bloviation extrordinaire
Snapshot from the webcam of a truck that’s tracking the storm:
Just refresh to see the latest shot, or bring up the official HurricaneTrack.com page that refreshes for you.
UPDATE: Storm was no problem here in Raleigh, hope everyone else is doing ok… Here’s my favorite animation, from NASA satellites…
Our most recently inducted family members Julian and Simon, being feline, desired a place to discretely excrete. But our dogs wanted none of that! Thinking fast, I recollected the experiences of our good friends and “cat people”, brother and sister Ken Etterman and Kimberly Welch. Both have had DECADES of feline/canine interaction experience in a full house environment, leading them to the same conclusion:
| Step 1: Pick a room with a door for the litterbox. Any room will do, as long as it’s OK to always keep the dogs out of it. | |
| Step 2: Attach a small hook to the inside of the door frame, as such: |
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| Step 3: Tie a slipnot in a thick short string or rope, as such: |
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| Step 4: Tie the other end of the string around the hook, as such: |
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| Step 5: Slip the loop of the string around the doorknob, and adjust the slipnot so that your cat(s), but not your dog(s), can fit through the door, as such: |
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| Step 6: You and the cats can come and go, the dogs are verbotten! Enjoy! |
Tried to use one of those fancypants Windows DVD players but it turns out I can’t play a freakin’ DVD if I haven’t happened to have manually disabled my video-out on my video card. How sad is that! DVD *PLAYERS* have to go to great lengths to make sure you aren’t doing something as simple and fundamental as sending a video stream to an output jack. That’s like your car having an automatic refrigerator scanner in it to make sure there isn’t beer in your fridge before you go off driving somewhere. It’s so sad that it’s come this far…
I didn’t even think the video in/out was working on my Gainward video card. Hooked up my video camera to my tv-in jack and got this. At least I had a little fun in the end…
I just realized, several toe-tapping hours after the end of this movie-trip-around-the-world, that there wasn’t a single spoken word of English in it! It was that good that I didn’t even notice. I want to see this one a hundred times more!
Fortunately, I found the
I actually did it a couple weeks ago, but felt no reason to comment until things stabilized. I give it two thumbs up. No serious discomfort, even during the operation, which took all of about 10 minutes. My eyes are a bit dry at times, the only down side. Within 20 hours I had 20/20 vision, after one week I tested to 20/15. Cost less than $2k, and I could finance the whole thing at 0% interest. I can now wrestle with the dogs and girls without nose dings! :P
Go do it!
Old and new commentaries on capital punishment. Neither one has any final answers, of course, but at least they both attempt to provoke a few questions…
We all took naps around 3 o’clock on Saturday while one of the kids from the neighborhood cut my lawn. (thanks Kelly!)
Then we got up around 5 and gathered up the troops. We took a blanket and a picnic dinner to the NC Art Museum’s amphitheater to hear the best guitar player on the planet lay down a wall of sound for two solid hours.
He was everything I hoped and expected, starting off with jazzy sounds, mixing in 15-year-old classics from my first exposures, rocking 12-string slides, and a beautiful darker tune in some minor key called “Industrial Park” (but he said the name in German hehe). All mixed with his droll disjointed ramblings that kept a permanent smile tatooed on everyone’s face – whenever we weren’t laughing out loud. We heard about everything from reincarnation to watermelon liberation to martian hibernation – something about a guy named Frizz Fuller and his crazy lyrics… “Martians at the window… And you in my arms… take down your antennae, don’t broadcast your charms…” And the whole time he’s just dinkin’ away on the guitar…
We brought the binoculars, and for the second half we were just a few dozen feet from him. I zoomed in on his hands and tried to figure out his playing technique. I couldn’t see a pick or a slide, but his dual melody-rhythms and walls of full twelve-string chords kept flowing out like he was using four guitars. So I guess his hands are just melded with his guitar, as I always expected.
Dang, that was fun!
Thanks again to Jason for hosting anotha LAN, all day long this time. Counterstrike and Diablo ][ devoured the day before we knew what hit us. Chau, Stephen and Brenda, Zac, Jason and Julie, myself and 4 or 5 friends of Chau were in attendance…
It was great fun having Grammy Boop stay for the summer. We all had a blast improving our swimming (no more floaties!), playing Lost Cities, and watching the new kitties make themselves at home. Can’t wait for next summer so we can do it again!
Looks like we may be becoming a “cat” family, in addition to being a dog pound. We bought 2 large air purifiers this week. It’s just so crazy it might work! Stay tuned… and if you want to adopt you better hurry up! (pleaaaase?? :> )