Random thoughts and questions

ITT: "sexbucks" :D

When I eat an apple, why do I always feel the need to take a HUGE bite out of it?

Just got blood drawn from my left hand for the second time since getting home from work today. Once by each cat. The first one was Fry seeing me through a curtain and getting rowdy, the second time was Duncan appearing out of nowhere to use my hand as a springboard. Come on guys, be gentle.

Sometimes you can only, "WAHT"

Aw geez now they're curled up on the couch grooming each other like sweeties. I forgive you guys!

My almost-5-year-old nephew wants a pink polka-dotted tea set for Giftmas, and by god, he's getting one. Already ordered. :)

And I'm not real fond of Nute, now, either.

Depends on the beer. That Sam Adams Utopia costs more than most hookers. Or are you worth more like PBR? :D

That's called conspiring.

THAT IS A ROACH ANT SPIDER CRICKET SCORPION

is this thing indigenous to australia because seriously how did this thing come to exist

Despite Australia having the deserved reputation of being home to all that should never have evolved, it's indigenous to New Zealand. I'm not actually sure if Australia has any - they might have related species.

There are a great many different weta species here. Including, on a particular island, this one, which might be the heaviest insect in the world:

FTFY

i can't stop screaming.
I see its little eyes and i'm like "awwww" and then I move on to the body and AHHH

Well... that image is equal parts adorable and pants-shittingly horrific.

Next time I run a pen-and-paper RPG, I'm sending the party up against dire weta.

aw, it's nothing but a land lobster. Yum!

Don't you live in LA? The roaches I remember down there aren't as big as a weta (though they are big for roaches) but they flock in greater numbers, which I think makes them win the disgusto award.

I don't live anywhere near roaches. In fact, the only roaches I've ever seen were at my father's house, and he lives waaaay in Compton. :T

I'm in the Valley. We have extreme temperatures, reptiles, spiders, occasionally rats, and crickets. But I've never seen a roach.

Oh, they're there, don't worry. Just don't take a flashlight to look around the edge of your foundation at night. :o

I am average, so maybe Guinness. The American import not the real stuff.

No idea what got into me and made me bring this up. I am having issues. :).

One of my cats likes spinach.

But doesn't like turkey.

Wtf cat.

It's all right. It cracked me up. :D

I need to stop reading BF in the university library. The totally hot guy who sat in front of me will now hate me forever for laughing out loud.

One of my cats is obsessed with ramen. I once saw him desperately trying to get a paw through the grate in the sink to get at the centimeter-long, waterlogged shred of ramen that had gotten stuck in there.

So I'm skimming through this thread for the first time in the past few days -- wtf, who replaced Nute with Brian Koontz?

We have our Christmas tree up now, which is lovely, and our cats are super interested in it because it is a thing that they can climb and then break, or at the very least eat. So we bought a motion-sensor compressed air blaster to keep them away from the tree.

It's not exactly working as intended. The sensor seems either asleep or super touchy -- I can walk up to it without it going off one minute, and then walk across the far side of the living room and have it spray. At one point, a branch dipped down low enough to set it off. Another time it went off when I walked well to the side of it to get a book. So something's weird with it, obviously.

So our cats are not staying away from the Christmas tree because every time they get close to it, a terrible noise and rush of air tells them not to.

They are staying away from the Christmas tree because the Christmas tree is fucking crazy.

I've considered getting one of those things. Glad to know it's a waste of money, they aren't exactly cheap.

What is more effective (but definitely not cheap, and requires some handiwork) and is one of my favorite things in all the internet, is the Blender Defender (and its cousin, the Vacuum Defender).

The only thing I've ever had problems with are cats hanging out on counters, which I've corrected using the "lining up empty sodacans around the edge of the counter" method.

I actually also trained my dog to poke the cat with his nose if she starts to use the landing as a scratching post.

when we went to pick out our kittens at the orphan kitten foster place, it was about this time of year. Our girl cat stayed curled up in the box shyly, while our boy cat got out of the box, headed straight for the Xmas tree, and started climbing. This has turned out to be a perfect summation of their personalities ever since.

Hello for the first time in three months from a legitimate computer with an (INCREDIBLY SLOW) internet connection!

Some thoughts:

-I have 5533 e-mails sitting in my main personal e-mail. I dread the number of e-mails sitting in my site-wide catch-all.
-Addendum: This post was in the making for so long (since last night) that I got all the way through my catch-all e-mail, 3050. I guess the host's spam filtering does a great job!
-DOUBLE ADDENDUM: This post was in the making for DOUBLE THE SO LONG that I got all of the way through sorting all of it. It was mostly bullshit. Even the legitimate stuff. I'm unsubscribing from everything.
-I have been completely disconnected from the major news stories except for what was being posted here, what was easily parsed via PBS and what my wife was telling me about.
-I have numerous games to catch up on, some that I bought on sales when I couldn't even play them. This probably sales something about the psychology of Steam sales on buying habits.
-Following on the previous, Steam's password recovery system is still atrocious. Thankfully, their support is AWESOME.
-I started 'liking' more posts while using my phone than responding to posts as it is easier to express an opinion in that fashion. My tenure as Elyscape the Lesser is over.
-I didn't really miss not having proper internet access with a real computer, but what I did miss was having access to an all-in-one media center/service. Physical media is wonderful and irreplaceable for what I can only describe as its unique, tangible aesthetic textures, but nothing beats having instant access to a sweeping media library.
-There is still an astounding amount of stuff that isn't optimized for mobile use. Paying bills online can be a chore due to buttons that don't render or click properly, most websites try and serve you ads that will crash even advanced dual-core independent GPU Android phones, etc.
-Rich text editors are not a smartphone's friend. Disabling them does nothing. NOTHING. I know I could use Tapatalk, but this goes to the point above - there's a mobile audience, design for it!
-The mouse is hurting my hand. :(
-25" is a LOT bigger than 4" (if Aeon does not chime in I will be disappointed). I do not like browsing anything on 4"
-Holy shit, browsing is FAST! Even on a slow internet connection bridged via a hacked wireless router, pages render so much faster than on a fast smartphone with a 30Mbps LTE connection.
-With the computer I brought in a mobile firewire recorder, a couple guitars and our entire wet bar - all into a 300 (?) sqft cottage. I guess this says something about my priorities? I don't know.

I'm sure I have more useless thoughts to add, but no one cares! So I'm back, not that I was ever really gone! Whee. Civilization!

I was thinking this weta:



And I was wondering why he was hanging around in bricks near your house.

I decided to stop by a consignment store while I was out doing errands, and they has a box of the old-school metallic bulb Christmas ornaments, for $6. I am pleased.

Here's one of them, there were 3 striped like this, and then some various colored plain ones:

I am sitting in the waiting room at the electric service, and they haven't figured out how to keep the dialing/screeching sound of their fax machine from bleeding over onto their piped-in music. Doesn't give one much confidence.

Google is Abstergo.

As proof I offer this photo of their data center in Iowa:

That's an awesome link. Thank you, shift6. :)

Modern segregation:



Hope you can read that.

I guess it's ok. Candy should be judged by the character of its content. Plus it saves me time, since there is a whole row I can ignore!

Yes, Mom, this is a stress disorder. Entirely. And causing a crapton of extra gut-twisting stress with a phone call is clearly the way to go about resolving this issue.

Am all but resolved not to go home for Christmas this year. That's a near-apocalyptic event in the Bread family, but...

Last Friday, the CEO loudly proclaimed he was glad that the queue at our company's town-hall after party was entirely in front of the bar. Yesterday, we hired a two-time Olympic medalist to our staff. A clown riding a unicycle, playing spanish music, and beat-boxing into a mic just rode by my desk.

So, my new workplace is pretty awesome.

40 minute wait SO FAR for a 5 min appt to tell the nurse my meds are not causing any problems. Grrrrrrrrrrtt

Yes, those are always fun. Every three months I have to go into the doctor for a followup on my various medications. It's supposed to be a fifteen minute visit, and with all the reminders they send about the importance of being on time, you'd think they would be as well. But no, it's always a wait until the I get in just so the doctor can discuss the blood test results I've already seen online and tell me he isn't changing anything.

There was a news story recently where they said the FDA was considering alowing certain super common and specific medications (with no alternative value) to be refilled without requiring a doctor's approval. That would make my life 10 times easier, but no, some people think the idea is insane.