My little cat Mira is bloodthirsty, as all cats are. Sometimes she brings in prizes for me, and her track record with eating them is not very good, making it feel especially wasteful, and making me feel especially hypocritical for enjoying nature while simultaneously employing a murderous psychopath to warm my feet at night.


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So in the middle of my dream last night, I was entering this house. Tasteful upper-middle-class suburban place with lots of furniture in it ( Read more... )

Ladies and gentelmen, I introduce to you, the critters that have been my nemesis for an entire year. Squirrel #1, and her two partners in crime, Squirrel #2 and Squirrel #3.


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Start the day off right, with a visit to the local kittycat! (We found this cute fellow when we stopped for snacks at the thermal park, on the way out of the area.) It's a movie, but since this is LiveJournal, it won't embed, so you're gonna have to click. Sorry...


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Recently I saw a question on quora about failure: "What's it like to have attended an elite school, and be an utter failure afterward?" Some people responded to the question by passionately rejecting the act of comparing oneself to others. Different respondents gave vivid descriptions of their mid-life crises, and how they did - or didn't - turn ( Read more... )

A large contingent of people - producers and consumers - eventually realized that the solution to the industry-versus-piracy problem, with music, was to abandon DRM and instead chase the piracy out of the market by offering something easier to find, easier to get, and easier to play.

I wonder, how does this contingent feel about piracy of software ( Read more... )

So, we set off a-wandering from the Waiotapu Tavern and in a few hours we were face-to-face with this:


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After checking out, we rode down to a general store and bought a few snacks while people ogled our bikes. After so many years, I still actually like the attention that riding a recumbent attracts. Added eyeballs means added safety ( Read more... )

I interviewed my grandma Hazel when I was in middle school, approximately 28 years ago. The family visited her house one day and I had a little tape recorder, and shortly afterwards I transcribed the recording. I don't know if I ran out of time, or if the tape ran out, or if I stopped my transcription early, but in any case the narration simply ( Read more... )

The earliest thing I remember is walking around a city, near the coast. The bright afternoon sun made all the colors intense. The ocean was a striking Mediterranean blue, the dirt walkways and streets were a deep brown, the plaster walls a variety of eggshell greens, pinks, and whites. Doorways were dark and inviting. Roofs were speckled ( Read more... )