1. A completely intact copy of Loom for Mac Plus, SE, and II running at least System 6.0.3, but with enhancements for 6.0.7.
2. An REI giftcard with $22 left on it.
3. An old soundhole pickup that I salvaged off a used guitar I bought then sold because I needed the money. A little bit of Internet research (which was not really feasible the last time I had my hands on this pickup) indicates that it’s a somewhat prized DeArmond 210. And here I am in pretty immediate need of a soundhole pickup.
Things I Found While Emptying Old Boxes
October 12th, 2008 Comments Off
RSS and Atom Feeds for Apple Store Refurb Pages
April 8th, 2008 § 1
I stumbled on this feed a while ago. If you’re in the market for a Mac or other Apple product, it might be worth subscribing for a while. It helped me score a nano for running.
I’ve noticed two things about the feed: Apple sells more refurb stuff than I thought, and it moves very quickly, so if you see something you want, jump on it.
Fighter
February 21st, 2008 Comments Off
Our husky Bolleke hates going to the vet. **Hates. It.** But this month is dental month at [our vet](http://nlvlc.com/), so today we took all three animals in for cleanings. I’m utterly convinced that keeping their teeth clean is number three on extending a pet’s life (after high-quality food and adequate exercise), so the expense (about a grand after all is said and done) is totally worth is.
With Lola and Naboo, there’s no issue in going to the vet. Lola is a very polite and well-behaved dog and doesn’t freak out at the vet, and Naboo is always in a carrier, so they’re both simple.
Bolleke is a different matter, though. He hates being poked and prodded, especially from behind. He’s not a mean dog, and there are certain people that he’ll allow to hold his hips and hold his paws and move his legs and lift up his lips, but the vet is not one of them. He also gives very little warning when he’s going to bite. He just whips his head around and snaps his jaw, so he has to be muzzled any time he goes to the vet. We even have our own muzzle. (He’s never bitten anyone – he always stops short – but he’s demonstrated his speed a few times. And I’ve seen what his jaws can do to cow bones, so I have no doubt that if he decided to actually go for it, it would really, really suck.)
The last time we took him in for a dental cleaning, just a few months after we adopted him, the vet had to have me come into the operating room to settle him down enough to get the catheter in, even after they’d given him the pre-anesthetic sedative. So I expected to have to do that today as well. I sat with him in an examination room while the sedative took effect, then the tech came and got him. She felt like she’d do better *without* me in the room, and I understand that line of thinking; some dogs act up more in the presence of their owner.
So I stood in the waiting room listening to Bolleke growling and trying to howl and bark through his muzzle. I heard his nails clacking on the floor as he tried to get the muzzle off and tried to avoid the grasp of the tech. I heard one tech say to another “Man, he’d totally be trying to bite us if he wasn’t muzzled” and then exclaim in exasperation “GOSH!”.
All I could think of the whole time was that grainy footage you see on COPS when the blackout drunk starts throwing punches at the state troopers.
Now all the animals are home (no extractions! all had the lowest level of tartar expected! yay!). The cat is doing marvelously (the only indication that he was at the vet is the shaved patch on his leg), and Lola is doing pretty well. But Bolleke’s hips have been getting pretty weak over the last few months (he’s almost 15) and the anesthetic hasn’t worn off, so he’s making me think of that same blackout drunk, but now it’s morning and he wants to know why he can’t find his car keys. Poor doggie.
Enclosing the Kitty
June 10th, 2006 § 1
Earlier this year, as the snow was melting and the sun was starting to stay out longer, our cat Naboo started his annual agitating to go out in the back yard. Last year we installed a cat door in the back screen so he could go in and out and not bug us. It worked well for us and for him (and for Lola, who’s small enough to fit through the door), but not so well for the neighborhood birds. It turns out that Naboo is an incredibly adept hunter.
Like most animals who don’t actually *depend* on their hunting skills, he’s not perfect, but he’s better than any cat I’ve ever owned. I think his skill is in the stalking and the speed. Veerrrry sneaky and like furry greased lightning when he goes for the kill. While we really love watching animals be themselves and live up to their potential, we also don’t want the backyard turned into a killing field. And while the odds are slim, we don’t want Naboo killing a bird infected with avian flu. More about this at the end of the post.
So Katie asked me if we could build an enclosure for him with a cat door leading from the house so he could go in and out on his own. We talked about a few different places we could put it, originally thinking it would be in the back yard. Ultimately, though, we decided that wouldn’t be the best because that’s where the dogs are, and even though Lola couldn’t care less where the cat is, Bolleke still has moments of looking hungrily at him, especially when he’s romping like prey through the back yard.
One day we realized we’d been overlooking the best place of all. Right outside our bedroom window, there’s a giant evergreen that’s easily fifty feet tall and estimated to be eighty to a hundred years old by the tree guy. We had some of the lower branches removed last year to bring the skirt up off the lawn, so there’s easily room for me stand under it. As it turns out, we had room to build a 6′ long x 4′ wide x 6′ tall enclosure, with a cat door in one on of the bedroom windows.
After some fits and false starts, we finally got it done. We used green cedar two-by-fours for the frame and standard chicken wire. I made the door out of cedar fence planks. It took a little convincing to get Naboo through the door the first time, but now he’s very much into it. He doesn’t hang out in it for hours on end, but he’ll go out there a couple of times a day. We plan to build a little veranda for him that actually goes out from under the tree’s skirt so he can lie in the sun, but haven’t had time to do it yet.
Oh, yeah. The bird thing. A couple of weeks after we’d built it and gotten him going out on his own, he was sitting on the bed in the morning with Katie, who hadn’t gotten up. He started agitating to go out (the blinds were still down over his cat door), so Katie pulled up the blind and Naboo *shot* out the door and Katie almost immediately heard a little scuffle. She looked out the cat door just in time to see Naboo headed back *with a dead bird in his mouth*. She jammed her hand against the cat door while we tried to figure out how to get the bird away from him, during which time he was pushing against the door with his head as hard as he could. Finally we just let him in and chased him down to the basement and took the bird away from him.
It was a crazy perfect storm of bird killing: a bird small enough to fit through the chicken wire had done so for some reason, the bedroom was quiet enough for the cat to hear the bird in the enclosure, and he was fast and quiet enough to get through the cat door to kill the bird. It hasn’t happened since, but Naboo is definitely more interested in the possiblities of his kitty den.
