Roasted Ramblings (and other things)

I like Chris Seibold. Especially when he talks about me and makes references to blogs and articles that I have written. Now, if only I could get him to do that in his AppleMatters articles. Well, I can dream can’t I? By the way, don’t forget to download a copy of Chris’s eBook “iMovie on the cheap.” It’s only 5 bucks for the love of God and a good read. Buy it before you really tick me off.

This whole Macs on Intel thing has gotten WAY out of hand. It’s time to squash those rumors like the vermin they are. Well, unless of course they turn out to be true, in which case I will feel even more foolish than normal.

(NEWSFLASH! tickaticktickaticktickatick)
2:10 PM: Apple goes and does it. By 2007, any Mac you buy will be Intel based.

I’m not going to once again go into the reasons why Apple going to X86 would be a mistake. I’ve got two other blogs to handle that so go read them, comment, and force me to do another blog on the subject.

No this will be a different type of blog altogether. Well, mostly different except for the part where I ramble incessantly without really going anywhere.

If you have paid attention over the last couple of months, John “Nemo” and I have been doing a collaborative series of articles called “The Problem Solving Guy.” You may have noticed that it has been missing for a while after three fun and fact filled episodes. As much as I’d like to blame it on John, I can’t. He gave me a topic on troubleshooting your Mac and I had trouble being informative and funny at the same time. While many will say that I typically am neither, I choose to believe my own press on the subject and I have been simply glowing in my reviews of these articles. So when the next one comes out in the next week or so, please read it and leave your own awe-filled comments. If you didn’t like it, or think I’m a talentless hack, please leave comments along those lines that I will cheerfully ignore on the outside while seething and wishing harm to any small animals you make have stewardship of. Not that I’m vindictive or a lover of mayhem to small defenseless creatures mind you, I’m just petty.

Hi-ho, next topic. Regulars know about Tim and Chad doing the MyMac.com podcast. I listen every week and really enjoy the back and forth dialog between them. I also enjoy Chris Seibold’s “Not Mac News”. I have thought long and hard about doing a podcast of my own but decided that the world is suffering enough without a show based on my own various insane comments and viewpoints. Unless of course there was a boatload of money involved that actually didn’t come out of my own pocket. Or for some reason I decided to change my mind. Nemo and I have actually had some preliminary emails about doing such a thing. I know, I know, you’re thinking (insert squeally voice here), “But Guy! You just said you wouldn’t inflict your demented thoughts on us! Why would you change your mind?” Why you ask? WHY YOU ASK! Because I just don’t get enough attention in my regular life and I need constant reassurance that I’m important. The fact that I’m not important hasn’t stopped in the past and it won’t stop me now. BWAH-HA-HA-HA! For those of you who don’t read comic books, that was a typically evil laugh.

If for some reason you wonder how this all started, blame Tim Robertson. He actually invited me to become a regular writer for MyMac.com. So far he hasn’t realized his mistake.

Karma

What exactly is karma? I guess there is a dictionary explanation but I think of it as people getting what they deserved even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.

Speaking of small defenseless creatures (well, I did a few paragraphs ago), I want to tell you about the two cats that I had for 13 and 14 years. When I finished traveling around the world (believe me it got old after awhile), I decided that it was time I got some furry mammals to lord over. I first went to the local Humane Society with a plan. I wanted to get at least one older cat that might otherwise be put to sleep and I also wanted a kitten. While they were delighted to see me, the rules they had in place to adopt animals made it impossible. First there was the mountain of paperwork. That was not a problem. Then they wanted to do a home visit. Again, no biggie. They also wanted my two roommates to come down and do an interview and sign some paperwork. This was the deal-breaker. My two roommates didn’t give a hang about me wanting cats and weren’t interested in going to the shelter. I tried to get them to agree to do it all during the home visit, but no dice. This forced me to go to a Doctor Pet store (No longer in business in this area) and buy two cats.

When I arrived at the pet store, they had a cage filled with six all black kittens. All vying for my attention. Five were shorthaired and one was longhaired. He seemed to be the cutest (and as it turned out the dimmest) of the six, so I chose him. I looked at all the others and there didn’t seem to be much to distinguish one from the next except one actually had extra toes. I though, “Cool! Mutant cat!”, and picked him as well.

I got them home and started calling the fuzzy one “Beast” (just because I thought that was a good name for a cat). I didn’t have a name for “Toesy” just yet, but I knew something would come to me. The first night I had them, they spent running around in my basement room. At the time I had a waterbed with a very high pedestal, and I kept hearing the sound of them jumping up and not quite being able to reach the bed. I found a long piece of carpet and tucked it between the bed frame and the mattress and slung it down to the floor. Their little kitten claws dug in and soon they were happily cavorting on the bed disrupting anything I thought was important so that I would pay attention to them. That night while asleep, the furry one actually climbed onto my chest and bit one of my nipples. This woke me from a sound sleep and without thinking I grabbed him and threw him off the bed. Once I was a little more awake, I searched him out to make sure he was OK. He was and forgave me for my transgression. Actually, I think he immediately forgot about it (like I said, he was a little dim). Before too long other little games they enjoyed to play with me in the middle of night included knocking my water glass onto me at 3 in the morning and fighting loudly while I was trying to sleep. I think God made kittens so cute so that we would think before destroying them. No matter how mad I would get at whatever their latest shenanigans were, they would look at me with those little faces and start purring. I never could stay mad.

There were other habits they had that really ticked off my future wife. Like being unable to figure out whom the dominant one was between them. Cat lovers know what type of behavior this can lead to so I won’t go into it here.

As far as names go, once their personalities were established, I realized I had made a mistake. The short haired one was very sneaky, so I ended up calling him Beast instead of the long haired one. In a fit of originality I called him Fuzz. So there I was, with my two black cats, Beast and Fuzz. Over the course of 13 years they were a constant source of frustration and delight. Fuzz ended up sticking mostly to my wife, while Beast followed me everywhere. If I was sitting for more than five minutes, he would be in my lap. Fuzz’s favorite activity was eating, sleeping, and curling up next to my wife. Beast had a game that we dubbed “Stairtime”. Stairtime consisted of Beast on the upper stairwell while I was on the lower stairwell and we would engage in rough play. This meant that I would scratch his belly while he would take large chunks of flesh out of my arm. This was his favorite game and he never failed to wait for me on the steps whenever I was in the vicinity.

Flash forward 13 years. My beloved cats were now senior kitizens. Even though they were getting on in years, I never envisioned the day I would have to say goodbye. The first to leave us was Fuzz. A year ago last March, I was home with the kids and my wife was out running some errands one night. I put the kids to bed and was watching TV when my wife came home. As soon as she was in the bedroom, Fuzz came in and started howling like I had never heard before. I knew something was seriously wrong, so I bundled him up and took him to our Vet who had emergency 24-hour facilities. They took him and less than five minutes later came out to tell me he had gone into cardiac arrest. They had him on life support but told me that animals rarely recover from this sort of thing and that he would never be the same. I had to make a decision and I decided to let him go. He had been such a loving animal that I could not stand to see him suffer for my own selfish reasons. They put him in a cardboard box that resembled a small coffin and drew a little heart on it with his name. I took him home and the next day dug a small grave next to the house so he could always be with us.

I can’t say that Beast missed him. I doubt he even really noticed after a day or so. Cats generally aren’t capable of it. He settled into the new routine and life went on. Then last December, we noticed he was off his feed and took him to the Vet’s for a check-up. After some blood work, they informed us he had kidney cancer and likely had only about three months to live. We put him on the steroids that the vet recommended and waited. We were told the end would be near when he stopped eating completely. Little by little he got smaller and smaller. Finally in March, he stopped eating. With a heavy heart we took him to vets and got the diagnose we were expecting. Our choice was to take him home and watch him slowly die or to give him his release. We allowed him to go and buried him next to his brother.

This is where karma kicked in.

There is a stray cat that lives in our neighborhood. She is all black and looked so much like Fuzz that our kids called her Fake Fuzz. Well, it turned out she had kittens about a month and a half after Beast died underneath one of our neighbor’s decks. Another neighbor got them out and nursed them until they were weaned. There were four of them. All black, two males and two females and they were the cutest little things you could imagine. It took some doing, but between the kids and I we talked my wife into taking two of them. The only condition she had was that it had to be the two females. They are both about as furry as Fuzz was as a kitten and are a constant source of entertainment. I’m looking forward to as many years of companionship from these little purring machines as God sees fit to give us. Their names? Dusty and Shadow. At some point I’ll post some pics.