I've always had cats, but none of the three cats we have now had ever lived with a dog before Mitsuyo. There was definitely a learning experience involved in not being afraid of the dog. I often wondered which of the three between Zinger, Buttah and Daisy would be the first to snuggle up to the dog on a cold night. Surprisingly, it turned out the dog herself was the one leery of touching while asleep. If a cat managed to sneak up on her and lie down in such a way that cringing away would not be an option, the dog would lie there petrified with angst until the cat went away. I witnessed all three of them trying various times before finally giving up.



But wait! Over the last three days (probably no coincidence it's been the coldest days so far this year) Mitsuyo and Buttah have been getting closer and closer together at the top of the stairs. LOL I'll bet I'll find them touching one of these days.

Note to self: finish scraping woodwork in upper stairwell.

My grandmother emailed me this story recently, in response to my LJ postings about vermiculture:


LOL! One reason I picked Red Wrigglers out of several possible choices for vermiculture is they supposedly don't try to escape very much. Even so, the worm bin is designed to prevent escapees by having a top that fits closely inside the bin sides. The layer of damp newspaper just under the lid gives them something to gnaw on if they were thinking of escaping to find more food. I haven't had any escapees from the bin at all and if I find one it's usually my fault (such as when adding food or cleaning) so I just place it back inside.

This story reminds me of one though. About 20 years ago (egads!) I was living in Albany, California in a house with a number of roommates. My room had its own door to an enclosed backyard so I'd leave it open so my cats and dog could come and go at will. My dog was technically not mine, but being fostered for a small private humane society that had none of its own holding facilities. It was inevitable I'd have to give the dog up, and once that happened a very strange phenomenon developed. Every time it rained, I'd come home at night and find my bedspread covered with dead and dying worms. Some were big nightcrawlers and others medium ones. Some culprit among my cats was bringing a worm in to play with, then going to fetch another when that one stopped being fun. There would be as many as 15-20 at a time by the time I came home. By why did it start only after the dog left? The logical explanation was that it had actually been going on the whole time, but when the dog was around she had gobbled up the used worms before I could find them. Yuuuck!

Today I took Mitsuyo (our dog, who is 1/2 Akita, 1/4 Chow Chow, and 1/4 Golden Retriever) to the vet to get her very long nails cut. This was a monumental task and I am sure the vet, the vet's assistant and myself are each now wearing more fur than the dog herself, but the nails got cut! They gave her some Valium-equivalent to make it less traumatic but she was still freaking every time the cutters went snip!. This dog has like, hypersensitive toes or something. I have her very well trained to lie down and calm down (from my own toenail cutting exercises with her) but  I had to ask her to do that over, and over, and over again today. Whew!

At the same time I brought our cat Buttah for a rabies shot, which is required by law in this state.

Neither animal has me on the top of their "happy list" right now!

Today I fixed a broken wind chime that had been lying around since earlier in the fall. Over the summer it had been attached to the same branch of the tree as I tie the dog to when she needs to do her business out back. When she'd see a rabbit she'd go insane and stand on her hind legs lunging, causing the wind chime to ring wildly. One day I came out and it was lying on the ground under the tree, the string connecting it to its hanger having apparently parted.



I drilled out the rivet that had been holding the now-missing piece of connective string to the bottom of the flat bird piece, and substituted in my own piece of white string as shown above. There is a washer tied to the bottom knot to keep it from getting pulled through the hole. I don't know if this string will be tough enough to do the trick, but there's lots more where that came from if it isn't.

As a note, after I found the wind chime lying on the ground the dog refused to go anywhere near that half of her space. I wonder if there is any connection? (evil grin)

This morning there was water leakage in the basement so I got to see my leakwater channelling strip in action. Unfortunately some water had done an end-run around the head end of it, which kind of defeated the purpose. It appeared to come out of the very base of the wall where there is a gap. I think when I go through and patch all the wall cracks that problem will take care of itself. I hope so anyway. Hehe.



The basement has so much dehumidification equipment down there that the puddle was already partially dried but based on the evidence left it looks like the part that seeped around the end only made it a short way, so that's good. The rest of the strip worked exactly as it was supposed to. The cat, Zinger, agrees that wet floors are teh suck.



Also while I was over there I noticed that it is time to scrub the parts room door again. When we moved in the door was covered in mold, oh yuk! It has been scrubbed all over with bleach twice now. It appears the 3rd time will be the charm, as it is returning with very little force now.



Yes, we have a parts room. What do you expect in a house owned by 2 nerds? :-D

This other "leak" at the stairs end of the basement turned out to be a hairball. Thanks guys.



Today I spent much of the day on the 2 Compaq Proliant servers. Ultimately it turned out I will need some software I had to order out for, so realistically they will not be ready by October 12th when I had wanted to go to Minneapolis and switch the system over. So I have a modified plan now where I will use the two P1's with 2.4.x kernel Linux and no SSHD capability as temporary servers. Once everything is all switched over I will be able to finish and swap in the two Compaq Proliants at my leisure.

While I was moving stuff around I made an important discovery regarding a used KVM switch I got on eBay a while back. I had never had enough machines running on it at once to really pinpoint what it's issues were, but I figured it had some since it was included for free with something else I bought. Lo and behold, it has exactly 4 bad keyboard channels. (The 3 marked with X below, plus the one labeled "ORLY")



Electronics technicians love to see stuff go bad in multiples of 4 and 8 because it makes it insanely easy to figure out which part has gone south. Somewhere in the keyboard input circuitry there is an IC chip with 4 sets of inputs/outputs that needs to be replaced. It should be relatively easy to tell which one it is by taking an oscilloscope and comparing the signals on the working one and the non-working one. Before I take the switch apart though I need to test the mouse functionality, so I have a concise list of everything that is wrong. All of the monitor circuits work.

Of course, I could also just wait. Once the old primary system comes home from Minneapolis, I'll have a very nice 16 circuit switch of the same brand that works perfectly. Hehe.