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> Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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7:47 pm - A thought on the Michael Jackson thing
I agree with calls to stop (or at least slow down) the media circus surrounding Michael Jackson's death. Yeah, he died. People die all the time - even famous ones. Even people arguably more famous and meaningful to society than Jacko was. But we haven't seen the nearly 24-hour coverage of Jackson's death since the OJ Simpson trial. This is ridiculous.
BUT, and this is a big BUT: I wholeheartedly and vehemently disagree with anyone who says we should stop glorifying Jackson in death because he was a "child molester" and/or a "pedophile". Charges were brought against him for that, yes, but he was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. Keep that in mind, guys. In the eyes of the law, he lived and died an innocent man. Whether anything really did happen behind closed doors that he should have been tossed in jail for, they never proved it, they never found him guilty of it, and now the claims can never be proven to a degree that would justify such vitriole.
I agree that the media has focused too heavily on Jackson. Yes, he was one of the greatest rock stars of all time, and his influence on the music industry, the cultural divides of our nation and the world, and his legacy as a uniter of black and white people, are all hugely significant. But remember, Abraham Lincoln was a great man too. And all the people risking their lives to protect what we take for granted are great people as well. They deserve recognition for their sacrifices. They deserve equal weight. Just because they didn't write a piece of music that caught the world by storm doesn't make them any less deserving of recognition.
But when we call for the media to stop focusing on someone so much, let's make sure we're doing it for the right reasons, okay?
current mood:  thoughtful
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> Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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7:26 pm - Long, productive, chore-filled weekend
This has been one of those weekends where you just don't have enough hours to get everything done that you want to do, and even if you did, you wouldn't have enough energy to do it all. That's how we feel, that's for sure.
Friday evening, we went up to Lynnwood to celebrate the birthday of one of our WoW guild members. We had tons of mediocre food at Claim Jumper, then hopped down to my bro-in-law's place for presents, truthful cake, and lots of idle chatter about WoW. On the way home from that, I unfortunately hit the raccoon I mentioned in my last post. I didn't see any damage to my car, so I think that I may have just knocked him around a bit - here's hoping I didn't seriously hurt him.
Saturday morning, Fire opted to sleep in while I headed down to Ft. Lewis to join some of my coworkers for paintball. I'd never done it before, and I think it's something I'll probably decline in the future - just not my thing, really. The range was very pretty, but obviously way understaffed - they'd cut their staff from 20 down to only 5 people, so games were very slow. I was the first one of our group there at 9am, one other coworker showed up at 9:30, and the rest weren't there until about 10:30. We didn't actually get into a game until noon, and it was a best-2-of-3 game of Capture the Flag (something I generally am not good at even in video games). I did manage to hit two people before I got taken down in the first round (took a shot to the goggles!). Second round, I lasted about a minute, then got sprayed with paintballs - I ended up with a bruise on my finger, several welts on my chest and shoulder, and one ball hit me on my arm and broke the skin in about a dozen places. That really hurt. :P I stuck around for a quick lunch, then headed back home. I figure that's enough excitement for one day.
At home, I helped Fire do some housecleaning and tidying, then I ended up falling asleep on the couch for a couple of hours. Once awake again, we went out and got fireworks for our 4th of July party, then did a bunch of Freddy's shopping as well. We cooked up some burgers, did a little more housework, then played WoW for the rest of the evening.
Today, we got an early start. I mowed the lawn and side yard (which had some weeds almost as tall as me!), then we finished digging up the sod in the front-most part of the front yard. (This was something we'd started last summer - never finished.) After that, we ducked back out to Freddy's and got some bark mulch, grabbed a Jamba Juice, then hit up a local nursery for some nice flowers (mostly these really pretty yellow-and-purple daisies). We came back and spread the mulch in the new area, redid some of the rock barriers, and planted all the new plants. It looks SO MUCH BETTER there now.
I took care of all five of our litterboxes after that, while Fire made shepherd's pie for dinner. We ended up eating a whole pie by ourselves (man, we must have been hungry!), then we ended up falling asleep in the living room watching Mythbusters. We just got back up about 20 minutes ago and decided that the rest of our party-prep chores will just have to get done this week.
It's been a while since I've been so thoroughly exhausted that I'd fall asleep on the couch. But naps are good, and as our social calendar starts to thin out again after the next couple of weeks, I'm gonna look forward to taking more of them. :)
current mood:  refreshed
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> Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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1:01 am - Guess there's a first time for everything...
On our way home from a birthday party tonight, I hit a raccoon on Maple Valley Highway. :( Little guy just ran right out in front of our car, and there was nothing I could do - couldn't swerve because there was traffic too close to me, and I wasn't able to stop in time.
We went back to look for the raccoon, but it was nowhere to be found. We think it managed to run off, so at least I didn't kill it on the spot. But I hope that it's either not seriously injured or in pain, or that it dies quickly and peacefully.
I've never hit an animal with my car before. Come close a few times, but I've always managed to avoid them. I feel terrible about it. :(
current mood:  sad
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> Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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6:48 pm - To the door-to-door guy we just got rid of...
Hi. You may not care what's posted on our door, but our door reads "NO SOLICITING". That sign is there for a reason, and if you cannot respect that, it doesn't matter what your stated cause is. You're still trespassing. And if I see you do that to any of our neighbors, I will call the cops.
Thank you.
current mood:  irritated
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> Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
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10:18 pm - New speakers
I finally got around to doing something I'd been meaning to do for a while: Simplified my computer's sound setup. I "inherited" from my dad (read: they were hand-me-downs) a set of very nice studio monitor speakers, an Alesis power amp, a Boston Acoustics subwoofer, and several other pieces of pro-audio equipment before we parted ways. Since then, I've been gradually finding that, nice as all this equipment is, it's not really USEFUL to me.
The problem with the setup was that the old speakers took up a LOT of room, I had to have separate power for the power amp and the subwoofer (which meant that power management was not easy or fun at all), and when the equipment was on, it both consumed a lot of unnecessary power and heated my room very effectively.
More recently, the speakers started developing a "warm-up" problem where the drivers would just stop working until I physically tapped on them to unstick them. After unsticking, they'd work again for a little while, then stick again, but this would gradually work itself out as the speakers warmed up.
Now, don't get me wrong, when they were working, the speakers sounded great. But I was unhappy with the complexity of the setup. So I finally went out to Fry's and picked up a set of Bose PC speakers (the Companion 3 set, which sold for $250). That turned out to be a disappointment - the speakers were very impressive, for tiny 1.5" drivers. But the sound was hollow and tinny, and there was no amount of bass adjustment that could make up for a very not-flat response.
So I packed them back up in the box and we took them back to Fry's this evening. On the way, we stopped at ComputerStop in Bellevue, which had a set of Altec Lansing VS2421 speakers for $45. These sounded MUCH better - they have larger drivers, better sound image reproduction, a treble control (which is ALWAYS useful), and a surprisingly good subwoofer for the size (only about 5", in a small, thin box). Of 8 sets of speakers on display in the store, they were easily the best ones.
They still don't sound quite as good as the studio monitors, but hey, nothing short of another set of studio monitors is going to. But for less than fifty bucks, I'm very impressed with the quality of these Altec Lansings. It's a pretty attractive set, too - black and red. :)
So, if anyone's interested in the studio equipment, lemme know. The drivers on the big speakers are probably just dirty. The amp is still in great shape and has lots of power left in it, and the sub would make an excellent addition to any home theater setup.
current mood:  geeky
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11:52 am - Have I mentioned recently that we're insane?
Evidence that we have too much time on our hands AND are just not quite right in the head...
Kiefer says:
* I just came up with a neat limerick for something I'm commenting on on YouTube. I came across a video where someone opened up a dead hard drive and attached a piece of sandpaper to one of the platters. Instant sander.
Fire says:
* Cute. XD
Kiefer says:
* Someone commented that it's cool until the thing shatters and you're picking shrapnel out of your head. I'm replying saying that the platter isn't likely to shatter because it's made of sturdy metal.
* And that led to this:
When you expose a hard drive platter,
It isn't at all likely to shatter.
Unlike DVDs,
Which break at high speed,
Motor burnout will be more the matter.
Fire says:
* HAH! That's awesome! XD
* And have I mentioned recently that you have too much time on your hands? ;)
Kiefer says:
* Uh, yes. :) Don't tell my boss. ;)
Fire says:
* ;)
* Know what's odd? [snip - unrelated comment in the form of "either/or"]
Kiefer says:
* I'd be willing to bet the latter.
* (Uh oh... I'm sensing a pattern... AAUGH!!! Platter, shatter, matter, latter, pattern...)
Fire says:
* *cackles!*
* Is this going to be a song??
Kiefer says:
* I could make a really strange rap out of this.
* ...uh, I could be a rapper?
Fire says:
* ...Dear. You are FAR too white to rap.
Kiefer says:
* o/` I'm a white rapper, who's dapper, a napper. Gettin' fatter, with my hard drive platter! It's not gonna shatter, no matter, 'cuz the former and latter meet to form a pattern. I'm such a mad hatter, I reach for my swatter, ... oh, never mind. o/`
* (Channeling the Rap Song on Whose Line.)
Fire says:
* OH GODS. XD XD XD
* That is the funniest thing I've seen in ages. XD
* *imagines you actually trying to rap that in person, and dies* ;)
Kiefer says:
* I'm thinking I should blog this.
Fire says:
* YES.
* YES YES YES. XD
(For anyone interested, here's the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMmiqS8gKu8)
current mood:  silly
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> Saturday, June 6th, 2009
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10:43 pm - D&D is complicated!
One of Elaine's coworkers roped us into participating in a D&D campaign online with a group he plays in regularly. Because of the kittens and other factors, we kept putting off researching and rolling our characters, so we scrambled to get it all done tonight since our first session is tomorrow. It's pretty darned complicated, though!
I *think* I got my character sheet fully filled out finally, and I think Fire gave up on trying to finish hers and just sent it in partially done. I think the whole process took us something like 5 hours just to get where we are. Hopefully things will be simpler once we get started.
I can see why people take this game so seriously. It's a lot of work!
current mood:  tired
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12:46 pm - Two down, two to go!
Glenn and Gaspar just went home with their new owners. :) Fire's coworker and her fiancee showed up around 11:30 and spent a bit of time playing with Glenn, then took him home in a bag with a blanket. My coworker and a friend of his showed up about an hour later to get Gaspar, and it was obvious that said coworker and Gaspar recognized each other from last week's meeting. I think they're both going to very good homes. :)
Fire put together little care packages for both kittens - a small bag of litter, a few cans of food and some of their dry food, their medical records, and a couple of toys. We also got cardboard carriers from Petco, but we ended up not needing them since both owners came prepared.
My coworker's friend took a particular interest in Spekkio while he was here. He said he has a house with several teenagers and a very laid-back orange tabby, so it sounds like a potentially good fit! He said he'd think about it, and my coworker can pass on our contact info should he decide to bring his kids by to meet the little guy. :) So it's possible we might have another home lined up!
Already, it feels like the house is a bit emptier. I don't think the kittens have necessarily noticed the difference, but the energy is already a bit lower and everyone's gone to sleep (I'm about to as well - stayed up WAY too late last night). Nicholas is sleeping on the papason chair, Spekkio's curled up on a newspaper on the floor, and Schala is snuggled into Fire's arm while she sits reading a seed catalog next to me on the couch. :)
Can it get any cozier?
current mood:  snuggly
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12:47 pm - Hey, we fixed the kittens!
We took the kittens in to get all four of them vaccinated and the boys neutered yesterday. Dropped 'em off at around 7:30, and I got the call around 11:00 that the boys made it through their procedures very well and there were no problems. :) By the time we got back there to pick them up, the vet and techs told us the kittens were acting as though nothing had happened - they were still playing, jumping around, being all cute and rambunctious, and didn't seem to be at all aware that anything had been done to them. :)
The vet and nurses were grateful to have kittens to play with throughout the day. Apparently they were having a hard day - there was a euthanasia going on in the next room over from where we picked up the kittens, and it had apparently been like that all day. (It was a scorcher! I wonder how many of their tragedies were heat-related.)
So, Gaspar and Glenn both have homes lined up, and their new owners are going to pick them up tomorrow morning! That means Spekkio and Schala still need homes. Fire drew up some flyers to post at the vet's office, so we're thinking they'll probably find homes very soon. I'm still interested in keeping one of them, but I do want to give priority to external adopters - why deprive a perfectly qualified and willing adopter of a kitten? :)
Still, I will miss the little guys when they're gone. Now that they're growing up and looking less like the puffball in my icon and more like adult cats (tiny ones, but cats nonetheless), they're really a lot of fun and not quite so much work.
Fire and I were talking about it yesterday and thinking that if the opportunity presents itself again sometime in the future, we'll probably foster another litter, whether it's a rescue litter like this one or we take it in from a shelter. But we're gonna need a break, and I think the big cats do too - Trevor and Cal got into quite the fight last night, bad enough that we needed to keep them separated overnight. Probably a stress reaction more than anything.
I gotta say, I'm looking forward to catching up on some sleep once we've at least thinned out the kittens a little. We've had to keep a fairly strict schedule around them to make sure they stay healthy. I think our efforts are paying off, but just the same, it'll be nice when we don't have to worry about it so much.
current mood:  accomplished
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12:18 pm - Frustration and enlightenment, brought to you by Qwest
I posted a little while back about how our DSL line was up and running, but seemed to get really laggy whenever we tried video streaming or file downloads. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) meerkatzukin suggested that we look into getting "interleaving" turned off on our line, and said it would likely take several calls to get someone who knew what it was and what to do about it. Interleaving, as he explained it, is an error-correction protocol of some sort that ensures packets are delivered stably, at the cost of some speed, and it can usually be turned off on clean lines because it isn't really necessary there.
I got an online chat rep at Qwest to put in a ticket for that (he said he knew right away what it was and agreed that it could help to turn it off), and he gave me a ticket number and said it would be done no later than this Wednesday (the 3rd).
Wednesday rolled around and still no updates from Qwest on this. Considering they inundated us with "Hi, we finished your order!" and "We hope you're happy with our service!" in just about every medium possible when we got the DSL hooked up, I figured we'd at least hear something on this work order. This morning, I called in to find out that there weren't any open work orders, and the one with the number I had just said we were having lag problems, but had no mention whatsoever about interleaving! The tech didn't enter my request at all! :P
To make matters worse, the tech I ended up getting was really rude, refused to help me at all because I was at work and therefore not in front of the modem, and even refused to connect me to a supervisor. At one point, he said "I'm telling you, sir, that it's a problem with your internal network. I know this because I have been working here for more than two years." This came after I explained to the guy that we had already determined the networking equipment was working fine and I could reproduce the problem if I hooked my computer directly to the modem, and I mentioned that I'm an experienced computer tech and have been working with Windows for a long time. The tech also tried to tell me that I'd have to buy an advanced wireless modem to support more than one computer at a time.
He finally agreed to let me talk to a technician when I explained in excruciating detail what my original request was. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes, then came back and said that a supervisor would not speak to me until I was at home and able to troubleshoot the modem. So we ended the call and I called back to lodge a complaint about the tech. The customer service rep apologized, but then started playing Tech Support again rather than taking my complaint seriously, so I had to steer HIM in the right direction. He took down the notes and then connected me with Tech Support again.
The tech I ended up with this time was EXTREMELY helpful (what a breath of fresh air!). Turns out the original tech was likely right on one thing: Our modem *can't* handle multiple computers on the network, but I most likely don't have to replace it to fix the problem. Our modem is the original modem we had when we got Qwest DSL back in '06, when we moved into our house. They've updated the firmware several times since then, and the newer firmware is supposed to resolve issues with multi-computer networks. He gave me detailed instructions on how to upgrade the firmware, what to do if it fails to upgrade, numbers to call if I need help, and said that if that doesn't solve the problems, I can call Tier-3 support directly to start doing more detailed troubleshooting, speed testing, etc. while they tweak settings.
He also explained a couple of technical details that I was only vaguely aware of, which help this situation make a lot of sense. We've been seeing video streaming really suck, even though I'm very certain that 1.5 Mbps should be more than enough to stream regular Netflix-quality video. But at the same time, file transfers have been going at top speed - we've gotten large files to download at a full 150-160KB/sec, though the rest of the network lags a lot when that happens.
The tech explained that this is a symptom of the modem not knowing how to route packets properly (resulting in collisions that the router has to sort out - not sure how that works, since I thought routing was inherent in the TCP/IP protocol). He said that file transfers are generally one-way block transfers with minimal packet returns to acknowledge that packets are received, and thus they can stream very efficiently to a single computer. Video streaming, on the other hand (at least as it works with Netflix Instant), is handled much the same way as game, chat and VoIP traffic: It requires a two-way connection with lots of packets going both directions. That exacerbates the routing problem the modem is likely having and hits the network much harder as a result.
His explanation is consistent with what I've seen at home, so it makes sense. If the newer firmware fixes the problem, I'll be satisfied. Not sure if all the technical details of what he said are correct, but it was certainly a lot more helpful than virtually any other tech support conversation I've had with any ISP in close to 15 years.
What a pain in the ASS though. :P
current mood:  frustrated
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8:19 pm - Lying to the telemarketers
Got a call at almost exactly 8pm.
Phone: "Hello, this is (name) from Sears Protection Company. May I speak with Mr. or Mrs. K?"
Me: "I'm sorry, there's nobody here by that name."
Felt pretty good, actually. :)
And turns out in this case that it was probably a good idea. I think the only major item we've bought from Sears was our lawn mower, so I suspect they wanted me to extend our warranty on the thing. I looked 'em up on Google, and aside from links to the service itself, the first page of results was full of complaints and general griping about the company. Guess I'm not gonna miss not having that extended warranty. :P
current mood:  satisfied
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> Saturday, May 30th, 2009
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8:19 pm - They're growing up!
The kittens are growing up, and they're starting to find homes. :) I put out a notice at work saying that we were looking for adopters, and while I only got one response, that person turned out to be a hit. :) He came down today to meet the kittens, and he fell in love with Gaspar, the fluffy one that Fire says has an Ewok face. :) So it looks like he'll be going home with that guy.
Spekkio has also found a home with one of our friends, and Glenn was claimed on the first day we had him by one of Fire's coworkers, so the only one left is Schala. The big cats are starting to get along with all of them, but Schala in particular seems to be low on their "this annoys me" radar, so if we don't find a home for her, we may end up keeping her. :) No commitments there yet, though.
We have an appointment on Thursday to have the boys fixed. We'll drop them off in the morning and pick them up in the evening when we get home, and Friday will be their day of rest. Then Saturday, Glenn and Gaspar get to go home! (Spekkio too, if his new owner is ready for him.)
I have to admit, I'm gonna miss the little guys. Glenn and Gaspar are so cute and snuggly, and they really do seem to think of us as Mom and Dad. But I'm also very proud of how these kittens are doing - they're healthy, happy and well-socialized now, and I think it's wonderful that people are going to take them home. They'll make wonderful pets. :)
That said, I'm looking forward to when we don't have to worry so much about keeping doors closed and cats away from each other. We are *so* not cut out for children - I'm glad we're keeping it to just kitties. They're handfuls enough as it is!
Very cute, snuggly handfuls. :)
current mood:  excited
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> Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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9:58 pm - BEWARE, IT LIVES!
...whoops, wrong game. But hey, my Galaga machine is working now! :) The replacement RAM chips came in today, so I swapped out the suspect chip with a new one and the machine worked PERFECTLY after that! Only complaints now are that the sound is a bit glitchy (probably just need to exercise the volume pot a bit) and the buttons are dirty. But I can play the game now, the graphics look great (due in part to the new monitor), and everything works. Whee!
Played one full game, and for having not played on an arcade machine in quite a long time, I did pretty good! Ended on Stage 31 with 318K. Fire says we'll need to post a sticky pad on the machine so we can keep track of our high scores. :)
current mood: accomplished
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8:13 pm - Kitten update: Playtime in a big room with the big cats
The last couple of days, we've let Nick into the room to see the kittens face-to-face, and last night we also allowed Trevor in briefly. Most of it ended up with Trevor hissing and backing away very cautiously, and Nick swatting at the various kittens. Between that and the fact that the kitties are very intent on getting out of my smallish room, we decided to try something different today: We took the kittens, their litterboxes and food, and their toys down to the big family room/den downstairs, which the big cats have had to themselves all this time. We blocked off the washer/dryer room, let the kitties out to wander around, and they were intrigued! They actually turned down their food for the most part to just explore the room and start playing in it.
Eventually, we let Nicholas in. He came in and started sniffing around, checking everything out, and quickly started eating the little ones' food. We let him for a bit, then started taking it away. We also quickly found out which kittens he seemed to be okay with and which ones he wasn't.
It seems that Nick hissed and swatted at Spekkio the most. Given that Spekkio seems to be the most alpha-ish kitty in the group at this point (we previously thought that was Schala), this is probably not surprising. He took swats at Gaspar as well, but seemed to leave Schala and Glenn alone. (At one point, Nick and Schala faced off on opposite sides of the gate to the carrier, and that looked much more like play than anything else.)
A bit later, all the kitties except Glenn curled up to sleep next to me on the futon. Glenn remained on the floor, still exploring everything and watching Nick. Nick eventually crawled into the carrier and the door ended up mostly closed, and Glenn appeared on the other side of the door. Nick then rolled onto his side, then on his back, and started poking his paws playfully through the holes in the door. It was ADORABLE! The entire rest of the time he was down there, he seemed to either ignore or tolerate Glenn's presence, but never once hissed or swatted at him. He did still hiss a bit at the others, and he swatted a couple more times at Gaspar (but not Spekkio, oddly enough).
We think that Nick is warming up to all of the kittens slowly, and the bigger, less crowded environment downstairs probably really helped. Trevor came in a few times and continued to hiss (and even growled a bit) at the kittens, but managed to make a couple laps of the room and just sat at the door watching for a while. I think he'll eventually start getting closer to them as well - he just needs more time. But I remember him taking longer to warm up to Nick than the other way around, and he also was (and still is) more standoffish with Calcifer, so there's so far nothing terribly unusual about this.
Calcifer did pop in briefly - it was cute: Nick left the room at one point, then came back with Cal following him. Perhaps it was Nick going up and saying "Hey, you gotta come see this!" Cal walked in pretty much to the middle of the room, took a look at one of the kittens, sniffed a little, then decided it was too scary and ran back out. No hissing or poofing - just being his usual scaredy-cat self. :) We didn't see him in there again, but when we put the kittens back in my room, he was seen walking around and acting normal, so I don't think he's too put off by the whole ordeal.
So, looks encouraging! I think a few more meetings like that, and we may be able to set the kittens loose in the house as a whole. It'll be good for them to get some good experience before they start going home with new families. :)
I have a short list of people I need to talk to about potential kitty adoptions before I post a wider call for adopters, but if those fall through, I'll post some information about that here. Stay tuned!
current mood:  mellow
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6:24 pm - Kittens, Galaga and Motorcycling!
Not in that order, though. Galaga first! Did a bit more poking around at the machine today and isolated the RAM failure to one specific chip. Thankfully, the RAMs in question are socketed, so I just popped out the suspect chip and swapped it with another one in a different socket. As I suspected, the board went further into its self-test, then failed at the expected point.
Jameco, where I got the CPUs this last week, has the RAMs I need as well, so I ordered enough to replace the entire set if necessary. Those should come in probably Thursday, so with any luck, I'll have the thing up and running by next weekend!
Okay, now on to motorcycling: This has been a BEEEE-YEWTIFUL weekend, so Fire encouraged me to get out on my bike. I rode into work and back on Friday, and today I did something more ambitious: I drove all the way up to Snoqualmie Pass and back (about a 90-mile round trip). That was FUN, but also a bit nerve-wracking because it was really windy going at 75-80 miles an hour! Stopped at the East Summit and took a quick break before coming back.
Unfortunately, I lost my glasses on this trip. I can't really wear them inside my helmet since they fog up instantly, so I put them in my pocket. I think I might have forgotten to zip up my pocket, though, because when I got home, I couldn't find them. May have lost them out on the freeway. :( *le sigh* Ah well, I was planning to replace them soon anyway. Just means I'll have to get new frames as well.
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: KITTENS! The kitties seem to be over their diarrhea now - if anything, one or two of them are acting constipated now, but they still don't seem to have any lack of energy. We're starting to introduce them to the older cats now as well - Nick was the first to go in and see them in a carrier, and he hissed at them and batted at the gate a couple of times, but has not once poofed and otherwise seemed pretty comfortable. He's getting a little ancy around the rest of the house, though - I think he's getting frustrated that we're not letting him spend more time with them. (We plan to let them meet out of the carrier tonight.)
Trevor came in briefly last night, took a look at the kittens, hissed at them and backed away slowly, then stayed out of the room the rest of the time. Calcifer apparently walked up to the door and peeked inside, decided it was really scary and took off (I was away from the room at that point). So the jury's out, but we still think Nick is the best candidate for cat-to-cat socialization.
The kitties have also met quite a few people by now, and we're starting to get a feel for their individual personalities and how they get along with people. That'll be useful when people start picking out the kittens they want to take home. :)
Speaking of kittens, though, it's time to go play around with them some more! Off I go.
current mood:  cheerful
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8:43 am - Galaga update - Real Progress!
For the first time since Bruce and I got the new monitor and power supply in, I've made real, tangible progress on getting my Galaga machine working. It's still not fully working yet, but it's no longer in "dead board" territory. :)
( Technical mumbo-jumbo under the cut )
current mood:  optimistic
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> Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
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10:33 pm - Kittens: 4. FIV-positive kittens: 0
Just a quick update: Our vet visit went well! The kitties are apparently very healthy, despite some lingering tummy issues (vet recommended some more beneficial bacteria and a slight change in their diet). And they took blood samples from Spekkio and Gaspar (one from each day's worth of kittens, since we got two kittens each over two days), and the results came out negative - meaning, no FIV!
So yay! We can move forward with introducing them to the adult cats. :) Also, the vet says she'll fix the males in two weeks (at the age of 2 months), and she'll fix Schala at 3 months (6 weeks from now). They'll all get their shots in 2 weeks as well.
This is a big relief! :)
current mood:  relieved
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12:26 pm - The Kitten Network
I'm overdue for an update on the kittens. But first, a quick update on our network situation at home: We're running Qwest DSL and Comcast High-Speed Internet side-by-side for a month to see which one works better. At the moment, DSL is winning, though it has its own quirks that I'm less than thrilled with. We've noticed that video streaming via Netflix is slow and tends to lag up our network big time when we do it (pings that are normally around 80-100ms go up to about 400-500ms when streaming). But the DSL has been rock-solid stable and only tends to make our pings vary by a little bit when playing WoW (ranging between 160 and 330ms in waves). So while we do seem to have rather limited bandwidth, the DSL does appear to work.
On the other hand, when I switched over to the cable last night, it was doing exactly the same thing as before: High pings all over the map, lots of packet loss, etc. I didn't even bother trying to stream video over it, because that just wasn't gonna fly. Back to the DSL again for now.
We'll do a couple more tests here and there, but I'm thinking it's likely we're gonna just dump the cable Internet in favor of DSL before too much longer. We'd rather have slow and stable than fast and sometimes-not-working-at-all.
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Okay, kittens! All four kitties seemed to have some sort of stomach bug over the weekend, but they're doing better now. A few loose stools here and there, but it seems they're feeling better, eating better, back to gaining weight, and they certainly have no lack of energy! As Fire posted in her journal, the kitties have taken to escaping from my room whenever we open the door, which led to quite the comical scene last night! Four kittens are a LOT to corral!
The adult cats definitely seem intrigued, and we're really looking forward to introducing them to the kitties soon! We're taking the little ones to the vet for their big checkup - we'll get shots and FIV tests done, so we should know very soon whether they're healthy enough to put in multi-cat households. :)
The little ones are definitely developing stronger personalities now. We've concluded that Spekkio seems to be the most independent of the bunch - he tends to sleep by himself, mainly, and he doesn't seem particularly attached to either of us. But he does still ask for attention at times. :) Gaspar fell asleep in my lap last night as we were getting ready to call it a night ourselves, and he frequently wants attention from both of us. Glenn does too, and Glenn seems to not mind being flipped onto his back now and then - he'll roll around and act all cute while doing so. Schala is still the most athletic of the bunch, but she's proven to be a bit of a scaredy-cat when given new toys to check out.
We also discovered that all three boys (and Gaspar in particular) are already responsive to catnip! Schala isn't for some reason, but we brought in a new catnip toy and let the boys play with it, and Gaspar started going NUTS over it! He was trying to rip it to shreds, growling at it (or the other kitties - not sure which), and generally acting high even after we took it away from him. Gonna have to find out if that's healthy at his age, but I was surprised and amused to see that from him. :)
...Two hours later, I come back to find I've left this LJ post open. Darned work, getting in the way of... oh, wait. :) No, I'm working, honest! :)
Anyway, more updates later!
current mood: mellow
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8:53 am - Email down
It looks like PlanetFurry is down - second straight day now, and unfortunately that means I can't access my regular email. Not too big a loss, since 99% of it is spam these days. But if you need to get in touch with me via email, use my Gmail address: kieferskunk-et-gmail-dawt-khan .
I'm thinking of switching web hosts, partly so I can have more programmability and a better web-mail reader. We'll see how long PlanetFurry stays down.
current mood:  annoyed
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> Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
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8:53 pm - New network equipment up and running!
Alrighty, so far, so good. I went out and picked up a simple Netgear wired router and a Linksys wireless access point, to give us plenty of flexibility for running our Internet connections side-by-side temporarily. This way, we ensure that our connection to the Internet is managed by a simple, dedicated router that doesn't also try to be a wireless hub, and I can move the router anywhere I need to in the house and keep our wireless connection in the place where we need it most - the living room. (We don't have an accessible phone jack in the living room, so I'd have to do a lot of creative stringing of cords to get DSL working there. Much simpler to just have the router in my room where the modem is.)
Setting up the router was the simplest thing I've ever done. Plugged it in, turned it on, and tried to access the web, had to click two buttons in my web browser, and it was ready to go! And right out of the box, I downloaded Adobe Reader (41.1 MB) at somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 MB per second! (Entire download was done in about 30 seconds.) That tells me that Comcast's PowerBoost or whatever they call it was working. :)
Setting up the access point was a bit more difficult because the docs and the Setup Wizard they provided apparently disagreed with the AP's default settings. (They got the stupid username/password combination wrong.) I had to guess at it for a few minutes before I figured it out, but once I was into the AP, setting it up was also a breeze. Now everything is up and running.
Remains to be seen how stable this will be, but so far the results are promising. And since the main points of our network that really need the bandwidth and fast response are wired now, I think I'm gonna feel better about this setup.
current mood: accomplished
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