Month: September 2006

Alright, do I have your attention now? Sure, the title might seem just a tad inappropriate – like some attempt at link whoring – but I assure you that anal impaction is what this post is about. So the squeamish might just want to flee right away.

Shadow, my sole remaining guine pigs for those of you with short memories, has been acting odd of late. Alright, he’s always acted oddly, and his behavior wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary except that he wouldn’t stop begging for food and man did he learn how to milk us for treat… but that’s besides the point. He’s always had a tendency to drag his butt while walking and lately he was getting even more sedentary. Late Tuesday night I picked him up, and felt something hard sticking out where nothing hard should be sticking out.

I won’t go into really gross details, but imagine trying to take a crap 10 inches in diameter. That’s about the scale we’re looking at. Fortunately for Shadow, guinea pig tushies are way more stretchable than ours – well, at least from my experience. It took two sessions (I had to finish in the morning because I felt bad for him), and lots of mineral oil and heiny soaks, but I managed to pry the tremendous poopy from the flaccid cheeks of his buttocks. Amazing how much spring that added to his steps – especially considering he was now dragging around his somewhat droopy bottom.

Lisa took the time to point out what a good father I’d make. I feel great being ready for a job that includes cleaning someone else’s ass as a requirement. Sometimes you just have to block those thoughts out of your mind before your can change it…

I just can’t wait to see what kind of searches bring up this post in the future. I’ve got to write something else today pronto so this doesn’t stay at the top too long – aren’t you glad I got this out of the way before describing the rest of Hawai’i?

Sometimes I wonder about New Yorkers.

And I really hope the end results are good enough to warrant a movie.

I don’t read McSweeney’s much, but The Recording Industry Will Destroy You is sheer brilliance. And sadly seems to be accurate as to how the RIAA conducts business.

My home computer had been all wacky for the past… year or so. Not enough to warrant drastic measures such as troubleshooting, but enough to irritate me at times. But because of the sheer volume of data (I download several gigs per day – primarily concerts) the effort to move everything around, coupled with the ensuing downtime, has prevented me from taking matters into my own hand and throwing the POS out the window… I mean re-installing Windows.

The other night I finally got sick of the constant blank screens in the middle of watching videos (for the love of all that is holy I just want to see the damn kitten mew!), and figured some downtime would be a good thing. And midway from point A to point B I also decided it was time to jump back on that beta horse and check out Windows Vista – at least now that it’s hit RC1. So, after a couple of aborted attempts to get everything set, and a trip to CompUSA to replace my now confirmed crappy video card, I am cruisin’ the vistas at home.

It reminds of days of yore. At first I was a little nervous, and then I realized just how late in the game I was. I was telling a co-worker the other day that I never used Windows 95 – I jumped from Windows 3.11 straight to Windows NT 4.0 Beta 2. Once the final release came out I never looked back. With Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I hopped right on Beta 1 and worked my way through all of the bugs until RTM time rolled around. With Vista going gold in a couple months, this baby is ready for primetime.

And while there are certainly some compatibility problems with a few programs and drivers, the system is absolutely gorgeous. There are some things I have to get used to, but overall I really do love the way they’ve changed the interface. For now it looks like my potential fulltime switch to Ubuntu is on hold.

These issues, coupled with lots of work at… work, as well as a switch in my ISP has led to a lot of offline living at home. I just realized that it’s almost halfway through the first month of the rest of my life and I really haven’t said anything here – I’ve also barely been keeping up with my usual reads. Oh well, we all need a break from Internet from time to time…

While many of you may realize that I’ve been hurtling towards my 30s at the speed of… time… most of you don’t know just how quickly that is. That sentence had so much potential that I want to weep at its demise. My point is that I just finished drinking away my 20s last night. Alright, I didn’t actually drink last night, but I did enough of it for the past decade that a night off doesn’t really change the overwhelming effect. As a matter of fact, I’ve already told Lisa that when our kids ask us why we can’t afford fancy things, I’m going to look them straight in the eye and say, “Daddy drank a lot in his 20s.” And if they question my response, I’ll have several years of credit card bills to back me up.

But I digress. I’m not ultra-secretive about my birthday, but being one who has never celebrated them I also don’t make a big deal about it. If you were to ask me when it is, I typically just respond September unless I’m pushed for further detail. In the past, friends find out about the occasion when we happen to be hanging out just after midnight on the 1st of September and I suddenly blurt out something like, “Oh wow, I just turned 24.” Of course I said that once – 6 years ago – but you get the idea.

This year – being the time of the big THREE-OH – I thought about doing something big. By that I mean actually getting some people together. But I am loathe to plan any such gathering, and so this evening approaches rapidly with little fanfare. Instead, Lisa and I will be hitting a furniture store, swinging by Chik-fil-A, and possibly going to see Invincible to get me even more pumped for the coming season. Tomorrow my parents are visiting so that my Mom can finally see our house. Sunday holds other gatherings followed by an empty Labor Day. Sadly, the weekend contains no plans for drunken tomfoolery with friends. If anyone is interested in said tomfoolery, perhaps something can be arranged…

Otherwise, I still hope to have people over for something at our house as some sort of housewarming/wedding/30th/3xth celebration for Lisa and I. Mayhaps October will bear better fruit (or even just later this month). In the meantime… HOLY CRAP, I’M 30! Where the hell did all that time fly?