I have several things backed up to talk about, but between helping a relative resolve some computer issues, dealing with an ISP that is becoming increasingly strident about e-mail addresses, and conning a cat into getting into a carrier to take a trip for “the operation,” I haven’t had time. Hopefully things will start resolving themselves tomorrow.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
32 comments
i can sympathize with all 3 of those. i’ve [temporarily] given up on the e-mail, i start carting cats off to the vet this week, and i convinced the relatives to ask their neighbors for computer help.
plus, i wasted a perfectly good sunday afternoon working on the car.
Hang in there. All of us can sympathize. Stella’s computer bit the dust today… doesn’t even get through the power-on self-test… and while the good news is that she has a three-year warranty still in effect, the bad news is that a) she has no current backup, and b) the machine is in the shop for at least a week of workdays. Don’t get me started about a) … Regarding b), I hope to provide her a laptop donated by a friend, if I can get it going with current s/w, so she can surf, check email, etc. in the interim.
At least Stella’s cats are “fixed.” It did take twice with Samantha, but for the moment, it’s not a problem. Good luck with “the operation.”
Regarding email, I’ve had essentially zero trouble with everyone.net, which is a commercial email host. That’s all they do, and they do it well, for corp’s and serious individuals. They’re not cheap… a personal account is $35/yr for 5 mailboxes, 5 aliases and 100mb mail storage online… but things basically never go awry there. I got the recommendation originally from the good people at NearlyFreeSpeech.net, and I’m not at all disappointed. One failed email from a client would cost me more than the yearly fee; so far, no trouble.
about everyone.net, how long is “so far, no trouble”?
Fortunately, Hipparchia, my Mother’s car is under warranty as my van would cost an arm and leg for the gas to start it. [350CID V8].
I’ve been helping the relative who actually owns my permanent e-mail account to move to a different host because Yahoo has been so spotty. I managed to change to embarqmail from earthlink without any noticeable problems yet, but I have to contact some people and tell them.
I’m waiting on the call to see how Property made out.
hipparchia, just over a year. I know because my credit card just received the charge for the second year. I’ve seen an instance where their webmail interface went flaky for a couple of hours. But that’s just the web interface: even on that occasion, the mail servers still worked fine when viewed through a client like Thunderbird or Outlook… the mail servers themselves appear to be up at all times, in my experience.
Hoping for the best for Property. Would you call the removal a Property tax? 😈
echoing steve and hoping for the best for property too.
Property has to stay overnight because her surgery was delayed by an emergency, and they wouldn’t release her until she was awake. I’ll go back tomorrow morning to pick her up.
there are worse things than spending the night in the hospital. i think.
It means I’m spending the night with 5 cats who think I’m an ax murderer.
you’re in trouble, dude.
i’m still basking in worshipful gazes for restoring christopher houdini to the fold, but i have to admit that the intensity of the worshipfulness is waning a bit.
It takes about a week for them to forget.
it’s been nice while it lasted. starting tomorrow, i get to be the ax murderer.
Property came home totally annoyed. At some point the Vet’s office removed the towel from the carrier, and then she had to empty her bladder. She got wet, and she definitely doesn’t like getting wet.
I was going to isolate her for another day to avoid any problems with her brothers, but decided it was a better idea to let her mom take care of her.
She has settled down, but I’m keeping my shoes in plastic bags for a few days.
poor little property!
She has some pipes. I’ve never heard her vocalize before, and I can wait a long time before I hear it again.
good for her! i’ve always heard an angry cat is a healthy cat.
time to take up everybody’s food and water, in preparation for the first round of operations tomorrow. the dog, who has been ignoring his food for the past 4 hours is now diligently scavenging crumbs, and there’s a mewing mob over where the food bowl used to be. i’m expecting an unquiet night, but here’s hoping none of them has property’s vocal properties.
Healthy for whom?
Fortunately I have have the ability to isolate the individual or I would never get any sleep. Sox would wend around the house announcing to the world the shock and horror of an empty food bowl.
the vet’s surgery schedule had room for two today, so with 5 to choose from, the plan was to grab the first two i could lay hands on; easiest to just deprive everybody and apologize later. besides, everybody here complains more loudly about isolation than they do about food.
curmudgeon cat has a bloodcurdling scream that he saves for two important occasions: when people are trying to break into the house [very effective], and when he’s riding in the car [also effective, if unhealthy for the driver].
Mom would be my number one priority, and females before the guys, but you do what you can and if I hadn’t managed to get Property, one the boys was going.
If someone was breaking in, sox would wait until he knew if the individual had treats before saying anything.
curmudgeon cat can be bought, but his price is high. the dog and i can both be found hiding under the bed if trouble breaks out [or people break in].
my plan a was to get mom cat and the one boy cat today, but mom cat scotched that one, so it was boy cat and one of his sisters. there’s one surgery opening on friday, so i’m going to concentrate on mom cat then. that will take care of the three blues, who are the most social, the most likely to hang out by the front door, and the most eager to accompany the dog on his walks.
the other two girls are much closer to being feral, and would be the most difficult to re-corral if they got out, but they mostly hang out in the back of the apartment, and usually run away from the door when i open it. if everyone stays indoors, the easiest, quickest, cheapest way to stop the kitten factory is to fix the one male, but like you say, you do what you can.
The boys tend to be friendlier if they are fixed early, and they may never discover the joys of “spraying”. Fully functioning tom cats on the other hand have the livability index of billygoats, odor included.
With only one male, he was the second best on the target list. The other benefit of fixing is not getting involved with going into heat, a major annoyance.
yep. i’ve got a friend who used to breed siamese cats. apaprently they become even more vocal when they’re looking for love. and yeah, we’re veterans of the tomcat spray wars here. even curmudgeon cat got his two cents worth in a couple of times.
Your mother cat is very good to have two litters survive within months. It indicates a good mother cat, which is a real problem in controlling the feral cat population, especially with such a high percentage of females.
Siamese are the champion howlers, but they were bred as temple guards – to spread the alarm and to attack in groups – they can been interesting to live with.
she is an excellent mom cat. she is to be commended for her skill, sagacity, and nurturing. unfortunately, this means that she’s a one-cat population explosion all on her own. of course, i live in excellent rat country: swampy, thick brushland; dumpsters that don’t get emptied as often as they should; high human density [for this area], so that’s not all bad. the rats are possibly the reason why the neighborhood has been able to support a hawk family for several years now. or maybe it’s the excess kittens.
my mom’s ironclad rule on family cats: no smashed-face persians and no siamese, so i don’t know first-hand what they’re like to live with. i do, however, own all the cat who… books.
the weather disrupted a few things today, not the least of which was the vet’s office [closed]. the 2 cats were fine as of wed afternoon, and i was supposed to pick them up this morning. ha. i was out slogging around in the worst of it, looking for a phone to call a tow truck [yes, i have a cell phone; don’t ask]. i did drive by the clinic this evening [after hours], saw lights on inside, cars in the parking lot, and no apparent damage to the building, so i assume everybody inside was being fed and bedded down for the night and made it through the storm ok.
we’re supposed to get more of the same all night tonight and all day friday, so i’ve scrapped the plans for taking any more cats in for surgery until monday.
Hawks, raccoons, and possums will take kittens as well as rats, but as you know, one good momma cat can populate an area on her own, but it really reduces her life span.
Doesn’t everyone own all the Cat Who… books?
I have some repairs to make when the weather permits, but no major local flooding.
I posted the current totals and they look a like Georges without the wind. I’m avoiding the road because the locals are driving like this was the first snowfall of winter.
thanks for the cubits. i started to look them up last night, but got distracted. i remember georges. i think that’s the one where i lost some books to flooding, but i’m not sure. so many hurricanes, so few neurons to devote to remembering them.
some flooded streets here, and some destroyed houses that probably everybody has seen on the news already and the day care center, and the church, and joe patti’s]. a tv crew was out in front of the vet’s this morning, trying to do person-in-the-street interviews when i went to pick up the cats. i stayed inside the clinic until they went away. the vet thanked me profusely for not bringing them any more cats today.
for rats you really need dogs, terriers, instead of cats [although i’ve heard that ferrets are good too]. if the hawks hadn’t moved in, i was threatening to start a colony of feral pit bulls to take care of the rats.
i dunno. there might be some starving kids in china who only own one or two of the cat who… books.
It was probably Georges for the flooding. It crawled by dumping about four-feet of rain. By day three I gave up on rain gear and just stacked towels and dry clothes in the kitchen.
Some of the electrical grid was smashed, so things will be iffy, power-wise, for a few days over in your area. Trying to repair electrical lines in the rain is slow work.
A truly feral momma cat is a very effective ratter. Rani [may she rest in piece] dropped them off at back door at least once a month, but I suspect she found something wrong with those, because she would eat them [maybe she didn’t like Thai, and they came from the back of the Thai restaurant].
Ferrets are the best ratters, but they don’t survive very long down here.
maybe she didn’t like thai 😛
the family farm always had more mice than rats, so my only firsthand observations of dogs, cats, and rats is from a couple of rat invasions into two of the houses i’ve lived in. in both cases the resident cats [pets, not ferals, i’ll grant you] completely ignored the rats, while the resident dogs went on killing sprees, gleefully. the dog i had before this one was an especially superb ratter.
lots of electical crews out working today. fortunately the weather was not as bad as predicted.
georges, flooding. ivan and frederic, 2 weeks without electricity. opal, evacuation. celia, sudden intensification just before landfall. all the rest, big loud rainstorms [can’t even remember most of the names anymore].
Tropical Storm Alberto came through the year before Erin and Opal and was the worst local flooding we had. It was a very slow moving storm and came right into Choctawhatchee Bay and then north over the water shed. Not much in the way of winds, but that was the highest the bayou has ever been.
i missed that one. i was still living out of suitcases back then, and goodness only knows what city i was in at any given point.
we had some heavy flooding here soon after some hurricane [ivan or dennis]. it wasn’t much more than a big rainstorm, but the ground was already soaked and all the storm drains were clogged with hurricane debris. we’re not going to need a huge increase in the number of category 5 hurricanes to have problems along the gulf coast. among other things, the cumulative effects from an increasing number of albertos and allisons will be sneaking up on us while we’re watching for the “big ones.”
hmmm… if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again
It’s a bad name for tropical weather or attorneys general.
’tis that.