Happy Homes

As noted in the comments, both kittens have found new homes. The vet estimated they were about nine weeks old when we acquired them, which means my guess was quite respectably close– I went with ten weeks.

Annoyingly, although I inspected the kittens when they arrived at our house, I apparently didn't do so well enough. The vet also noticed that one of the kittens had fleas. This has led to a frenzy of vacuuming, and poor Aria (our "keeper" adult cat) is going to be stuck with a flea collar for a while. She hates collars, but I suspect she'd hate fleas even more.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Meow

Yesterday I had to be at work at 0700. I left at 1900 with the expectation that I would have to rush home, change clothing, then attend a community theater production with my fiancée. She's been looking forward to it. We originally were going to see it last week, but my boss called and asked if I could work instead, so we rescheduled.

Anyway, as I was leaving work, I got a call from the aforementioned fiancée. She wanted to warn me that when I got home, the number of cats in the house was different.

Her aunt Beverly had found two kittens meowing on her porch earlier in the day, and knowing that we already had a cat, sent the two little ones over packed in Bev's dog's crate. (I do not know if the dog was consulted.) So now we've got two kittens in a crate for the weekend, because the ASPCA is closed for the weekend.

I inspected and determined that we've got one male and one female, age somewhere in the vicinity of eight or ten weeks, i.e. shortly post-weaning. They appear to be siblings, and comfortable with humans. My hypothesis is that they're siblings that were kicked out of the house once they were old enough to have a vague chance at survival. I could be wrong and they are friendly ferals, but I would think if they were old enough to get kicked out by their mother, then they would have split up as well.

So anyway, I got home, met two kittens, changed clothing, and we went to the Ghostlight Theatre. Tonight's show was "The Deep End of the Dark", a horror story for five characters camping on an island. It was written by the theater company's manager/creative director, who was also playing one of the parts.

I found myself terribly bored. Part of the problem was that I was hungry and tired. But also the whole thing was terribly predictable- I knew who the killer was and why he did it at about the ten minute mark, and I knew how the killings were going to be accomplished by the twenty minute mark. Plus the writing was just not good, with much of the dialog sounding quite unnatural.

After the show we went home and socialized with the kittens. My future sister-in-law came over to coo at them, and despite our intention to merely foster the kittens for the weekend, my fiancée and her sister named them Sophie and Marcus. That's not a good sign.

Our existing cat, Aria, is not at all pleased with these interlopers. We're keeping them separated, so she keeps hissing, growling, nipping at people trying to pet her, and occasionally retreating to high shelves and glaring at all and sundry. I'm sympathetic, as I would be quite irate if two strangers moved into my house without so much as a by-your-leave, and I was prevented from ejecting them.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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More Things I Am Not Allowed To Do

9. The new access-control devices are "electronic turnstiles". They are not "murder machines".

10. When an electronic turnstile begins to cycle open and closed continually, the report should state that it is malfunctioning. It should not state that "the turnstile has gone feral, and has developed a taste for human flesh."

11. A desire for accurate paperwork is laudable. However, when receiving an injury report for "John Smith" only to discover that the actual injured party is named "Joan Smith", I should change the name on the paperwork. I should not instruct a security guard to find an employee named John and injure them.

12. An email to the Property Services Manager regarding flooding at a branch should have a subject like like "Flooding at the San Diego branch". It should not have a subject like "Gather the cattle and head for the hills!"

Posted by: Boviate at 11:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Things I Am Not Allowed To Do

Things I am not allowed to do while working for a multinational bank:

1. No quotes from Karl Marx in my email signature block, even for internal emails.
2. No quotes from Adam Smith either.
3. Also no Latin mottos that are non-obvious. In fact, just use the default .sig.
4. People from England get confused when told to press the "pound" key on their telephones. It took a moment to realize why.
   
5. When a malfunctioning alarm panel calls 911 five times in a row, the police don't want to hear jokes.
6. Any story that begins "So no shit, there I was, in..." shall be considered inappropriate for work.
7. I will walk the extra 20 yards to the escalator that is already going the direction I want to go. I will not use my override to reverse the direction of the nearest escalator.
8. Techniques used to calm freaking-out Marines are not to be used to calm freaking-out bank tellers.
   

Posted by: Boviate at 07:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Working for the Weekend

I've rejoined the ranks of the gainfully employed. I'm not exactly in my dream job, but it'll hold body and soul together.

I'm working for Command Security, which is a security guard provider. Due to my education and military background, I'm not the kind of guard that stands in a bank to deter robbers.

Rather, I'm the kind of guard that sits in a multinational bank's security headquarters. I'm a "console operator" which means I have a computer and a telephone with a disturbing number of incoming lines. When a security alarm is tripped at any of this bank's hundreds of North American branches or ATMs, the phone rings and it shows up on my computer. I then check to see if other alarms are activating at that location and remotely view the location's cameras. If something untoward seems to be occurring, I can call the local fuzz. I've been doing it for two weeks so far and the only thing that's legitimately tripped multiple alarms is a pair of cats that got locked into a branch overnight. We figure they snuck in the doors with a customer and hid out from the staff. Either that or a staff member brought them to work and they got loose.

While that work's full-time for now, Command Security may mix-and-match my 40 hours per week with work at the local airport. I'd be manning the service vehicle gate. Which is to say, when the Cinnabon in the airport concourse needs a resupply of that white slime that they claim is frosting, a delivery truck has to pull up to an airport loading dock. My job will to be to ensure that the truck is loading with disgusting white slime and not with explosives, terrorists, or thieves. The latter is the biggest concern, as stuff worth shipping by air is almost always very valuable, and there have been some multimillion-dollar airport heists in the past.

I haven't started that yet because we're waiting on the TSA to finish my background checks. (The bank checked me too, but being a business they were a lot faster about it. They're probably more thorough too.) For the TSA security check I had to fill out a long and hilarious form, upon which I averred that I had not been convicted of the following crimes:

• Treason
• Sedition
• Murder committed on an aircraft or at an airport
  
• False construction of an aircraft

There were dozens of others, but those were the funny ones. I looked it up, and the most recent American convictions for treason were for offenses committed during WW2. There were six convicted, and the last one died in 2006.

I don't think sedition has been a crime since the repeal of the Sedition Act (of 1918) in 1920.

Laughing, I asked my boss about the third one. He confirmed that you can work in an airport with a murder conviction, as long as the crime was committed in a non-airport related context. That's reassuring.

As to the final one I listed, I have no idea what that even is, although I can confirm I have never been convicted of doing whatever it is. My best guess is the construction of an aircraft that does not have a FAA certification. Or, possibly, doing work on an aircraft without the proper licenses. A lot of my Marine buddies got their Airframes & Powerplants licenses when they got out, allowing them to do the same kind of work that they had been doing while in the Corps.

So anyway, good times. CSC is taking its time with direct deposit, so I got the first paycheck in paper. How old-fashioned!

Posted by: Boviate at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A Capella "Grapevine"

This is interesting. To make a karaoke track, they strip away the vocals and leave the instrumental and backup singers. This is the opposite, with everything but the lead vocal gone.

Without the chipper orchestration, I Heard it Through the Grapevine is really depressing.

Posted by: Boviate at 01:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Spoiler: It Always Rains the Day You Pack Up

About twenty-five of my friends and acquaintances went on a trip to Allegheny State Park last weekend. Most of them stayed in some amazingly cushy cabins, but three of us decided to show them how it's done and went tent camping.

We're kind of hyper-competitive, too. So the goal was to be visibly and obviously better off. Now, we couldn't beat them on sleeping comfort, what with the cabins having electric heaters and mattresses on beds. So we went with cuisine as our plan, and brought about triple the food necessary, then proceeded to cook it over an amazing twenty-first century camping stove, the Biolite CampStove. It's an eight-inch tall bundle of wizardry- it's a stove that burns twigs. The heat generates electricity, which it uses to power a fan to give you amazing heat from said twigs, plus spare electricity to power up electronic devices via a USB port. I'm sure the original intent was hiking GPSes, but they're not dumb, and all the advertising materials show it charging smartphones.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Odd Couple

I suspect that they bonded over a shared love of hunting rodents.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Whisperlite

Prepping for my upcoming camping trip, I pulled out the family Whisperlite and gave it a try. The Whisperlite is a backpacking stove made by the good folks at MSR; it's ultra-light and built to last. It can be completely disassembled in the field if need be.

However, the particular Whisperlite I was using is old enough to drive. And to vote. And to drink. It won't be long until it can serve in the US House of Representatives. Which is to say, it needs a few replacement parts— the pressurization pump's leather gasket is not doing well, and there are a few other bits that look iffy. I serviced it according to the manual, and managed to get it to start, but it wouldn't maintain a burn.

This isn't a huge deal, because the trip this weekend is car camping, and I'll just take a Coleman propane burner stove. But it'd be nice if I could get the Whisperlite working for an upcoming backpacking trip that we've been contemplating.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I Should Teach Her How to Use a Hammer Properly

I try hard not to anthropomorphize our cat too much, but just now I was in the basement, building some wooden shelves that I'm going to give to a friend. As I was working, Aria sat on a piece of carpet and watched with intense concentration. I can only imagine that was how I looked when I was six years old and watching my father in his workshop.

Also, on a barely related note, when I picked up the wood from Lowes I had neglected to bring my measuring tape, but I took their word for it that a 60" trim piece was, in fact, 60" long. Alas, I am too trusting. Also, alas, the opening sentence to this paragraph reminds me that I have a tendency to write overly long sentences with an excessive number of clauses, with this terminal sentence being another example, although undoubtedly an unnecessary one for a reader of your evident perspicacity.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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