Welcoming Ba-kun, our new Roomba

Posted by mde [ Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:50:00 GMT ]

I got my wife a Roomba for Christmas. She's really hard to shop for, but she seemed pleased and kind of surprised to get it.

I asked her what she was going to name him, and she decided on 'Ba-kun.' It's kind of a play on words with the Japanese katakana pronunciation of both 'vaccuum' (bakyuumu) and 'bug' (baggu). 'Kun' is the name suffix you use with young men or boys, so I guess he's a boy.

We finally got him out of the box and put him to work the other day, and as you can imagine, the kids totally went nuts.

They just can't stay away from him, and of course the sudden course changes he makes as he drives around means he keeps banging into them and changing course again. They don't mind; they just laugh like loons. But of course it messes up the vacuuming pattern, which is kind of the entire point of a Roomba.

Felt kind of odd hollering at them, "Boys, leave your mom's robot alone, and let him do his job."

It does take awhile, but it actually does a pretty good job, even with all the toy clutter we have. I'm looking forward to seeing how it does on the carpet upstairs.