The Evil Eyebrow

Month: May 2011

  • Psyche Cat: 1998 – 2011

    Psyche Cat
    We chose to put Psyche to sleep this morning. Her kidneys had failed and the likelihood of them coming back in time to clean her system of the built up poisons was small. The choices were to take her home and let her die there, transfer her to the emergency veterinary hospital where she would more than likely die alone and amongst strangers, or to administer the euthanasia drugs while she was laying in our arms and still had some comfort and care. She died just before noon.

    Observe me, Bee-atch!

    Psyche came into our home while we were living in Lubbock, TX. It was 2000 and this long-haired gray cat kept hanging out by our back door. Our neighbors told us the previous tenants had been feeding this cat, so we kept up the tradition. After a while, despite my insistence that we were not going to adopt this cat (we already had an adopted cat, Cassandra, you see), I opened the door and she just walked inside, neat as you please.

    And never left.

    Psyche was the ultimate indoor cat. She occasionally showed some interest in what was going on outside, but never really wanted to leave the house. She was Jenn’s companion through her dissertation work and kept me company when I was sleeping on the couch. She was a tough-as-nails feline who would demand rough rough rough scritches and then bite you when she liked it. She was soft and fuzzy and loved us both. We’re going to miss her terribly.

    Psyche

    We buried Psyche on the front hill of our house, where the previous owners had also laid some pets to rest. Psyche deserved to be placed there as this was more her house than ours, by virtue of total time spent inside it.

    We both cried a lot this morning and I’m already catching things out of the corner of my eye that I immediately think is her, before remembering that she’s gone. All that’s left now is to clean up her litter boxes, vacuum up the seventy or so pounds of fur that she’s left around the house, and remember what a wonderful companion our kitty cat was.

    Jenn and Psyche

    All of the images of Psyche on flickr are here.

  • Redaction Tool for Important Internet Privacy Protection

    A friend posted this link today, which sucked up my lunch. That link takes you to the best demonstration of Poe’s law available to date ((For some additional and slightly relevant entertaintment, check out Conservapedia’s entry on Poe’s law)).

    Then I clicked through to the dude’s website, which lead me to his redaction tool.

    Thusly, I provide for you, this very website, properly sanitized!

  • Uh, Whoopsie – Email FUBAR

    So, since the grand re-hosting of 2011, I’ve apparently not been receiving emails from my WordPress install telling me things like, “You’ve got comments in the queue!” or “Somebody just tried to hack your account” or “You’ve got 800 gazillion spam comments waiting for deletion”. All of the email settings that were part of my WordPress setup had been zorched and I’ve just now gotten around to fixing them.

    So, my apologies to those of you who’s comments were left in limbo for a while.

  • Bike Ride + Thunderstorm = Exciting (for some values of exciting)!

    Tree down, not on the Silver Comet
    A representation of what we found on the Silver Comet last night

    Yesterday, Jenn and I did about an hour’s bike ride on the Silver Comet trail. There was threatening storm clouds but I said “fah!” and so off we went.

    The ride was nice, with very little traffic due to the weather predictions ((If you’ve ever been to the Silver Comet starting from the Cobb trailhead on a regular nice sunny day, you know how busy it can be)). We biked out to Anderson Farm Road and then turned around and headed back.

    All through this time, the sky was getting darker; one might even say foreboding. We tooled along until the underpass culvert at mile 3.0 (Hurt Road), when it started raining and the wind picked up. Despite the weather, I stopped us at the end of the culvert and told Jenn to GO!, that I’d give her 90 seconds head start and we’d see who got back to the trailhead first. She took off, into the now pounding rainstorm, and I waited for exactly one and a half minutes while getting soaked. Then I was off, too.

    This portion of the Comet is not something you can normally let it all hang out on; it’s usually heavily congested with bikers, pedestrians, runners, skaters, dogs, antelopes, and unpredictable kids. Yesterday was different.

    Yesterday was way more dangerous.

    So here I was, doing 20 to 22 mph on my bike, through blinding heavy rain, with the wind pushing me around, trying to catch up with Jenn. Around the first curve and I’m starting to run over down twigs and other leaf debris ((clue #2)). The wind was still pretty wicked and I kept my sunglasses on in order to keep the rain out of my eyes, which was pelting me pretty hard ((clue #1)). About 1.6 miles out of the trailhead I come into a more thickly wooded section, with increased shade, still busting ass, and I see a tree down across the trail about two seconds before I reach it ((did I mention I was still wearing my sunglasses? And that the storm was making it dark?)).

    I had time to curve away from the very thick part of the tree toward the not-so thick part of the tree before I straightened out and grabbed tight to the handlebars, hoping for the best. Oh, I also had time to yell, “Oh shit!” before driving right through the middle of the tree.

    Due to an inordinate amount of luck, I didn’t hit anything hard enough to dump me, although I was fully expecting to go down. I also didn’t lose a tire, or a chain, or really damage my bike at all. In fact, other than the hear-pounding relief after the fact, it’s like it never happened.

    I slowed down after that. I also took off my sunglasses.

    I caught up to Jenn a little farther along. We had to walk around several more down trees and even portage once in order to get back to the trailhead. Quite a mess.

    Lessons learned:

    • You’re never too old to do something stupid and reckless
    • But damn does it make a good story
    • If it get’s so dark that you can’t see, just take off the damn glasses, even if the rain is that hard
    • If the rain is so hard that you need to wear glasses to avoid “OH MY GOD MY EYE” syndrome, maybe you should slow down and stop
    • If there’s small tree crap down everywhere, there may be large tree crap down, too. Watch out

    Next time we’ll pick a better occasion for our handicapped time trial.

  • Like a Hole in the Head

    What I need, really, is an interesting distraction.

    Really. And I’m sure you do too!

    So here it is: Pax Britannica!

    It’s a one-button real time simulator with up to four players, or you can play against the AI.

    Need more description? Here’s a Youtube video

  • Apocalypse When?

    In case you’ve been hiding away from the internet, you might not be aware that you have a measly five days to live (plus or minus, depending on your time zone).

    Yes, that’s right, the apocalypse is coming this Saturday, May 21, 2011. At 6:00 PM. Local time. Your local time, wherever you are ((I have no idea if the apocalypse corrects for daylight saving time, or if it acknowleges those areas that don’t observe it)).

    Harold Camping, of Family Radio fame, has predicted absolutely that the Christian Rapture will occur this Saturday and all the rest of us will be left behind for a five month period of torment, after which God will destroy the universe utterly. Of course, he’s predicted the endtimes before, in 1994. He made a slight miscalculation apparently and after further research and study, he’s come up with this weekend.

    I find the idea pretty funny, or I would if enough people didn’t believe in it to get its own movement.

    For those of you out there who truly believe you will be Raptured, I will happily take care of your post-rapture business, including caring for your pets, for the low-low price of $100. Please send me an email and I’ll arrange a PayPal transfer or other acceptable transfer of payment. If you feel that sum is too low, or wish to take care of the rest of your worldly assets, I can make those arrangements, too.

  • Mississippi Flooding Resources

    I found a few other things of interest in my ‘tubes travels:

    A map showing the locations of major structures and levees

    The USACE Website for the New Orleans District

    A CNN story about a town square in the middle of the Atchafalaya floodway

  • Morganza Floodway Opened

    I’ve learned a lot about the control of flooding along the Mississippi in the last few weeks. From the dynamiting of the levee by Cairo, IL to spare the city (and the purpose of that) to the long term US Army Corps of Engineering leases along the various floodways of the Atchafalaya River, to the very name “Atchafalaya” and the distribution of the systems that control the river during flood.

    Did you know that, left to its own devices, the Mississippi might actually be flowing down the Atchafalaya, skipping Baton Rouge and New Orleans?

    This would be a bad thing.

    Today, the USACE opened the first gates in the Morganza Floodway. This structure is intended to allow Mississippi river water to flow into the Levee-Protected Atchafalaya river basin and exit to the Gulf of Mexico via the Morgan City area rather than go past Baton Rouge, New Orleans, the Port of New Orleans and all the other urban/commercial/industrial concerns along the river. This reduces the peak rise of the river. It also, unfortunately, floods the crap out of the area surrounding the Atchafalaya, between the levees. USACE maps of this are available here.

    These two images are the same (river) side of the Morganza floodway. You can see the water is a bit higher in the first than the second. Concentrate on the bridge beams that you can see below the fence of the floodway structure. Those are the same in both pictures.

    Forebay side of the Morganza Floodway

    Morganza Floodway

    That second picture is from this resource, which describes the measures of flood control around the lower Mississippi

  • Home Re-Valuation

    Roof Before

    We received a letter from Cobb County yesterday telling us that our assessed home value was dropping by 26%. I dug out my files and did the math and if that assessed value stands, we’re officially underwater on our mortgage.

    This is my happy face.

    I’ve been thinking about this and I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do. There is an appeals process if I want to challenge the valuation but I have no idea if I want to do so. I mean, a lesser valuation means less taxes. Twenty-six percent less, to be precise. That’s not something to sneeze at.

    Also, I have no idea how the official county valuation effects the potential home sale value. I mean, the reason for our reduced value is because of the short sales and distressed homes that have been sold around us in the last few years. It’s not like our house magically coughed up 26% of it’s structural value. So, no matter what the valuation is, really it depends on what we could sell it for.

    Right?

    I confess little knowledge in this area. We have some Realtor friends whom we’ll query. My gut says we don’t want the house to be valued as low as they told us, but I don’t know if my gut is right. We’ll see.

  • Busy busy

    Once again, I’ve been a bit too busy to keep up with the blogging. I don’t even know what I’ve been doing so I can’t tell you about it, however we have had a couple bike-centric Saturday’s recently. Last week we went to the Roswell Criterium, shown here…

    Blur

    …and this week we biked the Atlanta Beltline path with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Much fun was had. Pictures of both of these events are available at my flickr stream although there’s way more of the Criterium than the bicycle tour. I need a small camera that can be thrown into a bike jersey pocket.

    One of the stops on the tour was at the Beltline Bike Shop, a non-profit that serves the local community with emphasis on the kids in the neighborhood. I saw a bike there for $25 that might just fit the bill of somethign I’ve been looking for. ((heavy, and suitable for beating up in-town, possible to a single-speed conversion. Heavy, so that I’ll get a better workout!))