Rest in Peace

One of Six-Pack's kittens died tonight.

I'm not sure what happened, exactly. Six has been busy moving her kittens around a bunch, lately. We'd had a maternity box set up downstairs in the laundry room (the same one Flea-Byte and Mystery had their kittens in), but Six gave birth under a chair up here in the living room, and she's been determined to take all three of them back upstairs. For the past couple of days, she's been living in the corner under the easy chair.

Tonight we caught her transporting her litter under our bed. This was clearly unacceptable, so I gently reached under and scooped up the kitten she'd just brought in. It was cold to the touch, but it was still moving about, so I figured it had just gotten too chilly because some of the windows were open. It was the smallest of the three, obviously the runt of the litter, and it was making movements like it wanted to cry, but it was too weak to make any sounds. We tried feeding it some milk in a medicine dropper, but it was too weak to eat. It died in my arms.

I don't really know why it died. Maybe Six inadvertantly handled it too roughly when she moved it, or maybe it was just too small and weak to make it. The kittens have only been around for a week or so, and this household has already gone through three other litters this year, so I wasn't really attached to it on a personal level. I still can't help but be pretty upset over this, though. Natural life cycle or not, I hate watching things die.

Runt, the little white kitten who's the last remaining one from Plank's litter, could have easily met the same fate. He was weak and tiny when he was born, looking underdeveloped, like he hadn't quite been ready to be born when he was. We cared for him and bottle-fed him, later making sure the three available mom cats were all taking turns nursing him after they'd come to accept him, and always stopped the bigger, stronger cats from picking on him or pushing him away during feeding time. Now, we've found homes for all the kittens from that batch except for him, and I've come to love him so much that I can't stand the thought of giving him away. He's such a sweet little thing. He mews for me, follows me down the hallway, and grabs onto my leg. Already, he recognizes that I'm one of the caretakers. He's had eye infections and litterbox training issues, but it's so easy to overlook that. I hate to think what would have happened if we hadn't stepped in and helped him.

We let Six say goodbye before we buried her little one, right next to Crosswise. She meowed at it and licked it and meowed some more, and then thought nothing more of it. Actually, I can't say that with certainty. I have no idea what goes on inside her head. We put her back down in the maternity box with her remaining two kittens and closed the door. She's turned into a very domesticated cat, and loves getting pets and attention, so I feel bad for relegating her to the downstairs. She's crying to be let out even as I write this. I recognize that I'm overcompensating, after the fact, for past events that I had absolutely no control over. I guess it's just what people do.

Low-Tech Solutions to High-Tech Problems

I really do hate my computer.

Don't get me wrong; it's a wonderful device. As a communications tool, it enables me to reach people all around the world instantaneously, and send and receive files and images that would otherwise take weeks to process by conventional mail. As a filing system, it can store hundreds of documents and pictures and songs for me, and grant me immediate access to any of them at the touch of a button. As an art tool, it lets me work with thousands of colors without ever having to mix paints or dig out my collection of withering Crayola markers. As a research tool, I can use it to look up any subject, no matter how esoteric, and learn more than I ever wanted to know without ever setting foot inside a library. It's a modern-day miracle that goes far beyond being a simple household convenience. I could get by without a can opener or a toaster oven, but I can't stand the thought of not having my computer.

At the same time, though, it's an infuriatingly delicate creature, fraught with problems at any given time, and I'm roughly as qualified to diagnose and repair its problems as I am qualified to perform open-heart surgery on my cat. (Which reads as "not at all," in case you didn't know.) I like to think I know a fair amount about computers, but they're making them so sophisticated these days that it's impossible to keep up without certified training. (As I write this, there are something like 32 independant processes running in the background. I know what two of them are. Bugger if I know what the rest are up to.)

There's no excuse for any home appliance to be this damn complicated. It would be like having to call tech support every time your refrigerator went on the blink.

ZOB: Hi, I'm having trouble with my fridge. It's not keeping food cold enough.
TECH SUPPORT: Have you tried replacing the light bulb?
ZOB: I did that last week when the light went out.
TECH SUPPORT: Go ahead and replace it again, and tell me the wattage on the bulb.
ZOB: Okay, I've still got one left in the package... it's a 40-watt. And that didn't help.
TECH SUPPORT: What condiments do you have in the door right now?
ZOB: Well, let's see... ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, soy sauce, and something that might have once been applesauce. Or horseradish. I'm not sure.
TECH SUPPORT: How many of those do you actually use?
ZOB: Just the ketchup and mayonnaise, mostly.
TECH SUPPORT: Okay, throw all the other ones away.
ZOB: Will that solve the problem?
TECH SUPPORT: No, but you don't need them, right?

It looks ridiculous when you apply it to anything other than Windows XP, doesn't it? That's practically a transcript of the conversation my wife had on the phone yesterday. The problem we were having was that AOL kept crapping out on me every time I closed down a web page. (It was impossible for me to simply circumvent the problem by getting into the habit of leaving windows open after I finished with them. I mean, geez, think of the air conditioning costs.) Apparently there was a corrupt file somewhere, but replacing and reinstalling AOL didn't do the trick.

Of course, my wife found this out after the tech support people told her to delete the program off the computer, including the filing cabinet containing all my saved e-mails, my bookmarks and preferences... yeah, I'm not pleased. They apparently told her that AOL keeps all this stuff on their online servers, which is of course patently false. (People, if you don't know the answer to a question like this, just say you don't know. Yes, I'll probably be irritated at your incompetence, but I'll be even more irritated if you feel me a line just to make it seem like you know what you're talking about.)

So, I decided to just back up all our personal files and restore the whole damn computer to its original factory settings. This, surprisingly, was not the insurmountable task I'd been expecting. I actually started deleting stuff that wasn't vitally necessary, knowing the small box of discs I'd bought forever ago would barely be enough to hold all the programs I needed, let along all the pictures and songs I'd collected. Then I figured I'd go ahead and start anyway, at least to give me an idea of how many more boxes of CD-RW's I'd need to get. As it happened, the four discs I had were more than sufficient. I stuffed all my songs on one disc with room to spare, and leisurely stored all my programs on another with plenty of room to spare. I'm baffled, to be honest. Media storage sure has come a long way since floppy disks.

The system restore went down without a hitch, and now I've begun the task of reinstalling all my programs (AOLPress, Adobe PhotoDeluxe, the driver for my scanner and digital camera, stuff like that). I'd thought that I could just drop the folders into the same spot I'd grabbed them from, but apparently that's not the case. Oh, well. It's tedious, but ultimately nothing I can't handle.

I will just say here that I sure am putting a lot of time and effort into getting this modern-day convenience back up to speed. Almost makes me long for the days of letter-writing and huge stacks of photocopied drawings.

I'm Just Marking My Territory.

Well, that was fun. I spent the better part of my waking hours (not including time spent at work, of course, during which I exist in more of a zombie-like state) washing out my kitbashing fodder. I've got this large collection of action figures and toy pieces that I've amassed with the eventual intention of creating new projects out of them, but I recently noticed that one of our former cats, the late, great Crosswise, had peed all over the storage bin I'd been keeping them in. Well... actually, I didn't notice quite that recently. It was more like about a month ago. Plus, the poor cat's been dead since October. (You can imagine, thusly, how little time I actually spend in my art room.)

It's a full moon tonight. I guess this is the part of our program where I attach all sorts of unholy significance to how people acted today and the way the stray cats outside are behaving and tie it directly to a visible celestial presence in the sky. (If you ask me, there's nothing supernatural or mystical about a full moon. Yeah, I suppose to some small extent, people/wolves/badgers tend to do all sorts of wild and crazy things when the moon is at its brightest. Know why? Because they can actually see what they're doing. Kind of pointless to go carousing through town when it's pitch black outside.)

That's "Mysspellyngge," With Two G's

Memorial Day weekend wasn't quite the hellish episode I'd been anticipating. I'd sort of assumed everybody was going to pick up their barbecue grills and patio furniture sets and trampolines and swimming pools, but apparently that wasn't the case. Of course, the weather's also been unseasonably cold, so perhaps that ended up working in my favor. (I am by no means a lazy person. I just don't particularly enjoy running around at work like a chicken with his cranial unit having been forcibly and irreparably extracted.)

I will just say that most everyone I dealt with was amazingly, phenomenally rude to me today. My current theory is that people had a three-day weekend, and now they're grumpy and bitter that it's over, so they turn around and take it out on all the people in the service industry who didn't get a three-day weekend because we were too busy catering to all the people having barbecue cookouts and pool parties in fifty-degree weather.

My current pet peeve is people whose names aren't spelled correctly. Yes, I am just obnoxious enough that I'm purporting the notion that you may very well be misspelling your own name. For example, if you tell me your name is David Peterson, and it sounds like David Peterson, it's only natural for me to spell it as I've done so here. It's not like this is some brand-new name that you've plucked out of the ether. If, say, on the off-chance it's really spelled Dayvydde Pedersinne, you have my permission to calmly correct my spelling. You do not have the right to launch into some furious rant and proceed to act as obnoxiously as possible for the rest of our time together on this Earth. It's not my fault that your parents decided to get all cutesy and bastardize a perfectly decent, traditional name and ensure that nobody in the known universe will ever be able to spell it the way you want them to. I realize you're jealous that I have a normally-spelled name that doesn't take gratutious liberties with assorted vowel sounds. Please don't take it out on me.

Sorry, that's been building up for a while now.

I'm slowly in the midst of revamping my web site. It's a long and laborious process, and I don't like it. There are parts of the site I have no interest in touching again, if I can help it. Maybe I should just stick with the kitbashes and fan fiction and get rid of everything else. (Ah, but that would require deleting everything else that's online, and that in itself would take forever. Okay, so maybe I'm a little bit lazy.)

I've got all this creative energy right now and no outlet for it. I have a day off coming up, but I have complete confidence that I'm going to spend the entire day fixing leaky faucets and various other repairs that have needed to be done for the last week or two. It's really rather depressing. I'd hire somebody to do it for me, if I actually had anything resembling money.