Cold for the Cats

January 23, 2014 Timothy Price7 Comments

I’ve gone out at sunrise the past two mornings (in 10º F temperatures nonetheless) to put the new roof on the catio. While I was out freezing, the kitties were in bed, under the covers, wondering why I was stupid enough to be out in the cold at such ungodly hours. As the first photo shows, I got a nice translucent roof installed that lets plenty of light in through the windows it covers on the north side of the sunroom. The kitties still can’t go out in the catio at night because I have to put wire up between the new roof and the structure over their kitty jungle gym.

Anthropomorphic Rooster, Floppies & Moore’s Law

January 22, 2014 Timothy Price2 Comments

What does a stack of 3.5 inch floppy diskettes and Foghorn Leghorn have to do with each other? Nothing other than floppies are about as useful these days as our sign is in keeping people from bothering us in the IT Dept. But after I had to drag the old, dusty stack of floppies out of the server room for WCW to extract some old CAD files from, I realized that in relative terms, a cartoon of an anthropomorphic rooster and that set of floppy diskettes were about the same age. Foghorn Leghorn made his debut in 1946, making him 67 years old. 3.5 inch floppy diskettes were first introduced in 1982, which makes them 32 years old, but we have to apply Moore’s Law (processor speeds double every two years) to anything associated with computers, so in computer years, the floppies are 64 years old, making them and Foghorn Leghorn virtual cohorts.

Somebody Set Up Us The Bomb

January 21, 2014 Timothy Price6 Comments

The title is another line taken from the 1991 introduction to an adaption of the arcade game “Zero Wing” that had really bad Japanese-to-English translation (It’s also included in the intro to the video All Your Base Are Belong To Us). The crew working on cleaning up the smoke in the office is moving and cleaning everything. They pulled out a computer bag that had been sitting forgotten in a corner for years that had an old Macintosh Powerbook G3 in it. I plugged it in, and turned on the old PowerBook and it still had Mac OS 9.1 on it. Not long after I got it booted it gave me a system error with the bomb. Although nostalgic, I don’t miss the days before OS X and iOS.

Cats in Winter

January 16, 2014 Timothy Price18 Comments

What do our cats do in winter? Romeo was not sure about me taking yet another photo of him. Rosencrantz made like a kitty statue, while Guildenstern relaxed on a Viking book to see if he could soak up some Old Norse. Mama Manx dozed on a “cat magnet” blanket, and Diné got warm lying on the heater vent.

Pompidou B&W

January 15, 2014 Timothy Price2 Comments

A few shots in and around the Pompidou. Paris, France. June 2013.

Ratatouille Bocadillo and Waffles

January 13, 2014 Timothy Price16 Comments

I made a cheese burger bocadillo with ratatouille for dinner last night — it was wonderful. Around 11:00 this morning I took a load of stuff to Goodwill, and then stopped by the store around 12:00 to get a paper shredder. While looking for paper shedders I passed by the waffle makers, and since I was hungry, I ended up coming home with a great big waffle make instead of a paper shredder (I didn’t find the paper shredder I wanted). As you probably guessed, I had waffles for lunch. I made a quick buttermilk batter from our old Betty Crocker cookbook, and used the waffle maker’s suggested amount of batter for the first waffle. That turned out to be a little much as some of the batter ran over the edges of the waffle maker. The remaining batter wasn’t quite enough for a full-sized waffle.

Of Mice and Mess

January 12, 2014 Timothy Price14 Comments

Laurie’s been reorganizing the house over winter break, and she finally got to the armory/computer room/photo room/workshop that has been doubling as a large closet to store everything that we didn’t have a place for otherwise. Scads of age old electronics, analog sound equipment, computers and peripherals have come out of this room — many of which go back to the stone age of their technology.