Tag Archives: cats

Solutions

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Another day home, another day getting better at working there. The boys are currently settled in happily on their kitty tree by the window. They don’t both have to be there, though. They were being little hellions yesterday. Fighting over the top spot on the tree, then flying around the house and yowling at each other, they made it very difficult for me to get any kind of a work groove going. With that in mind, I added another chair (Gramma Sprague’s old wing-back) to a spot in front of the window today. Joshua immediately curled up in it and went to sleep, and Chamberlain settled into his favorite spot on top of the tree. I had an uninterrupted morning.

I also had some issues with my internet yesterday, which was a bigger concern than the cats. I figured that the problem was probably my wireless signal and not the speed of the outside connection, but I really didn’t want to move everything downstairs in order to plug the laptop directly into the router. Truth be told, that’s exactly what I’d tell a client to do if they called in needing help for internet issues while working from home.Instead of doing that, though, I spent $130 on NetGear PowerLine Adapters,which I was able to buy online from Best Buy and pick up at the store at about 10 yesterday morning.

We used a version of these things at Digital Life when a customer didn’t have good wireless strength throughout the house, but I was never overly impressed with them. The newer generation, though…just damn. Call me impressed. The way the adapters work is pretty simple. You plug one into an outlet near the router and you attach it to the router with a Cat-5 (Ethernet) cable. Then, you plug the other adapter into an outlet near the system that needs a better connection (my upstairs laptop, in my case). The adapters use the electrical power lines in the house (basically) to connect the “far away” adapter directly to the router. Much easier than having to fish cable through the walls. The “far” adapter can serve as a wireless access point, a physical network port, or both. In my situation, I connected my laptop to the adapter with Cat-5, and my download speed when from about 8MB to about 29MB instantly. Problem solved.No problems for the rest of the day yesterday and today is a continuation of that. Decent speed, no jitters…just like working from the office.

I also connected my upstairs Roku to the wireless access point; and that seems to be running better, too.

Joshua looking regal in the wing-back chair

Chamberlain has now moved off of the tree and settled into the wing-back. Everybody’s still happy.

For the last week or so, I’ve been opening the front windows for the boys, but I don’t dare open them all the way, as I do downstairs. When they see anything – a bird, a dog, a bug, or an air molecule – they tend to try to get to it. I yell at them downstairs when they do this, but the paranoid side of me can see both of them leaping for a squirrel outside of the upstairs window, hitting the screen with a combined 35 pounds, and falling out. Because of this, I basically crack the windows open about 2 inches on either side (these are tall windows that open side-to-side, not bottom-to-top.

Since I do want to be able to open them a little more, I think I’m going to try to build some frames this afternoon, into which I can insert a couple of heavy-duty pieces of wire shelf. I can then attach the frames to the windows and let the boys have about 10 inches of fresh air. It’s hard to describe, but I’ll put a picture in here after I complete the frames.

The featured image for this post (also inserted here) is one that I took in my back yard a couple of days ago. I went out on Tuesday evening to mow the back yards – first time I’ve done so this year – and determined that I can no longer look the other way when it comes to fixing the landscape timbers that are keeping the upper part of the lawn from sliding into the lower part. As you can see, they need to be replaced. I don’t know exactly how to do this, but it’s something that has just risen to the top of my list. I talked with a friend who is a handyman by trade, and he told me that I can probably get the timbers – pretreated and stained – for about $10 each. If that’s the case, then I’m probably looking at $600-$700 for the material and God knows how much time learning how to replace everything. No way am I hiring somebody to do that, however. It can’t be that tough, right?

Famous last words, I’m sure.

The Big Game

Aside

It’s the night of The Big Game.  Starts in 11 minutes, I think.  I don’t have ESPN anymore, so if I do watch it, I’ll be doing so through the free portion of the ESPN app, which follows all of the action using only those overhead cameras that zoom up and down the field for the whole game.  No commentary at all.  Believe it or not, I prefer to watch the games that way, so it works out for me.

Should you not know, The Big Game is the championship game of the joke of a college football playoff known as “The College Football Playoffs.”  The actual college football playoffs, which has 24 teams and determines the actual Division I college football champion, ended last Saturday, with North Dakota State eking out a win over James Madison University.  I watched it.  It was a good game.  I might, as I said, watch a bit of the game tonight between Georgia and Alabama, but it’s not something about which I’m overly-excited.

I had a decent day at work today.  Knocked out a couple of problems that had been bothering me for the last week and continued to slice into my mountain of open tickets.  I was not helped by the fact that – yet again – one of the Level 2 people ran updates on numerous firms yesterday and didn’t bother to fully test said updates; so that, when we arrived at work this morning, there were already more than 25 of said firms who couldn’t use one of their most vital applications until we, the Level 1 team, manually patched all of their servers.

I don’t understand this trend – and it is a trend.  It happens all the time.  Somebody who has the job of updating applications does so, but doesn’t take the simple step of launching the applications after they’ve been updated.  I know that they don’t take this step because many applications will give a pretty obvious hint (i.e., they won’t launch) if you haven’t completed the update successfully.  Rule #1 for all application updates, going back to the dawn of the computer age: have a rollback plan.  The X-Company just doesn’t seem to grasp that concept; and, frankly, it really pisses me off.  It’s tough to guess just how many man-hours are lost – by us and by the clients – every time they do this, and they do it at least twice a month.

Enough about that.   Today’s featured photo is of my boy Joshua.  The tiny little runt of a Maine Coon who I chose – with no close second – out of a little of 11 when he was two days old.  He and his brother, Chamberlain, are coming up on (I think) their fourth birthday next month.  Both tilt the scales at around 15 pounds and, while both are incredibly sweet and loving, Joshua is still the daddy’s boy that he was on the day I brought them home.  The photo up there shows Josh lounging on my Kelti 20-degree sleeping bag on a Sunday morning a few weeks back.  He was there because…well….because I was there.  Joshua wants to be with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  He wakes me up every morning, he follows me around the house until I leave, he sleeps on my pillow.  If I’m in a room, there’s a 95% chance that he’s in the same room.  At the moment, I’m at my desk and he’s on his little cat tree about three feet to my left.  A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to get a drink, and he followed me down.  When I came back up to my office after all of 5 seconds in the kitchen, he came back up with me.  There is no dog more loyal to his master than Joshua is to me.

He also plays fetch as well as any dog, and it is a constant source of amusement and, in a way, solace for me when I come home and find one of his favorite toys (he has three that he prefers far more than the 200 or so others in the cats’ toy box) at the top of the stairs or on my bed – evidence that he’s been entertaining himself while I’ve been away, by playing a game of solitaire fetch.  Every night before bed, he begs me to throw just a few tosses down the stairs.  He is a remarkable little animal.

So is Chamberlain, and Chamberlain will get his own write-up one of these days.

It has been outlandishly chilly in Atlanta for an extended time, and I’m almost ashamed to admit that.  I generally like to be a bit chilly.  I hate being hot.  I’ve got no problem with camping in the mountains in the winter or driving to the Upper Peninsula in October.  This month, though, has been different.  It’s just been cold. It reminds me of one of our last winters in Shoreham, when Dad commented to me something along the lines of, “It hasn’t gotten really cold – like 20 below – this winter, but this month-long stretch of 5-degree days really takes it out of you.”  Well…this month-long stretch of 30-degrees has really taken it out me, too.  To that end, I broke down last week and bought two pairs of flannel-lined pants from Duluth Trading company.

Naturally, they make me sweat.  But they’ll be good for winter camping.

Well, I must go watch a bit of this Big Game and fall asleep.  Joshua will be waking me up in just under 9 hours.

Marching Forth

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So it’s been a month since I posted anything here.  Had to go back and read a few posts to see what’s happened.  In spite of the huge number of faithful followers, that’s really the reason I type into these things: so I can remind *myself* of what happens in my life.

The featured image for today, if I can ever get it edited enough to upload, is of the boys (Chamberlain and Joshua) being boys – a week after their first birthday.  I’d given them a couple of plastic tubes filled with catnip (or maybe Jenny gave them those), and they were having a blast with them.  I still stumble upon those toys occasionally, so I guess they still enjoy them today – a week past their third birthday.  It’s really hard to believe that it’s only been about two and a half years since they came home.  Seems like a lifetime ago.  I guess that, in many ways, it has been.

The job, while still failing to make me leap out of bed in eager anticipation, is becoming more of something that I do without actually despising it.  I’m closing 6-8 tickets a day, have actually started using the phone (instead of trying to do everything via email, which is incredibly difficult), and have settled into a quasi routine of getting up earlier (5:15), taking a short walk, forgoing any “rest time” in the morning, and hitting the road by 6:30.  That gets me to work at around 7:00 – traffic is just starting to ramp up at that time.  I’ve discovered that, for every 5 minutes that I dawdle, my commute time increases by 5 minutes.  So if I leave at 7:00, it takes an hour.

My 30-minute commute normally includes a stop at McD’s, where I get two biscuits and a cup of coffee.  One biscuit is eaten during the drive.  The other serves as my late-morning snack.  Lunch no longer occurs, though I’ll sometimes eat a pack of crackers at my desk in the afternoon.  By skipping lunch, I can leave the office between 3:00 and 3:30, making my drive home take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes – much much much faster than I’d be able to do it if I were to leave at 4:00 or 5:00.

There are still things that bug me about the gig.  Oddly, the work itself is not one of them.  I’ve gotten along pretty well with the clients that I’ve helped, and I’m learning some of the quirks and tricks of working in a cloud-first environment.  The kids working there, though….it’s jarring at times.  True story: nearly everyone has their own Nerf gun, which shoots little Nerf darts; and at any given time, there are darts whizzing around the office.  This activity includes not only the level 1 consultants like myself, but also the managers, level 2’s, project people, engineers…I think the only three people who DON’T indulge in this behavior are the CEO, the receptionist, and myself – though I’ve been known to get ticked off and simply throw an errant dart back at a shooter by hand.

Turns out, I’m still a pretty good dart thrower.

For people who are out of Nerf bullets, there is also a huge ball of blue rubber bands.  I don’t know where this came from, but it’s literally bigger than a soccer ball, bounces like a super ball, and weighs about 30 pounds.  I’ve dribbled it a few times, and it’s like playing basketball with a medicine ball.

Lots of “balls” in that paragraph.  Please keep your tittering to a minimum.

At any rate, the children in the office regularly take rubber bands from the ball and shoot THEM around the office when they’re out of Nerfies.  At the end of each day, I dutifully collect the 8 or 9 bands that have managed to collect on and around my desk and return them to a central location.  To their credit, the other people in the office appear to pick up those toys on a daily basis and put them back on the mother ball.  It has not shrunk since the day I started.

Regarding the desk (and the phone): THAT’S another problem that I’m working through.  Not since the mid-90’s have I been stuck at a desk all day.  Starting with my consulting gig at Compaid, I’ve always been able to combine working at my computer with other activities, from crawling under desks (or floors) to climbing ladders to running cable to walking around doing physical inventories.  Sitting for so long at my advanced age has led to a few, shall we say, delicate annoyances.  To be a tad more indelicate….hemorrhoids and testicular zits.

Oh sure.  You have your laughs.  Just discount my suffering.

While I can’t completely get away from sitting at my workstation, I did buy a new set of wireless headphones yesterday that will at least allow me to stand up when I’m on the phone.  The headset that the company provided has about a three-foot cord that doesn’t allow much movement.  Most of the people in the office have opted, as have I, to purchase their own gaming headsets and gain some mobility.  I do not in any way fault the company for this.  Good headsets aren’t cheap, and The X Company provides a lot of perks that, frankly, I am not used to seeing.  Free drinks.  Free snacks.  And, as I pointed out earlier,   a pretty loose working schedule.  Seriously, though, I’ve got probably 20 years on the next-oldest person in the office, and my body can’t deal with sitting down for 8-9 hours at a stretch every damned day.  I do take a couple of 10-minute walks around the outside of the building each day, but that doesn’t really undo the damage that’s being done to my lower anatomy.

I did indeed receive my severance check from AT&T in mid-February, which was nice.  As expected, I got raped in taxes, but it came in in time for me to pay my mortgage and car payment, which I couldn’t have done with my first paycheck from The X Company.  Now having received my second, I should be back on track to be able to pay all of the bills going forward – having also reworked my budget.

Not eating lunches is helping.

Also helping is the fact that Mary (and Princess) completed their move in on Saturday (Feb 25th), and I’ve received her first month’s rent.  The first few days were a bit hectic.  Mary is a weepy thing and there were scheduling problems with her movers, so she was not a joy to be around.  Adding to the stress was the fact that, due to our schedules, we really couldn’t let the cats run around freely.  Princess was ensconced in the second guestroom for a couple of days while Mary moved things in and out.  I locked my guys in my room on Tuesday, with a bit of shelving covering the cat hole in my door, so that Princess could run around the house and, if she chose to, sniff noses with my kids while Mary and I were both at work.

Got a text from Mary in mid-afternoon Tuesday asking me if I’d been home, because all of the cats were running around the house.  Turns out that my three had managed to work together long enough to break from their shackles and escape.  No bloodshed that we could find.  Josh and Chamberlain have been getting along fine with Princess (who is TINY.  6 pounds soaking wet), but Boo still has reservations, as I assumed she would.  Princess herself appears to be the instigator of most of the stress.  I know it’s all new for her, but she’s a weird little thing.  She’ll let me pet her and purr and be a happy cat for about 30 seconds.  Then she’ll start hissing and taking swipes at me.  She appears to do the same thing with the boys – though they could care less.  Boo just avoids her.  Truth be told, I think Princess is grandstanding a bit.  When she thinks that no human is looking, she’s perfectly fine hanging out with J or C; but as soon as she catches one of us in the corner of her eye, she hisses and runs away from whichever cat has been hanging out with her.

She’ll get over it eventually, I’m sure.

On the music scene: I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Symphony Wind Orchestra this afternoon.  Not quite as ambitious as the four we had last year – I think Dr. Wubbenhorst is beginning to realize that he’s not directing a bunch of A-listers at this point – but some pretty nice stuff.  While not incredibly musically satisfying for me, it does give me a chance to dust of the tuba chops, which is nice.  Next weekend, the GBB will be performing at Kennesaw State’s Brass Blast for the third or fourth time.  That’s going to be a concert comprised of movie themes, and it should be pretty good.  The GBB is also finalizing plans for a mini-tour in May, during which we’ll be presenting concerts at Jacksonville State (Alabama), Huntsville, AL, and Chattanooga; and then we’ll return to Roswell, GA, for a ticketed event that, I think, closes out the season.  The board is considering taking the band to the Gettysburg Brass Festival in 2018, which would be a blast.

Always assuming that I can get time off from work, of course.

I’d hoped to go to the woods with Brett this weekend or next, having completely forgotten about the concerts.  Maybe we can do it in two weeks instead.  I really need some woods time.

Having received the severance check, and in anticipation of getting my final bonus check from AT&T sometime this month, I’ve re-opened my negotiations with my landscaper buddy, and he and his crew have started mauling the growth in the lower forty.  He came out last week and decimated a row of privet that has been the bane of my existence since buying the house, and within the next few weeks they’re also going to take down all but two trees back there, clear out all the brush, take down the two trees by my chimney (and the hideous little bush that I’ve always hated…I can’t remember what it’s called), and, later in the year, help me get grass growing in the lower forty again.  It should transform the place and I’m looking forward to getting it done.  At some point, after the initial tree harvesting is done, I’ll also get Chamblee Fence back there to replace the existing, decrepit, fence.  Not going to be cheap, but it’s got to be done and should more than pay for itself in increased property value should I ever get nerve enough to put the house on the market and hit the road.

Oh!  I also got a thing from AT&T last week about a pension fund that I didn’t know I had.  So there’s an extra $100K available to me at some point.  Herb thinks I should roll it, and my 401, into a Roth.  I’m like, “Do you really think I’m going to live long enough to take advantage of that?”

I guess I’ve probably bored everyone enough for one morning, and I think I covered pretty much everything of substance for the last month, so I’ll wrap things up here with a shout-out to the one who gave me life.  Yesterday marked 7 years since Mom moved on, and it was the first March 4th since 2010 that I actually didn’t think about it until I saw Facebook posts from Dianne and Dad.  It’s not that I don’t miss her – I do think about her fairly often, particularly when I’m feeling lonely or frustrated and just want somebody to cry to – but I’m sure she’d be happy that I’m far enough along to – nearly – pass that anniversary without thinking about it.

One thing I’ll always wonder, though: What would she have thought about Trump?  You and I might have to discuss that at some point, Dad.

Crunch Time

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It has been chilly for the last two days, with temps in the 20s when I take my morning walk.  That being the case, I finally turned on my heat this morning (it was 48 degrees in my living room), which is something that I dread doing every year for a few reasons.  First, I’m always mildly paranoid about firing up the furnace for the first time of the year.  I have this idea that all of the accumulated crud in my ducts is going to immediately burst into flame and I’ll have fire shooting out of my ceilings with no way to put it out.  I meant to have the ducts cleaned earlier this year (not sure if that would have done much good for my paranoia), but didn’t do it.  Also haven’t had the furnace checked since last spring – my furnace people are supposed to do it twice a year, but they haven’t called me so far this winter – and frankly I’d rather not have to write them a check right now.

Second, I really hate turning on the heat because, obviously, my gas bill will now increase – and I don’t need increased bills at this point.  As of 12/28, all of my AT&T crap is going to double in price already.  I’m currently determining what I can afford to do away with.  Cable (DirecTV) is obviously the first thing to get nuked.  DTV, to put it mildly, sucks.  However, once I get rid of it, then I no longer have unlimited data on my phone, which is kind of important.  I’ll go back to having 2GB/month, which normally would be enough, but when I’m sending resumes out from my phone, data adds up quickly.

Had to take Boo to the vet yesterday because she had an ingrown claw.  Jenny and I spotted it about two months ago, and I’d been hoping that she’d bite it off herself, but she didn’t.  Came home for lunch on Thursday and noticed that she was holding up her paw.  Wasn’t complaining, wasn’t limping, wasn’t averse to putting weight on the foot – but every time she sat down, she’d hold up her paw.  So I looked at it and the claw was completely embedded in her pad.  Off to the vet.  They cut it out (bled like a stuck pig), and all’s well now.  Boo took it like a little champ.  Only cried once and settled back in at home happily after the ordeal was over.  I’m a bit worried about infection, but she’s doing a good job licking at the wound.  Hopefully that will be enough.   The bill, by the way, was just shy of $100 (she also, by law, had to get a rabies shot.  Stupid).  That’s $100 that I didn’t want to spend.

So I got a letter from Meditech yesterday informing me that I’m not going to be working for them anytime soon.  I knew it was a long shot, but I really wanted to land that job.  The rejection definitely put me in a funk.  I’ve still got decent leads at Georgia MLS and The Salvation Army, but haven’t heard back from either of them after great initial contacts.   I’ve also become convinced that applying for jobs online is sort of like pissing into a storm drain and waiting for a glass of water to come out.  So I’ve decided that, next week, I’ll start contacting recruiters.  Didn’t want to have to go that route, because the recruiters that I’ve dealt with tend  to want to put me into jobs that I don’t particularly want, but as the title says, we’re getting to crunch time here, and I need to get a paycheck lined up somewhere.  As far as I know, I’ll get a check on 12/21, get fired on 12/27, get a final check on 1/6, and then – sometime, hopefully before March – I’ll get a severance check.  The danger zone in all of that is February.  I’m glad, of course, that I managed to pay off all of my credit cards this year, but doing so depleted by basically non-existent savings.  If I don’t have a paycheck or a severance check by March 1, I can’t pay the mortgage.

To that end, I’ve investigated the possibility of getting an hourly job at Kroger or somewhere.  I really don’t need to make a bunch of money to get by (and, obviously, making a bunch of money prior to now didn’t do me a great deal of good), and I figure I can get by fairly easily if I can take home about $500/week.  The only drawback to going an hourly route, be it at a grocery store or in retail or whatever, is that I can kiss the IT gig goodbye forever if I’m out of it for too long.  Not sure how I feel about that, considering that it’s what I’ve done for the last 26 years.  I have no problem with starting a second career, but I’d rather it not be a dead-end one.

Have been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to make money on my own.  Internet-based stuff, home computer/phone repair, something like that.  I really am trying to see this as a good thing.  A way to have a second act.  The world’s my stage and all that.  But I’ve got to take care of the cats, and that means I’ve got to keep paying the mortgage.

And the high heating bills, apparently.

The caption for my picture, by the way (which I created in the months after AT&T acquired BellSouth) is “AT&T.  Your World.  Destroyed.”

I thought it was a fitting image for the way I feel today.

Insidious and Insightful Insights Into the Debate

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So it’s Tuesday afternoon and I’ve nearly recovered from the last 5 days of activity, which included driving up to Greenville, SC, for a mini family reunion – during which Dad met his first great-grandchild – and driving over to Conway, SC, for a football game in which Furman was pummeled by 20 points largely because their special teams gave up 18.

Both events were enjoyable, of course.  I’m just not quite as young as I used to be, and that was a lot of driving in a pretty short period of time.  Basically, I got about half of the sleep that I needed between Friday and Monday (and, believe me, I was a mess yesterday).

So the big presidential debate was last night.  Here’s my take on it:

 

Moving on, let’s talk about my cat Chamberlain, who has had a pretty rough couple of years but has come through like a champ and, in the process, has turned into possibly the sweetest feline on earth.
chamberlainIt was just about a year ago today that I brought him to his vet because he’d been losing weight and had very little energy.  He was diagnosed with diabetes and had to start getting daily insulin shots.  A month prior to that visit, I’d taken him in to the vet because he was scratching incessantly and had bald spots all over his head.  That, it turned out, was because he had a flea allergy.  Just a few bites had turned his life into a nightmare – which was cured with some superb flea medicine and a steroid shot.

As it turned out – or at least appeared to turn out – it was the steroid that kick-started the diabetes; fortunately, he eventually recovered from both.  I’d weaned him off of the insulin by about March of this year and everything was going great.  He had lots of energy, enjoyed playing and racing around the house, and occasionally snuggled in my lap.

In April, he got startled during one of my lunch hours, jumped off of his cat tree, tore through my music room, lost control cornering on a hardwood floor, and was immediately unable to put any weight on his left leg.  Two hours later, we were back at the vet and I was looking at the x-ray confirming that he’d broken the ball off of his left femur.  Surgery to extract the broken femur head was scheduled for three days later.  A few days after that, he came home and we started a long rehab.

For a week or so, Chamberlain was confined to my guest bedroom – the mattresses removed from the bed and put on the floor so that he wouldn’t try to jump more than a few inches.  In the mornings, I’d carry him downstairs for breakfast and then carry him back up to his room while I took my walk.  In the evenings, I’d carry him down to lie in the kitchen for a while before bedtime.  At night, I slept on the mattresses on the floor so that he could have some company.

It’s now 5 months later and, unless you know what to look for, you’d never know that the little guy has absolutely nothing attaching his left leg to his skeleton.  He runs and jumps and plays and does all the things that a cat should do – but his personality has completely changed.  Cuddling in my lap is no longer an occasional thing – it’s something that he loves to do whenever I sit down.  He used to be somewhat of a loner, but now he wants to be wherever everyone else is.  He rarely tears around the house now – not because he can’t, but because he’s more inclined to look around and SEE what’s happening before reacting to it.

Can’t say that I blame him for that.

Anyway, he’s a sweetie.  And – hopefully – we’re done with the vet for a while.

I’m on vacation next week.  The plan as of now is to drive up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and spend a week on the southern shore of Lake Superior at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  I discovered this place last year and fell in love with it.  Looking forward to some fresh air, cool temperatures, steady breezes, and solitude.