You're not supposed to go to bed angry, so here I am.
I have this friend online, although I don't know how much of a friend he is online really since he generally serves to irritate and exasperate me. I've met him in person a couple times, and he's a nice enough guy. Takes himself a little too seriously sometimes, and he's quick to take offense at things (short guy syndrome), but he's not all bad or anything.
Anyway, he used to work for a newspaper putting their content online, and now he's moved to New York City to work for a particular web portal (one of the ones with only one type of content, and I'll say no more). You'd think he'd been in the web business (and the newspaper business before that) for long enough to understand how copyright works.
Anyway, I was on IRC, and he was on, talking about his job, and how he just found a really long page of links to content of the type his portal does. So he copied the whole thing, reformatted the page, and put it on his company's portal. He sees no problem with this.
The first words I typed were, "that's theft, you know." After he tried to dismiss that out of hand, I followed up with, "bad web karma, at least." His argument (and he thinks this is something you can argue, not something that's just wrong) is that if the guy put it out there on the web, it's free for anybody to take and use as they see fit. He also thinks since the author isn't actually providing the content he's linking to, just the links, that the author has no right to assert any sort of copyright on that collection of links.
I've argued with this guy on listservs before, and it's pretty much pointless. He sees the world one way, and if something is outside his worldview it doesn't exist. So I commented that it was useless to try to argue any sense into him, said I was going to get dinner (true) and quit IRC.
While I was eating my sandwich, pine beeped at me. I looked. He sent me an email, one paragraph of which I'm pasting here:
You show me someone who believes copying someone's *deliberately publically posted* information is "theft" or "bad karma", and I'll show you someone who's done the exact same thing but who rationalized it into being OK for them.
So I responded, reminding him of the time a mutual friend's content was stolen from her labor of love web site, and the comment that while reusing a link or two is fair use, taking the whole compilation of links is a violation of copyright law unless the author has explicitly stated that the compilation is in the public domain. That he sees nothing wrong with this is really disturbing.
Feh.
link
(2000-06-29)
You're probably going to think this is weird:
I'm having a crisis of soap.
There are people in the world who buy whatever soap the store has in front of them when they go, "oh yeah, I need soap." I think those are all single women. They're also the ones who buy most of the fruity soaps or whatever. I have only willfully changed soap in my adult life once, and I suspect that for most men that's one time more than they've ever changed soap.
And there was a reason. I was in the dorms at the "University" of Oklahoma (aka Sooner High), and the water we had was treated with all sorts of stuff to make it not rust the pipes. This had the effect of making it
hard water. Now, I even had people get into arguments with me that it was
soft water, but those people were wrong and are forever idiots. I looked it up. I also had a water test kit since I had an aquarium, and the water was indeed
hard so those people who insisted it was soft can blow me. (Hardness is the presence of certain calcium salts in the water that prevent soap from lathering - the more of the calcium salts there are, the harder it is for the soap to lather, and if it doesn't lather it won't rinse. You can also confirm that I am correct by looking at the ingredients of any laundry detergent, since you'll see "water softeners" on the list, and why would they want to soften the water if soft water were bad? Eh?).
So anyway, I saw a commercial that was targeted to customers of Oklahoma City's terrible water supply, and if you live in a town that also got the jingle you can sing along with me:
It's hard to get clean in hard water
And you're livin' in a hard water town.
So this was a commercial for Zest, which isn't actually
soap by some definition of soap (it's a detergent bar, apparently), but which is capable of lathering, and thus being rinsed, in bad (hard) water. So I tried some, and lo and behold it didn't leave my skin feeling slimy like the old standby Safeguard did, and I never looked back. I've been using Zest ever since.
But I'm tired of it. Every day, my soap smells the same. But the idea of willfully changing that part of my life is, well, surprisingly hard to take. There are just so many soaps out there. How do I choose?
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm finding it difficult to
change soap. Sad, isn't it?
It's about the only thing I haven't changed though. I changed toothpaste several times (Arm and Hammer PeroxiCare, not the tartar control variety since that eats the enamel off your teeth), antiperspirant several times too (currently also Arm and Hammer, but in a pinch anything with the active ingredient Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex Gly will do, and yes I remember that off the top of my head), and I use random shampoo every now and then just because (usually Neutrogena T-Gel, as I announce my dandruff shame to the world) - although that's smell-related too, now that I think of it.
I used to change mousse brands regularly until it got silly and I opted for a caesar cut, which requires no mousse (the last one was, uhh, L'oreal Studio, I think, the one with the squares on the logo). The caesar cut was cemented in my book when I caught a
Fashion Emergency show on E! (another secret shame, I guess) where Jerry Springer's bouncers wanted to go out on the town with him, and in the makeover of one of the more, er, balding ones the stylist gave him a caesar cut and said it's the best way to minimize the appearance of thinning hair. I already had the cut by then, but I went, "oh hey," and it's probably a keeper. It's also great for driving the car with the top off, as there's no such thing as convertible hair when all your hair is less than an inch long and sits flat on your head as it is. Not that you care.
Let's see, since I seem to be listing all my personal care at this point:
-
Neutrogena liquid soap, fragrance free: for cleaning my face in the shower. This habit started about acne time, when I became obsessive about having my face clean after watching my brother and sister have terrible skin for years. Either I lacked something they had that caused their skin problems, or the early obsession paid off, but I never had more than three pimples at any time, and it was usually less than that.
-
Neutrogena bar soap, also fragrance free: hand washing before dealing with my contacts and most other hand washing tasks. Habit inherited from older brother and sister, continued because it's good soap and it doesn't dry my skin out or leave funny goo (bad for contacts) or scents (bad for nose).
-
Aveeno shave gel: I've changed shave gel or foam several times, and my loyalty lasts only until somebody else recommends something they like. Aveeno may be the keeper, because even though it's twice as expensive as Gillette or Edge, it's that much better.
-
Gillete Mach 3: I condemn the cow orker who recommended I try these blades. They're far more money than I wish to spend on shaving. They're that much better, though, so I guess I'm stuck.
-
Aramis Lab Series Razor Burn Relief: My mom can't believe I pay whatever it is this stuff costs. You use a couple drops per day so the little bottle lasts for months and it works like a charm. I use this whenever I shave and wouldn't trade it for anybody's favorite brand.
-
Body Shop Tea Tree Oil Facial Cleanser: I have a problem with chalazions (you probably know them as styes (your people call it corn)) and I use this stuff to clean the edges of my eyelids. Yes, it burns, but so do the Ocusoft Lid Scrubs that cost a lot more money. It really gets the goop off my eyelids though, which prevents the chalazions from coming back. I don't use this stuff every day, only when allergies have gotten my eyes really goopy. I have a whole long list of instructions on how to alleviate styes, so if you get them send me an email and I'll tell you how to make them go away.
-
Clean and Clear Foaming Facial Cleanser: I only use this stuff when I'm in an opera or a play and I have to wear makeup. This stuff works better than anything else I tried (it even removes that pesky eye liner that nothing else seems to touch, although that sometimes takes a second round of lathering).
-
Johnson's Baby Shampoo: Only listed because I'm being complete. This stuff removes body makeup, which is surprisingly stubborn otherwise (soap doesn't really touch it). I have it in the bathroom only for those occasions (like Aida) when I need to be some color I'm not and would like not to stain my clothes once the show's over.
I think that's about it for the ablutions. The toothbrush is an Oral-B Plaque Remover, but not the new super one that vibrates in addition to the oscillation. The contacts are Surevue, the solution is Renu Multiplus, or whatever the one in the blue box is called.
Koog always complained that I took too long in the bathroom in the morning. I countered that she took too long at night. Good thing I'm not a girl or my makeup list would probably be longer than hers.
Anyway, that's why I have such a hard time changing soap. It's like a part of me.
link
(2000-06-27)
So, I get complained at whenever I don't update this frequently. C'mon people, I didn't name this
Fits and Starts for nothing. ;-)
Had a weekend. The teevee was supposed to be delivered within a three hour window of 3pm on Friday. At 5:30 I called the dispatchers, who said the driver said it'd be 7:30 because of traffic. At 8:30 they said he'd be here in half an hour. At 9:25 I walked outside to figure out if I needed to call dispatch again, and the driver drove up while I was out there. Yes, boys and girls, the three hour window took six and a half hours. The driver must have been a cable installer in another life.
Odd thing: shipping weight of the teevee is 94 pounds, and he picked the box up by hand, which is interesting for two reasons - there were no handle cutouts in the box, and he wasn't wearing a lift belt. Anyway, got the box inside, looked it over, didn't see any signs of damage, signed the bill of lading, and sent the driver on his merry way.
And then when I opened the box I discovered damage on the teevee anyway. It's merely cosmetic, but argh. You'd think they'd package them well enough so that sort of thing wouldn't happen.
So I watched DVDs for most of the weekend. Friday night was
The Matrix. Saturday I cleaned up a bit before my guests arrived (including
koogle and
chinacat) and then we watched
Brazil (super-geeky Criterion release) and
Rushmore (another Criterion release, including hysterical interpretations by the Max Fisher Players of a few other movies). Then after they left and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to sleep immediately, I put in
The Third Man (surprise, surprise, it's another
Criterion release), which happens to be one of my favorite movies ever. It's a lot of people's favorite movie, actually. The British Film Institute named it their number one. I didn't actually get that far before turning off the teevee and falling asleep on the couch. So I watched it this afternoon.
Tonight I watched the Iron Chef New York Battle. The first hour was some of the most appalling television I've ever sat through. If it hadn't been Iron Chef I'd have changed the channel the minute I saw Gordon Elliott. (Ack). The whole bit with the kid at the end was horrifying. I had thought that it was one two hour show, but it turned out that it was two one hour shows, and I could have completely skipped the first hour.
The second hour, well, I have two words:
LOCK CLAB! And I'm not really sure of the choice of Bobby Flay, but whatever. And where was Chen? Is he no longer part of the program? Is there something I've missed by not remembering to see the show every weekend?
Oh, and I also played some on the Playstation, plugged into the new teevee. One of these days I'll finish the original Tomb Raider and can move on to #2.
So for a weekend that involved a new teevee, well, I got a lot of couch lounging in.
Oh, yeah, I bought groceries yesterday. I'm not sure how long it'd been since I'd been to the grocery store. A hundred and sixty-two bucks. That included a case and a half of beer (I already had a case picked out when I got suckered in by samples from a smallish brewery in PA) and silly things like Pop Tarts, Nilla Wafers, and Cap'n Crunch. There was also a pretty good supply of near-instant foods (I was even out of ramen, that ought to tell you how long it had been since I'd been grocery shopping) and some snackies for movie night. I forgot again to buy a degreaser for the wok though.
There's a story behind that wok. It was free. It was also rather pockmarked with rust, so I never used it for anything. I got it when somebody I knew in college moved out of her apartment and she virtually made me take it instead of just throwing it away. I've since moved it three times myself, without ever using it. But recently I had this inexplicable craving for fresh popcorn, so I went to the Kwik-E-Mart around the corner and bought some kernels, determined that the wok was the most suitable vessel in terms of surface area, and that it wouldn't kill me since the cooking surface was clean of rust (after a little scraping, anyway), and I made popcorn. It worked surprisingly well. So I've tried a couple different ways to clean it up some more since then (including a 500 degree oven for a while, which burned off quite a bit of stuff but also discolored the lid and set off the smoke detector), but now it's got sort of a coating of oil mixed with cellulose. I've scrubbed it every time I've used it, but that coating doesn't remove very easily. So I need a degreaser to get that gunk off, then I may be able to shine it up pretty well. The good news is the rust is gone already - the oven took care of that for good.
It's a shame. I actually like to cook, and I'm pretty successful at it when I bother, but if I buy fresh stuff I never get around to cooking with it before it's of questionable status. About the only way I accomplish that is if I make a day of it - grocery list in the morning, grocery shopping in the afternoon, cooking in the evening, then cleaning up the dishes that night. If I don't do it that way it generally doesn't get done.
So is this all random enough for ya?
link
(2000-06-25)
I've been told more than once I should have been a librarian.
Now, it's not like there's any monetary success that is granted you for having a librarian's skills or mindset, but the thing that librarians do for a living is something that I naturally do just because that's the sort of guy I am.
I know how to find things, and I know how to sort things. Now, the problem with me sorting things is that I tend to sort them in an ideosyncratic way, ('cept my CD collection, which is alphabetical by artist, chronological within each artist, with classical works separated out, sorted by composer) and generally I'm the only one to whom my sorting makes sense. Actually, that's not quite true. I've found that other people who have the same understanding of the things I'm sorting think that my sorting method is quite natural and fitting. This means that I sort for experts, I guess.
Anyway, the point of me bringing this up isn't the sorting, it's the finding. The web is all about finding stuff. I've maintained ever since I started on the web (five years ago now, with some Netscape 2.x version on my old mac) that the secret to using the web is knowing when to use a search engine, when to use an index, and how to make either of them tell you what it is you want without burying it under all the crad you don't want.
Now, it's generally agreed upon that the expert's favorite search engine is
Google nowadays, since they have a pretty slick way of weeding out the stuff you don't want - they weight their results based on how many links there are to any given result, with the bonus that pages that are themselves highly weighted count for more in this linking game. I like Google. You can search for "fedward" on Google and it'll take you here. :-) The drawback with Google is you can't do
or searches, and doing stuff like a
near search means you have to enter the various permutations manually and try them out - for instance, if you want to look for somebody's name (Leonard Bernstein, pulling a name out of a hat) on Google, if you just enter
Leonard Bernstein in the search field you'll get back results that include pages of names where both
Leonard and
Bernstein appear, but not limited to the specific one you're looking for. In order to get the composer/conductor/pianist, you have to search for
"Leonard Bernstein" and
"Bernstein, Leonard" (with the quotation marks) both, manually.
So. For people searches, I found a while back that
HotBot offered among its search options (that pulldown menu being my favorite web search tool for several months after it came out) one for
the Person, which has the effect of doing both of the above at once. But without the weighting of Google, so it's not my first choice. That pulldown is still pretty cool, since you can tell it which kind of search to perform without having to remember if it's one where you do
and or use a plus sign, or what.
Since it doesn't take very long to run through these things for what I'm trying to find, anytime I hit HotBot I also hit
Alta Vista (I remember when it was new, the first search engine to index every word on every page it found, and still at altavista.digital.com). I don't like it anymore though. It got dumbed down and co-branded too many times, and I'm really annoyed by all the links for whatever their vendors are. I'm too irritated by this to even go look now just so I can paste them in, actually I'm not:
-
Comparison shop for leonard bernstein
-
Get answers on leonard bernstein from an expert at EXP.com
-
Shop by request for leonard bernstein at Respond.com
-
Find Yellow Page information on leonard bernstein at WorldPages.com
-
Search — Know more! Get to know leonard bernstein at Britannica.com
-
Refine your search on leonard bernstein with LookSmart Categories
-
Looking for audio/MP3 downloads? Search for leonard bernstein in Audio/MP3
Ugh. So I don't really use Alta Vista anymore. Oddly, I
do use their shopping.com for price comparisons, but even that doesn't work particularly well. They don't categorize things the way I would.
And then there are the days when you just want an index. I've always loved
Yahoo! (their exclamation point, not mine), in large part because a human had to go look at all the links before they got on their index, and due to the laziness, intractability, and overworkedness of their particular humans most of the links they had were ones that had warranted the effort of linking them, which made them slightly more worthwhile. In the pre-Google days, you didn't have cred if you weren't on Yahoo!. (I'm putting a period after that exclamation point because I'm not into ending sentences with exclamation points, and that's not an exclamatory sentence). Number two in this regard is
Excite, and I never even look at any of the other portals because they all stink. Yahoo! is the best, Excite is my Number Two, and all of the rest are also-rans. Sorry, Lycos, Go, GoTo, Snap, and whoever else you are. Searching for Leonard Bernstein on Yahoo! is pretty much guaranteed to take you to some worthwhile pages.
Anyway, I bring all this up because I got an email this morning from my sister involving something called a
domain tag on a domain a group she does web stuff for is going to host. It's a .org.uk domain, and Em said she'd never heard of this domain tag thing, neither had her org's ISP, and did I know what it was? She went in the right direction asking if it was specific to .org.uk domains but she didn't research this herself.
I didn't know a thing about it, but I have my trusty search engines and about 10 minutes later I had her answer along with several sites for her to check out. I've done this for other people, too. I'm a finder. And none of this is anything that seems particularly difficult to me (it all seems terribly obvious, really) so it's strange to me that other people don't do it already. So I looked it up, found out that the
domain tag is something unique to .uk domains, and that it represents the responsible registrar within the .uk system. I pointed her to how to solve her problem and went on my way.
Indeed, it seems I could have been a librarian.
Oh, and an unrelated note to
Koog:
IIRC, it was this exchange on a listserv:
Annoying Person 1, commenting on driving in Canada and seeing signs with the abbreviation
OPP (Ontario Provincial Police, IIRC): "Hee! The Canadian highways are down with OPP!"
Annoying Person 2: "I thought that too! Great minds think alike!"
Me: "... and fools seldom differ."
Koog (in a private email): "Damn you for beating me to it."
Certain persons who read this diary may even remember who the specific annoying people referenced above are. I will say no more.
link
(2000-06-17)
I had a first tonight.
I've owned my car for 3 and a quarter years and 45000 miles (28 February 1997, 260 on the odometer, it was a Friday with blue skies and afternoon temps in the mid seventies). It's a Honda del Sol VTEC, which is odd because I thought they were awfully silly looking when they came out. But I'd always wanted a British Racing Green convertible, and when I went to the Honda dealership to go look at the much more practical Civics there was a del Sol in the showroom and a bug planted itself in my ear and said, repeatedly, "why, exactly, is it you think you need a car with a back seat, again?"
Y'see, when my sister was looking to buy a car a few years before that, she ended up getting a Buick Reatta of all things. It was cool. It was the hard top variety, but it was cool nonetheless. And when she got married in 95 and moved to the Caribbean my parents bought it from her (they couldn't bear to see her sell it to a stranger, I think) and it became my car.
Before that I'd been driving an 87 Buick Somerset (blech) which I had mistakenly gotten my parents to buy me in high school, not realizing that they would have bought me the Mustang I rightfully should have had, if I'd only asked. So the Somerset did pretty well until it hit 60k, at which point it went to hell. But that luckily coincided with the advent of the Reatta, so the parents were going to sell the Somerset and that was that.
It didn't sell. A year later, they still had it, and after I hydroplaned on the Turner Turnpike (going in a straight line, even, but on a patch of road that curiously was being resurfaced the next time I was on the Turnpike a couple months later, and I also noticed that there was more paint on the Jersey barrier than the Reatta had left) and totaled the Reatta it (the Somerset) became mine again.
Interestingly, the insurance settlement from that plus the leftover insurance settlements from the two times I'd been rear ended (the bodywork ended up cheaper than the independent appraisal, both times) meant that my parents got back as much cash as they'd paid my sister for the Reatta. That's after I drove it for a year, too.
Anyway, a month or two went by and I decided I'd had enough of that Somerset and it was time to buy a car. Went to the dealer, saw the del Sol, drove the Civic, went home and figured out how much a car payment would be and dropped the whole car idea.
A few months (and a raise) later, I got the bug again, went back to the dealer, got a real quote on the Civic, called the bank to inquire about a loan, called the insurance guy to get rates ... and found out I could afford the car but not the insurance. Interestingly enough, I had him run the numbers for the del Sol while he was at it, and the difference was less than 10%. It seems for a 25 year old single male, a Civic coupe is seen as a
sports car for insurance purposes. Chastened by the cost of insurance, I once again decided I wasn't up for the car thing. But I also realized that if they were calling the
Civic of all things a sports car, then that argument against the del Sol was tossed out the window. Or the open top, for that matter.
The rate of decline of the Somerset increased to the point that I pulled out my trusty spreadsheets, figured out that it was going to cost me $300 a month to keep the Somerset alive once I factored in the transmission, steering, and engine work it needed, and decided at that point that I didn't need to justify things anymore. Bought the car.
Not the Civic, mind you, the del Sol. A green one. It's not British Racing Green, but it's that dark sorta bluish green and that's good enough. And it's a targa and not a convertible, but the whole top comes off with no annoying T-bar in the middle, and it's only got two seats, and it kicks ass. I said the day I picked it up, "if it continues to make me as happy in the future as it makes me now, it's worth every penny I'm paying for it." It does, and it is. And I really said that, you can check with Amber. Provided you know who Amber is, that is. She was there.
Anyway, 3 and a quarter years and 45000 miles later, I've had a first.
It's been misty and spitting rain the past couple days, but it had cleared up enough for me to take the top off for my drive home this afternoon. I took off early today so I could go home, get the kitten, and take him to the Animal Welfare place. (They said he was the best-cared-for stray they'd seen, but I digress). That done, I headed over to Toys 'R' Us to see if they had the particular Koosh gun that I ordered from
thinkgeek (it's discontinued, and thinkgeek isn't clear on how many they'll be able to ship to fulfill outstanding orders, if any), and then I thought, "I'm right next to Circuit City, why don't I see if they have my new teevee?"
I killed far too much time inside there, really. I picked up a power strip, then I played with the new Sony version of the TiVo (the remote really is better than the Philips, but the software is still the same and they still don't have an automatic two-minute fast forward for commercial breaks ... I mean, duh) for a while, then I looked at teevees. They've got all the teevees showing
CCTV (boy, I bet they thought they were clever), but even so, it's difficult to get a handle on the picture quality of the various tubes. They must have used cheap cable or they don't have a good signal amplifier or something, since some of the screens had actual
snow mixed in with the picture, showing that they were getting weak signals. They didn't have the model I ordered anyway, so it's moot, but of the ones they had one of the Sonys (Sonies?) had the best picture. It also had the best reception so I don't think that's fair.
I paid for the power strip. I went to the entry/exit vestibule. It was raining. Not just spitting,
pouring in that way I've been complaining it doesn't ever seem to rain in DC. Cats and dogs. Coming down thick and fast. And I looked where I'd parked the car, to see ...
The top was off.
Luckily, the car was made with that eventuality in mind, so none of the interior should be damaged and the seats will be completely dry by tomorrow (the fabric's "water resistant" but they were indeed wet, as would be my back and ass). But still. It's all wet. I took some towels out when I got home, and the driver's seat is pretty much dry already (thanks to me sitting in it for 20 minutes driving home). The passenger seat is mostly dry now, and I wiped down all the other surfaces. Oddly, the carpet didn't seem to have gotten all that wet, due to the angle of the rain I guess.
Well, there's a first for everything.
It's supposed to get to 91 tomorrow. I'll park the car outside and bake it dry.
link
(2000-06-15)
Two things:
One. The kitten is going to go away. If I can ever get an animal foundation to take him, that is. It seems that they're all full, although one's recording said they were taking kittens of 6-12 weeks (he's at 8 weeks) but then hung up on you before you could leave a message. I'll call them back tomorrow and deal.
Two. Ordered a new
teevee last night from
800.com. This means I never had to set foot in Worst Buy. I spent more than I originally planned, but it's got video inputs for every gadget I own (none of the others available had that many) and other cool bells and whistles. Now the waiting for delivery. The good news is that the delivery is by a real freight company and not UPS, and they
call and schedule delivery instead of just randomly showing up at your house to ring and run.
Three. (I lied). I desperately need to get my car serviced since it's been like 6000 miles since I changed my oil. They're almost all highway miles, but still. It also turns out that I let too much time pass and I can't get the alignment re-fixed for free by the NTB folks. Feh. What good's a 6 month warranty that doesn't last 7 months?
I'm tired and I need to go buy cables for the new teevee so I can plug all my gadgets in when it gets there. Maybe I'll change my mind again on the kitten while I'm at it. Who knows?
link
(2000-06-14)
So, I'm now thinking that the
kitten is probably going to go to a rescue organization tomorrow. This is the sensible, right thing to do, but that's not the actual reason that's pushing me into doing it. The actual reason is:
He's got diarrhea.
Now, that's a terrible reason on its own to send him off for adoption, but it's quite a complication here in the apartment and the difficulty of dealing with it is enough to point out what a mistake keeping him would be.
It's a problem for several reasons:
One, it's a potential mess. So he's locked into the bathroom to keep him from depositing little bits of runny cat poop wherever he happens to sit. For the actual business, he's using the litter box like a trooper and I have no complaints. But in between trips to the litter box he often has a little bit of poop sticking out his little kitty ass, and this is more than I care to deal with.
Two, it's a health risk for the other cats. I don't know what's
causing the diarrhea, and if it's something that will go away on its own after he's eaten real cat food for a couple more days, or if it's worms and the treatment he got at the vet will make it go away and it's just taking its time, or if it's giardia - in which case he most definitely can't share the litter box with the other cats, or be near them really since they can pick it up from him by grooming him. Urg.
Three, since he's in the bathroom, I had to move the big litter box into the hallway where Cosmo and Jester could get to it, but where I also have a tendency to trip over it. Luckily I haven't yet planted my foot
in the litter box, but I think that's merely a matter of time.
So the hassle of dealing with a kitten with diarrhea is pushing me over the edge, and I'll probably call around tomorrow morning and find out what I have to do to find him a new adoptive home.
He's darling, cuddly, purrs a lot, and really likes people. He's just got a little kitten health problem that I really don't need to deal with right now, which makes it easier to make the hard decision to take him to a rescue league. He's cute enough he'll get adopted within a week, I'm sure, so I don't have to feel bad about it.
Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize.
I feel bad because he adopted
me, not the other way around, but I'm already over my cat limit and I really can't deal with a third litter box and different food, and all that. Plus I don't think the other cats are too happy to see him.
Eh.
link
(2000-06-11)
Can I keep him? Can I keep him? Can I keep him? Huh? Huh? Can I keep him? Can I? Can I? Please please please please please?
Heh.
So anyway, I came home last night at about 1:30 and there was a little orange kitten on the sidewalk. He ran up the steps into a neighbor's yard when I got out of the car, but then he came over next to another parked car where I could vaguely see another cat. I didn't get a good look at the other cat, because it took off and ran into the alley, but the kitten came right up to me and started mewling and generally making himself my new best friend.
Now. I already have too many cats. I determined that my optimal cat number is greater than two but less than three, but since it's not possible to have a fractional cat I'm already over my limit. Going up to four is just a bad idea, any way you slice it.
But he's adorable, and after I put some food out for him he stuck around the porch all night (mostly up on the brick fascia on the stairway to the main entrance upstairs, but on the porch nonetheless). I got up this morning with two options: call a rescue group, or take him to the vet. Which do you think I did?
The vet said he's in pretty good health, about 8 weeks (going by the pound every four weeks rule, which was the first time I'd heard that) old, and almost certainly raised by people to some extent because he was totally adjusted to being around humans and being picked up and stuff. The vet said with actual feral kittens, you can't even get near them. I ended up getting the recommended treatment for his ear mite, worm, and possible flea problems (it's called Revolution), and if I keep him he has to go back in three weeks. I also got some information on rescue groups they've worked with, and the vet thought he'd get placed really quickly since he's small, cute, and personable.
But since the rescue people probably aren't there on weekends, I've got him until Monday, by which point I have to make up my mind if the house can handle a fourth cat or not.
And now I need a nap, since I got out of bed early to make sure I didn't miss the vet's Saturday hours (where "early" on a Saturday means "before 11").
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(2000-06-10)