A new website, coming soon
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
So it turns out, companies upgrade their server farms on a regular basis. Some every 3 years, some every 5, some every 7, but on a semi-regular basis. As a result, one can find relatively inexpensive but robust server hardware online. I have taken advantage of a couple sweet deals I've found, and am in the process of setting up a full corporate network in my basement. (Mainly for my own disgustingly geeky amusement but partly to brush up on my tech skillz.) As part of that network, I plan to host a website. I chose to pick up asdfghjkl.info, cause it was on sale for $2.99. It's not active yet, but it will be soon. If you want an @asdfghjkl.info email address, just let me know and I will soon be able to hook you up.
The Garage Band, Scene 1
Scene 1:
Curtains open. On the stage is a white one-car garage. A truck is parked outside and a man is carrying boxes from the truck into the garage.
Man: Whew, that's the last of my stuff. I'm glad it all fit...I was starting to get worried! Now I'm off to enjoy five months in Sweden. I'm sure glad all of my stuff will be safe here in this secure garage!
Man gets into truck and drives off stage left.
After a few moments, a squirrel scurries to the middle of the stage from stage right. He pauses, sniffs the air, and then stands up on his hinds legs and looks around. He sits back down and a second squirrel approaches from stage right.
Squirrel 2: tktktktk. Is the coast clear?
Squirrel 1: Eep. Chkchkchkchkchk. Yep, he's gone. Did you see all those boxes he was carrying, Bushy? There's gotta be some good stuff in there. If there was only some way in.
Bushy: Are you blind, Pushy? There's a huge crack under the door. You could squeeze 10 squirrels through there! That guy was clearly only concerned about keeping people out.
Pushy: Let's go investigate!
Bushy: Whoa, not so fast. tktktk. He might be coming back. This is the eighth time we've had this conversation in the last 2 days. Let's wait for at least three days.
Pushy: Three? Since when could squirrels count? Do I look like I have a calendar? I'm tired of waiting, let's go now!
Bushy: OK, fine. Let's go!
The squirrels run through the crack under the door. Curtains drop. End of scene 1.
...To Be Continued...
Curtains open. On the stage is a white one-car garage. A truck is parked outside and a man is carrying boxes from the truck into the garage.
Man: Whew, that's the last of my stuff. I'm glad it all fit...I was starting to get worried! Now I'm off to enjoy five months in Sweden. I'm sure glad all of my stuff will be safe here in this secure garage!
Man gets into truck and drives off stage left.
After a few moments, a squirrel scurries to the middle of the stage from stage right. He pauses, sniffs the air, and then stands up on his hinds legs and looks around. He sits back down and a second squirrel approaches from stage right.
Squirrel 2: tktktktk. Is the coast clear?
Squirrel 1: Eep. Chkchkchkchkchk. Yep, he's gone. Did you see all those boxes he was carrying, Bushy? There's gotta be some good stuff in there. If there was only some way in.
Bushy: Are you blind, Pushy? There's a huge crack under the door. You could squeeze 10 squirrels through there! That guy was clearly only concerned about keeping people out.
Pushy: Let's go investigate!
Bushy: Whoa, not so fast. tktktk. He might be coming back. This is the eighth time we've had this conversation in the last 2 days. Let's wait for at least three days.
Pushy: Three? Since when could squirrels count? Do I look like I have a calendar? I'm tired of waiting, let's go now!
Bushy: OK, fine. Let's go!
The squirrels run through the crack under the door. Curtains drop. End of scene 1.
...To Be Continued...
Harley
Thursday, December 2, 2010
This first post now that I'm back is a sad one.
Before I got back to Minnesota this summer, MCRS (the Minnesota Companion Rabbit Society) contacted me to see if I would be willing to foster a rabbit with some "behavioral issues" (not the first that I have dealt with). I agreed, and they hooked me up with Harley, an intelligent and energetic rabbit who had the unfortunate tendency to bite people. (His temporary name when he came to MCRS was Mayhem along with his sibling Mischief.)
I had Harley for just over 4 months starting in the beginning of July. When I first started with him, he would bite and run from me any time I got near. Recently though he started to let me pick him up and pet him, or lie down near where he was flopped out on the floor and scratch him behind the ears or rub his face or just hang out next to him. He liked climbing on me and nibbling my hair, doing full-speed laps around the living room, and constantly exploring and investigating. As is the case with many biting rabbits, he was rather intelligent and bit because he had learned that it was effective. It took some time, but I eventually trained him that biting would not keep me from picking him up, but that being picked up was not that scary anyway. He had improved to the point that I was ready to tell MCRS that he was ready to be adopted or transferred to a regular foster home.
A few weeks ago, Harley was out getting his daily exercise.and I forgot to close the basement door. Being the explorer that he was, Harley made his way down into the basement and got into an altercation with Pretzel.
Pretzel is one of my bonded pair of Dutch rabbits, Triscuit being the other. Both reside in the basement. Although Triscuit is the more aggressive of the two, Pretzel is a jealous partner. He does not hesitate to defend his damsel at the slightest provocation from another boy.
Anyway, by the time I was able to intervene, Harley was sprawled out triumphantly in the middle of the basement surrounded by tufts of fur while Pretzel was huddled underneath some shelves in the corner. (Triscuit had apparently stayed uninvolved in the whole fiasco. This summer when I would let all of the rabbits out in the yard to play, Triscuit and Harley got along fine. Maybe even a little bit more than "fine"... Triscuit can be rather flirtatious and I had to separate them at least once when their fooling around turned into humping. That may explain why Pretzel tends to be overly protective.)
I returned Harley to his cage upstairs and proceeded to treat everyone's wounds. Pretzel had a pretty deep gouge taken out of the top of his head and a couple other, more minor injuries. Harley had a small bite on his face that was easily treated. Everybody got hydrogen peroxide and a stern lecture.
Two days later, I noticed that Harley was limping when I let him out for his exercise time. I investigated closer and saw that I had missed a cut on his shoulder. I treated it with hydrogen peroxide and requested permission from the rabbit society to take him to see the vet. The next day (Saturday), I received permission to take him to the vet as soon as they opened Monday morning.
Saturday night his condition started to worsen. He started eating less and seemed to be in pain. By Sunday night he wasn't eating at all (not even treats) and I had to force him to take a baby aspirin to try to ease the pain. I stayed up with him and held him all night, as that seemed to make him feel more comfortable. At 4:00 AM, he had a seizure and then died in my arms.
Even though Harley was "only" a foster, I still cared about him a lot. We had gotten pretty close over the last couple months as I had been training him to trust people and be more friendly. Now that he's gone to that big field of clover in the sky, I know he's happy running, playing, and exploring, but I hope he thinks about me every once in a while and knows that he is missed.
I'll return to more light-hearted posts, but I felt that Harley deserved an obituary. Thanks for taking the time to read his story.
Before I got back to Minnesota this summer, MCRS (the Minnesota Companion Rabbit Society) contacted me to see if I would be willing to foster a rabbit with some "behavioral issues" (not the first that I have dealt with). I agreed, and they hooked me up with Harley, an intelligent and energetic rabbit who had the unfortunate tendency to bite people. (His temporary name when he came to MCRS was Mayhem along with his sibling Mischief.)
I had Harley for just over 4 months starting in the beginning of July. When I first started with him, he would bite and run from me any time I got near. Recently though he started to let me pick him up and pet him, or lie down near where he was flopped out on the floor and scratch him behind the ears or rub his face or just hang out next to him. He liked climbing on me and nibbling my hair, doing full-speed laps around the living room, and constantly exploring and investigating. As is the case with many biting rabbits, he was rather intelligent and bit because he had learned that it was effective. It took some time, but I eventually trained him that biting would not keep me from picking him up, but that being picked up was not that scary anyway. He had improved to the point that I was ready to tell MCRS that he was ready to be adopted or transferred to a regular foster home.
Pretzel is one of my bonded pair of Dutch rabbits, Triscuit being the other. Both reside in the basement. Although Triscuit is the more aggressive of the two, Pretzel is a jealous partner. He does not hesitate to defend his damsel at the slightest provocation from another boy.
Anyway, by the time I was able to intervene, Harley was sprawled out triumphantly in the middle of the basement surrounded by tufts of fur while Pretzel was huddled underneath some shelves in the corner. (Triscuit had apparently stayed uninvolved in the whole fiasco. This summer when I would let all of the rabbits out in the yard to play, Triscuit and Harley got along fine. Maybe even a little bit more than "fine"... Triscuit can be rather flirtatious and I had to separate them at least once when their fooling around turned into humping. That may explain why Pretzel tends to be overly protective.)
I returned Harley to his cage upstairs and proceeded to treat everyone's wounds. Pretzel had a pretty deep gouge taken out of the top of his head and a couple other, more minor injuries. Harley had a small bite on his face that was easily treated. Everybody got hydrogen peroxide and a stern lecture.
Two days later, I noticed that Harley was limping when I let him out for his exercise time. I investigated closer and saw that I had missed a cut on his shoulder. I treated it with hydrogen peroxide and requested permission from the rabbit society to take him to see the vet. The next day (Saturday), I received permission to take him to the vet as soon as they opened Monday morning.
Saturday night his condition started to worsen. He started eating less and seemed to be in pain. By Sunday night he wasn't eating at all (not even treats) and I had to force him to take a baby aspirin to try to ease the pain. I stayed up with him and held him all night, as that seemed to make him feel more comfortable. At 4:00 AM, he had a seizure and then died in my arms.Even though Harley was "only" a foster, I still cared about him a lot. We had gotten pretty close over the last couple months as I had been training him to trust people and be more friendly. Now that he's gone to that big field of clover in the sky, I know he's happy running, playing, and exploring, but I hope he thinks about me every once in a while and knows that he is missed.
I'll return to more light-hearted posts, but I felt that Harley deserved an obituary. Thanks for taking the time to read his story.
I'm back!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Labels:
a new beginning,
back to blogging,
paper avoidance
I haven't posted in forever, mainly because I haven't graduated. You see, I only have 2 more papers to write before I graduate. I've been very unmotivated to finish them though, so they've been really dragging along. I haven't posted anything to my blog because anytime I start to, I feel guilty that I should be working on my papers, not wasting time blogging. However, I've been making some good progress recently, and I think that posting something to my blog will make me feel productive, thus spurring further progress, hopefully in the paper-writing area. Anyway, expect to see posts again on a regular basis. Especially in the near future, 'cause I have a bunch of blog topics that I have been putting off blogging about (like the family of creatures living in my storage garage and the story of my truck getting broken into).
It's good to be back!
It's good to be back!
The greatest thing I've found so far in Sweden
Friday, June 4, 2010
Labels:
bacon flavored squeeze cheese
I could describe this, but the picture is pretty self-explanatory. It's bacon flavored squeeze cheese. Lots of this is coming back to America with me.
English in Sweden
Labels:
awesome sauce,
blah blah blah conversation,
board game night,
boyfriend material,
catchphrase,
granny panties
I still haven't learned Swedish...I gave up a while ago. So in any given day, I spend a lot of time listening to other peoples' conversations in Swedish, having no idea what they are talking about. But Swedes use quite a few English words in their conversation. So a typical conversation goes: "Blah blah blah Facebook blah blah blah big deal blah blah blah oh sh*t that's awesome!" I've started keeping a list of English words that I have heard in these "blah blah blah" conversations. Enjoy!
Facebook
Google
Awesome
Awesome Sauce
Epic
Epic Fail
Nice
Gay
Dude
Disgusting
Sign me up
Instant coffee
I am not surprised
Boyfriend material
Granny panties
On a related note, being in Sweden has been like a huge, 5-month game of Taboo, Pictionary, Charades, and Catchphrase all rolled into one. People generally speak very good English, but often struggle with more obscure or niche words. So they start describing or acting out the word and I have to guess what word they are looking for. It's great fun, and with so much practice I will DOMINATE on board game night when I get back.
Awesome
Awesome Sauce
Epic
Epic Fail
Nice
Gay
Dude
Disgusting
Sign me up
Instant coffee
I am not surprised
Boyfriend material
Granny panties
On a related note, being in Sweden has been like a huge, 5-month game of Taboo, Pictionary, Charades, and Catchphrase all rolled into one. People generally speak very good English, but often struggle with more obscure or niche words. So they start describing or acting out the word and I have to guess what word they are looking for. It's great fun, and with so much practice I will DOMINATE on board game night when I get back.
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