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Well, James and I totally bought waaaaayyyyy too many fireworks this year. We started shooting them off Saturday night around 10:30 (would have started sooner, but the rain prevented it), and we quit around 12:00 midnight. In that time, we shot *maybe* 1/4 of what we had.

So, here’s some pictures of the stash…

So, Niobe, who is only about 10 months or so old but is still our oldest cat at this point, has taken it upon herself to train Tanis, who is only about 12 weeks. One of her regular training methods is to go into the back yard, sit still like a statue until something interesting comes along, then pounce on said something interesting, then bring it in the house and give it to Tanis. By now, Tanis is well trained such that any time he hears Niobe come in the doggie door, he immediately runs to see what she brought him back from the hunt. If she brings in something small like a cricket or a spider, I just let them keep it (it eventually disappears as one or the other of them eats it). On the other hand, big items like lizards and snakes they just play with until they kill and then leave the carcass on the floor. So, I tend to rescue those before they die. The other day, in just one day, I rescued two lizards, two snakes, and a tree frog.

It’s worth nothing that Niobe occasionally captures things like moths as well. And one day, while we were in the back yard working, she tried to capture another flying insect only to end up letting out the most pathetic yelp and then go running off and spend the next 10 minutes licking the pad of her paw. I haven’t seen her try to capture a wasp since then.

Had fun white water rafting today. Hope to go to the top of Mount Mitchell (highest peak east of the Mississippi) tomorrow, plus maybe a couple other things. Having fun. Sore from paddling. Enjoying family time. Later!

I could totally see building something like this in the mountains for the occasional getaway trip:

http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

OK, so I went to Legends for the 13th anniversary of Goth night.

I went to Flex for grimepoch’s 120 mins of music.

I got my left nipple pierced.

I posted to LJ.

All in two nights.

Holy shit…the world must be ending.

So, about 2 years ago I bought 2 flat screen LCD panels. When I first got them, I was running linux under VMWare on Windows XP on my workstation (the other way around didn’t work all that well, plus the guest doesn’t get good video and linux doesn’t need good video for running email and web browser, while the XP side had my flight simulator). However, there was a bug in VMWare such that if Windows XP enabled a screen saver or put the monitors into power save mode while the linux guest had focus, then you couldn’t ever get the machine out of power save mode. You had to hard reset the machine. So, I disabled the screen saver/power save mode in XP. That went on for about a year.

Now, that basically means the fluorescent bulb in the panel had been on for about 6,000 hours in the first year. Most bulbs only last about 10,000 hours then they start to die. And, sure enough, about a year later, the monitors started to become hard to turn on after they had been off for a little while. Sometimes it would take a few minutes, sometimes more like 15 minutes. When bulbs are going bad like that, they’ll keep running pretty much as long as you keep them running, but as they end their life, they become impossible to start. So, I did the only thing I could, and disabled power save mode again. This went on for about 3 months, and then by accident I let one get turned off for too long. I let the monitor attempt to start again for 3 days before I went to Circuit City and bought a new LCD panel. The nice thing is, the bulb was still under warranty. The only reason I bought a new panel is because the turnaround time on shipping it off for repairs is about 3-4 weeks. So, I shipped the thing off, and it came back after Thanksgiving.

Which brings me to the point of my post. After a three week or so turnaround, the panel now comes on just fine. But, the f***ing repair tech probably forgot to reconnect the internal speakers as he was reassembling the panel and now the speakers do nothing. I’m left with the choice of trying to open the thing up to see if it’s a simple disconnected wire (likely) and possible void any remaining warranty in doing so, or send it off for another three weeks. Someone should have checked their work before sending this thing back…

Looks like I may have done it again. About 2 weeks ago I strained my back. Or so I thought. But, here it is, 2 weeks later, and even with keeping myself out of sitting positions and instead spending all my time working from my couch where I can recline and keep all stress off my back, my back still hurts. I’m getting the feeling this isn’t a strain of the muscles but instead another herniation of a disc. I’ll probably have to have an MRI to know for sure, and possible another surgery.

It might be nice if my particular muscular structure wasn’t one such that I’m relatively strong without working out (don’t get me wrong, people that work out are stronger than me, but my starting point is higher than most people’s). As a result, I’m able to lift heavier things than my skeletal structure can support without having a problem. I’m pretty sure this time was from lifting 6″x6″x8′ pressure treated posts off the ground by myself. That or just working on the deck. I lifted some pretty heavy stuff then too.

Oh well, yet another day laid up and working from the laptop…

when about every 10 seconds you feel the urge to run into the other room and see what the kittens just hit/scratched/knocked down/broke/ate/attacked this time.

I need two large, powered hamster wheels that I can put the kittens into and turn up to high speed just to burn off some of that excess energy they have.

The kitten Jessica and I had agreed to buy before these three little puffballs showed up in the middle of the road is almost 8 weeks old now. We’re still getting him, and you can see what he’s like by going to http://www.furbabiesmainecoons.com/ and clicking on the kittens available link and then scrolling down to the adopted kittens area.

So, I’ve been looking for a cat recently. We went to a no-kill shelter and were turned away because we have a doggie door. Then I find a beautiful Maine Coon kitten for sale, and speak for him. But, I haven’t sent the contract or money back yet. Then, I miss a deadline at work Friday, and Monday I don’t really get into a groove working on it, so I put in a normal day. Tuesday, I get in a groove, and I’m up working late into the night. I run out of cigarettes and decide to run to the store. One the way to the store, I see 10 deer. On the way back, I see 6 more deer, 1 possum, and 3 kittens that are in the middle of the road and hunkered down on the yellow line as I zip past at 40 mph only seeing them at just the last second. So, I stop the car, back up, and all three kittens aren’t the least bit feral and I’m able to pick them all up and put them in the car. I just happened to have taken Casper with me to the store, so I have to wonder how he’s going to react as I put three stray kittens in the car next to him. He does wonderfully. He looks at the kittens, then gives me a look of “What the HELL is that?” The kittens brush up against him and he sits there like they are some sort of plague On the ride back home, the white/gray kitten climbs on my lap, then up my chest, and finally onto my shoulder and rides the rest of the way home there.

It’s just amazing to me that we spend the time looking for a cat, then have these three kittens show up. They’re in bad shape, so it’s obvious that they haven’t been cared for, yet at the same time they are amazingly affectionate and not afraid of humans at all. If I hadn’t gotten in a work groove and stayed up late, I wouldn’t have run out of cigarettes, and I wouldn’t have gone to the store, and none of this would have happened. Serendipity at its finest.

Oh, and the kittens are loving the spare bedroom. They immediately jumped up on the bed like it was home all along and proceeded to create a kitten pile and work on cleaning each other. They couldn’t be happier at the moment. I’m sure that will change when we take them to the evil vet for some much needed care, but they’ll be happy again when we get home, I’m sure.

I found this on the net today. We totally have to get one for Casper:

http://www.helpingudders.com/CoolingVests.htm

The birds that built a nest in our garage and had themselves a few little baby birds have decided that it’s time to kick the babies out of the nest. I saw them training one of the young ones how to fly today. And the nest is totally empty. It did have 3 babies in it. Guess I missed the training of the other two babies.

Girls take both time and money.
Therefore, girls = time * money

Time is money.
Therefore, girls = money * money

Money is the root of all evil.
Therefore, girls = (square root)evil * (square root)evil

Therefore, girls = evil

(Stolen from the forums on TribalWars)

We have a couple small birds that built a nest in our garage this year. They were amazingly fast. Once they selected a spot, they had their nest built in a couple days. Since then, they’ve come and gone, but we’ve started to hear tiny chirps from the nest each time they come. Well, the chirps sounded a bit weak this morning, like maybe the baby birds aren’t as strong as I would like. So, I mentioned to Jessica that she could run down to the local convenience store/bait shop and get a small package of worms and the birds could have easy access to food to feed to the babies and that would help them survive, especially since birds are notorious for letting the weakest babies starve whenever food is in short supply. Jessica said she didn’t want to go and walked back into the house.

A second later the door opened up and she said “Besides, it’s that sort of thinking, over many generations, that gave us George Bush.”

I didn’t go get any worms.

Taxes are done, several more items around the house are done, general work for Red Hat coming along nicely, plane is unfortunately taking a back seat to all these other more pressing issues

Thanks to Chris for offering to let Jessica borrow his car so I can take ours to Florida. Means he’s going to have to go back to riding his bike again and I may be down there for as long as 2 weeks. That’s a big inconvenience for someone to take on our behalf, and it’s much appreciated.