Little Java got his first vet visit today. He was quite friendly, to the extent that the vet complained it was hard to hear his heartbeat over his purring. On the other hand, he did not particularly enjoy getting his temperature taken, and expressed his displeasure with claws. Although he was using them to try and escape, not to fight, which is something.

He's got eye infections, and we're dosing them with eye-drops; there is already a marked reduction in the nasty discharge, so the meds seem to be working. The eye drops also appear to feel nice, because he doesn't struggle at all when we apply them. Beyond the eye infections he's got an upper respiratory infection, which is very common in cats that have spent time in a shelter. (We got him from the local SPCA.) It's viral, so it should clear up on its own.

Going to a vet in the morning, we only encountered two other patients. One was a white cat, who never left his carrier; that cat and Java meowed at each other meaningfully. The other animal was a large dog, whose owner told me was a rescue case. The poor dog was terrified, trembling and shying away from even a 5-pound kitten. I hope that dog gains some mental equilibrium with love and time.

Confusingly, the large dog and the white cat in the carrier had the same name. One of the coincidences of life, I guess.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 247 words, total size 1 kb.

Hil and I have welcomed someone new into the house.

He's male and about 4.5 months old. We're not sure about a name yet, but we're trying out "Sven" to start. (Hil was not enthused when I suggested "Albrecht von Wallenstein" even though we could shorten it to "Wally".

Posted by: Boviate at 08:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 48 words, total size 1 kb.

When I read history books, I make marginal notes, which I suppose connects me to the traditions of scholars for as long as books have existed. This evening, my pencil was getting dull, as the book I was reading was causing me to take more copious notes than usual. But I was at my GF's place, while my pencil sharpener was in my apartment, as were my pocketknives.

But earlier today, I had done some wiring work in her basement, fixing some of the hinky stuff the prior owners of the house had done. A very fine carpenter had lived here, and did a lot of great carpentry work. But as electricians go, he made a fine carpenter, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, while doing the wiring, I had noticed a pencil sharpener attached to one of his workbenches! It's a nice classic model of the sort that are probably still found in elementary classrooms all around the world, with the wheel on the front that lets you select the size of the pencil shaft to insert.

It was packed full of shavings, and the GF said she didn't even know it was down there. Those shavings have surely been there since the carpenter died, quite a few years ago. Spooky.

With the shavings gone, I inserted my pencil… or rather, tried and failed. Visual inspection revealed that someone had shoved a stick of chalk into the sharpener, and it had broken off in there. Who does that? I was told that, sadly, the previous owners did not have grandchildren coming to visit, so I am still mystified.

I spent about ten minutes trying to take the cutting cylinders apart to extract the chalk. The mechanism was not apparently designed with user servicing in mind. It took those ten minutes for me to realize that chalk is probably softer than wood. After than revelation, I just jammed my dull pencil into the appropriate opening and turned the crank until the chalk was reduced to dust, and got me a nice sharp point. Victory was mine!

This was the most interesting thing to happen today, because it's been pouring rain all day and I've been feeling cooped up.

On the other hand, there is likely to be big news Friday.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 385 words, total size 2 kb.

Today the GF and I drove for a bit more than an hour to go party with her old college buddies. There were nine adults and four children, all boys, age 24 ± 6 months. We were in a single room, with a vaulted ceiling, which echoed mightily. Then the kids figured out that they could scoot their plastic chairs along the hard floor, and the chair legs made the most astonishing noise. Shrieks of glee ensued.

The chair scooting game didn't get old for the whole five hours we were there. I think her friends may think I'm antisocial, because I spent a good half the party hiding elsewhere with a massive headache. They were nice people, I'd just rather visit them without young children in attendance.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 130 words, total size 1 kb.

Yesterday, my GF joined me for a lovely bike ride of almost 20 miles. Unfortunately, at around the half-way point there's a railroad crossing at a very acute angle, about 30 degrees. It was very clearly marked, as we were riding along "New York Bicycle Route 5" which, as the name would indicate, is designed for long-distance riders.

Just before we reached the rails, I hollered out "Careful at the crossing!" to remind her what to do… but I had told her what to do at a non-perpendicular crossing a good six months ago, and she'd never had a chance to put the instructions into action and thus remember them. (For the record: turn into the rails so you cross them at close to a 90 degree angle). She thought I was warning her about some unusual traffic condition, she slowed down and looked around, then took a hard spill when her front wheel dropped into the crossing's flange slot. Once we picked her up, she soldiered on, declining my offer to race ahead and come back with a car. The damage was limited to quite a bit of surface bleeding: skinned elbow, skinned knee, and parallel scratches on one forearm. Her bike gloves saved the skin on her hands, which is their primary job! It's a good thing she was wearing them.

In a few days she should be healed up to go for another ride.

UPDATE: Here's a close-up of the damage to her arm!

Posted by: Boviate at 09:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 250 words, total size 2 kb.

Last weekend the GF's parents invited us along to a home show. We toured five luxury houses, all selling for >$600k. They were, as one might imagine, very nice houses.

What really got the GF's father going was the discovery that the houses were officially condos, and that this meant that their combined condo fee + property tax was about half of what the property tax alone would have been had they been normal houses. So the owners save about $10k a year on taxes, plus the association cuts their lawns and plows their driveways.

Posted by: Boviate at 10:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 97 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 5 words, total size 1 kb.

My GF has a nice house, built in 1906. The original part is a square, two stories tall with two rooms per floor. At some point a one-level addition added a master bedroom and a kitchen, then later another addition added a bathroom. That last addition was probably in the 1990s; previously, the toilet and shower were in the basement.

Anyway, the place has forced air heating and central air conditioning. While the upstairs stays nicely warm in the winter, it becomes brutally hot in the summer, even while the AC is keeping the ground floor nicely cool. I finally figured out what is going on– the house only has a single return vent, and it is on the ground floor!

Installing a return vent on the upper floor is very doable, but it would require taking down a bunch of walls, which I'm not about to do as a weekend project. So file it in the "long term plans" folder.

I have also considered putting together a kludge, with 15-20 feet of flexible ducting attached at one end to a box fan. The duct would run from the hot upstairs down the staircase to the solitary return vent.

Posted by: Boviate at 05:11 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 203 words, total size 1 kb.

Major fireworks shows are computer-controlled nowadays. It seems that San Diego's 2012 show had an undetected bug or two.

(Found at Boingboing.net).

Posted by: Boviate at 04:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

There's a family in Alaska that likes to film their cats interacting with an eagle that likes to stop by their house. Here is a short film that I would entitle "The cat has not thought this through."



And starring a different group of cats, here is "The better part of valor."

Posted by: Boviate at 10:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 55 words, total size 1 kb.