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Acceptable things to do on public transportation:
Unacceptable things to do on public transportation:
And the worst offender of all...
I'm always willing to oblige requests for kitty pictures. Following are a bunch of random kitty shots. Click the thumbnails for a bigger view.
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I almost forgot to mention the kind of week the cats have had.
On Wednesday we went to the vet for a whole bunch of stuff. First they got their shots, for which they were super cool. Then they got a flea treatment and a worm treatment (preventative - not treating an existing condition or anything).
The vet said they were looking just awesome. Very different from the last few visits. Their tongues indicated no problems, and their fur was nice and soft. In short, they are the picture of health. I don't have to go in again until it's time to get them fixed, so yay!
Then on Friday, the poor little things had a bit of a traumatic day, I think. Trauma for cats=cracking up for rappy. The washing machine I mentioned in the last entry was brought over by a mover, whom my sister and I hire quite frequently (more frequently than any person should have to hire movers, actually *eyes eyeball*). The guy is this massive Russian guy, who is the sweetest and most gentle giant you'll ever encounter, but the cats got one look at him and fled to safety under the futon, where they stayed pretty much the whole day. It took me about forever to coax them out. On top of that, I also brought a big mirror over from my sisters, and I've yet to hang it because I'd like to refinish the frame on it, plus I'm not entirely sure how to hang it anyway, so it's leaning against the wall in the living room. Well. The cats were in pounce mode at the "new" members of the household for just about the entire weekend. It was HILARIOUS to watch Kiwi prepare for an attack. They still walk by it every now and again in wonderment. Stupid little gits.
Moran, I also wanted you and Z to know that Sassy is doing great. I visited her on Friday and she loves her new house and her new sister (Choopchick).
After going through the list at a fairly steady clip in the first few months, I'd left it rather untouched since the kitties arrived at my doorstep. To compensate, I decided to try and cross off a few of the easier items.
This weekend I finished watching the LOTR movies (item no. 79). Wow. I had no idea I would like them so much. Fellowship of the Ring was a wee slow and I wasn't really that into it, but by the end of Two Towers I couldn't wait to rent Return of the King. In a way, I'm not sure which way is better - waiting a year between each movie until the next came out, or just renting them one after the other. Maybe those who watched it the standard way (for I have a late fuse with all things pop culture) could weigh in on that.
I also watched a few of the Oscar nominated films (item 50) over the last few weeks. I saw Ray, which was good, but which I'm sure I wouldn't have bothered seeing in the theatres given another chance; Million Dollar Baby, which was kind of sad, but again, not a subject matter that appealed to me much. I also saw Finding Neverland, which I loved beyond all reason. There was also the cross-task of watching Return of the King. All I have left on item 50 at this point is Master and Commander (blech) and The Aviator (blech). I am not a fan of Russell Crowe nor of Leo DiCaprio, so those two will really just be something to cross off the list without any foreseeable benefit.
I've also read a bunch of books this month, and borrowed a whole pile from a friend yesterday, so I might be able to squeak through the 150 book reading quota in item 53. My reading list is linked on the left menu bar. I'll welcome any book recommendations to help me complete this task.
Chances of crossing off item no. 62 (doing laundry once a week for a month) just increased exponentially this weekend, after my aunt gave me an old washing machine (emphasis on old). I'll need to figure out how to use it some time this week, but I sense it'll make life much easier for me. No more lugging a suitcase of clothes over to my sister's. (I'm sure this fact pleases her even more than it does me.)
And, thus endeth the dullest entry ever. I apologize. I just hated seeing the white screen and had nothing better to write about.
I haven't got much to post with aforesaid job kicking my ass and making me miserable, but here are some pictures I took at a cooking workshop last weekend.
It was led by the (very recently departed) chef of one of the most well respected restaurants in the country - the one on my 101 list.
Just yesterday I was telling my brother's roommate that I needed a hobby.
Feast your eyes on it. Except one might term it an obsession. I solved the one from the paper on the bus ride home, and am now counting the minutes until tomorrow's paper arrives.
Here's one for you to try! Click on the "read more" tab for the solution.
Fill in the grid so that every row, every column, and every 3x3 box
contains the digits 1 through 9.
Ezboard is the host of the two message boards I belong to, Looking Good and Hamster Time (links to the left). They host thousands of message boards, some paid and some free. Mine happen to be paid boards.
Sometime on the 31st of May, they were apparently hacked, and the majority of boards lost all of their data. There is some sketchy information being bandied about by the company about all of their backups being erased by this hacker, and there is a significant concern about their ability to restore information.
I'm really saddened because the Hamster Time archives, which represent a significant portion of my last three summers, have been completely decimated. I'm sad to say that I'm not holding too much hope about them being restored at all.
The whole situation is really quite bizarre, and if the company isn't able to restore the missing data, I don't see them surviving financially. Paid boards pay for the promise of weekly backup, and it seems odd that the company is running into so much difficulty with the restoration. These difficulties would certainly lend credence to the suggestion that ezboard did not, in fact, back up the data in an offsite location, which in turn means they made false promises to paying customers. The legal and financial ramifications seem stupendous to me, should this be the case.
As sad as the whole situation is, reading through their support forums is really quite entertaining. On the one hand are the gold members, who quite rightly, are less than thrilled that a product they've paid for has proven so defective, and on the other hand are those people praising the company for all of their work and "restoration" efforts. (I use quotations because no boards have actually been restored.) There are plenty of conspiracy theories abounding, about the hacker being an insider, or the company blaming some sort of a technical glitch on a so-called hacker. There is also speculation that the hacker was the recently departed founder of the company, who is said to have been pushed out of the company. Then you have the non-paying customers getting indignant because the company has only alluded to the repair efforts they're making towards the paying customers, because, well, the company trying to cover it's own legal and financial ass is clearly, y'know, an indication on its part that the content of non-paying boards is inferior.
I've developed a rather morbid, rubbernecking curiosity about the entire debacle. I can't wait to see how it plays out.
UPDATE:
Ezboard was able to restore all of our recap and show related discussion threads, but none of the general discussion threads. While it's unfortunate we lost those threads, I'd rather lose the 1000 or so posts we lost than the 37,000 posts we got back.
Yay!
