Back from town again I investigated our robot sweeper's innards. There's been a lot of talk on both rasfc and alt.recover.clutter about Roombas, those robot vacuum cleaners. Ours isn't a Roomba but a cheapo floor wiper that only works on hard floors. You stick a disposable sheet underneath and it simply drags it over the floor. However it is quite cute and we used it a lot when I first bought it and it kept the kitchen floor nice and clean. But then something happened to it and it started just feebly going round in circles.
Anyway, I decided it was crunch time. I either got the thing working or I chucked it out. There weren't as many workings inside as I expected and I soon found my way into the part that drives the wheels. It started to look better when I removed a bunch of hair and fluff from the gear wheel, but the final solution was to glue the wheels to the axle. (The axle was turning but the wheels weren't!)
It is, even as I type, trundling round the kitchen giving the floor a wipe.
- Finished all the crits for the OU students
- Posted a message intended to encourage them to reflect on the tutorial
- "marked" the practice assignments the students do to get the hang of the electronic assignment submitting system
- collected the Daihatsu from the garage. It's not been repaired because he didn't have the right inner tube, so it will have to go back in again Wednesday.
- didn't collect the quotes for the repairs to my car because the other garage hasn't done it yet. But garage has been reminded of the need to get the quotes faxed to insurance company.
- did a load of washing.
- phoned 2 students to tell them the result of the ECDL test they took last week.
- made a big pot of soup which will be my dinners for the rest of the week.
- dried the load of washing.
No further progress with the novel revision, but I have cleared a huge number of things of the To Do List and eased my mind considerably.
Work tomorrow, but this week should have more free time so I might start catching up at work as well. Goodneess!