|
|
Monday, May 11th, 2009
| |
2:45 am - Fishtank update
|
So I've added a few things since I last posted. A small pulsing xenia frag, a ricordea polyp, a single head of duncan coral a, a brittle star, and the big additions, just acquired yesterday: a rose-tipped anemone and two false percula clownfish (one, certainly a male, about 1.25-1.5 inches in length, the other, certainly a female, about 2-2.5".)
If you've never had clownfish before, do some research on their absolutely retarded behavior. They commonly do things -- like swimming mostly on their side at the top of the tank at night -- that would indicate, in most other fish, that they're about to buy it. I had a couple of anxious hours there until I found a good page on clownfish behavior.
They ignored the anemone until the lights went off tonight. Then, literally minutes later -- I guess being spotlit by the moonlight called attention to it -- they both dove into it, rolling it it, flipping all around -- doing the clownfish-in-an-anemone thing. It was like cats on catnip.
ClownfishM: Dude! Lookit what I found!
ClownfishF: Dude! When did they put -that- there? Oh, awesome!"
ClownfishM: *frolic*
ClownfishF:*frolic* *chase ClownfishM away* *frolic*
Anemone: "WTF? Hey! Hey! You kids get off my me! Martha! Pack the car! The Coloreds have moved in!"
*Anemone picks up and starts racing to get away from the clownfish. Given that an anemone full out makes maybe two to four mm per minute, this is a race it's doomed to lose*
*poor fishtank keeper plucks up a bunch of sessile inverts endangered by the anemone and redistributes them, chuckles as he makes the situation into a metaphor for White Flight*
Eventually the Anemone will settle down and learn to live with the clownfish, and I can put my corals back, but right now, it's annoyed and roving. ;)
|
|
(5 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
| |
7:34 pm - Dammit...
|
|
Shirley Drug & Surgical closed at some point in the relatively recent past. Now I'm going to have to find somewhere else to get, well, surgical supplies and apparatus, and who won't look at me like some kinda mega-ultra addict when I ask them for 10cc syringes and "the largest bore needles ya got." Aah, the hazards of being a DIY-er and being a science geek to boot.
|
|
(6 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
| |
4:36 am - What I've been up to
|
Yeah, it's been forever since I've updated.
I got a new car about a month ago -- an '04 Civic. It's great. :)
Most of my time over the past month or so has gone into research and getting a tank set up. In a bout of madness, I decided I wanted to set up a marine tank -- specifically, a reef tank, one that focuses on corals and other interesting invertebrates. Of course, i'll have a few fish too, but only a few. The theme for the tank will be 'Cthulhoid Terror Field'; A pretty waving field of grasses (tentacles,) flowers (polyps and accompanying tentacles,) and ... umm, vines? (More tentacles.)
I set the tank up a little more than a week ago, and it's been going ... healthily. My water parameters are great. Of course, this may be because of the MASSIVE ALGAL BLOOM all over my glass. And rocks. And sand. So, well before I expected to, I got some hermit crabs and varied snails and put 'em in.
A few days passed and I realised that more serious measures were needed. So I got a sea hare. A sea hare looks like a combination of a slug that's had its rear end chopped offcrossed with shrek ears. It's one of those critters that goes so far past ugly it comes back to cute. It's mostly cleaned up my rocks and is starting to help the snails clear the long, waving strands of algae off the grass. With any luck I'll have to start actually obtaining algae or getting nori for it to eat in another week to two weeks.
I always seem to imagine sound effects while watching the critters in the tank. The snails basically go "gnomgnomgnomgnom". The little hermit crabs have an accent like mexicans on helium, and attitudes rather like the ones you'd see on the guys hanging out behind th ebodega in wifebeaters drinking coronas. The sea hare is the monster of the tank. About three to four inches long, its head is bigger than the hermits or most of the snails. OTOH, it's completely harmless and incapable of doing anything else other than sitting on something. I basically hear Lenny -- the version that's a dog in the old WB cartoons. Except when he's eating. Then it's *GLORMPH...GLORMPH...GLORMPH*
That leads to scenes like this:
SCENE: two hermit crabs chillin' on a rock eating algae. The sea hare comes oozing its way over the curve of the rock.
SEA HARE: "Durp durp ... doo doo doo..."
HERMIT CRAB #1: "Hey! Hey, man! Whatchoo doin'?"
HERMIT CRAB #2: "Yo, man, this is our turf!"
SEA HARE: *GLORMPH* *OOZE*
HERMIT CRAB #1: "Yo! Back of!"
HERMIT CRAB #2: "Yeah! Back off man! Back off or I'll cut you!"
SEA HARE: "Durp?" *ooze*
HERMIT CRAB #1: "WTF, man, this dude's huge!"
HERMIT CRAB #2: "RUN! It's reefzilla!"
(HERMIT CRABS exit off the sides of the rock)
SEA HARE: *GNOMPH*
|
|
(8 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
| |
12:18 am - Looking for reading material...
|
|
Anyone got a full collection (at least of the early stuff) of OCRs of the battletech novels? Or have a good torrent link?
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Monday, March 16th, 2009
| |
1:21 am - Feh.
|
|
I think I'm going to need a new car in the near future. Blargh.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
| |
5:56 pm - Yay!
|
I now have a new clutch. Hopefully it'll be another 200,000 miles before I have to replace this one. Now I just need to fix the valve gasket and do some other minor mechanical fixes -- but at leats now my clutch won't slip when I'm on the highway and encounter a strong headwind.
In book news, I finished off The Oathbound Wizard and a few more:
The Witch Doctor, Christopher Stasheff
Spellsinger novels 1-5 by Alan Dean Foster. I'm currently working on #6.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, February 14th, 2009
| |
1:12 pm - Idle minds do the devil's work.
|
|
I'm thinking about the horrible party tricks one could perform if one had a glass eye. I think that putting a cigarette out on it would pretty much be at the top of the list. ;)
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, February 8th, 2009
| |
4:42 pm - Update.
|
Car's kinda fucked up, still; I'm in the process of fixing it, but weather's making some of the repairs impossible until things dry out -- too much water on the ground to be laying down on it.
My time coaching is over as of Friday, so it's back to real work for me. Pity. I've been getting so much reading done. It's going to suck to have to actually work at work again.
To date, this year, in approximate order:
Owlflight, by M. Lackey
Owlsight, " "
Owlknight, " "
Arrows of the Queen, " "
Arrow's Fall, " "
The Black Gryphon, M. Lackey & Larry Dixon,
Infected, by Scott Sigler
Contagious, " "
Earthcore, " "
Ancestor, " "
Island in the Sea of Time, by S. M. Stirling
Against the Tide of Years, " "
On the Oceans of Eternity, " "
The Silent Tower, by Barbara Hambly
The Silicon Mage, " ", in progress.
Her Majesty's Wizard, Christopher Stasheff
The Oath Bound Wizard, " ", in progress.
I've found a few wonderful sci-fi/fantasy/horror torrents, and as such, am now engaging in an orgy of reading books that I can't get in bookstores -- and now I can actually finish a few series that I have the first or second books for. The iPod touch + the Airshare app ($5, IIRC) == a rather passable e-reader that'll take PDF and other popular formats. If I limit the brightness of the backlight, I can get more than 10 hours of reading time on a charge.
As an aside, Infected and Contagious are gory, but if you don't mind that, great zombie/invasion of the body snatchers/The Thing (Clive Barker, not comic) takes, if you like that kinda thing. Infected is the first in the series. Also, the Island in the Sea of Time series is magnificent, and now I know why people've been telling me to read that for so long. ;)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, January 10th, 2009
| |
10:11 pm - Blargh.
|
Ugh. It's been an interesting few past weeks.
I dinged 80 in WoW a few days ago.
My clutch cable snapped, and was replaced. I've gotta replace the clutch itself, too; that'll probably be done next weekend, as it's not an emergency.
I've been doing a lot of reading, burning through Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar stuff; so far this year I've downed Owlflight, Owlsight, Owlknight, and Arrows of the Queen; now I'm working on Arrow's Fall.
I'm curently feeling rather crappy (woke up at about 7 PM...), and it's artocalyptic out, so I'm in no mood to do anything except read and play WoW. Blah.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, October 9th, 2008
| |
8:37 pm - Yay, internet.
|
|
| Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
| |
4:25 am - *ahem*
|
|
| Sunday, September 28th, 2008
| |
5:29 pm - Miniature Austrialian Possums
|
When people come over who don't know I have a rat and see me with one of my rats, the first thing out of their mouths is inevitably the equivalent of "OMG, what is that?"
I've decided I'm going to try and convince people that they're miniature australian possums. The reason they can't hang by their tails is that they've evolved into a burrowing species.
I wonder if I can get anyone to buy it. But then, there -are- people who don't seem to instantly recognize that it's one of the most ubiquitous mammals present in any urban ecosystem, so if I can get these idiots to buy it, hey, it'll be funny as hell.
current mood:  devious
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
| |
9:16 pm - Re: Shrub's Speech
|
You unutterable shitbag. If I wanted to see feces fall from someone's lips, I'd watch japanese porn.
I love how he managed to not-so-subtly blame the people getting these shit mortgages for the problem. No, the reason they're getting forclosed on, because they bought more house than they could afford -- that's their fault. The systematic exploitation of these people and the fact that loans were targetted to people who hadn't a fucking chance of living up to terms by an industry that literally couldn't lose -- that's not the People's fault, that's the System's.
Just argh. more lies, more blame-passing, more leaderless leadership, more of the fucking same. %P
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, September 18th, 2008
| |
3:34 am - Update
|
|
| Monday, September 15th, 2008
| |
4:42 am - Nothin' much
|
I've been workin' and playing WoW. I've been averaging about a level a day or so. I could do better, but I keep getting distracted by fishing or wandering around doing quests. I'm also going to play a warlock in Josh's D&D game, which hopefully starts next weekend; I need to put that together sometime this week.
I've been thinking about getting an iPhone after playing with a co-worker's the other day; it's just got so many things that I want! iPod, browser, e-reader, GPS -- it's just neat. I can afford to buy the phone, but I'm wondering how much more it'd cost per month for data.
... That reminds me, I think I owe Josh two or three months of phone bills. Josh, lemme know how much I owe ya. :)
I've been playing with a new setting to write in; sort of a Draco's Tavern in a radically different setting. I think I may try and write a series of short stories for NaNo. Right now I'm just trying to peg down the setting and characters. The way that I do this reminds me of certain math functions, the way you keep making approximations and zeroing in on the answer, an inward spiral.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
| |
2:08 am - We've exported all of our Freedom...
|
|
...And we seem to be experiencing a local shortfall. :P The news is really just getting fucking depressing, online. Preemptive raids, 'Freedom Cages', the fact that Usenet is being eliminated from several major ISPs, mine included, to 'save the children.' Ugh. Fuck the children. Fuck the safety of politicians.Fuck every judge and every senator that hasn't stood up to unconstitutional laws in the name of political expediency. Fuck every single person in public office, including the cops, who have forgotten that -they- are the servants.
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, August 25th, 2008
| |
5:10 am - Why...
|
|
| |
3:13 am - Oh, god, what have I done?
|
...I started playing WoW again, on the 10-day free trial. Level ...12? 13? undead warlock tailoring/enchanting.
Impressions:
1: OMFG does having a pet make PvE more survivable and go significantly faster.
2: Life Tap + Cannibalize means never having to say you're sorry for burning through your mana -- at least, where you can find humanoid mobs to turn into healing potions.
3: Dear lord, there're people who do enchanting who -don't- go Enchanting/Tailoring? They're mad!
So far, while I've been playing a lot, I'm not in addict-stage, yet. We'll see if I bother to start paying.
Oh, I'm Fasciitis on Area 52, if anyone cares. I could use linen! ;) Or cash, or gear, whatever.
current mood:  embarrassed
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
| |
3:00 am - Perseids
|
Just a couple of pictures taken during the Perseid meteor shower last week.
Of the two meteors I caught on ... err ... sensor? ... this was the better.
The above is M31, in the lower left quadrant, which will be difficult to make out at this size if your monitor's not adjusted properly.
Both were taken with the bog-standard Canon 50mm f1.8, and at higher resolution show just how bad a $70 lens is; I need to get together some cash and get a better 50mm.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
2:26 am - Most Epic Space Battle EVER!
|
|
|
|
|
|