Sonny the Roomba

We have owned a Roomba robot vacuum for over a year now. We named it Sonny, in homage to Sonny the robot from the movie "I, Robot" (and presumably the books, but I've never read them... gasp!)

CNN had an article yesterday about other people who own Roomba vacuums. Apparently, other owners have dressed their Roomba up in clothes. Now, I think thats a bit much, but we do participate in behavior that the researcher found odd:

1. We've named the machine, as described above.
2. We've assigned a gender to the machine (male).
3. We do "worry" when Sonny signals for help. This is practical in nature.. if he is stuck on something then he's not vacuuming. With a moderately short battery life and a very long recharge time, its important not to let the battery die while he's stuck on something.
4. We've "Roomba-ized" our rooms so that the machine can function more easily (well, actually i dont care how easy it is for him, just that the performance of duties is better carried out... this is practial in nature.... if you pay that much for a robot, I expect to get my money's worth by getting a good vacuuming out of it!!)
5. Mike has always been excited about vacuuming, but he also really enjoys Sonny. Taking care of Sonny is challenging, so I make Mike do it. (Of course, I also give Mike some of the challenging parts of taking care of Tera...like cleaning up her poop). For example, Sonny requires detailed and tricky disassembly and thorough cleaning after every use. If we had to do this much work on a full size vacuum we'd chunk it.