Why My Life Sucks

Other wise why all the Cat-5?

My Sunday game was called, due to sickness and the Superbowl. I’ve been taking care of Mother for the last two days and have to take her to the doctor later today.

My tea kettle broke, which means I fell back on boiling water on the stove. It may be the in my mind but tea made with actual boiling water taste better than tea made by super-heating (i.e microwaved), and damn sure taste better than tea made with the “hot water” tap on a retail shop’s coffee machine.

We have also established this weekend who the Alpha critter in the house is. Keenii, the cat. Otto, the Alpha Dog gives space to her. Of course Ashley, the other cat, doesn’t really care and is friends with the dogs. She does what she wants to do regardless, so it could be argued that she is alpha.

This cat has got way more balls than sense. Of course you notice the bear did make off with the garbage sack any way. I strongly suspect several of my cats or The Darling Wife’s cats would confront a bear. Psycho, of loving memory, I’m sure of.

Hat tip Bayou Renaissance Man

In the current House of Crazy we have two cats, Keenii aka Baroness Mouse Slayer, Lady of the High Places and Ashley, aka Mother’s Cat.

Both of them are in heat now. This isn’t quite as bad as it could be because Keenii just rolls around and chin marks every thing in sight, plus spends a lot of time on my lap (more than normal).

Ashley, on the other hand is a talker. She wants a boy cat and she wants it now. And will tell every one about it, all night long. The only thing that seems to slow that down is if Mother rubs her lower belly. Mother figures that she is having menstrual cramps and is trying to help.

I suspect that a trip to vet, for at least Ashley is going to be added to the budget soonish.

Mother, Ashley and Buddy.

Keenii, getting those morning kinks out of her back, in the sun room. The sun room is also the kitty room, so it’s where they hang out a lot any way.

In the current house of crazy we have 3 dogs and 2 cats. (Shown here is Ashly and Buddy, sharing the floor) One of the dogs, “Brandy” is mine, no questions asked. I am her person. Mom has “Buddy” the French poodle who is attached to her even more than Brandy is to me. Otto is the “float” dog. Tends more towards me than mom, but not really “attached” to any body like Buddy and Brandy are.

On the cat front, Keenii is mine. No questions about this, she hangs with me most nights and some evenings, with some daytime lap sittings. Ashly is “cat aloof” but if she wants to hang with a person, she hangs with mom. Keenii of course, is the mighty hunter cat of the set.

Once it gets dark out, and assuming the humans aren’t doing something with a food stuff she likes, you will find Keenii right here. Until morning, unless she is mice hunting. This makes making the bed a bit tricky at times, plus limits what I can do in the bed as well. I really am not complaining, just stating facts. Plus she purrs and lays on my chest a lot, which does help with the dark times. It’s quite possible she why I made it through some of them.

Otto is, in fact, my mother’s dog. Well, he was Don’s dog so mom inherited him. Otto would rather hang out with men, so for the time being he’s my back up dog. Brandie, who I inherited from The Red Headed Girl, is still my primary dog. Now If I can just get Keenii to stop swatting at Otto life will be all mellow with my critters.

A few weeks ago Keenii caught a mouse and then took it down to the sun/sewing room. At the time, there wasn’t a light in the room, so I couldn’t see what, if any thing she was doing to it. I did see her as she carried it off and I knew the mouse was dead, based on the way she was carrying it. After she came out of the sewing room, treats were presented to her for getting the mouse.

Last night, she caught another one. This time there was a light in the sun room. I turned on the light, looked under the table where I saw Keenii with half a mouse in her mouth. She growled at me, telling me that I was not getting any of this mouse, if I wanted one I could catch one my self. Or sounds to that effect. Any rate, I left her to her dinner and reported to mother that she was eating it and not to worry about finding it laying about. Keenii was a bit “wild” after that and was rather difficult to give her a “victory” treat. After 10 minutes of so, she calmed down enough to take a bite of cheese and a smoked oyster from me. By bed time she had calmed all the way down and spent the night on her pillow on my bed, as per normal.

Mother, Ashley and Buddy. Ashley is the cat, Buddy is the dog.

Not a major thing, but this morning, after telling every one at work I was going to be be in early to do some server maintenance work, I over slept, plus arrived at the office with my shirt on inside out.

UPDATE: My ride was 15 minutes, more or less, late in picking me up. This lead to more drama than it should. I know they aren’t doing it to make me feel small and worthless, and that they don’t think that window shopping in a bead store is more important than me, but that is how I feel, even with my meds. Fragile ego, I has it.

Update 2: Lost a kitten. Not as in killed, as in couldn’t find it. Found it, in the mouth of Brandy, the non-hyper MinPen. We are charitably assuming she was trying to carry it some where. Kittens and Mommy Daz cat moved to lockable cat carrier for the night.

Both of them are walking, sort of. A little unstable but trying real hard.

They both have their eyes open, can’t quite walk yet, but are cute as all get out. Mommy cat, Daz, wasn’t really happy about me taking them out and putting them next to her, because she had gotten out of the box to take a short break. Oh well….

Just some random photos I took this morning. The kitten box is a bit harder to take photos in, so I had to dink around with it first. The Darling Wife seems to have broken out in critters this morning as she tried to take her medications.   The tabby kitten has her eyes open, but the tuxedo’s eyes are still shut.

Yesterday, we had some sort of accident while The Darling Wife and I were out of the house, and the ginger tom kitten was killed.

Run with Bast, little Trey.

If you happen to be one of the 4 people that use the internets and don’t know about I Can Has Cheezburger, it’s unlikely that you read my blog.   However, I’m adding it to the daily list now, just to get it out of the way, so to speak.   You can pretty much assume every one in the freaking world reads this, or at least it seems that way.

I don’t do New Years Eve.   Never has been that big of a deal to me.     Once you’ve see the Rhine Valley light up from fire works on a crystal clear night, from the highest point on the local radar horizon nothing Americans can do will match it.   Plus I don’t enjoy getting shit faced drunk any more, so there’s nothing really to do, so I just follow my normal evening plans.   Which tonight included going to bed semi-early.   So, come mid night I was asleep.

None of my dogs like fireworks.   I did not really know this.     My next door neighbor’s children do.   I did not know that either. Not that I blame them, the kids that is.     On the other hand, having Jack, Brandy and Coco all attempt to climb in to my bed, plus most of the cats at 12:01 put an end to the sleep thing I was talking about in paragraph one.     I could tell Jack was freaked out because he never comes into my room.   He just sits out side the door and whines if he wants out.   Not tonight.   Just for the record, normally only Brandy and at most 2 cats are in the bed.   It was a little hard to tell, but I think when the last set of fireworks went off at 12:06 I had all but one of the 6 cats and I know I had all three dogs, and not a single one of them was a happy critter.

Any rate, I only have two new years resolutions.

1) Get my ass out of debt and

2) Try and do something other than go to work every day.     A blog post, here or the other place.   Clean something.   Take photos, write a block of code.   Work on “Opfor”, other than just reading weapon books.     Something.     I’m in a deep rut and I need to get out of it, or just let the sides collapse in on me and get it over with.   I can’t keep going on like this last year.

Edit.   Just found out that with my current set up, I have to include a tag with each post or it makes Firefox act funny.   Oddness.

I seem to have lost my “I am your Ghod, fear me” effect with Windows computers.   The Windows side of Godzilla decided to start rebooting when selected.   In what is unquestionably a related note, don’t point the c_drive pseudo drive of the current release of Linux wine at your real C drive.         Also, don’t attempt to run the second life windows client under wine, unless you REALLY like a bad acid trip screen.

However, I am it’s Ghod, it should have feared me, because I found my XP Pro SP2 disk, the one that I have a legit 20+ install key for.     The Windows XP Home version installed by a moron is being removed even as I speak.   I have no freaking idea what drugs he was on when he installed it.   And, no, it wasn’t me.

The good news is that the default XP OEM disk has some idea what sort of network card I have.     That means every thing else is just driver down loads and dinking about.   However, that does bring up an older rant. I’ve always had an issue with the Microsoft IP Address widget.     It’s not quite smart enough to do what it thinks it’s doing and the fact that tab does the wrong thing in it is a pain in the ass.   Because I haven’t been dinking with IP setup on XP machines for awhile, I had some what forgotten about how fucked it is.   I used to rant about it damn near daily when I was working for $WeMakeEmailServers.

Important safety note.   If you are downloading “important documents” via Ktorrent, stop it when you start downloading things for other machines.   Eats your band width just a hair it does.

Fairly painless install, as windows installs go.   First up, get Firefox installed, then SP3, SecondLife and Daz Studio/Poser 7.   May or may not install open office on the windows side.     The whole reason for the Windows side is to run Second life and Daz Studio.   Maybe Never Winter Nights, even though I really don’t need yet another time sink.   Every thing else on the box will be Linux based.     “Game OS” indeed.

Good thing it’s painless, need to do it again.   Should have formatted the drive.   All sorts of cruft left on.     When Microsoft says “deleting the /Windows Directory, they lie.     Oddly, it installs a hell of lot faster after doing a format.

Just downloaded and installed the video drivers.     Damn the generic svga driver sucks.   Now starting the the Microsoft update cycle.   “We think our customers are thieves”, of course, goes on first.     Didn’t want a reboot after it decided that I am, after all, a MSDN user.     SP3 going on.   I’m going to bite the bullet and put some sort of C++ on this box, I suspect the current Express version.   And cygwin, forgot how much the command prompt is XT sucks.   No sense in doing andLinux however.

Of course, the SP3 download just failed.   Starting over.   And the graphics driver wants .net to work 100%.         Don’t forget, this is a more or less pain free install of windows.   Bleh.   Just found out why it failed.   It was doing auto updates at the same freaking time and it can’t quite deal with the idea of telling the manual update it’s working, please try again later.     On debian based systems apt can and does do that.   I’ll grant the Gentoo’s emerge will cheerfully let you shoot your self in the foot with multiply copies running, but Gentoo does assume you know what you are doing.

Ah, fuck.   Just looked at what it auto-downloaded.   Still going to have to put service pack 3 on, and I suspect find a copy of dot freaking net to install.   Bleh is right.   Still, the pain level is under what doing this to Smallbox was like.       Granted having XP see the network from the jump was a HUGH help.

First mandatory reboot.   Video Driver wanted one, but would let me put it off.

Odd.   It wanted to download and install SP3, but when I said do it, it just started to install it.   Something strange in the neighborhood…

Finished doing that,   and yes, had to reboot.

And it “found new hard ware”.   Audio thingy, which it did not find a driver for.     Will deal with that if and when I get speaker for this machine that work.

All right, off doing the 4 fixes post SP3 that it did not have, Media Player 11, because I’m stupid like that and both 1.1 and 2.x .net frameworks.   Assuming no other Microsoft updates, time to install real stuff.   Fortunately, I’ve been chunking most of the the install packages off on Smallbox’s external data drive, which Godzilla can get to with ease.

And reboot.   Still looking for the damn sound card stuff.   Sigh.   May need to deal with that now.   Check for updates.   Need to install 7 more.   Ok, that’s the 24 it autodown loaded, SP 3, 8 right after SP 3 and this set of 7.     That’s 40 updates.   Granted it’s from a rather old CD, but three of the last 7 were for Media Player 11.   Ah, why not roll those into the base down load of the application?   This is almost, but not quite, as bad as Java on OS X 10.4 (which, granted, isn’t really Apple’s fault, but it’s still a pain in the ass)

Small hyper dog wants, no, needs to go out and chase tree rats.   I’m going to take small calm dog out as well.   She will not be happy about that.

And reboot.   Oh, look, new audio device.   Still can’t find drivers.     Need to do that now.   Damn that’s a big freaking file, with a slow server pipe.   This is the longest single stage in the whole damn thing, including the format and install fresh copy of XP, and I’ve still got 20 minutes to go.   I’m going to publish this now and update as needed.

I’m going to let both hyper and calm small dogs back in.     They are happy doggies now, eating their post go out side cookies.   Keeni, my Russian Blue is helping me deal with Godzilla by holding down my lap top case.   And no, she can not has cheezeburger

Of course doing an XP install nails the MBR, so I’m going to have to make a GRUB install CD or just re-install xunbutu.   I may do the second because I got a bit carried away with stuff on it, so the Linux side is a bit crufty as well.

Because it’s Saturday and I really don’t have enough to do (sarcasm tags implied) I may go ahead and update the various blogs, other than RedHeaded Girl’s to Wordpress 2.7 RC 1, just to make the damn things stop whining at me.   Of course the actual release is Dec 10, so I may wait for that.   Depends on how Godzilla goes.

Just finished the driver download install.   Reboot, of course.   Seems happy now.

Installing real stuff now.

1. Of course Firefox, done way up there.   Also install DownThemAll, Adblock ,Adblock Filter Set G, the Google tool bar and Webdevloper tool set for Firefox
2. Gimp 2.6
3. Foxit Reader
4. ACDSee Classic
5. Cygwin (Just doing a core set, plus mc and bash completaion to start with, have other things to do, and I know this one takes some time to run)
6. PDFCreator
7. UFRaw
8. ISORecorder
9. Clone Cleaner ‘Lite’
10. SeaMonkey.   (OK, so I like the Mozilla composer to do quick HTML Pages.   Sue me.) (which wanted to upgrade as soon as I installed.   Whatever)
11. WSFTPle
12. Palm desktop
13. Putty
14. SmartlistToGo, desktop side
15. Servage Web Drive, just because
16. Second Life Windows Client.   Of course, this seems to have issues.       Of course.
17. OpenOffice

OK, now to fix and/or repair the Linux side, due to the mentioned MBR trashing that Windows did to me.

1. Boot CD.
2. Tell it I’m an American that speaks English
3. Tell it I’m Central Time Zone.
4. Tell it manual partition.
5. Tell it nuke the old ext3 partition.
6. Tell it computer name, my name and a pass word.
7. Tell it to import my windows account
8. Watch install bar go across screen
9. Open front door of Godzilla because it’s about to eject CD
10. Click “Restart”
11. Remove CD
12. Press Enter
13. Close Front door of Godzilla
14. log in (it’ rebooted all on it’s on)
15. Open terminal window, issue sudo apt-get update
16. Issue sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
17. Note that I, in theory, didn’t have to do that, because it told me I have software to install.
18. Watch it take 5 minutes to download and update system.   While it’s doing that I check what is installed.     This is the XFCE4 based version, so it’s a little light, but it will do for now.
19. While waiting on the update, I tweaked the grub menu.lst to give me 30 seconds to select OS.     Trivial, but first thing that required any geek skills, assuming you used the automated update system.
20. Issued sudo apt-get install mc ncftp arj xpdf
21. reboot, just to make sure I can get into windows.   And I can.   More or less done for now.

Spent about 20 minutes poking about with Synaptic to find what I wanted installed.   It’s a little crufty, but It’s not bad.   Basicly grabbed all the image processing tools and the KDE development stuff, plus a good size amount of PHP/MySQL/Apache2 stuff.     It’s installing now.   I think I’m going to declare victory and start reading Jane’s.

Other machines:

• Craptop is my game master machine.     Doesn’t do much else.   Lives in my briefcase now.   Need to load it up with d20 Modern stuff today.
• MacCraptop (yes, even worse than yours Art Dude).   Currently has OS 9.2.1 installed.   I think I can get it up to OS 10.3, but getting GCC for that species of OS X might be hard, which means no fink.   OS X with out fink is bad.
• Smallbox.   Rocking away as the household primary machine.   Need to upgrade the external drive “Real Soon Now”.     Most likely after Christmas.   When I do that, however, I’m making it an EXT3 drive, the whole mounting an NTFS drive read/write is starting to be a pain, in that I can’t copy files over to it via Midnight Commander with out turning off the “save settings” flag.     I want that on most of the time, so I can’t just disable it.   Minor bitch.   As it happens, small box is making an ISO of the disk I just used on Godzilla even as I type.
• DellBookPro.     See my post about turning the machine on it side.   As a side note, it may or may not be important to know that standard duct tape is exactly the right width to fit over the hinges of a D600.   The fact that I know this should tell you something about the design of the screen hinges of a D600.   The fact that the default color of a the machine is damn near the same as a normal duct tape tells me something.   Of course Dell is a Texas company, and duct tape is a primary part of the redneck tool kit, so this may or may not be by design.
• Tektux.   My webmaster box, currently living on my desk at $WeSellUsedMacsAndNewWii.   With random free shipping.   Need to spend some quality time on why that is happening.
• Smallmac and Bigmac.   (not really mine, but might as well be.)   A G4 laptop (yes, that one Art Dude) and a G5 iMac.   Both have OS X 10.4.11 Server version install, and the full KDE 3.5 via fink X11 suite.   Nice boxes.   I’m going to try and get Bigmac to really be mine if and when I stop working at $WeSellUsedMacsAndNewWii.   Once I got the fan issue resolved on that box, it’s turned into my favorite computer of all time.     More or less.

Well, I got a new battery.   Actually, I got two.   Let me explain.   I go into $CarPartStore across the street from where Darling Wife works and next to where Redheaded Girl used to work. At $CarPartStore, I speak with Clerk Dude about my need for a battery.   Clerk Dude does some computer fu and comes up with a type of battery I need and said that if I bought a 1 dollar “mounting kit” (two felt thingies that go under the cables and some sort of portected goo/lub stuff) he could install the battery.   Sounds good to me, not dealing with heavy toxic acidic crap inside a car is worth a buck, plus I get the little felt thingies under the cables, score all the way around.   He even yumps the battery out to the car for me.   He undoes the battery, puts in new one, plus mounting kit and tells me to start it up.

Nothing.   Not even tick-tick-tick etc.     He putzes about with the cables.   Tells me to try again.   “tick-tick-tick-tick”   Really weeny tick-tick-tick, I might add.

“Oh, that’s your starter.” sayth Clerk dude.

“No, It’s not.   If I hook up the Jump Buddy to it, the car will start.” sayth me.

“I don’t think so, but let’s try it.”   At least he was willing to listen to the customer, unlike the last “expert” I had to deal with (see rant about Vonage VoIP provider below)

Hook up “Jump Buddy”.   Car starts, as expected and predicted.   Clerk dude, to his credit, shrugs and takes my old battery into the store and puts it on on the battery tester.   It’s dead Jim.   Highest value, 6 or so volts, at any sort of amps.

He takes the portable tester out and hooks it up the “new” battery.     It’s even more dead, Jim.   Highest value, 4 volts, and dropped to under 2 under load.   It wouldn’t even power the clock whose display at least, is a 7400 TTL based system, which means 5 volts or it’s dead. (It bothers me some times that I know things like that, but don’t remember what the syntax of a SQL insert statement is.   It’s not like I’ve done any IC works since, oh, 1978 or so.)

He takes the portable test in to the store, takes battery number 3 off the shelf and test it.   Good to go.     Replaces battery number 2 (i.e the one I just bought) and has me do a “turn in” paper work thing.   (zero days on a 3 year pro-rated warranty, comes to, oh, full price….)   While he’s doing that, the store manager type (aka PHB for you Dilbert fans out there) wanders over and asks what’s going on. Clerk dude explains.   PHB looks amazed that a product that is known to have a life span is dead.   Shocked and appalled even.   Really appalled, at one point he was standing with his arms out at 45 degree angle over his head [heralds don't pun, they cant] {rim-shot} Thanks, be here all week. Try the fish...)   PHB doesn’t think clerk dude knows how to run the tester correctly.   (It’s not hard.   I can do now.   Hook up battery like you were jumping it, i.e. red clamp on the positive terminal, black on the negative. Push test.   Enter the Amps of the battery.   Watch LCD. Wait 45 seconds. Read result.   I could train Velifer to do it, if he had the thumbs to hook up the battery.)   PHB putzes with cables.   Pushes Test etc. Still dead.   Reads, if any thing, lower than it did out side attached to the car.

I sign the papers and leave, while PHB and Clerk dude start talking about checking lot numbers and who gets to do what with this issue etc.   That sounds like a load of fun and games. But Not My Problem.

Got the new D&D group’s first game tonight, I’m all sorts of happy about that.

Well, the machine isn’t dead.     I did figure out why it went into thermal shutdown however.   The speaker grills on the front of the machine are also the inbound air intakes.   Closing the lid, with the machine running isn’t a good idea.     Of course, NOT closing the lid when it’s running something in back ground isn’t a good idea with as many cats as I have.

Solution:   Don’t let it run in background mode unless I’m in the room so I can keep Pip and/or Velifer off of it.

And so does The Darling Wife.

The only thing useful I’ve done in the last 48 hours is to ‘Topspot’ all the critters.   Well, not all the critters the squirrels out side I didn’t bother with, but I did do all the dogs and cats.

bleh.

Actually, the badness started some time Friday afternoon.   I got a migraine, which responded, more or less, to my Midrin, however it didn’t go away, so I ended up take several doses over the weekend.   This is first time since I started on my current “don’t freak the fuck out” drugs that I have had to do that.

I’m not going to again.

There seems to be something about the Midrin/Adderall/Diclofenac/Temazepan/Cymbalta combination that, well, doesn’t freaking work.

Let me explain.   Saturday, The Darling Wife noticed that Pressa wasn’t feeling well.   I made a vet appointment for her on Monday.   Short version, she had some sort of liver disease and on Tuesday, we had to have her put to sleep.   Run with Bast, my lesbian love kitty.

Due to some work related issues, I was already fairly well stressed out.   When the vet told me over the phone that we needed to come in and say good by to Pressa, well, I totally lost it.   Complete and total break down.

Which I just found out isn’t over.   I just lost it at my wife, who I love more than life itself over where to put a bunch of broccoli in the fridge.

Oh, God, please, make it better, I don’t want to live like this any more.

This is Velifer, yet another cat named after bats. Velifer is The Darling Wife’s cat, but he likes any one that will pet him.

He also likes to drink bath water, but only AFTER a human has gotten into it, which is a bit weird.

Or should that be moar kitteh fotoz? Any rate this is Vampyressa Pusilla, normally called Pressa, yep, it’s another cat named after a bat. Pressa is one of Ben, the owner of The Original Game Shop kittens. She’s also great for taking low light photos of because she will hold very still for you.

This is the last photo I took of JoJo, the spherical cat of uniform density.

Rest in Peace my old friend

We had to put JoJo ,our eldest cat, to sleep this weekend, after he had a stroke. The stroke rendered him blind, plus he had little to no control of his body. JoJo was 19.

I do have some photos of him from before, so I’ll post him next.

Run with Bast my old friend.

I’m going to do a set of photos of my various pets. Today it’s “Pipistrellus” or “Pip”. Yes, he’s named after Pipistrellus pipistrellus, the common small gray bat. A lot of my cats are named after bats. It’s a Family Thing.

Pip is also known as “The Miracle Kitty” due to how we found him and what it took to keep him alive. Let’s just say that a “dot com” era bonus check was spent on this cat. May have been the best thing I did with any of those checks.

I had to bury a kitten today.

Run with Bast, little Paladin

Things that sucks

1. Last night, for reasons I’m not going into for privacy of others reasons
2. Freon.   Or the lack of it in a central air conditioning system.
3. Either the Bank of Oklahoma or Well’s Fargo.   Maybe both.
4. The City of Tulsa’s abatement inspectors
5. One of my neighbors.   not sure which one.
6. ONG.   Just in general.
7. Postfix on Mac OS X 10.4 PPC
8. Fink on the Mac PPC OS X 10.4 version
9. Ingram Micro,Petra,D & H, and Navarre’s some what odd B2B data systems. Each sucks in their own odd way.
10. Dog Poo
11. The GSL
12. AOL and   ComCast’s white listing system
13. Subscribe Me Professional (yeah, related to above)
14. What ever it is in the air this week that is making me sneeze
15. Forgetting to take my sleep aid
16. Getting a total of 6 hours of sleep over 3 days (yeah, see above)
17. The Cities of Wichita KS and Oklahoma City, OK
18. Internet streaming radio “stations” with ads.   A limited number of ads that you hear over and over and over and over.

Things that don’t suck

1. The Darling Wife
2. Art Dude and Redheaded Girl
3. Dungeons and Dragons 4th ed.
4. Jolt Cola
5. Choc 1919 beer
6. Cats and Kittens
7. Miniature Pinchers
8. German Shepherds