Random Ramblings

Tonight, right before Enoch began saying his prayer, he let out a loud belch. He and Bea rolled on the ground laughing over it until I chased her to bed and got him to calm down enough to say his prayer. It did not leave his mind, however, as during his prayer, he asked, "Please bless me to have even more amazing burps at the most inconvenient times." I can't think of a more appropriate phrase for someone of his demographic.

This would have come out in time for Christmas, had it not been for some unforeseen logistical problems. But here is our annual report on the well-being of our household for 2014.

Our dear amazon Houdini said buh-bye for the last time this year. He had been told he was living on borrowed time six years ago, so while we'll miss him, we're grateful for all the time we've had together.

After eleven years with us, Salem came to the end of his road. We were all very sad to see him go. He never told us how many lives he had left, but no matter how many remain, we hope they all are good ones.

We got a dog, because sometimes Eric gets outvoted. Bea wanted to name her Violet. Enoch wanted to name her that too, but kept calling her Vomit. So we chose Posey, since both kids could pronounce it correctly.

Fred is still here on indefinite loan. He doesn't step up yet, but for a bird whose purpose was breeding, he has grown quite fond of us.

When bald eagles become extinct, Bonk is prepared to step in as our national bird: the yellow-crested partially bald eagle.

No one has missed Houdini here more than Casey. We've been patient and empathetic, and are happy to see that she's decided to move forward in life by taking up a new vocation as a cash register technician. If playing with those paper rolls makes her happy, we're all for it.

We were pleased to see Lottie catch a mouse recently, which has given her more access to the basement than any other cat has been granted. Her other highlight of the year has been her alternating hairstyles.

Beatrix started kindergarten, and her interest in drawing has never been greater. She had a falling-out with Zazu-Zazu-bah, unfortunately, but still wishes the unicorns were real.

Math appears to be the subject where Enoch shows the greatest aptitude, so far. He's currently the head of his class, but pushing for scholarships for a seven-year-old is more silly than we can handle, so we're not pressing the issue with anyone.

Fafnir's musical output continues at a steady rate. He was most excited to hear Weird Al Yankovic's latest album, and even more heartened by the apparent decision of Mr. Yankovic to release future music as it's produced, rather than on a record label's timetable.

Klio swears that the loss of two pets earlier this year has nothing to do with her being so into her cups lately. Her philosophical musings have been most enlightening, and her coaching of Enoch in his math studies has been most appreciated.

The midterm elections this year have seen Elvis busier than ever. She almost moved to Washington to be closer to the action and rumors, until we convinced her that her rumor ideas are just as good here as they would be anywhere else.

We're not sure Freya was prepared for the responsibilities of Senior Pet. Her administration, so far, has been one of staying the course, even though that includes a dog who loves everyone despite the cats' reservations.

Everyone has been blessed by the increased interest Ginny has gained for cooking. She also kept her raid guild together without losing a single member during the latest expansion transition, which is no small accomplishment.

Eric observed his tenth anniversary at work this year. Other projects and obligations take as much time as ever from him, and if he could tackle them from home, all the better.



Despite the losses to our household this year, we expect to grow in exciting ways during this coming year. May the holiday season bring joy to all who celebrate it!

Tonight at the dinner table we were discussing this and that when Bea randomly popped out this gem:

Bea: "If someone says, "Do you want to smoke?", I'll say, 'Do you want to dance?' Then they'll start dancing and I'll run away!"

Thank you, Queen of the Non sequitur. It was nonsequiturception!

Well, the Kindle Fire may suck, but Amazon continues to be awesome. The new Fire arrived today despite being scheduled for Saturday. Here's hoping this one holds out. I must say that I remain very pleased with the case I got for it as well. I'd have to look up who I got it from, but it's held up extremely well despite being moved between four devices and handled primarily by kids over the past two years. I've not been happy with the cases I've had for my iPad. The first one was too bulky (though in fairness, since I ordered the mini right after it was released, there was almost nothing available at that point) and the second one I got is now starting to have problems after just six or seven months. It's fraying along the edges and it's come loose on one corner where it's supposed to be holding the iPad in. If I pulled it in and out all the time, I'd understand that, but once I put it in, I've never taken it out of the case, so I'm disappointed. I didn't pay a lot for it, but I didn't pay a lot for the Kindle Fire case either and it's held up beautifully. The iPad case does have a three year warranty, but you have to pay the shipping both to and from the manufacturer, which is clearly a set up, because that ends up being almost as much as a new case. Most people won't bother and that includes me. I'll just not buy from Poetic again.

ETA: Aha! The case I have for the Kindle Fire is a Marware Microshell Folio and they do in fact have one for the iPad now.

I thought I'd overheard Bea say something about Zazu-zazu-bah being dead recently, and today, she told my mom the story in a bit more detail where I could hear more clearly what was going on. According to her, one of her other pet unicorns turned ZZB into a sheep and all the other pet unicorns into sheep and goats. Now she has no unicorns (except for babies, which apparently don't count), and ZZB is dead. I'm not quite sure how turning into a sheep equates dead, but oh well. Both the kids are quite nonchalant about it, to the point where when I started to tell Eric about it tonight, Enoch emphatically told us that she was dead, but the part he was upset about was that I was /questioning/ that fact. My kids are very strange. I would think the death of an imaginary friend would usually be upsetting, but oh well. Apparently one of the baby unicorns is ZZB's baby, so maybe she'll grow up to be like her mom. The whole thing has been so funny that I've grown rather fond of ZZB and will miss hearing about her if she is truly gone. Like in much of fiction, however, the death might not be all that permanent. The octopus she used to carry around in a box started out as an undead octopus and at some point transitioned to being a live one, so maybe we'll end up with a zombie ZZB trying to eat the brains of the various pet horses (which are still around) or something.

Enoch just woke up crying just now. I asked him what was wrong, if he had a bad dream, etc. He finally answered that he had a bad dream. I asked him what happened in the dream. He told the most horrifying tale. He said...that he dreamed he wanted ice cream and that we had it but...Dad ate the last of it! Oh noes! Anyone would wake up crying after that dream, right?

The funny thing is that he blamed Eric in the dream. We did have ice cream a few days ago and I ate the last of it last night after the kids were in bed. Tonight after dinner, they asked for some more, and were quite upset to be told it was all gone. But, you know, it was my fault, not Eric's! He even told them about how I didn't even share the last little bit with him, so he's clearly been victimized just as much as they have, but somehow gets the blame and causes the nightmares. :D

There are some articles I've come across in the last few weeks that I wanted to comment on and didn't get on immediately. So they're a bit old news, but oh well.

First up, we have the "news" that the NSA saved us all from computer disaster! Now, in full disclosure, I couldn't get the video at the bottom of this page to work for me. However, what is being reported is that the NSA worked with computer manufacturers to close up some undisclosed exploit in BIOS to ruin computers.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. When you boot up your Windows-based computer (I haven't touched a Mac in so long I don't know what they look like), you'll generally see a logo from either your computer manufacturer (or the motherboard's maker specifically) for a few seconds before the Windows logo pops up. That's your BIOS. It's possible to turn that logo off and if you do that, you see a bunch of stuff scroll by that shows the computer setting up how the different bits and pieces are going to be called upon. The BIOS is part of the firmware of your motherboard (which is the part of the computer that everything else hooks into) and if it gets messed up, it most certainly can cause major problems for your computer.

However, there are a number of things wrong with the NSA's claim. First off, there isn't some universal BIOS. It's not like it is with the millions of computers running nearly identical versions of Windows XP/7/8/whatever, where the only differences are based upon if the end user has been getting updates or not. The reason Windows viruses are so successful is because there are so many systems out there running the same code with the same vulnerabilities. When it comes to BIOS, though, every single different manufacturer has their own program and they're all different. They will even have different versions, in fact, to handle the various hardware changes that come about (such as being able to handle more RAM). So, due to this, the likelihood of a single piece of malware being able to affect every machine out there is incredibly unlikely.

Additionally, the NSA claims to have worked with manufacturers to close up whatever the undisclosed vulnerability was. That makes little sense either. Even if every single BIOS of every single manufacturer out there had the same vulnerability, these things are /being produced in China/. The country being accused of writing this super-virus. Do you really think the Chinese government, with the way they spy and intrude on everything within their borders (sound familiar, NSA?) and without, doesn't have the ability to then get the new source code of the new versions of BIOS and then find another vulnerability?

Furthermore, even if somehow the Chinese had managed to make this super special malware, the idea that this would be some huge, overwhelming problem is exaggerated at the very least. According to the story, the computer's user has to accept the installation of the malware program. Now, obviously, people install viruses all the time due to this sort of thing. "YOUR COMPUTER IS UNSECURE, DOWNLOAD THIS PROGRAM NOW FOR $19.95 TO SAVE IT!!!!" However, if there are significant numbers of computers running crucial infrastructure that are generally open to the internet to easily download such unauthorized software, there are some IT departments that need to learn to do their jobs.

Oh, I'm sure a few idiots would take a flash drive and plug it in at work and so on, but for the most part, who would be affected by such a thing? Grandma who was checking Facebook or Little Timmy who was writing a paper for school. What would then need to be done? Sometimes, the BIOS can be flashed, i.e. put back on the motherboard, from an outside source such as a CD or a flash drive. If that doesn't work, though, all is not lost. The computer can be fixed just by getting a new motherboard. There were no claims from the NSA that this was affecting hard drives in any way or phoning home or anything of the sort. People would have their data still intact, they'd just need one new piece of hardware to interface with it. So, for the most part, people would take their computers to the local shop, the BIOS would get flashed, the motherboard replaced, or for those with a lot of money and no patience, a completely new computer bought. Then people would get on with their lives, having weathered a relatively minor annoyance.

The whole thing just seems so ridiculous. If there really was such a magical piece of malware out there able to do this, I doubt very much the Chinese government had anything to do with it. Follow the money and the trail leads to hardware manufacturers. Analysts have been screaming for several years about how the PC is dead, and while those claims are ridiculous, what is true is that sales have dropped and are continuing to drop, and will continue to drop for the foreseeable future. Some people are getting what they need out of mobile devices, but even more key is that computers are so incredibly powerful now. You can go get that budget $400 computer off the shelf from Walmart and if you're a typical user (i.e. email/Facebook/web browsing/word processing), that computer will do everything you need easily for many years to come. People just don't need quad core systems with 32 gigs of RAM and SLI video cards to do that sort of thing. Even enthusiasts don't need to upgrade constantly anymore. My video card is three years old and still runs everything I've tried to play on max settings, up to and including games released in the past year (and while I'm sure there's stuff it wouldn't run that well, it would still render them acceptably for my usage). I'm planning on upgrading the card in another year. After that? Short of something breaking, I can't imagine what else I could need for several years after that.

So basically, for all but the most taxing of applications (various video processing things and CAD remain resource hogs), computers last people for a long, long time now. Something off the shelf now could easily last a typical user a decade. Manufacturers would benefit greatly from a lot of consumer hardware suddenly becoming unusable, because they'd either be selling the individual motherboards to various shops and companies to fix the various computers whose BIOS had been ruined, or they'd be selling entire systems to people whose hardware was so old that a replacement isn't easily obtainable or they just don't want to bother. It'd be a huge bump in sales for those companies. Now, please note that I don't actually think this is what happened. I think the NSA, who admit to being liars, are doing it again. They're lying to us at a time when people are thinking about them in a negative fashion in the hopes of convincing us that their infringement of our natural rights is actually helping us. That's certainly more plausible than the plothole-ridden TV script they presented us with.

Merry Christmas (or insert holiday of choice) to everyone!

We went to my mom's for dinner and presents. Bea was very tired through the afternoon and evening and on the way home started throwing yet another tantrum. Then Hotel California comes up on the CD we were listening to.

"I hate this song!" she declared.

"Why do you hate this song? It's one of the Eagles' best!" I asked in disbelief.

"Because it's about Mickey Mouse and I /hate/ Mickey Mouse!" she replied.

As Eric noted, there are many proposed interpretations of the song out there, but this was a new one to both of us.

I loved my third grade teacher immensely and I periodically visited her until I graduated from high school (even having to chase her down to a different elementary school). When I was in the fourth through sixth grades, the visits were more frequent due to closeness. One spring afternoon when I was in fourth grade, I admired a vase of pussy willow limbs she had in her classroom. She gave them to me since they were from a bush in her yard and she could just get more. I gleefully took them home and put them in a vase there to enjoy.

I have vague memories when I was in kindergarten of believing that pussy willows would grow if you just planted a stick in the ground, but by age ten, I knew better. So when one of the sticks started developing roots, I was excited, as I knew that this was a way to actually get a pussy willow bush. I asked my mom permission to plant it in the yard, and apparently thinking I was an idiot, she granted me permission (she claims that she just thought it wouldn't grow, but my memory of it suggests it was humoring the idiot child in much the same way we nod and smile when Enoch says he's going to marry my mom when he grows up). In all fairness, while I was right that it was a viable clone, I was an idiot, because I planted it about a foot away from the house.

And it grew. And grew. And grew. It thrived and was beautiful and I loved it.

Some six or seven years later, my stepfather was around and he'd had it with this ten to twelve foot pussy willow growing against the house. He insisted it was growing into the pipes, one of which had burst in the basement over the winter. I doubt he expected to get the full fury of a teenage girl's wrath when he said he was getting rid of it. Oh, how I carried on over that tree. I don't think I had all that many breakdowns as a teen, but that was one of them. He agreed to try to move it instead of just destroying it. It was a kind and reasonable compromise, in retrospect, but I wasn't happy with anything short of a full pardon, because I was sure it was going to kill it. I knew a bit about the microbial suite that lives around the roots of plants and attempts as a child to dig up and transplant things like wild roses had been failures, so I was convinced it was all doom and gloom. I snipped not a vase, but a bucketful of branches to try to get another clone going to replace my beloved tree. The day of execution came, he hooked it up to the minivan, and yanked that decent sized tree right out of the ground before re-planting it in a corner of the yard away from the house (and I will note there was no evidence of it having roots in the pipes).

And it grew. And grew. And grew. It thrived and was beautiful and I loved it.

While I believe some of the branches I saved sprouted roots, they all got tossed unused, because my tree was saved. And boy, was it happy to get out away from that house (did I mention I planted it on the /north/ side?). With so much more access to sunlight and space, it spread its branches out in all directions and then went straight up, well above the roof of the house. Other than one strange summer where it suddenly had some bizarre, triangular shaped bugs in masses over chunks of the trunk (which I promptly went avenging angel with bug spray on-HOW DARE YOU THREATEN MY PUSSY WILLOW!) and some scarring from the straps tied around it for its relocation, it was healthy and never needed any attention beyond an occasional pruning to save the roof from its eager growth or to allow a mower under it. Its only flaw was that as it went from bush to genuine tree, the pussy willows mostly grew way out of reach as a silvery haze in the top branches rather than on the lower branches where we could enjoy them.

Then Thursday night we had an awful windstorm. At my current house, there were times it sounded like the wind somehow managed to wrench the storm doors open and then slam them back shut, it was so wild. My mom's house is fairly near the mouth of the canyon and 95% of the time, when we get wind, she gets it much, much worse. The pussy willow hadn't exactly had a strong central trunk initially, rather having three similarly sized branches that eventually grew together as it grew larger (I'm not sure if that's a species trait, though an unrelated pussy willows I mail ordered that I planted in my yard is similar, so I suspect it is. It was /supposed/ to be pink, which is why I hadn't just gotten a start from my beloved tree in the first place). In the twenty-two years since I planted it, it had weathered the nightly canyon winds without a problem, not to mention many strong windstorms and even a tiny tornado or two, but Thursday's proved too much for it. That grown-together trunk finally proved to be a fatal flaw and it split apart under the force, thankfully only taking out the neighbor's fence in the process.

We're going to try to get some starts from it going. In fact Enoch's teacher, upon hearing the story, wants a start for his classroom. I'm afraid the tree was probably dormant for the winter and the attempts won't be successful. And yet, I'm finding myself not upset. Maybe it's just because my mom told me when I was in the throes of a twenty-four hour virus and so it still seems unreal. But maybe, after the last threat to my tree's existence and all the carrying-on I did then, I've learned to trust that it will survive and that it will once again grow and thrive and be beautiful again.

I love how competent our city is. They're so helpful, with a newsletter coming with our utility bill talking about all sorts of holiday events on July 4th, even including a coupon for reduced ticket prices for one of the fireworks events!

...The utility bill arrived this week. You know, weeks after all of this is over. *golf claps*

In other news, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are both broody. They spend most of their time huddling in the nest box together, both trying to sit on the eggs the others are laying (since they're broody, they're not laying hardly any themselves). Dumb birds. I feel kind of bad for them, but I think most of that is habitual after feeling bad for Wyvern and her broodiness for so many years. The whole purpose in life for these birds is to lay constantly, and if they're not doing that, they're not fulfilling their purpose.

It's crazy to think that if we want a regular supply of eggs, we're probably going to need to start a new flock next year. The information varies about how long hens lay, but even so, it does seem to agree that they're at their peak now. I definitely want to do ameracaunas again and probably sussixes as well. The sussix eggs are smaller, but before their broodiness, they were quite consistent. Both of the individuals of those two breeds are a lot friendlier and less skittish too. The dominique is pretty ornery and the wyandotte is still way nervous. If we just had those two, I don't know that everyone would have such a good impression of them. Instead, the other five are so gregarious, everyone loves them. Even Eric smiles over them.

My mom's going to freak when we start eating them. Hopefully they'll keep laying pretty regularly next year while the new batch gets started to put that time off!