Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

What’s a superhero without a sidekick? Okay, yes, there have definitely been some. A lot, perhaps. But anyway, that’s not the point. I guess we’ll see what Monster Cat comes up with for options.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

It may be time for breasts to start pulling their own weight.

This week a very interesting topic came up in the Technology section of Slate: Breast Power! No, nothing like that… get your minds out of the gutters. We’re talking about green energy - harnessing the kinetic energy of the common breast! (Well, uncommon breast since you would probably need larger-than-average breast to make efficient use of the hypothetical system.) “Victoria’s Circuit: Harnessing the untapped power of breast motion” is both an amusing and technical article. Our future will probably come from this type of daydreaming about better ways than plugging into the grid to get energy. And if that future includes turning my breasts into a power plant, well, finally they’ll be making up for the high cost of quality bras.

“Per sotto, per farli combaciare,” meaning: “For the hair down there…to make it match.”

So here’s something I never thought of doing: coloring the “hair down there” (as the Betty Beauty website cutely calls it) pink or blue or any other color. The blue is specifically marketed to brides for their “something blue.” Personally, I imagine it would be a hoot to surprise one’s spouse on the wedding night with neon blue… and the options for embellishing are extensive. Betty Beauty also sells “CharmCils” for shaping the “hair down there”. I think it would hilarious to see the look on some guy’s face when suddenly a bright pink peace sign is unveiled where there was nothing but natural before.

It’s probably telling that I look at color for the “hair down there” as a means to mess with a significant other rather than a means to achieve sexy hotness. No, I will not be doing a product review.

[All links in this post are safe for work… assuming you don’t mind getting caught surfing frivolous hair color sites and Slate at work.]

tags: , alternative energy, betty beauty, bras, breast motion, breasts, energy, green energy, hair color

An entertaining accident of Google Ads “working as intended”: a John McCain campaign ad appears on the page for a YouTube video criticizing crude commentary McCain made about his wife (and the media’s complete lack of coverage of that comment). My assumption is McCain’s ad campaign with Google Ads is targeting pages that mention John McCain, which would make sense except that every once in a while ads will end up on pages that mention John McCain in a negative light.

I noticed the ad last week when dreda linked the video. I went back today and somewhat unsurprisingly… it’s still there. Google Ads is useful and pervasive, but there’s a reason a lot of big advertisers don’t want to take the chance of advertising on pages containing "user-generated content"…

So kudos to the McCain campaign for trying to reach out to the small donors one might find randomly on the Internet… but a bonk in the head for not doing it quite right. It did make me giggle a lot, so thanks guys. Oh, and when I was done giggling, I marveled at how some people stay employed.

YouTube Video pictured above - it is not safe for work and contains offensive language: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euu_DMhsXQo

As a random coda to this story, this morning I received a junk IM from a known spam source that simply said, “John McCain is aware of the Internet!”

tags: ad placement, advertising, campaign ads, election 2008, google ads, internet ads, john mccain, presidential candidates, youtube

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

• Most creative tribute to George Carlin today at Indexed.
• King Arthur Flour has an awesome baking blog. Complete with step-by-step photos for the tricky (and non-tricky) bits. I can feel like I’m baking even if I’m too hot or too busy to actually do it! Seriously, it’s an awesome blog. Late summer there will be baking motivation!
• Here’s some random Neil Gaiman. Just because.
• I have a large amount of basil growing fiercely in my raised beds. I have a Fop who likes hazelnuts. Has anyone ever tried hazelnut pesto? I see a couple of different recipes floating around the web. (And if anyone in the area wants some fresh basil, let me know!)

tags: baking, basil, gardening, george carlin, indexed, king arthur floure, neil gaiman, photographs, tributes

That’s right… my video card died. Annoying and money I didn’t really want to spend, but it could have been so much worse. This is actually the first real maintenance I’ve had to do to my desktop Mac in 3.5 years. (Okay, I did upgrade to Tiger last year sometime and I repaired a problem with the hard drive on Thursday night, but the latter was an attempt to fix what turned out to be the video card. I haven’t actually pulled over my iPhoto library from my backup drive yet since the versions don’t match. I’m hoping to get through the next bunch of episodes with what I can shoot in the next few days. Of course, I’m going away the end of this week and will need to line up some extra episodes in advance… Good thing I enjoy a challenge.

And don’t think Monster Cat won’t mock *YOU* if you don’t do your back-ups regularly and get bitten in the but for it.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

Happy Summer! This brings us one step closer to Winter again!

The plan for today was to draft a pattern on junk fabric for the viking apron dress I want to make for Pennsic.

Unfortunately, the video card in my desktop went kaput sometime over night. For the record, a Mac desktop tower is very heavy. Carrying it through the Mall was rather foolish and I have the bruises on my forearms to prove it. It turns out the Apple Store has a loading dock - I’ll use that next time, really. Anyway, so the Mac Genius confirmed my suspicions about the video card. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of cards still available for my Mac since it’s 3.5 years old. They’ve ordered one for me and expect to have my Mac all happy and fixed within the week, but probably later rather than earlier. *sigh* Luckily my laptop is almost as cool and I have back ups of most of my data so I can do almost everything on the laptop until I get the desktop back.

I admit, I almost didn’t repair it. I’m saving for a new desktop but, as with every major purchase in my life, I’d been having 2nd thoughts because my desktop really is chugging along nicely for what I do on it. I just can no longer do as much at once. I think if I slap another 2 gb of RAM in it though… and maybe another external hard drive… Much cheaper than any new Mac.

To console myself for the loss of my Mac and most of my afternoon, I came home and made a plate tomatoes and mozzarella with basil.

Alas, I do NOT have a backup of my photos for the past month. I need to take a lot of photos of Mr. Paw this weekend to ensure I have enough material for the next 5 or 6 episodes of Monster Cat. Luckily, I didn’t have any plans for adorable kitten flashbacks again until late summer.

I did plant a rosemary plant I’d picked up earlier this week. I also got to play with the hose and water the raised beds. And I cleaned my desk a bit and vacuumed my office. These things were technically in my plans for the weekend, so I guess the day isn’t a total loss.

tags: apple, computers, monster cat, powermac g5, repair, saturday derailed, video card, weekend

Yes, I’ve been traveling a bit the past week or so. Don’t tell Mr. Paw, but I’m leaving again next weekend for a few days on a road trip. He’s already chimed in on one conference call this morning… if he finds out I’m traveling again so soon he won’t leave me in peace!

Of course, now that I’m off the phone, he’s snoozing quietly on the rug. So cute, almost innocent and sweet, but I know he is just waiting for me to get on the phone again so he can “help” with our next meeting.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, silly, tennyson

Components to a bad day:

• Finding out information too late to save time for yourself and others. Twice.
• Having to force people to answer your questions directly rather than deflect. Twice.
• Getting stuck on an annoying, soul-sapping conference call without much hope for extraction.
• Not having any tasty pudding-yogurt left for lunch.
• Needing to go grocery shopping desperately.
• Being exhausted and fearing the grocery store and therefore procrastinating it. (good and bad really)

Bonus round that almost makes up for the day:
I put in the deposit for our new yurt. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks! Sadly, we’re only getting it in time for Pennsic because someone else had to drop out of the yurt queue… but at least we can give their yurt a happy home!

tags: bad day, communication, meetings, tired, work, yurt