Socks the Cat

Let me formally introduce Socks. He is my cat now. I adopted him from Becky. He just turned 8 years old this month. I'm not sure, but it looks like he's got Arby's on his mind. Either that or I had Arby's for dinner and I have too much time on my hands. It's one of those two things.

You can see where he got his name. He's mostly black but with white on his feet, his frontside and some on his face. He's been (mostly) well behaved since I've had him. I don't allow him go on the kitchen counters or on the dining room table. I've caught him these places once or twice now and he knows he is not supposed be in them. Also, nothing has happened so far, but he's been known to relieve himself in areas other than his litterbox when something is upsetting him. One time I thought I found a turd on the carpet but on closer inspection it turned out only to be a hairball. It was a dark wet and cold mass of hair with puke-ish looking stuff on the carpet around it. I'd never seen a hairball before that one but I'm positive that's what it was. I wish now I'd taken a photo of it but there's always next time I guess. Maybe next time I will take a photo and put it up here.

He likes to watch birds. He sits on the floor at my patio doors or sometimes up on topside of the back of the recliner near the patio doors. He also likes the window sill if I have the window open. I think he sleeps mostly at night or while I'm away, otherwise he mostly sits around or walks in and out of whatever room I might be in.

Since I've had him I don't use my alarm clock anymore. He gets right up in my face as soon as I begin to move around when I first start to wake...even if that's 4:30 in the morning. I don't mind it or I'd shut him out of my room at night. He leaves me alone to doze off again but sometimes he's more persistent. He licks my head which I think is rather weird behavior. Other times he'll paw at the bed right near my head like he's digging for something. One time when I had dozed off again he was bold enough to slap me in the face with his paw. It's a good thing he doesn't have any claws or that could've been bad. At least I know if my house was burning down he'd be able to wake me. Although in the morning I think it's all about the food. I think he just wants me to get up and feed him and that's really it. He eats his whole dish of food right away like a dog would. Any cat I've ever known eats throughout the day and you just fill the dish when it's empty. I think if I kept filling up his dish when it was empty he'd just keep eating it all up. Socks is 12.5 lbs.

Cat and bird

I'm not real sure what's happening with my house finches. The first pair I think is gone along with their 2 baby birds. I think that other pair in the corner nest took over the general area but it's harder to see and I haven't seen them flying in or out so much. Sunday I saw some kind of baby bird sitting near my patio. I think it was a baby robin but I'm not sure. It sat there for a long time chirping loudly every so often in sort of a helpless baby bird way.
I recently adopted Becky's cat Socks. I thought about changing his name to something else but he's already about 8 years old I guess. I have no real reason to do that. Tonight in fact I'm going to buy some cat litter for the first time. Socks likes to watch all the activity with the finches and other birds out in the yard. I think he'll enjoy it when the Sandhill Cranes come back this summer.

Finch Update

This morning I had some time to watch the activities at the nest. There's definitely a baby bird. I think just one. It rises to the edge of the nest and flaps its' wings but does not leave yet. While this young one is being attended to by its' parents there seems to be a new conflict going on between its' parents and a new pair of finches that want to move into a nest the next slot over. I've never seen this other pair until today. These 2 pairs of finches aren't getting along at all. They chase each other out and they flap around in the air like they're fighting. I watched this for about 20 minutes this morning. I'm rooting for the pair with the baby bird. They were there first and they have a young one to look after. Besides that I'm pretty sure they built most of any of the nests that are under any of the slots.

I took some photos but they're not great. You can't see the nest in the corner or the baby bird. The first shows the new pair in the slot on the left and the original female in the slot on the right (with a bit of motion blur). The corner nest is out of view to the left behind the edge of my patio doors.
This second photo has one of the males in mid-air. I'm pretty sure that's the other male on the rain gutter but I can't tell for sure, or which was which male. The original female is on the right in the same slot.

Tragedy

I came home after work today to find a dead house finch lying in the drive directly in front of my garage. I feared the worst, that for sure it was my finch from the nest over my patio. Then I decided to take some photos to document the tragedy. Was that crazy?

After I the photos I picked up the deceased and put her into a paper bag for the garbage. If it was my finch I didn't want it to turn out like this bird. I rushed into the house so I could look out my patio doors at the nest. There wasn't anyone home at first. I checked several times and after about 10 minutes I finally saw both the male and female just like I did this morning. Thankfully the dead one I found wasn't the female from my nest. Still tragic but not quite as much so.

Definitely House Finches

I took this just after I opened my vertical blinds this morning. It's the first I've seen the male in a while. He's the red one. I only managed to get one photo and then they flew away. I'm not sure yet if any baby birds hatched yet. I should open the patio door and take a listen.

Muppet Wiki

Occasionally I wonder whatever I did with all the free time in my life before the internet became what it is today. I had one of these moments of reflection recently after I spent an hour or so looking over details of Muppet characters at this site.

I haven't seen the Muppets in a while or any of the newer movies. I remember when I was younger always hating anything that had to do with Miss Piggy. These were some of my favorite muppet characters.

House Finches

I've concluded the birds building nest above my patio are house finches. I don't see the male as much as I did during the nest building phase but I'm positive that's what is living there.

These are house finches...

MJ and the Gay Dancing Spiderman

I found this on the web someplace recently. It looks like Michael Jackson to me.

I don't remember where I found this spiderman thing but his dancing is pretty fruity looking if you ask me. The background of the site where I found it was probably white. It looks pretty crappy against my dark background.

...just thought I'd share some dumb stuff I've found on the internet.

Edit: After I posted this I discovered that if you click on spiderman it goes to a screen with just that image in it and without my dark background. Gay dancing spiderman as he was always meant to be.

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

One of my favorite TV shows Dr. Katz has made it to DVD. So far only the first season is out. It's a mere 6 episodes but later seasons have more episodes to them and I presume their release on DVD is forthcoming. I used to watch this show all the time when I was in college. When I spotted the DVD on the rack at Best Buy I knew immediately I wasn't leaving the store without one in my bag. The animation style used in Dr. Katz is called squigglevision. Basically even thought the characters are stationary their outlines are constantly undulating and wiggling around. I think I'm going to go watch an episode right now. If I remember right I had a cartoon crush on Laura the receptionist.

Some Dr. Katz related places on the internet I found interesting:

Dr Katz Episode Guide

The Many Faces of Dr. Katz - fan site

A list of Dr. Katz's patients from Jonathan Katz's official site

Horror Movie #3 - Hostel

My third horror movie rental was Hostel (official site here). It was without any doubt the bloodiest of the my 3 rentals. It had more scenes that were disturbing and uncomfortable to watch than my previous 2 horror rentals combined. The plot wasn't great or even very unpredictable but I didn't care about that. The setup is that some traveling backpackers decide to visit a hostel in Slovakia with the intent of satisfying their hedonistic desires. The 3 friends find what they are looking for but also end up getting separated from each other one by one. Where they end up and what happens to them is essentially what makes this a "horror" movie. There are some tense moments but they are mostly brief. The filmmakers always delivered some sort of disturbing outcome.
The most disturbing moment for me was the scene where the girl had her eye hanging out. The main character manages to rescue her from her captor and her torturous death but decides it's best to snip off her eye which was dangling from its' socket by the nerves or something. This was pretty sick stuff. Overall I'd give this movie 3 stars on a five scale. It probably deserves more than that but I watched this a while ago now. It's not fresh in my mind anymore so I've already forgotten a lot about it.

Horror Movie #2 - Wolf Creek

The same night I rented Saw II, I also got Wolf Creek (official site here). Blockbuster had the unrated version which is what I got. I don't even know if they had any other version but it wouldn't have mattered as I would've gotten the unrated one either way. I liked this one much better than Saw II. It wasn't particularly gory I didn't think. More so than in most movies the first third of the movie stood in contrast to the horror that followed it. There was some character development and some events that allowed you to become familiar with the general surroundings. In this movie the location (the Australian outback) played as important a role in the movie as any character. The vast open spaces created an atmosphere of isolation. As I watched the movie develop I knew it was only the setup and that things would inevitably take a turn for the worse. It was a longer setup than probably most movies of this variety. You almost get into a comfortable spot before things turn bad, but when they do, they really do. It's a horror movie and it was pretty horrific. Again, as a whole it wasn't particularly gory I didn't think. The most intense part I thought was when this girl got her fingers cut off. Still I backed it up and watched it a few times. I thought it was a scene that needed some extra attention and a few extra viewings to fully appreciate the gravity of her situation. It wasn't especially graphic the way the showed it. They didn't show it at all really. She was knocked down on the ground and on her back when the guy pulls out a knife (like first photo below). She had her hand up to defend herself I guess and then the next thing you see is some fingers hitting the ground. Then of course there was the aftermath (second photo). She reacted like someone who just had some fingers violently cut off. If that's not horrific I don't know what is. I sat in the comfort of my living room imagining what that would be like to be in her situation. Her life was still very much at stake but yet losing fingers is pretty shocking. How does a person get past that moment where you see your fingers tumbling to the ground, then get up off the ground, get your legs moving and get away from whoever cut them off? Do you pick up your fingers or just run for your life without them?

The terrifying part of the movie wasn't so much blood/guts visuals as it was the surroundings and the events happening to the characters...discovering where they were, who they were with and what he was capable of. The sounds of screams and pleading from that girl being tortured in the shed was amazing. It sounded like such real, genuine and almost unimaginable terror. To watch such movies puts me in an uncomfortable space in my own mind. It's not for everyone I suppose but I like to have that type of experience once in a while...only while sitting "comfortably" in my living room of course. I give Wolf Creek 3-1/2 stars.

Horror Movie #1 - Saw II

I like a good horror movie on occasion. I don't know why but sometimes movies that are mentally or visually disturbing and uncomfortable to watch interest me. The last 3 movies I rented would fall in this category. Probably none of them will go down in history as horror greats but they were definitely disturbing and uncomfortable viewing to varying degrees. The first one and my least favorite of the 3 was Saw II (official site here). The tagline from the trailer was great. "Oh yes, there will be blood". I had higher hopes for it and I was somewhat disappointed overall. The opening scene was great. This guy was led to believe by his captor that he had a key implanted behind his eyeball which would free him from his trap. It's too bad nothing else that happened after that was on a level as disturbing to watch as that was. The guy had a scalpel, a mirror, and a limited amount of time to get the key out from behind his eyeball and unlock himself from his trap before the contraption would slam shut on his head and kill him.



The "surprise" ending was just OK. It set things up for Saw III which I doubt I'll bother with. One thing that didn't make sense to me in Saw II was the peephole/gun trap. This guy gets shot right square in the eye from a gun that was rigged up and pointed into the opposite side of a peephole he was looking into. If he was unknowingly looking down a gun barrel on the other side of the peephole wouldn't it just have been dark? The gun firing was activated by turning a key in a lock on the door. Once they had found a key to unlock the door why would that guy stand there with his eye in a dark peephole where he couldn't see anything?

Still the movie overall wasn't a complete waste. It was not as good as I'd hoped but not worth more than a rental fee and one viewing. I'll post about the other 2 horror flicks I rented as I get to them. I give Saw II, 2-1/2 stars.

Seeders and Leechers

I've been flexing my high speed internet muscles lately and using torrent files to download and share files. If you look you can find a lot of commercially available music and videos out there but there are also a few torrent tracker sites that I've been going to that disallow torrents that contain anything that is available commercially. One such site that I've been using is Bootcity. I've been downloading a bunch of old Led Zeppelin shows that I've wanted for years.

I also use bt.etree.org but not as much so far. If I do this much more I'm going to need another drive to fit all this stuff onto. My 20GB drive has 8 GB free left and my 120GB drive has about 31GB free space. My first computer I ever had, had a hard drive with a capacity of 1-1/2 Gigs. That was about as big as they came on home computers back in '96. It also had 32MB of RAM which was an upgrade I chose from the standard 16MB offering. That's weird to think about. Now I'm downloading torrents that are more than 4GB in size and I have 512MB of RAM. My drives now are mostly filled with tracks I rip from my CDs in order to burn them on mix CDs I make for myself. I've ripped some of the tracks to lossless formats (wav or flac files) and that takes up a lot of space. I think I'm going to start shopping around for a couple of external drives for expansion and for backups. I'm thinking probably 2 drives might be the way to go. I'd probably mirror them and then if one dies the other is a backup. I haven't had a drive crash and burn on me yet but if I can avoid it I'd rather not lose a bunch of files if it ever does happen to me.

Jim the Bird Watcher?

My barn swallows are back. I have a couple of new bird nests again this spring. Last fall I cleared out from above my patio on the underside of the second floor deck, all the nests from the last 2 years. Two summers ago I had barn swallows and if I remember correctly, last summer some sparrows used the same nest but added to it. They might've just finished another one that the barn swallows started but didn't finish...I'm not sure which it was. The spaces where birds always build these nests is over my patio on the underside of the deck above. There are several slots which offer a good place to build.
I think the birds get confused when they are building them because each slot has a little bit of nest in it. Eventually they manage to finish a complete nest and live in one of them. I'm not sure exactly who built what and when but out of 6 slots 5 have at least part of a nest built into them. Two of these nests look fairly complete. I haven't paid very close attention lately but I figured the new nests were built by sparrows again. Earlier today I think I saw the barn swallows again. I couldn't be sure because the glass on my patio doors was dirty. Whatever they were they were not sparrows. I cleaned the glass now and I plan to keep an eye on them to see what they are.

This is a barn swallow.

Emissions Test Photos

Around where I live in Wisconsin we have to pass a vehicle emissions test before we can renew our registrations. It seems like I have to go every year but I think it's really every other year the test is required. It's possible it seems like that to me because I have more than one registered vehicle and I think they alternate years. Anyway there are sometimes long lines nearer to the end of the month and at certain times of the day. Someone had a good idea and put up some cameras at all the test stations and a website that you can go look at the photos to determine if it's a good time to go. Last time I had to have this test I pulled up the website on my computer at work and I left it up while I drove over and took my test. The camera takes a picture about twice each minute. After I got back to work I did some investigating. It was a little tricky but I found all the image files in my browser cache and was able to pull out the relevant ones from the time period while I was in line. I'm the green Ranger at the back in the first photos. Blogger shrunk my photos for some reason but if you click on them the full size image is there.

StarTrac Machines and Sandwiches (again)

I just finished my sandwiches after I got back from my Saturday workout. My sandwiches were as great as last week's sandwiches. I cannot imagine a time when I will ever grow weary of the taste of my sandwiches or desire any other after workout meal. Quick summary of my workout....I did an hour on the StarTrac crosstrainer. I've found that different machines have a different feel to the resistance at the same level. I struggled a bit my first half hour to stay at level 12 once I was warmed up. I alternated between 12 and 11 with 5 minutes a piece on each. The second run even on the same machine was altogether different. I used levels 13 and 14 in the same way I did the 11/12 except I did 11 minutes on 14 then 4 on 13, alternating until the half hour was up. I felt pretty great throughout except for there was somebody nearby that kept farting or something. I was near a ceiling fan and I'm not sure if that sucked the offending air toward me or away from me but it was pretty foul either way. It smelled like a sewer. After the StarTrac there was somebody on my usual Lifefitness Cycle so I tried one of the StarTrac cycles. I wanted to try one out anyway and I was pretty impressed. It has the same little fan attachment as the crosstrainer does. I noticed the pedaling seemed to be at a bit of a different angle than I'm accustomed to and the pedals seemed a bit close together but those would be my only complaints. The mechanism for the straps on the pedals was solid and easy to operate. It had arm rests and the heart rate sensors were on this adjustable bar that came out in front of you. I thought that was pretty cool. I tried one of the regular (not recumbent) bikes a few weeks ago and I liked that. The operation was real smooth and quiet on both types of bikes. I think I might switch to the StarTrac bike for good now.
So for the day now I'm worked out, showered and cleaned up, I've had some great sandwiches to satisfy my appetite....and I've written about it here while I rest up. So now what?

Foil Easter Eggs

It just occurred to me as I was eating a few of these chocolate Easter eggs that they are very similar in size and shape to testicles. They're a little smaller than testicles but still this is a somewhat disturbing similarity. I can't be the first person to ever think of this. Why don't they just make them wider at one end like a real egg?

Saturday Workout and Sandwiches

Today I went to the gym again for another long workout. At work I've been working in the warehouse for about the last month for various reasons so my morning workout routine has suffered as a consequence. My only day to get a good workout now is Saturday and so because of this for the last few weeks I've been doing longer cardio workouts on Saturdays. I've been spending about 45-55 minutes on the StarTrac Crosstrainer and then an additional half an hour on a LifeFitness bike to cool down. The programs on the machines limit you to 30 minutes so I have to cut my StarTrac workouts into 2 consecutive chunks. My first half hour is the most intense and the intensity of my second 20 or 25 minute turn on the StarTrac depends on how I feel. I've been targeting my heart rate at a maximum of 140-145 during the first half hour and easing off a bit to the 130-145 range for the second run. I cool off on the bike maintaining my heart rate around 100-110. By the time I'm done I've usually drank two bottles of water. When I take my shirt off before my shower I'm always amazed at how heavy and wet it is. It's pretty disgusting really but in a way if feels like an accomplishment of sorts.

I never know whether or not to believe the stats from the displays on the machines. I have no idea how they calculate your calories burned or your distance. I'm most skeptical of the distance figure. I'm not a runner as much as a cyclist but the StarTrac only shows I'm going about a mile every 25 minutes or so. If that's true I'm working awfully hard just to get one mile. I don't think running a mile would take that long or would be that difficult going across real ground. Maybe the settings I use would be comparable to running up a steep hill or something. I always use the manual program and during my first half hour I adjust the level to a 12 or so out of 20 and I keep my strides per minute to a min 130 but I try to maintain it around 140 or so. It's plenty difficult but not overwhelmingly so. These are just the settings I need in order to reach my target heart rate. After my workout....stretching, a shower, 10 minutes in the hot tub, and then another shower I'm usually pretty hungry. When I get home I usually make my favorite sandwich of late which is a peanut butter and banana sandwich on toasted wheat bread. I make 2 of them and I put super chunk peanut butter on one half and smooth on the other half. Because I'm usually so hungry by this time eating these 2 sandwiches is like eating the 2 greatest sandwiches ever made.

ACME Products

The Original Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products.

I'm back.......again

I've not had any real trouble with the "operating system not found" issue but my internet service has been out. I've been off since the 2nd of March with the exception of about a week in the middle of March. I almost became accustomed to not having any service. The wireless service I had uses a radio signal from a tower near my place and the frequency of the trasmission from the tower is 2.4 GHz. Apparently that is an unlicensed frequency that anyone can use. The problem I was having was that someone nearby was using some device with that same frequency and (unknowingly) interfering with my signal. Some newer cordless phones use the 2.4 band among other things. I thought for a while I would ask my neighbor if she had one of these phones but in the end it wouldn't really matter. It's not as if I could tell her to stop using her new cordless phone. And beside that the range on those phones is pretty far so it could be any of a number if different neighbors (or devices). So in order to get back online I got Roadrunner. It's faster at downloading but slower uploading than the wireless was. At least I'm online again. I have the introductory rate for now but eventually it's going to cost me about twice what the wireless was. OUCH! After I got it I went through some of the steps from the booklet in the welcome kit to activate my account. I'm not completely sure it was even necessary to do the steps but I did them anyway. Now I have this roadrunner in the corner of my Internet Explorer browser. He runs whenever I click on a link. For some reason the welcome kit or the roadrunner mousepad that it came with smelled like bacon at first.

So now since I'm back for good I guess I plan to continue where I left off with this blog. That is to say I plan to continue to write about whatever nonsense I feel like sharing and continue to use my corner of the web as my creative outlet.