Slo-mo Kung-Fu

One thing I love about my cats is that they feel compelled to fight all the time. If one of them relaxes for a minute, the other one feels compelled to sneak up on him and jump him. I think part of it is being boys and part of it is the fact that they were feral for 3 months before I got them. Check out the picture to get the idea.

But I think age is starting to catch up with them. For the past few minutes they've been fighting in slo-mo. It's as if they're fighters who are each paid to take a dive. But, no, after a couple minutes, they're speeding up and now they're fighting and running at full speed.

The other thing that's funny is that they'll switch from fighting to grooming each other and back by the second. I guess that means that they really love fighting.

A new addition to my blog. Cute pictures of wild animals!

I started putting out food for stray cats and other wild animals (mostly raccoons) a little over three years ago. Since the critters were really cute, I hooked up a camera so my friends could see. And now that I have a blog, it makes sense to share some of the still images.

Hopefully the motion detection on my camera will work and they'll always be a couple of pictures of raccoons eating cat food at the top of this blog.

Compassion's cost

As I was driving to Chipotle to get some food, I started musing about downsizing both in companies and in government. A simple way of putting the debate is:

"Compassion costs money". Helping people takes time & effort and, in effect, money. Welfare helps people who don't have a job. Drugs aren't legal because we don't want people to fry their brains.

People who are against "big government" are really saying: "We want to spend less on compassion." But I think every time you don't help someone you become a little less human.

With this thought in my head, I went into Chipotle. The cashier (who I think is asst. manager as well) was talking to the person just ahead of me and said: "You know, I'm always right. It's a burden really", half tongue-in-cheek.

When I got to the front of the line, I told him about Cassandra of Ancient Troy. She was friendly with the god Apollo who gave her the gift of foresight. But they quarreled and she left him. Since Apollo couldn't take back the gift (once the gods gave something, they couldn't take it away), he made it so no one believed her.

The asst. manager said: "Yes! Yes! That must be where I got it from! And for that" and he handed me back my money and zeroed out my order. Then he said: "You've restored my faith in humanity." Which made me feel really good.

So I guess some types of compassion cost money and some don't. And either can return big dividends when you least expect them.

Tree Fishing or Adventures in Geekdom

Now for some comic relief. Here's a story that partly explains why my roof is in such bad shape (the other part is the flat roofs are a pain and natural wear and tear).

It took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't get over the air HDTV reception at my house. It took even longer for my cable operator to provide HDTV over their cable network. In my futile quest for over the air HDTV reception, I even developed a freakish sort of sport that I called tree fishing. This is provided solely for comic relief. Please DON'T do this at home. Here's what I did:

Climb on your roof. Attach a weight to the end of some high test fishing line and throw it over the end of a high, thick tree branch. After successfully hooking the tree (meaning the weight has slipped over the tree branch and is tugging the fishing line towards the ground) let out enough line so that the weight drops to the ground. Tie the fishing line to something. Climb down off the roof. Now tie the end of a spool of coaxial (Cable TV) cable to the fishing line. Wrap the place where they connect with lots and lots of electrical tape. Climb up on the roof and use the fishing line to pull the coax over the tree branch and to you. Once you get the coax to you, tie it to something sturdy on the roof.

Now climb down from the roof. Measure out how much cable you'll need and cut that much off the spool. Crimp a connector onto that end of the cable and connect it an omni directional antenna (which looks like a 3" thick white plastic pizza). Climb back onto the roof and pull the antenna up off the ground until it comes very close to the branch you originally hooked. Bring the cable into your house and connect it to your HDTV receiver.

Yes, I really did this. Yes, I do feel silly. And please, please, please, don't try this at home. I think I am exceptionally fortunate that there wasn't a lightning storm while this contraption was in place. It probably would have somehow started a fusion reaction in my house and turned the whole thing into a tiny thermonuclear device destroying everything within 5 miles. Or maybe it would have destroyed all my home audio and video equipment and set my house on fire. Either way, don't try this at home.

The funny thing is that I could get TV reception for stations that were literally static on the ground. A good example would be Howard University TV (Ch. 32 in the DC area). With an antenna on the ground there was no sound and no picture. With the antenna in the trees I could get a perfect picture. But still I couldn't get HDTV.

Most people can get great HDTV reception (even through concrete walls in a basement) using a Silver Sensor -- an antenna originally made by Antiference (a UK company). Antiference has since licensed the design to Zenith. For more information on HDTV reception a good resource is Keohi HDTV

More updates from the disaster site

Here's the latest. More than half of my cabinets and half the counter top from my kitchen are the latest casualties. (sob). But now all the demolition is done. And I get to re-do my kitchen. And since the mold people are finished downstairs, I don't have to corral my cats in my bedroom. They don't seem to mind hiding during the day, either, which is good.

So a week from today, or rather, yesterday (February 16th) is the target for when I get my house back. Here's hoping everything stays on schedule.

Adventures in mold removal or contractors with gas masks

My house is a disaster zone. Machines making as much noise a car assembly line and enough translucent plastic to cover a football field do not a friendly home make. All of this to get rid of some (well a lot) of moldy drywall. This sucks.

How did I get into this situation? Well I guess it all started with my obsession with HDTV. We won't go into to that because it's boring and geeky and didn't yield any interesting information. It turns out that all of my house's wonderful qualities -- it sits on a flag lot 150 feet removed from my cul-de-sac, it is surrounded by woods and yet has access to the benefits of Suburbia, and it has no grass to mow! Anyway, all of these things make for the worlds worst over the air TV reception in the history of TV reception.

Anyway, mounting a large variety of antennas on the flat part of my roof caused small holes. There were also places on the roof where puddles of water would form after rain. Melting snow and rain got into the holes, sat on the puddles and leaked into the house. Little by little mold crept along the drywall, forming a covering that looked like black lace. Then 18 months ago I got sick. I couldn't climb a single flight of stairs without being completely out of breath. More disturbingly I couldn't think. Anyway, after a lot of appointments with too many doctors I was prescribed an asthma inhaler and I could breathe again. I still constantly had the sniffles and mild cold like symptoms.

Eventually this kept bugging me, so I bought a test kit and went to collect some samples. Checking on top of some cabinets below where some of the worst water damage was, I found a small pile of what could have been dust. I picked it up and ran it through my fingers.

Ten hours later I was in bed. Ten days later, I finally felt better. I missed a friend's wedding in the interim and now knew I had a serious problem.

So two thirds of my house has been sealed off with translucent plastic from floor to ceiling. The living room and kitchen are sealed and since the guest room, guest bathroom, and laundry room are off the kitchen, they're sealed off too. There are large machines that are pulling air into or pushing air out of the house.

The first night my two cats (Rosencrantz and Gildenstern) wouldn't come out from under the bed for 2 hours and looked like they wanted to kill me or petition for a new owner. They've since adjusted some.

In case someone wants the real deal on this process, here's the scoop on how the people who are working on my house did things.

First you hire someone called a hygienist. This person does an inspection, takes air samples and writes up a plan of work. You can use this plan to do the work yourself or hire someone. I hired people.

The second group are called remediators. They're contractors who wear gas masks and white overalls on top of their clothes. First they seal off the affected area with thick plastic, tape, and staples. Then, they rip out the moldy stuff with saws and such. While they're ripping off stuff big machines are running to create "negative air pressure" (to keep the dust and mold in the room). Now they vacuum all the loose junk up and scrub the exposed wood beams.

After all this is done the air purifying machines still need to run for 3 days. That's the part they didn't tell me about. Then the hygienist comes back and does a visual inspection (to make sure they got all the mold) and takes more air samples. After the hygienist leaves (but before the results from the air samples come back) you get your house back.

So the two companies with two roles create a "checks and balances" setup. Personally I wonder if there are referral fees are some such going back and forth, but maybe I'm just being paranoid. More fun to come as the work goes on.