Tails of the D.. Creature

My wife Karen has been looking after a very sweet and lovable dog, its kind of your non-descript rescue from the shelter kind of dog. Her disposition is very playful but sweet, though Karen says this 20lb dog thinks its a lap dog.

Well it just so happens Karen decided that the dog needed a bath in the most urgent way so she bought her up to our apartment, If you have read my blog you know there are 3 cats that HATE any new creature in their territory. 

Upon bringing Pippy (the D creature) in we had three very fluffed out cats. Tess was the most amusing of the bunch as she is a black cat who took on the most amazing persona of  "The Evil Halloween" cat, fluffed up and arched her back so much that her front and rear legs nearly touched. it was to funny to see. The other girls Scout and Silver also bristled up at the insolence of the intruder entering their home.

After Pippy had her bath and did she need it, from the one second that Pippy was in the Craft Room it smelled very very doggy. After Karen had washed her and got her mostly dry and I herded the cats into a corner of the room (and yes everything you heard about cat wrangling is true) Karen marched Pippy out the door and back to her apartment. Scout decided to make a break for it and attack the dog on the way out. I headed her off with a spray bottle, and no she didn't back down she just did not advance further. Even with repeated blasts from the spray bottle she stood her ground. I guess she really hates intruders.

Karen has realised that there is little hope for us having a dog in this apartment. Probably for the better as we really don;t have the space, though I think a smaller dog like a Chiquia or a Bichon or some such would probably be okay. So long as they are not bigger than the cats.

Tails of a marriage...

My wife and I went to the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember marriage seminar. We learned alot there that bought us very much closer together. I will add more to this blog as we process the information we received at the seminar.

By way of preping ourselves for this I chose NOT to bring my laptop or take my phone off silent. I wanted to learn how to make us a better couple and found out we were'nt as broken as we thought. Yes we have problems EVERY married couple does.

The biggest problem with marriage is that you start out as two people, each with drives ambitions and baggage. What the seminar focuses on is oneness (two becoming one in spirit with God/Jesus at the center). Yes its faith based, since I am a Christian we chose a faith based seminar rather than a secular one.

One of the important things I learned is to MAKE TIME, nothing in life is free, you make the time, you sacrifice something else in order to accomodate the togetherness time. Simply put at 10:00PM we STOP what we are doing and go and do our devotion and spend time together, talking

Tails of a masochist 2

Being the masochist I am, I decided to build my wife a computer rather than buying off the shelf. There were a couple of reasons behind my thinking but the main one was cost/perfomance.

Yes I could buy her a Dell on the cheap for about 400$ less becuase we just bought the monitor. Or I could using parts on-hand build her a 3ghz dual core PC for about 200. I chose the later.

First off let me say I am NOT a novice computer builder. I have been making my own out of components for at least 15 years. I know what to do and how to do it so (Don't try this at home, unless you KNOW what you are doing)

Newegg.com is the MOST Excellent electronics store. I caught a break in that first I got a combo-deal and then they took an additional 10$ of  the price of the system board.

I had the following for Karens computer:

Antec Super Lan Girl*Computer Case
Samsung 22" Flat Panel
16x and 22x DVD Burners
Roswill Memory card reader
Silverstone Fron Port Bay Device
250GB SATA II HDD
750GB SATA II HDD

I bought the following at NEWEGG

AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor Processor (3.0ghz X 2) (AM3)

Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H Mother Board
2 GB of Muskin DDR2 PC800
500 Watt Coolermaster  Power supply (Compusa)

AMD really was the only choice for price/performance. Its steady under load and gives her computer a much needed kick it didn't have before. Passmark score of 1566 with onboard video.
The motherboard was a good choice I actually bought 2 one for Karen and one for me. The mother board has 5 SATA Ports and HDMI, DVI, DSub ports, 6 USB ports and headers for 6 more. It supports AM3 Chips using the 785 Chipset.

I formatted the 250 and loaded it up with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit (which I found out is incompatible with Webshots Desktop :( ). Luckily that won't be an issue as we are not re-newing the subscription. Sorry webshots.

The masochistic part is that I asked a friend of mine if he knew anyone who wanted a computer (my wifes old one) and a couple of days laer he said yes and when could I get it for him. I told him he could have it once my parts came in and I had Karen's computer working ( I figured the parts would come in Monday, Tuesday for testing and Wednesday he could have the computer, Yes I know I'm an idiot). 

Parts were right on time, build went smooth right up until I tried to start it. Power Supply under wattage. Ran off to CompUSA and bought a 500watt. Problem solved, still wouldn't start. Removed all the cables and traced my front panel cables and oops I missed the little pins to connect the power button. Oh well connected it up and it started.

Verified all the settings and began loading 7, wow the OS loaded quickly and I was ready to load the drivers put the disk in and loaded all the drivers and then began the software load. That went really quick too.

Below is Karens computer in her Antec Super Lan Girl Case.

*Karen stickered her case for one to cover a broken SATA port and 2 to make the case look like it was owned by a girl.

** About 2 weeks after I had her computer up I noticed a problem and I was correcting it in the software when the computer crashed taking all of her data with it. Thankfully I had backed her data up but not the software. Oh well its fixed now.

Tails of brotherhood...

I had a slow week at work last week. I had literally no calls. I don't really get stressed about it, but I am in a new position and I would like to be valuable from the start. Well I thought this week was going to more of the same. Monday I went to an office and checked in and updated my calls that I do have. Afterwords I went to see my brother, who is recovering from esophageal surgery because of cancer.

When I last saw him he was about 220 lbs, and prior to that he had been over 300 lbs. Yesterday when I went to see him he weighed in at 165 lbs. Mind you, I am a BIG guy but I think I'll pass on cancer as a weight loss program.

We are all very very happy to have him home and healthy, BTW he was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer with limited prognosis. He is now cancer free, even before the surgery (though they didn't know that at the time). When the surgeon went in they found a lot of scar tissue and severe damage to the esophagus but no cancer cells.

Amazing what prayer can do, Pat's wife Mary Ann (my sister-in-law) is a real prayer warrior and I am proud to have her as part of the family.

My brother was partly responsible for my Salvation, he may or may not realize it. But I do.

I am very glad that my brother is still around and happier still to see his recovery is doing well.

Tails of the first day...

Well for those who know me, last week was my first week in my new position. I prefer not to go into details on the position, because of security and the like.  My new boss came in to train me on the new system I will be using and to generally fill in the gaps in my understanding of the job and my responsibilities.

Suffice it to say I am pretty happy with it. It will take some getting used to and I might have to turn Sirius back on as there is a lot and I mean A LOT more driving.

My territory has grown again basically I cover South Florida from St. Lucie county to Monroe county and probably as far west as Okeechobee county. I used to cover a portion of  Broward county with 5 other techs.

My first impressions of my boss, is that we are a good fit. We both have the same concept of what the job is and we are out to take care of the customer, not just make money. I have always believed if you put your clients first you will prosper.

He went back mid -week and I began my new position, which I actually have been doing for nearly 3 months before.

Whats really funny is that I was hoping to be moved over in January but the timing I guess was wrong. I was hoping to be transfered over before I had to fly to Michigan in Mid-January.

Yes the white stuff in the Photo is actual snow. Funny thing is when we arrived they had just started a warming trend. We were only sub-freezing for 2 days then the weather warmed right up. When we left Friday night it was a balmy 44 degrees Fahrenheit, I almost put on my swim trunks!!

I actually had fun in Michigan, haven't driven in snow in nearly 20 years. But it seemed like a waste of time and money to send me off to train on the new equipment that I was not going to work on.

Tails of the well trained...

All this started after we got our first two cats, I noticed that we were almost perfectly attuned to their wants and desires.

I was in AFCA (Alt.Fan.Cecil.Adams) and was reading a post and I realised that we were trained almost literally from day one.

I know this becuase I love to hear my little furry girls purr and will almost do anything including loose sleep to make them happy. I am not joking about that. Silver has been know to climb up un my pillow and meow until I wake up and pet her bringing her to full purr. Then nod off again.

I guess you could say that I am well trained. I put my cereal bowl on the ground when I am finished so that the cats can lick it. When I eat a yogurt I lt the cats lick the yougurt off the foil lid.

We considrer them our little furry children and often times they are.

Tails of a cease hostilities...almost

Well it's another day and the girls have settled down a bit. There is still a bit of animosity in the air but they seem quite a bit calmer than they were.

Tessie is still the object of their aggression but I think she is beginning to loose that "UNWELCOME" smell that we tried so hard to get off her with a bath. Scout still hisses at Tess but Tess isn't backing down. She is beginning to assert her self again. Which is good to see.

Unfortunately this afternoon I heard growling and hissing from Tess, the other had cornered he in the litter box of all places. The litter box should be a sanctuary. She wasn't plussed she fought for her "Right to potty".

We forget our little furry girls are wired by millions of years of evolution, they are territorial predators, its hard to imagine that when they sit on your pillow purring their little furry heads off. Then they turn into all claws, screeched and yowls.

Still I have to admire our little Tessenator, she is absolutely insane. She chased off the Tommy cat a cat nearly double her size and He RAN.

BTW Tommy was back for breakfast today soaked but here (was raining this morning).