Category: Roomba

Cat/Roomba battle?

When I got home today the roomba had failed to make it back to it’s charging dock. When I went to look for it I found a couple things conspicuously not where I left them: a pot holder was on the floor (Talore normally doesn’t jump on the counters in my kitchen) and the laundry basket was on it’s side and mostly emptied. The roomba was stopped near the laundry basket, but didn’t have anything jamming it and had no obvious reason for it to be stopped. I’m guessing that Talore was trying to walk on the side of the laundry basket to evade the roomba, tipped the basket over, and pushed the button that stops the roomba, but I have no way of knowing if that’s actually what happened. The roomba also had collected very little in general, but there was far more cat hair on one of the sweeper brushes than I’ve seen there before and I cleaned that last night.

Over the weekend I attempted to keep Talore from sleeping all day like she seems to do while I’m at work in the hopes that it would cause her to sleep later and not wake me up. I was reading Cryptonomicon most of Saturday and every time it looked like Talore had fallen asleep on my desk I would get up and either pet her till she was awake or sit back down with her in my lap where I could pet her. She got a little sleep in her window seat, but for whatever reason she didn’t sleep there for long.

She still woke me up Sunday morning, but it was by walking across me to get back to the bookshelf that she sleeps on instead of meowing at me. I tried to continue keeping her awake Sunday afternoon, but she woke me up this morning in a mood to attack stuff. I think that was because she was hungry (her food bowl was empty), so I may start filling it at night instead of in the morning.

I’ve been planning to get a water pistol to shoot at Talore when she claws at the cushions on my furniture since just telling her “No” and glaring at her doesn’t stop her for long, but I couldn’t find one at wal mart today. Over the weekend I got a cup of water to flick at her when she starts clawing things. The first thing she did was drink a noticeable amount out of the cup, then go to sleep next to it. Apparently it’s convenient for Talore to have a cup of water on my desk since over a fourth of the cup has been emptied by her. The first time I managed to hit her with water she leaped three or four feet from the couch. The next time I tried she watched me flailing trying to fling water that far from the chair I was reading in for several seconds before I managed to hit her, but she did leave the sofa.

Talore has been playing with the feathery toy by herself (tossing it in the air and dragging it around), but she didn’t at all appreciate it when she somehow managed to tie the thread the toy is attached to around her tail. She got up to leave it and it followed her, which prompted another attack on it, but the next time she tried to run from it. She also tied her back legs together with the thread some time later and didn’t appreciate me rolling her on her back so I could untie her.

I discovered I had one of those large plastic bubbles of air that they use for packing flat things in boxes, so I thought I’d see if I could get Talore to pop it. She poked a few holes in it, but it’s probably a good thing that she didn’t actually burst it because when I did so she ran and hid under my bed for a while.

Visitors

A few people from my Sunday school group at church visited today.  I still have some of the (less appetizing) candy they brought last time, but the chocolate in this batch isn’t contaminated (with nuts or caramel).  When they knocked on the door Talore ran to see what the noise was.  I can’t figure out why that noise caused her to run to it, while noises like the AC coming on caused her to jump and look for someplace to hide when I first got her.  When they came in Talore wasn’t so sure she wanted to have anything to do with them, though she did get close enough to be petted.  I also got her to chase the laser pointer dot while they were here, but she was overly jumpy till they left and spent some time hiding in my bedroom and behind a chair.

I’m going to have to start running the Roomba daily again.  Apparently every other day isn’t often enough to not have cat hair completely obscure all the moving parts when it runs.  It’s amazing how much hair cats shed while never appearing to be missing any.  Hopefully Talore will keep a bit more of it in the winter.

When Talore is moving around on my desk and gets in the way (or starts creeping up on my plate of food) I tend to slide her back to the spot she has cleared off on the end.  It generally works well enough because her feet don’t get much traction on the desk surface, but I have to keep her claws trimmed since she leaves long scratches when they aren’t.  She finally stopped laying down/sitting between my keyboard and monitors, though now she occasionally just lays down on my keyboard.  At least she doesn’t generally do that while I’m in the middle of something.

All that remains of the feathery toy (till I find glue that sticks) is a plastic nub on the end of a thread.  Talore was quite willing to chase and attack it at first, but yesterday she got in front of it when I tossed it and got bonked on the nose pretty hard apparently.  Before it had hit the ground (from the chair she was in) she had made it over the back of the chair and was well on her way to my bedroom looking back to see if it was chasing.  Since then she’ll hit it if it’s on the ground, but the moment it leaves the ground she’s out of the way.

While I was looking for the large bottle of elmer’s glue I was left in college (leftover from a certain Halloween costume) I found my old rubik’s cube.  I’m sure I cleaned and lubricated it before I gave up on it, but it’s in pretty bad shape for speedcubing.  It’s nice and loose, but turning it feels like the plastic is grating against each other, despite the fact that it appears to be at least partially worn smooth when I take it apart.  I guess I got a new one for more than just the fact that the old one had peeling stickers.

According to the site I learned to cube from (http://lar5.com/cube) I should be solving the first two layers (f2l) in around 30 moves when I’m doing well at lookahead (spotting pieces and planning optimal moves).  I’m failing quite badly with my 45-60 moves, depending on how lucky I get at the start.  I haven’t decided if I want to spend time trying to optimize that (which should greatly improve my times once I can be efficient quickly) or memorizing moves for the more common cases for the last steps.  Considering how easily I memorized a couple algorithms I may keep doing that to a point, it just won’t help my speed much.

Robot Uprising!

I came home today to discover that my roomba wasn’t back on it’s charging dock waiting to be cleaned like usual. Further investigation revealed that instead of cleaning my apartment it locked itself in my bedroom and hid in the corner.  More an act of rebellion than an uprising I suppose.

Well, maybe not actual rebellion, more stupidity.  The reason that it did that was because it goes along the walls and when it went along my bedroom wall and hit the door it bounced the door off the door-stopper mounted on the wall. That caused the door to swing away from the wall and the next pass pushed the door closed. Then it cleaned my bedroom till it ran out of battery (and it picked up a surprising amount of dust considering the first night I had it I ran it in my bedroom till it asked to be charged).  I wasn’t home when it happened, but that was one of the first things it did when I ran it the first time (besides the cleaning till out of battery part).  I should probably find something to use to prop the door open.

I went to see Inception today with a group of people from work.  I thought it was really good and well was worth taking 3 hours out of the middle of a work day to go see it, though that may change if I end up working 10 hours on Friday to finish making up the time.

Also trimmed Talore’s claws when I got home.  She did not enjoy the experience, but after I finished with her front paws she was willing to tolerate it for the back ones.  She woke me up this morning by attacking my feet through the sheet, and her claws were sharp enough I was worried she’d managed to draw blood (not quite apparently).

I need to get a new laser pointer or find something else she’ll chase to try to wear her out a bit.  She finally started eating all the food I give her (she took just over a week to get settled in I guess), and now she’s very energetic and the laser pointer is about dead.

I also need to be more careful about my food when I’m eating supper.  Monday night I noticed Talore was somewhat interested in my plate with hot dogs on it, so I had it in my lap.  My attempting to keep her off my plate meant she decided to stalk it, so while I was reading my book I suddenly saw a paw, with claws outstretched, reach through the side of my chair and swipe at the second hot dog.  Last night I had shrimp, but I kept that plate on the edge of my desk so it was very obvious when she was going for it.  I let her have the last one.  I don’t think she really appreciated the breading on it, but she ate it all and licked clean the spot on the desk where she ate it.