheduled- they go on missions and return to their home bases without me. Once a week I do a thorough cleaning of them. One is assigned to my bedroom, walk-in closet and bath at 6AM, one does the living room, kitchen, laundry room, hallway and computer room at 7AM, and one does the pigeon's room at 7PM. When I get home, my carpets are always freshly vacuumed- it's wonderful.
Somepeople think Roombas are capeable of remembering or tracking where they have been, but actually, each mission is a brand new start, and they do a series of three movements- wall-following, spiraling and room crossing- over and over and eventually cover all areas of the room. Some have a feature called "dirt detect" where if they discover a particularly dirty area, as determined by number of particles hitting a detector, they will do a concentrated spiraling cleaning of that area. They also have cliff-sensing technology to prevent them from falling down stairs (which also sometimes prevents them from going onto a black area rug!) and you keep them away from places you don't want to go by using virtual walls with IR beams. (The newest series uses "lighthouses" with tractor beams to guide the Roomba from one room to the next and back to its home base).
