dpk’s weblog

Sony’s E-Ink E-Book e-product does look pretty neat, and I’m sure the technology is “cutting-edge” and all that, but I just don’t see myself buying a $350 tool just to carry multiple books around with me in one package. It’s not like I read more than a book a month as it is.

Call me when it’s $50, or $100 if it had built-in WiFi to let me download news to it while I’m on the train. :)

Who wants some dirt cheap turd laptops, as advertised on Google? (Sorta)

I have been wanting to adopt a pair of cats for some time now. I was hoping for two bonded adults that would entertain each other during the day. As luck would have it, I found a pair the first day I went out to the Tukwila Petsmart, host of PurrfectPals, a non-profit cat shelter. Introducing Praline and Chickory (left to right):

They’re both males, 4 and 3 years old respectively, and they’re enormous, at 17 pounds a piece. Praline is white and orange, and Chickory is nearly solid black, with a tiny tuft of white fur on his chest. They’re quite friendly and cuddly, brushing up against me as they explore the house. They came a long ways to get here — they came from New Orleans, after surviving Hurricane Katrina. I think they must have just finished eating, because although they came running when I popped a can of food, they didn’t stick around to eat.

Hey, more good news. They found the first litterbox, and now boy does it stink. I’ll be setting up a second litterbox after I refill the litter pail tomorrow.

So far I’ve managed to a) destroy my front lawn and b) spill part of a load on top of the Bobcat itself.

Turning these things is a bit tricky. They have really, really knobby tires of course, and you drive them like a tank (with one lever for the left side and one for the right side). To turn you’re supposed to push one forward and one backwards. That causes the machine to wobble around when on pavement, and it gets really bad if you go too fast (not that I am going crazy with it. In this case “too fast” is just a small amount above “not moving”). On grass, it doesn’t wobble, but it just wrecks everything underneath it.

The foot controls are taking getting used to as well. I’m not exactly sure why I ended up with the bucket up over the Bobcat — I wonder if I was just trying to “hit the brakes” with my left foot, stupidly, instead of just letting go of the foot controls — but it sure made a mess.

I’m enjoying using it, however. The suck part is I have to stop every 3 or 4 loads so I can spread the dirt I’m dumping — I can’t use the Bobcat for that because of the walls. :)

I’m still working on that yard project I started in May. In my sort-of defense I spent most of that time not working on the project. I decided to take this entire week off to “finish” it, or at least complete enough of it, and do whatever else is necessary to make it appear finished.

You can see the back of part of one section of the wall. You can also see the tree I planted today (this shot is from a day or two ago, I don’t remember, heh), still in its pot, on the right leaning up against the downspout.

14 yards of dirt. I originally ordered 20, but when I saw how big the first load was (it was to be delivered in 3 separate loads) I reduced the order. Some of it spilled in to my neighbor’s yard; not the driver’s fault (there’s only so much room) and lucky for me my neighbors are cool about it.

Here’s a full view of the project from the front “deck”. You can also see my neighbor’s yard and the work they’ve done — the caps they put on top of the blocks were all cut exactly to shape using a circular saw. They look great.

I had to make a compromise part way through the driveway wall part of the project. The project called for this entire wall to be made level, which required moving it back about a foot (so the blocks would not be resting on the driveway material). It isn’t “hard” work, it’s just really time consuming getting the base blocks level. I don’t think I have enough time to finish this part of the project before the week is out, and moving the dirt is a higher priority (before it starts growing shit) so I just made it look as good as I could.

I’m renting a Bobcat for tomorrow, to finish moving the 13.7 yards of dirt that remain on the driveway. I decided the compromise mentioned above before I decided to rent the Bobcat, so who knows, maybe I can finish that wall stage of the project after all.

Heh, I had no idea some TGTTM episodes are available online at video.google.com. Awesome.