I think I’d like to get a Doberman and name him “Gillis”.
Of course, I’d have to get him a lazy dog buddy and name him Maynard.
Staying Current. . . for What It’s Worth
I try to stay current, but sometimes local laws, ordinances, whatever, kinda scoot on by me w/o really making any impact. So, I try to look ’em up from time to time and be “read up” as much as possible.
Discovered today that nudity is prohibited in the county’s churches and schools. Who knew?
*heh*
*head-butt*
No, it’s not your eyes, and no, it’s not the camera, and nor is it my pathetic photog “skilz” (though pathetic is an accurate term *heh*). Caught this guy moving in for yet another head-butt. He’s the head-buttingest cat I’ve ever known.
A better pose (on the back of my Wonder Woman’s chair):
And another, same chair:
Annnnd. . . in the bay window. No, the basket’s not really too small for him. He just seems to prefer crowding himself up into as small a ball as possible.
Meteorological Karma
“Anti-pipeline protesters gather in Calgary to decry climate change”
“Protestors in Calgary said the Harper government is refusing to take meaningful action when it comes to climate change. Originally about 300 people were slated to participate in the Calgary protest, but due to a snow storm only about 50 showed up.”
@#$% you global warming!
*heh*
“Magnificent Devices”–Wow. Just Wow.
I allowed myself to get sucked into this four book collection the other day. Wow. So very well-written. Best “steam-punk world” I’ve experienced. VERY hard to put down. Engaging characters, good plotting, well-detailed descriptive narrative: just a Good Read.
Now, if you saw my normal reading list, you might be surprised that I enjoyed this collection so much. Four short books (the whole collection doesn’t run much over 800pp) that were a really fun read. I immediately bought the next book, A Lady of Resources, and immediately devoured it. Yes, I enjoyed the entire collection and I will purchase the next book as soon as it’s available.
But why, pray, might you be surprised at my glowing commentary? Oh, well, these books are “juvies” (yeh, yeh, they call ’em “YA” books now, but since “juvenile” now extends to the late 20s–or later: most politicians are sociopathic juveniles, for example–and “young adults” are more likely to be 30-somethings anymore, I’ll just stick with “juvie” mmK? ;-)), and the ONLY reason I read juvies is because I enjoy sharing my Wonder Woman’s world. She’s a K-8 librarian and is very close with her readers. I suspect a very large portion of her enjoyment of juvie books is anticipation of interaction with her students about the books she reads WITH them. And I enjoy the well-written and well-edited ones for being able to share them with her. (Besides, they are invariably very, very quick reads and don’t disrupt my other reading hardly at all, so. . . *heh*)
OK, but these books are quite different. Yeh, yeh, I read the Percy Jackson stuff. *yawn* Well-written enough, but really quite pedestrian, boringly predictable. And yes, I read the J.K. Rowling things, despite being bored to tears after getting halfway through the first one. (Maybe I’m a bit picky, but then again maybe not. . . )
These books, though, are real gems. They’re just very, very well-written, with an excellent Victorian period feel melding well with the fictional steampunk universe, characters that are engaging and credible, ripping good stories, just. . . just Good Reads, regardless the genre or target audience. What’s even more surprising is that this very, very well-written prose and these very, very well-told stories are from the hand of a person with an actual B.A. in Literature AND an M.F.A. in Writing Popular Fiction–two things that, in my experience, tend to result in writers producing Suckitudinous Fiction. *heh* My hat’s off to Shelley Adina for developing REAL writing chops despite her academic credentials. 😉
“Very Unique”?!? *sigh*
Seriously. I have actually read and heard that nonsense combination of words–“very unique”. In fact, I seem to hear it more and more often lately. Are these folks dumber than a bag of hammers or just wagging their tongues (resulting in really icky keyboards, in the cases of those who’ve written the nonsense phrase) with no more consciousness than can be found in a rock?
“Very unique”?!? *gagamaggot*
Scylla and Charybdis: Finally Dhimmicraps Find Out How the “Stupid Party” Feels All the Time
If the Dhimmicraps take a legislative stance that the individual mandate is NOT a tax, wouldn’t that nullify the only leg Roberts manufactured for it to stand on? Hmm? And if they admit it is a tax–a tax that weighs unevenly on young, middle class voters–that would certainly have a strong potential to weigh heavily against them at the polls next year.
This is gonna be interesting. . .
BrokeBlog Mountain
[If this sounds just a bit queer, well it is.]
So, had a call from Bluehost saying I needed to move to a more expensive hosting service, which they very naturally had on offer, because my lil “let the voices in my head duke it out here” blog was exceeding a reasonable bandwidth usage.
WTF?
OK, now why would that be, since I have seriously scaled back on traffic by deliberately working for several years to drive idiots away (leaving the 0.01% of blog visitors as acceptable traffic *heh*)? The guy–not tech support but sales–surmised a broken plugin or some such, once I clued him in on the site’s usage.
MmmK. . . No new plugins recently, but I let him deactivate ’em all for testing.
Right. Everything except the built-in left sidebar and the blog title–*poof!*–disappeared.
Oh, joy. *sigh*
Re-enabled plugins one-by-one, checking bandwidth usage as I refreshed the site. One plugin re-enabled yielded the restoration of the right sidebar (as expected) and also–surprise, surprise!–ONE post, the most recent.
But no more.
Have now re-enabled plugins to match pre-disabled state. Still no spikes in bandwidth usage. Still only most recent post visible (we’ll see what posting this one does, eh?). I’ve tried to access the database optimization and repair tools available via cPanel at Bluehost, but no joy. Won’t let me log in with known good credentials and when the credentials are reset, still no login. :-/
I’ll cogitate on this a bit. I have my two most recent database backups (in three locations) I can use–once I can log into the database management tools–so all my head voices’ crap is still around. . . somewhere
Hate It When This Happens. . .
. . . as it seems to be doing more and more often of late.
*sigh*
I just determined that my right mouse clicking problems on this computer aren’t entirely the fault of the mouse. *sigh* I live by the right mouse click! *heh* Dam*ed twitchy-finger. . . *grumble-grumble-gripe-complain*
Olde Pharte Body Fail.
