Monday, December 28, 2009
Christmas
The funniest thing post Christmas was trying out the new Wii Fit. It seems to think that I'm fat and old. I do know that over the past little while I have put on some weight but I blame my current employer for that.
To everyone out there I wish you all a great New Year's celebration and see you all in 2010.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Fun times
With all that we decided that we needed a new one. This was the plan but it was next year's plan not this years :( Anyway we got the new one installed yesterday, along with a new water heater, and everything is going along just fine. The house is a more normal temperature and better regulated cycle to cycle. Tomorrow's experiment will be if I actually drain the hot water tank when I take a shower, I could with the old one and it was only for half an hour.
Before everyone is up in arms about "Why not get them fixed?" it should be noted that both were house original pieces which dated them at about 26 years of age. Both have had their due and could be replaced without shame. Besides you can't get parts for a "Clare" furnace any more.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Somehow this seems right
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Funny in a painful way
Does this make it a new high or low for me?
Friday, October 23, 2009
Final destination
Friday, October 09, 2009
Final Journey
I found an animal hospital that was open that could do the job so I packed Five up for the last time and took him away. The process was quick and painless from what I could see and I held his head until well after the fact. Now he is taking a journey that has no return and I hope he finds his paradise along that path.
For now I'll be thinking about him while trying to juggle a new born baby. Oh what conflicted times.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Fading Five
Anyway Five is starting to fade faster than I thought he would. It looks like the problems have spread to his left eye and maybe his spinal cord. He has problems walking sometimes and going up and down stairs. Rarely right now his back end doesn't follow the front end when it is going places. He gave his head a shake like he had water on his head and the back end almost fell flat on the ground.
His condition is distinctly more troubled than it was, especially since last Friday.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Where's Waldo
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Five's new activities
He hasn't clued in about defending his territory against squirrels though. I saw three of them in the yard and wondered where Five was. When I looked down I got my answer.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
After the specialist
Needless to say that sometime between Christmas and my birthday Five will pass away and there isn't much that can be done about that. In the mean time I will be keeping everyone up to date about what is going on with him and posting pictures when I have a chance so we can all remember the crazy beast.
Health update
The good news is currently he doesn't seem to be in chronic pain. He has been outside recently, off leash, hunting, poorly, the local wild life. The best he has managed to do is be half the yard away when his intended pray flees. The only painful part for him from what I can tell is going up and down stairs. This isn't too surprising right now as his kidneys keep getting in the way when he climbs.
Five is eating less these days and having a few issues going to the bathroom. His bladder isn't suffering any at least.
Aside from that he is still acting Five-ish and all is going well for now.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Sick definied
As I noted we went to a vet yesterday to see why Five was loosing so much weight so suddenly. Initially it was though that he had more room to run around in and that he wasn't eating as much so a little weight loss was expected. After a little time the weight loss didn't stop and became an issue.
The vet felt around and noticed something odd about his kidneys which needed a specialist to look into. An appointment was made today for 12:00 which I arrived at 11:45 for.
Initial view from the specialist's assistant was that the kidneys were definitely enlarged and needed to have a closer look. The specialist came in and commented that the best go would be an ultrasound to see what was wrong and a quick "thin needle biopsy" to see what was going on. Luckily the all the resources were available and they could get it all done in 20 minutes.
When they came back they said that Five's kidneys were between two and three times the size they should be, should be 3.2cm were 9.0cm. This was being caused by cancer that had developed. They weren't sure how serious it is but a new specialist would be showing up on Saturday to take a look at the results and get a better idea of what can be done for Five.
Right now the given options were a) steroids which would delay the inevitable or b) chemotherapy which would delay the inevitable or even possible remission. They didn't say it but the chance that Five will see Baby E's first birthday is close to zero.
So right now I'm sad that I'll be loosing a friend but also sad because that friend will never know why this is happening.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Sick cat
I'm not looking forward to the long drive into the City.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Strange things
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Ender in Exile
Well here is my first review of something so I hope it will read well.
Ender in Exile is the fourth book written in the Ender's Game Series however, it takes place as book two chronologically. The book starts shortly after the attempted take over of the I.F. by the Warsaw Pact. The children of Battle School are still in flux about what is happening and when/if they will be going home.
The book tracks the life primarily of Ender Wiggin and his sister Valentine as they pass though close to sixty years of Earth based time. Very little time passes for them as they spend most of their time at relativistic speeds and thus only see about four of their own years pass.
Hyrum Graff is also followed in this book from his departure from the Military to other duties and finally retirement. He keeps Ender up to date over time to the goings on of Earth and other political events that he may want to know of.
The other Wiggins are also talked about in the book as well. For those that have read "Shadow of the Hegemon" you also get to have updates to the events as they transpire. There is a lot of overlap of the Bean Series as they both cover the same time span. If you haven't read the Bean Series you will find a few spoilers in here as some events are revealed, I haven't read "Shadow of the Giant" so there were some spoilers that I expected.
Overall this brings nothing new to the series that couldn't be guessed at before. The only enlightening thing that happened was the finding of the Chrysalis in great detail. Before it was always cited that "he found it exactly where the game said he would" but after that nothing. To wait until chapter 18 to find out so little seemed to be a bit of a let down for me.
Characters get introduced that seem to be discarded halfway through the book as if they were just filler. There are some characters that seem to last a chapter or two and then they are left by the way side creating plot lines that aren't needed to actually propel the story forward in any way.
Humor in the book is rare but worth a good laugh when it does happen. A good snippet is:
...."Has anyone ever mentioned that when you smile,
it would melt steel?"
"Inconvenient, in a spaceship. I'll smile less."
Overall I would rank this book as a "skip it" but not as bad as a "beating a dead horse for more money". I guess that means it gets two out of five stars.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Chain e-mail
Ok. I received an e-mail that included 140+ e-mail addresses in it. Considering that e-mail addresses should be private the question was rattling around in my head about what I should do about this. This has happened two other times this year so I have had a thought. My conclusion is this. If anyone sends me an e-mail that doesn't have trimmed e-mail addresses I will add all of them to a mailing list and send all material back through it. Not in an evil sense just saves myself some time posting back to everyone. I'll even be nice and unsubscribe people, at year's end, if they don't want to be there.
Oh before anyone gets annoyed about this it is actually better than publicly posting private information for all to see.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Teeth
Monday, May 04, 2009
Conference
The new laptop made all of this work very easy and quick. I am very pleased with my new toy and looking forward to many more happy conference years. Good bye year 15 and hello year 16!
Monday, April 06, 2009
Hardware purchase
Ok I finally broke down and got myself my first new laptop. Even though I have had two previous laptops, \\Fenris and \\Murgatroid, both of these were second hand. Both have served me very well so I figure now that I have a laptop that is my pick it should last longer. The only downside is that it comes with Windows Vista. Now I'm not a fan especially after all the press it got but I figured I should at least try it out. So far I'm not completely disappointed but the boot time and application load times are .... terrible.
Many years ago my APC SUA-1000XL died because it was involved in a flood has finally been replaced with an SUA-1500 which is oddly cheaper but has a longer batter life and higher output. I'm not sure how that works but there you have it. Even though this is for the entertainment centre it matches the one that I have safe guarding the workstations/servers so if anything happens I can easily switch them while worrying about the recovery later.
Last but not least I got a new Acer 19" LCD for my main system. This brings me to using dual monitors which personally I think is long over due but will allow me to be more productive on the book work that I have ahead of myself. I know this isn't a grand monitor but it isn't intended to be. I love my Viewsonic PS790 and it still works great. The best part is that it doesn't have the ghosting issues, and other technical faults of LCDs.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Busy life
Well it looks like life has become busy enough that I have been withdrawing from the virtual life. At best I have been checking my e-mail accounts and the social networks about one a week and as you can tell my blogging has kind of come to a stop.
The short news is: