Month: June 2006

Categories
Critters

R.I.P. Sampson, 2005-2006.

Sampson in December 2005Okay, so maybe they’re not limiting themselves to happening in threes. I found out last night that Sampson, and several of the kitties he had raised, succumbed to antifreeze poisoning. I’m still waiting to find out if it’s suspected that this happened deliberately, and if it was deliberate, who is responsible. I’d very much like to have a word with that party. And that party might just be able to walk away under their own power afterward…if I’m feeling particularly compassionate. 😡 I’m sure I’ve said this before, but anyone who deliberately harms an animal that hasn’t been raised as a food animal is more than likely warming up to doing the same to a human being. (Actually, if I’m not mistaken, I seem to recall hearing that the above stated philosophy is in the FBI handbook.) Taking such a person out first is something I’d consider a valid preemptive move before they decide to stop picking on relatively defenseless smaller animals and put their ideas into practice on a human being.
If it was, on the other hand, just a case of kitty curiosity leading Sampson and his buddies into trouble…well…I understand that it wasn’t malicious. But that probably could’ve been avoided as well.
Once I let that anger subside, though, I’m mad at myself. We should’ve kept Sampson. My wife and I should’ve kept him. I’m sorry, little buddy. I can’t help but feel like I let you down by not insisting that we keep you. You could’ve helped Othello out when we lost Chloe, and oh, the fun you’d be having with Olivia now. Heck, you might’ve gotten accustomed to the presence of the huge dog eventually. You were a beautiful cat.
(For those who don’t know “Sammy Cat”‘s story, click here for his kitten pictures, or here for his more recent pictures.)… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

Now that’s a bit of a switch.

I’m on the weirdal.com mailing list, as you can probably imagine that I’m just a little bit of a fan of Weird Al Yankovic. There was a routine e-mail sent out today through that list alerting folks to some price changes in the site’s online store, and it came with the header of “A message from Weird Al.” Tempting as it may be, I just don’t need any Weird Al t-shirts right now, so I deleted the message and refreshed my screen. Lo and behold, the first message on the list, which arrived while I was deleting that one and now appeared in its place, was now “A message from Lee Greenwood.”
It must be said that these are two gentlemen between whom I have never before made any kind of mental connection. 😆… Read more

Categories
Home Base

Pic dump.

Earl's frankly quite astonishing cameraWell, it took a while to happen, but at last it finally did: I filled every tape, and every memory stick, with video and still photos from the new camera. My wife scored me a stash of cheap DVD-Rs from the local freight store last week (I haven’t had any blank DVDs for a while now), so last night I ran at least 4 hours of video off to DVD (most of it horses and baby horses, or Olivia in action, or, if she was asleep, Olivia inaction), and copied almost all of the photos from my largest memory stick (256 megs) off to my hard drive. I was amazed at how many pictures I had taken – by far, the most frequent photographic subject with my camera is anything with four legs, and within that category, Chloe and Olivia were in the lead. I’m glad there are as many photos of Chloe as there are. I always said Chloe beauty shots were easy (all you need is Chloe and a camera), and the same is proving to be true of Olivia, although in her current “little kid” state there are plenty of utterly goofy moments in with the beauty shots (see the row of dancing Olivias in one of my previous entries from this week). 😆
I was surprised that there were nearly two full hours of Boss, and almost as much as some of the other horses and their fillies. In all, I now how four one-hour tapes to reuse, and one memory stick; I still need to dump the vast majority of the Boss still pictures, my photos from last year’s CGE, and much more. Once all this stuff is dumped off to the hard drive, it’s time to burn a CD-R or two (or maybe even a DVD-R, since we’re talking about a bunch of memory sticks that each hold at least a hundred megs). It may also pay to think about dumping video not only straight to the DVD recorder, but also to AVI files for future editing purposes. At that point, I’ve got to start figuring out an organizational system for keeping track of everything, which starts to make it sound like a project at the station.
I think it’s safe to say I’ve been getting plenty of use out of this camera. (The statistics above don’t include the tape that I recorded over and over and over again with footage from various video and computer games to create the flash movies in the Phosphor Dot Fossils section.) I also now have the docking station (shown in the above photo) permanently hooked up to Zen, and editing software on the same machine, so I can continue to throw gobs of video at you. (Considering how massive the “multimedia” column to your right is becoming, I may have to figure out something, like a second blog just for the high-bandwidth stuff. 😯 )
So was this camera worth the money a year ago? Oh hell yeah.… Read more

Categories
Critters

Lazy kids.

This picture pretty much says it all today:
Xena and Olivia
My back has been killing me since yesterday, though it seems to be trying even harder today – it may actually be trying to actively dismember me before killing me. Feel free to call me a wuss, but it’s unusual enough (and painful enough) for me to stay home from work and hang out with all these furry friends of mine.… Read more

Categories
Critters

Grrrrrr. Meow.

Grrrrr. Not like I can keep either of my computers online long enough to find out, but has some new virus hit today that universally slams anything Windows, just by virtue of being online? AVG snagged a virus on Zen tonight, and then found the same thing on Orac a little while later, and now both machines are routinely going down like it’s all-star Hindernberg tribute day. Orac can’t stay booted up for 3 minutes; Zen lasts an average of 5-6 before it shuts itself down. Hopefully my handheld is immune – that’s about all I’ve got to go online and find answers with. (Or post this, for that matter.)
Meow. While I’m dealing with that crisis, I realize that nothing gets people flocking to my blog like kitten pictures. So here you go.
Call now - operators are sleeping peacefully
Call now! Operators are sleeping peacefully!
Cat scanAnd here’s a special bonus cat for you – I saw this one (and evidently she saw me) in the parking lot as I was leaving work late one night/morning last week.
OK, there you go, not one but two kitties. Don’t say I never gave ya nothin’.… Read more

Categories
Gaming

We got game

Nothin’ fancy going on today – still dealing with a wee bit of very mild food poisoning from the other night’s pork chops. 😕 Needless to day, I’ve been in the bathroom quite a bit. At any rate though, I’ve added a new multimedia page – Game Artwork that I’ve done for various homebrews and repro releases for the Atari consoles and Odyssey2. I realized I’ve built up quite a few of these, so I figured, why not stow ’em all in one place? Those games which are available currently have their artwork marked as such (so no one tries anything funny – not that I’m saying that anyone reading this would do that, but just in case…there’s this thing called Google image search, y’see…) and I heartily encourage you to pick up those games in real live cartridge form. (It’s not like I get a cut of sales or anything, but they just happen to be pretty neat games.) This gallery will expand more as time goes on, seeing as I’ve already been asked in the past week about illustrating another Odyssey game… 😉… Read more

Categories
Gaming Music Television & Movies

Jar Jar links.

Not much to speak of this morning – my digestive system is still engaged in a lively debate with itself over whether or not the pork chops with stuffing my wife cooked for me are agreeing with it in any civilized way – so here are a couple of nifty links you might want to check out.
Doctor WhoThe Beginner’s Guide To Doctor Who: Whether you’re only casually acquainted with the original series of Doctor Who, or only gave in to the Time Lord’s charms when the new series started, here’s a nifty little semi-interactive guide to the original show. It’s not a terribly deep survey of classic Who (and the “monsters” segment is little more than a target game minus the reward), but it’s a decent enough refresher course. There’s a focus on classic characters and enemies who have appeared in the new show (i.e. Sarah, K-9, the Daleks), though some of the other mentions are somewhat curious, and one wonders if they have any bearing on the upcoming finale of the second season…
John BillingsleyMad props to Phlox: The Futon Critic is giving mad props to John Billingsley (formerly Enterprise’s Dr. Phlox) as the “breakout star” of ABC’s new fall drama series The Nine. (I’ve seen some preview stuff on the network feeds myself, and this review of the pilot only confirms for me that this is a show to keep an eye on later this year.) I’d find it riotously funny if DVD sales of Enterprise suddenly spiked because everyone wanted to see that show that Billingsley used to be on.
Pre-owned games and the law: a fascinating essay from a legal perspective about the rumors that Sony has plans to squash the used video game market, and largely right on the money. Now here’s a wild idea: how about making games that are just so darned cool that we don’t want to ever get rid of them? (Novel thinking, I know.) Still counting down to the Red Star release to see if it fits that category. Back on track, it’d also help if the pricing was a little more realistic on new games. The last current-generation game I bought new was We Love Katamari; total outlay was $25. (Well, technically, total outlay was nothing – I got it with a Wal-Mart gift card I got at Christmas.) Quick check of the ol’ PS2/Gamecube shelf…I’ve bought more than 2/3 of my current-generation games used. (Curiously enough, the only ones I’ve gotten new have been both Katamari games, Taito Legends and Pac-Man Vs. for the ‘cube, though that latter game was packed in with a budget “greatest hits” re-release of the otherwise forgettable Pac-Man World 2. So, if you’ve got a cheap game from Japan, I guess I’m all yours.) In short, if Sony and its licensees weren’t pricing their new product into the stratosphere, and were producing stuff with real replay value, that’d go a long way toward solving this perceived “problem” of the used game market. (Or, if you want the statistics spun in a different direction: I’ve spent more on Odyssey2 games this year than I have on Playstation 2 games. But admittedly, that’s just me.)
And last but not least – a new Weird Al song for free! Weird Al Yankovic is apparently coming down the home stretch of a new album, and if that wasn’t good enough news for you, he’s unleashing a free song that didn’t make the cut, for – rough estimate here – zero dollars. (I also see Al has linked to Rob’s UHF pilgrimage on his links page!)
Hope you have a good weekend. The Mrs. is headed out of town for several days for a postal convention, or she’s going to go postal at a convention, or something like that – I really need to get some clarification there. So for a few days it’s me, Othello, Olivia and Xena. How much you wanna bet we’ll have the place completely trashed by Monday night?… Read more