Tivo # 3, Erin Moron, Littermaid Not Elite

Ali met up with the guy selling a Tivo on Craigs List yesterday.  We picked it up for $30, pretty cheap.  Last night I hooked it up in the fitness room and worked on getting it set up.  It is in good shape.  The transaction was certainly more of a pain in the ass than ebay.  It required multiple calls back and forth as well as a trip 25 miles up I-75 to pick up the item.  I tried to get the guy to ship it to me but he didn’t have a paypal account.

Erin Moran is more of a car wreck than I imagined.  Her behavior on Celebrity Fit Club is bizarre.  Not only did she get whacked hard by the ugly stick, she also appears to be a raging alcoholic and have some sort of mental issues, almost bi-polar in nature.  She has strange mood swings where she will be hysterical and then 5 minutes later act like nothing happened.  During the show last night she simulated an orgasm on the bus.  It was extremely disturbing to watch.  If you want to be able to last longer in bed, just think of Erin Moran faking an orgasm.  You will last for weeks.

Well this new “improved” Littermaid Elite Ali purchased a month and a half ago is officially a piece of shit.  The original Littermaid unit we had was not perfect but it worked a hell of a lot better than this unit.  Normally you would expect newer versions of products to improve on the original but that is not always the case (eg. New Coke, Godfather III, Mustang II) Well the Littermaid Elite plus is significantly worse than the model it replaced.  Here are the flaws I have noticed in the brief month and a half we have owned it.

– Weak motor, much weaker then the original.  Almost any amount of excrement in the box will stop the rake, requiring it to back up and try multiple times to clear the box

– Uneven raking.  The path the rake takes on the way back to the park position scoops litter out of the back section of the box, permanently making that a low area.  If you try to add litter to fill that gully it will either be too much litter and jam the unit or it will simply scoop it out again.

– Electric eye does not consistently trip.  Time and again I walk into a box that has been obviously used multiple times yet the rake hasn’t even attempted to run once. 

– Waste receptacle doesn’t fit right.  If you drop the receptacle into the unit the natural way it fits, you will wind up leaving a gap between the receptacle and the Littermaid that allows copious amounts of litter to drop on the floor.  The only way to prevent it is to use your fingers to wedge the shitty receptacle lip under the the edge of the littermaid.

It’s basically a waste of money.  I called their support today complaining about the electric eye not working.   He gave me some ridiculous, inconvenient process to “reset” the unit that involved dumping the litter, ripping it apart and pressing on some button on the underside of the unit.  That isn’t going to fix it.  After reading complaint after complaint about the Elite series online I realized that it will be nothing but an exercise in frustration.  I found a a vendor on Amazon that still sold the older unit with free shipping.  Screw it, I bought that and will probably wind up tossing the new and improved model in the garbage.  There are fancier, more expensive automatic litter boxes out there like the litter robot but it is way more money that I am willing to spend on two animals that I am hoping move on to the kitty after life sooner rather than later.

We are getting a bit better at giving Spook medicine.  Although she still hates it, we are trying to reward her by giving her some tuna right after the medicine.  As far as I can tell, she hasn’t used the rest of the house as a toilet since coming back home on Friday which is all that matters.