Farewell Google Reader...

I use Google Reader, and Google is gong to shut it down July 1st.

I deliberately use different services from various providers because I don't want ANY of them to learn TOOO much about me.  I will suffer poorer quality service at the start to avoid control.  In the same way I left Microsoft to go to Apple, and Google Search for Bing, I will leave Google for some other reader service.

Google thinks it is too grand to leave.  They don't know me.  I will accept 2 star service in return for being CHERISHED by some new startup service provider.  And they are out there just waiting for those like me to give them a try.  I'll try them...

I always will.

What companies like Google DON'T realize is that there will always be competitor services, small start-ups that will someday become the IBMs/Microsofts/Googles of the future.

Google has decided that I am not worth their continued support.  If I owned stock in Google, I would sell it tomorrow.  (Disclaimer, I own index stocks and some may involve Google, but I don't know that).

I sometimes wonder how much some internet service providers understand about their users.  Do they really think they have a monopoly on any service?  Do they really think that their users can't move to other providers?

There IS such a thing as thinking you are "too big to fail".  That's exactly the point where a company SHOULD be broken up into constituent parts that compete.

Let's see how much better the parts of Google serve us, the users, when they get broken up into smaller competing units...

And back up your Google blog immediately.  I just did.  See instructions HERE.  Its tricky, but I did it and I'm no genius.  It did take some effort though.

Happy Gardening News!

The tomato seeds are up, the broccoli and cabbage seeds are up.

And I've been OUT in the flowerbeds doing some work!

Those black-eyed susans that I planted near the lower deck have been stubbornly migrating toward more sunlight for years.  So I decided to help them!  Today I dug up a patch of ground in the brightest area and dug out the roots of the maple tree the neighbors wont kill.  I turned the soil nicely and  moved 18 of them there.  (The Black eyed Susans)  I knoew the are suited for the spot because they have been TRYING to get there for years.

It was good hard work.  Up, down, up, down, dig, walk, plant, up down etc etc, etc,  I'll sure feel it tomorrow!  But it was great to DO that. The gardening season has begun outside!

The cats loved being outside with me too.  Marley and Iza ran all over the place and caught 2 mice.  Well, Ayla stayed inside.  Marley and Iza chase her when she is out.  I'm glad for the 2 outside, but I miss all 3 outside.

This is going to be a major redesign of the flowerbeds this year.  I've had too many spots of "6 of this, 6 of that".  I am dividing existing plants to make areas 10x10' of the same ones to get a larger view of the plants in flowers.  AND to leave large areas for annuals that I am growing under lights in the basement.

I used to grow 12 ech salvias, forgetmenots, carnations etc, but this year I have 36 each of many annuals.  And 60 marigolds.  Its hard to go wrong having a LOT of marigolds around here. They bloom fast and dont stop.

But this is going to be a year of dividing and moving around the successful perennials.  My favorite online nursery changed from cheap 6 packs to large individual pots last year tripling the price per plant and I told them I would use what I had instead of paying 3X the price.  So  I am.

I will be dividing the appropriate perennials I have in halves in the next few days and making larger areas of the same kinds.  They may not all bloom THIS year, but they sure will NEXT year!  And I was going in that direction anyway.  I'm liking the idea of larger areas of plants blooming rather than a cottage-garden style of small groups.

The plant-cuttings I rooted last Fall of butterfly bushes are growing well.  They will partly replace the aging existing ones, but I have may more than the replacements, so I think there will be a whole row of new ones in the sunnier front yard area.  Its hard to imagine anything better than plants that bloom from June to frost and attract butterflied and hummers.

I have 2 plants that are invasive,  Monarda and Lysimachia Firecracker.  They are going to be moved to the ridge in the middle of the back yard.  I can mow all around it, so they will never escape.  And they can fight it out to see which ones survive in the limited area (about 60' by 20").  I like the foliage and flowers of both, just not their invasive ways.

With the more open areas after the trees were cut back in January, there will be a lot more sunlight.  Good for the flowers and veggie gardens.  I won't miss the tall junk trees and I'll be planting smaller specimen trees in their place (that won't shade the gardens).  I'm thinking dogwoods, sourwoods, hollies, and star magnolias.  There is NO way they will ever shade the flowerbeds and veggie beds like the sweet gums and tulip poplars did.

And there STILL are majestic mature oaks, sweet gums, and tulip poplars here.  Its not like I cleared the yard.  I just cleared a Summer sunlight path VERY carefully.  I've lived here 27 years; I KNOW which of the trees were shading the garden.  They are gone, all the others remain.

Just Doing...

Risk online, Backgammon online, Cribbage online.  Blogging...  Anything to pretend I am living by myself again...  I wonder why all the other people play and stay up real late like this?

Playing Risk Online

Oh Wow, there were 5.  I had 1.8 million points, the higher ones had 9.8 million points and 5.8 million points.  The lower had 1.5 and .9 million points.  I won!  And I didnt even have good dice!  I actually did good stategic moves that worked.  Thats a rare evening so I will bask in the happiness (and good fortune) of it and not play again tonight...

Bask, Bask, Bask...

Oh drat, I should have taken a screen shot!

UPDATE:

Won 3 games in a row.  THAT won't happen again...  And from weak starts.  The God of Games was too kind to me tonight.

Retirement Anniversary

Retirement Day!  Well, it was technically Feb 28th, but today is the Monday I really felt it in 2006.


I left work without a party (my choice because I had been transferred to an office I hated that last 2 years).  I never cared what they did and they never had the slightest idea what I did.  The difference was that I could do what they did so easily and none of them (including the supervisor) could do what I did.

I know because, in spite of being new, I was the routine "acting" Division Director and I saw what they did.  Most of the time I was just amazed because what the others did was SO EASY!  And I learned, while "acting" that all the others in the Division could do their jobs in 2 hours a day while I was desperately trying to do mine in my allotted 8 hours and the time I spent at home.

I obviously chose the wrong specialty path...

OK, OK, I LOVED what I was doing, and that matters.  It was challenging, engaging, took a lot of varied skills, etc, etc, etc.  But I'm thinking that I could have accepted the Division Director job when it was offerred and stayed a couple more years, taking life easy at higher pay.

But retired life is SO much better and I have all I need in life...

So here's to retirement when you can do it and if you have something interesting to do during it!



Ya know what I hate?  Weekends.  The stores are all crowded and the roads are backed up.  Its almost like having to do routine food shopping the day before a snowstorm! 

We all had different daily work hours in my office, and mine was the latest.  On my last day at work, the last person shook my hand and left.  I could have left early that day, who would care, but I worked to the last minute.  I carried a box and one plant to the car.  And I drove off into the sunset, never to return...

When I got home, I walked into the house (It was Skeeter and LC back then) and said "well guys, I'm home forever...".

About a year later, I was advised by a friend that I had been replaced by 3 full time people and they were complaining about "all the work".  That was SO Sweet to hear (and my friend is brutally honest).

I'll sleep EXTRA well tonight...

Camera Troubles

A little over a week ago, Iza managed to knock my camera off a shelf and down the stairs  (SEE HERE).  It just wasn't working right when it worked at all.  I did some research and decided on a replacement.  The order confirmation came back with a delivery date of Feb 25-March 12, so I was delighted that it arrived yesterday.

Today, I opened the box to charge the battery, read the feature instructions, load the software, etc.  Oddly, I couldn't get the battery to fit in the charger.  Nor would it fit in the camera.  Its a special Li/Ion battery with a rectangular shape.  Checking the manual, I noticed that the required battery had a different model number than the battery in the box.

I called the retailer.  First, they said Canon only used one model  battery (NB-90).  Since I was holding an NB-5L and the manual listed an NB-4L, I knew THAT was wrong!  I finally convinced them that there was more than one battery type, and they checked.  Then they said they would be happy to send me the correct battery at no charge (gee, how kind of them).  And said "thank you for calling".

WHOA!  They didn't have my name, address, or order number, so I yelled "don't hang up"!  They (reluctantly it seemed) let me give them the order number and promised to ship the correct battery tomorrow and send an email confirmation.

Why do I have the feeling they won't...  I mean, they tried to get me off the phone without any idea where to send a new battery!  I fear I will have to return the whole package and demand a refund.  And then order a new camera.  And apparently there really aren't any more of this model available because there is a new version out (with all kinds of features I actively do not want (like a touch screen).

I already had crossed off the other cameras on the Consumer Reports list for various reasons, so I don't know what I would choose.

I sure hope they send me that replacement battery!

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Separate news...  A brother/sister littermate pair of cats lost their Bein suddenly and need a home.  They are in NJ right now awaiting their fate...  We are sure SOME of our readers have room for 2 sweet cats or may want to nicely domesticated ones as their first cats.  Please leave us a comment if you can help.

Neediness

Dad has become for needy of my physical presence lately.  It's not a new thing, but it has increased the past month.

He has previously been "lonely" if I do not sit with him in front of the TV, and sometimes he has suddenly walked around the house searching for me if he doesn't know where I am.  Its annoying.  Like the way a Mother can hardly go to the bathroom without toddlers banging on the door...

At least, with toddlers, you can expect them to grow out of it.  With an elder, you know it is only going to get worse.  It used to be that, if I got involved with yardwork or cleaning the basement, it would be a couple hours before Dad got worried about where I was.  I could always tell when I started hearing banging on the floor above going back and forth along the hall rapidly (for him).  So I would stop whatever I was doing and go upstairs to let him know I was around, remind him that I had told him I was working in the basement, and see if I could find him something interesting to watch on TV.

Then, I could return to what I was doing for a while with Dad at least remembering where I was in the house for another hour or two.

That time has shrunk to about 30 minutes.  I can't get away from him for very long.  Its not like I'm "hiding in the basement".  The gardening season is starting, and I am way behind in getting the place organized for the new season.  In previous years, I have kept the basement relatively organized; this past year, I have just not had the time.  It needed hours of cleanup and organization.  I have taken all the shortcuts I could since Dad arrived, and it caught up to me!

I've tried to do things an hour at a time, then spend enough time around Dad so that he knew I was there and go back to what I was doing in the basement.  I'm worn out...

The other problem that is getting worse is Dad expecting me to go do bed every night when he does.  He used to sometimes go to bed after me (and could turn off the lights and TV) .

And, BTW, I just did my 15 minutes of talking to Dad and "watching" his Fox News show, to comfort him with my presence.  I don't say that mockingly.  He needs a reminder of my presence to feel like he has not been abandoned.  Sometimes when I go out grocery-shopping, he is desperate for attention by the time I get back (about 1.5 hours from driving and shopping time).

I spent the last 30 years living by myself (with the various combinations of cats).  I LIKE living alone (with cats).  I used to just get up at 5 am, feed the cats, shower, dress, drive to meet my carpool, spend 9.5 hours at work, carpool back, drive home (after doing some brief grocery-shopping) by 6 pm.  I had 3, maybe 4 hours before I had to go to bed, and I spent a lot of the weekends sleeping.  I had to pack everything I wanted to do otherwise into those few weeknight and precious weekend hours.  Many of you do too.

I'm not used to accounting for my free time, in spite of so much more than I have now that I am retired.  But I was so happy with retired life and here is Dad dropped in...  I hate it.  I'm a responsible child, I always was (elder child syndrome).  I'm doing this because I "have" to.  I'm doing this because I should, I'm doing this because its "right", I'm doing this because because I was the right person to do it when the time came.  That doesn't mean I like it...

Well, yeah, few people like caring for an elder parent.  Its awkward, it changes the routine of life, it's difficult.  But am I right that MOST people who care for an elder parent are doing it with help from family?  A spouse, local children who visit, some old friends of the elder, your own friends who visit you and relate to the elder parent sometimes?

I don't.

I wish he really needed an "assisted-living facility".  He doesn't yet (by my unprofessional guess).  But I need him to need it. 

I live a rational, knowledgeable life.  I don't understand really what it means not to know how to do simple things like open curtains, flush a toilet, separate metal from compostable stuff in different containers,  read a simple 1099 tax document or a monthly bank statement, etc.  Answering the same questions about those things every single day is driving me nuts.  Sometimes, it is the same question 3 times in 15 minutes...

Nothing in my entire life has prepared me for this.

Iza Strikes Again!

Iza is very adept at catching tossed toys.  It is nearly impossible to hand-fake her.  At the same time, she is amazingly clumsy.  If she jumps up onto the table, she lands with the grace of a bag of sand.

So it should have been no surprise to me when she went to go from the tabletop to the half wall along the staircase.  And managed to almost go over the edge.  She didn't, but she managed to send my camera over the edge instead.  Eight feet down onto the hard wood...

When I checked it, the lens made a "geary" sound as it came out or back in.  I took a couple pictures and it seemed to work.  Then I realized that the case was slightly separated.  Pressing it firmly seemed to put it back together.  So I used it as usual (trying not to wince every time the lens made noise).

Then the lens refused to come out and there was a message about restarting the camera.  A few times of that not working I figured the camera was dead.  But there were pictures in the camera and it DID allow me to download them.  Whew!

Looking at them in iPhoto, the most recent ones (aka "after the fall") all looked a bit weird.  They were all a bit blurry.  OK, some didn't surprise me, since they were action shots of the cats (and it never has been very good at those).  But most were normal still shots.  I assume the image stabilization has been damaged.

THEN I realized that ALL the recent pictures were rotated 90 degrees!  The iPhoto software will rotate pictures, but only counter-clockwise, and NATURALLY, the camera had rotated them in that direction.  So I had to manually rotate about 50 pictures 3 times each.  And they were all a bit blurred anyway.

OK, I have to get a new camera...  I looked up subcompacts in Consumer Reports.  Quite frankly, even subcompacts are getting too fancy!  All I want is a fairly simple point and click, but one that does the point and click very well, has a better than average image stabilizer, takes good flash pictures, and has a rapid "next-shot" time (a real weakness with the current one).

I specifically didn't want top-quality video capability, a touch screen, and 20 different exposure settings, etc.  I decided on a Canon  Powershot Elph 310 HS and went to amazon.com to read more about it.  It uses an Li-Ion battery, and no matter how much I searched around, I could not find anyplace that said it was rechargable!  The replacement batteries cost $10 and I sure wasn't going to keep putting a new one in every 200 shots! 

I gave up for the night and looked again today.  I finally found that there is a battery charger included with the camera, so I went back to amazon to order it.  Would you believe the price went up $40 overnight?  Apparently, there is a newer version coming out next week (with things I do not want) and the few places that had any of the 310 version left all jacked up the price.

I looked at the other models on the Consumer Reports list, but one had a poor optical zoom, another had a touch screen, another had good video but average flash stills, etc.

I grumbled a while and ordered the 310...

Dad, Crazy

Last night, I was watching TV with Dad, only to be companionable.  He suddenly looked over at me and went "What the hell is that ANIMAL on your lap.  It was one of the cats of course.  I said it was Iza.  He said but what is an animal doing in the house? 

???

He thought it was a wild animal.  Never mind that Ayla, Iza, and Marley have been in the house all the 9 months Dad has been here.  Tonight, he didn't recall them.  Worse, he lost the concept of domesticated animal.

It is terrible watching a person lose their mind...

Playing Risk

Risk is a brutal board game.  4 or 5 players all determined to obliterate you country by country, continent by continent.

I often join games in progress in weak positions because, quite frankly, improving a position is more fun to me than winning outright, and on rare occasions I do win. 

Tonight I won a terrible brutal nerve-racking game right on the last battle, and I recalled a Gahan Wilson cartoon from many years ago.  I love the clean unlethal internet/boardgames, but I always keep in mind that there is a reality of what the game is about.

I always think of this...

"I THINK I WON"!


Gahan Wilson was a genious...

Its Going To Be A Long Unhappy Night

Iza and Ayla have to get their annual vet visits this time of year.  They were both scheduled for them last Friday but things went wrong.  I put out the PTUs  (Prisoner Transport Units) or "Cat-Carriers" for those of you who don't read "cat" early in the morning.   

Marley wasn't a catch, but he had just been to the vet in one, so he panicked.  Iza seemed pretty relaxed.  Ayla was nowhere in sight as soon as the PTUs came out.  But there were hours to go...

The appointment was for 3 pm, and the vet is only 10 minutes away, so at 2:30 I picked up Iza to put her in the larger PTU.  She fought harder than usual, so it took almost 10 minutes of hard grabbing and brute strength to get her inside and locked in.  She complained a lot afterwards.

Ayla was nowhere to be found.  If she wasn't in DEEP-HIDING just seeing the PTU, she sure was after Iza yelled a lot!  I searched the house top to bottom with a flashlight under every bed, every closet, and all the hidey-holes I knew about.  Apparently, she has some I don't know about.  After 20 minutes, I had to give up and just take Iza to the vet.

That was bad enough, but they both needed FIV shots started because after a year of them being indoors, I relented last Fall and let them outside again.  The shots have to be established 3 times (one shot every 2 weeks).  Marley had just finished him series, and I was royally tired of bringing any one to the vet every 2 weeks. 

Not bringing Ayla in at the same time as Iza means that they are both now on separate every-other-week schedules.  The vet says they CAN allow some overlap so I can get them both on the same schedule for the future shots, but getting them BOTH into PTUs the next time may be as impossible as this time was. 

I MAY have to just get used to taking them all to the vet one at a time!

Even worse is getting the stool samples for the annual exam.  I was lucky with Marley.  He obligingly pooped while I was in the basement in sight of the litter pans the day before his exam.  No such luck with Iza or Ayla.

So when I brought Iza to the vet last Friday, no stool sample.

Tonight is different.  I have enclosed Ayla in the basement with a clean litter box, food, and water, and a bed.  Iza is enclosed in my bedroom with the same.  Iza is in the bedroom because she demands to be near me more at night than Ayla does.  Marley sleeps out on the cat trees at night until dawn.  Of course, because Ayla is enclosed in the basement where the litter boxes usually are, I have a litter box at the bottom of the stairs for him. 

EVERYONE is going to be upset and unhappy all night.  Ayla in the basement, Iza in the bedroom, Marley not in the bedroom (and none of them able to sleep together or with me except Iza).  Its all a mess but the only way I can get the stool samples identified by cat.

I can best hope that both Ayla and Iza decide to poop in their respective enclosed rooms before I go to bed.  Oh happy thought.  But unlikely!  In the past (and I've gone through this before but not in such a complicated way) it has taken both about 12 hours before they would deign to poop after being so upset and restricted.  

My elderly Dad (who lives here now) says he can't imagine why I put myself through this for just a couple of "damn cats"and all the expense).  When  asked him why he used to have a boat that could only be described as "a hole in the water you through money into", he said he enjoyed the boat.  Well, I like my cats.    And a good bit more than he liked the boat.  Reminding him of all those nice weekend Summer days we spent scraping barnacles off the bottom of the boat and repainting/patching it endlessly didn't get through to him at all. 

But Dad complains about my aquarium, my garden, and flowerbeds, so there isn't much that makes him think effort is worthwhile except HIS favorite thing (watching golf). 

BTW, when he lived on his own, he watched golf when he could on his smallish old TV.  When he moved here with me, he commented that the HDTV was great.  Now that he is used to it, he thingks it is a waste of money.  If I dragged in an old 25" CRT TV like he used to have, he would gripe all day.

But this is about the cats, and I will not sleep well tonight knowing they are all separated from each other and 2 of them from me.  I hate this...