jesirose

I freaking love this game! Civilization Revolution is the  bomb. If anyone is on Xbox add me, my gamertag is jesirose.

I bought this Octo-play toy for the rats a few weeks ago, it was on clearance. This is supposedly one of the best toys you can get for rats. Yeah. They ignored it mostly. The corners of the room and behind my chair - much better toys.

Oh, and the leftover rolled oats container.

Tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary! I was so excited about the pet’s new diet I forgot to blog it. We celebrated with a dinner of homemade sauce on spaghetti and garlic and herb potatoes, and watched the Olympics and played Halo. I got Civilization Revolution for XBOX 360 for myself last weekend so we played a lot of that this week.

Happy anniversary to me and Colin. Yay!

I got Sophie and Katie about a year ago. A few weeks before I got them, if you had told me I’d have rats as pets, I’d have thought it was nuts. Now I think they’re great fun, I love cuddling them and watching them play.

I didn’t think I would ever own a dog either, yet now Sadie dictates most of my world. I love my cats and rats, but there is something unexplainably unique about dogs.

A few months ago, I had difficulty handling plain ground hamburger meat to make meatloaf - and over the past few days I’ve fed chicken wings, feet, and turkey necks to Sadie. I’d been handling them with baggies, but when she grabbed her organ meat and ran into the living room, I didn’t hesitate to run after her and pick up each peice with bare hands and gather it up. Was it still gross? Yes. Did I do it anyway? Yes.

I even vacuumed up a spider today. While it wasn’t quite taking it outside on a magazine, it was a step up from throwing things at it and running away until Colin could save me from it.

Today the cats and Sadie officially start their new diet. The cats are being transitioned to a prey-model diet, and Sadie will be getting “frankenprey” or as close to prey as I can get. The rats will stick on their HT and Suebees, but depending on how well the transition goes with the cats, they may be getting some Welness and Felidea as a treat.

As I type, Sadie is enjoying a turkey neck. She was apprehensive at first when I gave her one last night, but it was frozen still. After it’s thawed more and closer to room temp, she started chewing on it and now she’s eating it happily.

The cats are having a bit more trouble, which is to be expected. Last night they had no interest in the Nature’s Variety raw food I bought to try. I don’t know if they will get excited by the prey-model I will use more than the ground up stuff I started with. They didn’t eat it when I put it in their bowls, so I added a few pieces of dry in each chunk to get them to try it. They didn’t eat that either. So I mashed it up a lot, pour dry on top, and pushed the dry into the ground. They got about 1oz of raw, 1 oz of dry each. They started to eat the dry.

Felix apparently found the raw and liked it. When he jumped down from his breakfast, only dry food was left in the bowl. Bear on the other hand was much more picky and I think he got a few bits of raw, but still liked his dry better. I dumped what was left and cleaned the bowls really well. They still need to eat dinner so I’ll try 1oz raw each first, and if they still are not interested, add the dry. It won’t hurt Bear to lose a bit of weight but Felix is underweight still. Luckily Felix seems interested.

It’s funny because Bear will eat almost anything he isn’t supposed to, but gets picky about his “food”. What goes in the bowl apparently doesn’t have the anything-goes rule. Bear has eaten all kinds of paper and cardboard, he ate drywall, carpet, he’ll eat screws if you let him. Any human food of course he wants it. However, Felix’s favorite snack is one thing Bear will not eat - Jalapeno Cheddar Cheetos - Felix steals them from his dad.

Later today Lizzie’s mom is taking us to a grocer where we can get good meat for Sadie and maybe the cats. I will need to find a source for the cat’s food. I found some online sites but of course they are expensive plus shipping! So we’ll keep looking, and I’ll keep offering them new foods.

Last night, Colin yelled that Felix was using Sadie’s toy box as a bathroom. I went to clean it out, and tripped over the ruins of my favorite thong sandals, chewed apart by my darling dog who has never before chewed any shoe. She had always ignored shoes and most things that weren’t her toys, excepting water bottles and scraps of paper.

Plus, the baby ratlets seem to be EXUDING allergens.

Cause, so far today I’ve gotten 3 “open position for PHP Developer” emails on LinkedIn.

We got back from our trip to my Grandparent’s 50th anniversary party last night, about 3 hours late and with twice as many laptops!

We stayed with Dad one night, and then my very cool Aunt and Uncle the next, and sadly had to leave right after the ceremony. Then got stuck at the airport for 3 extra hours. Yes, we needed the thunderstorms that rolled in last night but I wish they’d waited a few hours to hit! *sigh*.

We stayed up pretty late on Friday watching the Olympics ceremonies. We missed the opening part but did get to watch some of the cool stunts at the end. I am trying to find a video online of the opening with the martial arts and the “boxes” but I’m having trouble finding it online. The NBC site is supposed to have it.

Colin was incredibly upbeat about “doing stuff” instead of “doing nothing”, and even had fun playing with my younger cousins, or pretended to at least. He pointed out during the ceremony on Sunday it was the first time we’d been in a church together. Actually the first time either of us had been in a long time. It was neat to visit a place I hadn’t been in so long, but had spent a good amount of time as a child in. I don’t remember the last time I was there but it was probably close to 9 years ago.

On Saturday we visited with people from all parts of my Grandparent’s lives - many friends and family were crammed into their house, which is actually very big, and I remembered most people’s names. It was slightly embarassing when a distant cousin and I recognized each other and I think neither of us remembered each others names at first, but I knew it as soon as I heard her name. I didn’t get to talk to her much though, I wish we’d been able to stay longer.

Long Computer Rambling:
My first laptop that my Dad got me was a Compaq, and it had worked great.  But when I went to college I wanted something I could carry around - the Compaq was basically a desktop, it was about 15 lbs and barely fit in my laptop. I wanted one to take to school so I got the Dell. I kept the Compaq for a while - I used it at home, tried out Linux on it, and eventually sold it online to buy Dad a PS2 for Christmas this past year.

The Dell still works alright now but I couldn’t use it as a work laptop anymore. The USB ports are connected to the motherboard so when they both broke, the whole motherboard had to be replaced. (I don’t know if this is common, but this is how they explained it when repairing it.) This happened twice in warranty - I should have realized it would be a problem. After the warranty I didn’t want to keep paying for a motherboard. Anyway without USB ports I can’t use my mouse, and although that sounds like a small problem it got to be a huge PITA. I would be using the mouse and suddenly - *dong dong*, it’s off. Then back on. Then off. Plus, I couldn’t use a USB memory stick, or anything like that. The battery was also starting to suck, it was 6 hours when I bought it and now it lasts about 1. So having no mouse and little battery made it very frustrating at a client site one week. Dad loves to say how he likes Dell, because he fixes them all the time.

When the Dell started having issues I bought a new computer from Dad. I had looked at the laptop he gave me but in the end decided on a workstation so I could get more out of it. It’s actually an HP too. I have had no trouble with it - I had specific requests like I wanted a dual-monitor card and wanted to be able to run new games like World of Warcraft well - the Compaq and the Dell quickly became outdated when it came to the games I liked - I never was able to play Black and White 2. Anyway the desktop is awesome, I haven’t had any problems - it’s fast, and it works for what I need. And it has a TON of USB ports. I guess I have strange criteria for a good computer for me

I had tried a macbook Colin gave me for a while but after all my software trials ran out I decided I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars to use the mac when I had programs that were free or I’d already bought for PC. The billing/client tracking software I tried was neat but I found one online that works great too.

So I had started looking at possibly getting a small HP laptop. I had checked out various brands and I liked a bunch but this seemed to be the best for my price range. I guess HP bought Compaq? Anyway the two computers I HAD really liked were Compaq or HP, so I figured I’d stick with what worked. When I mentioned this to Dad, he insisted I take the HP in the shop as a present. It’s an “HP Compaq nc2400″. I really like the size and weight of it, makes it great for a work laptop because I can easily take it to my client’s sites and work. I also can keep IE6 on it for testing, since the IE6 standalone I have on my other computers doesn’t quite work. Since I won’t be playing games on it I don’t need a great video card or anything, so I don’t even know what it has.

I love the screen size. It’s small but wide and has large resolution - I know I’m ruining my eyes but I love the tiny fonts. When I stuck the battery in it was fully charged and I checked it at 95% - 3:45 hours left. It’s supposed to have 6 hours I guess but 4 is good for me. I haven’t programmed the thumbprint reader yet but I think it is a cool feature I want to check out.

I did have a problem with it already which was actually kind of funny. Above the keyboard is a touch sensitive bar with volume and wireless controls. I didn’t know this was touch sensitive - Colin and I both thought they were just lights, not buttons. So I managed to turn off the wireless and eventually had to call Dad asking “The manual says to hit the button but I can’t find a button!” - to find out the light IS the button - and it’s actually VERY sensitive. I’m looking to see if I can disable this because I never have cause to DISABLE the wireless. I don’t use my laptops on planes, which is the only time I can see someone turning off the wireless.

My only other “complaint” is that it doesn’t have a touchpad - this is THE reason I didn’t consider this laptop when dad showed it to me. However, as long as the USB ports work, I don’t really care because I will use my Logitech mouse, not the “eraser” pointer.

Anyway my Dad rocks, my new laptop rocks, and overall a great weekend!

Sadie just surprised the heck outta me. She came to the office door and started barking, so I went to open the back door so she could go “out”. She just sat there so I thought okay, maybe she was barking at the front door, and looked for something out there. Nope. So I went back to the hall and she ran down the hallway to the bedroom, and sat in front of her crate. She wanted to sleep in it! So I opened it up and she ran in and laid down.

What a sweetie I have.