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Here’s something fun:

See how well you do at putting colors in order of grade from one to another. I scored 16, which is pretty good, weaker in blues and greens than other colors, which I suspected.

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

2009 02 12 Alison General
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Toy Food!

From Neil Cicierega, whose videos I’ve embedded here before, another work of genius. I think you’ll agree, it’s quite a catchy tune. Heh.

2009 02 03 Alison Humor
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Something about Hacking.

We had what appeared to be an emergency last week, when one of the girls was told by someone she was IMing that he might have transmitted a virus to her that would completely wipe out her computer. There was much scrambling around for blank CDs to copy her files onto, hubby checked every possible way for a virus to get in as well as ran a regular virus scan, and I had to calm down a justifiably upset daughter. She does everything on that machine, and it would have meant losing art, writing, photos, tutorials, correspondence, and homework. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false threat, but it got me thinking.

You see, this young man and his friends enjoy hacking, creating and combating viruses and worms, challenging each other by passing them around (or teaching those less computer savvy a “lesson”). However, they don’t seem to think things through to all their possible outcomes, a typical hazard of, well, being a teenage boy. It brings me back to the early BBS days, when I had to deal with teenage boys who didn’t understand that they couldn’t have everything their own way, and couldn’t do things to people in real life to “teach someone a lesson” for something they didn’t like online. And, just as it was then, this young man simply couldn’t understand why my daughter was upset, why his offer of a rebuilt gaming computer and a half-hearted apology would not have been sufficient had she really lost everything. Then, as now, the ability to understand and empathize isn’t a well-developed trait in this demographic.

The problem I have is that I wish I could get these boys to really understand, not to punish them or work out my anger, or anything like that, but just to get it, because I know several of them, and they’re decent kids. If hubby wasn’t a computer genius, if he didn’t know how to safeguard the computers and fix things in case something went wrong, it could have been a huge-ass deal, indeed. 15 years worth of digital photographs. Downloaded programs, and programs we’d have to search through thousands of discs to find again. All the tutorials and game mods I’ve ever written, handouts for classes I’ve taught. Plus, since hubby works from home, all kinds of confidential information and work for clients could be compromised – the kinds of things a person could lose his job for. Of course, this is why he’s put in all kinds of protection, but there are some people out there with just as much to lose who are vulnerable. Were they to be hit, they would certainly not appreciate a cavalier attitude, nor would they let these kids off because they were just playing around. I don’t think, though, that they’d understand even if the ramifications to others or the consequences to themselves were outlined. It hasn’t happened so far, so it’s not going to, right?

I don’t know. Would they understand it if it were put in a more personal perspective? Say, oh, what if some kids were playing around with a slingshot or BB gun, and that car you’ve been restoring for years got messed up. Would it be OK if they offered to lend you one of their bikes? After all, they were just fooling around. And they’re sorry, geez, chill! What if someone found the case of CDs your band made and played frisbee with them all, leaving them scratched and broken all over the parking lot? Well, they didn’t know how hard you worked on them, and they can’t afford what you paid for the studio time, mixing, art, or production, but what if they feel kind of bad and give you a stack of blanks from Staples? That’d be OK, right?

Nah, that probably wouldn’t work, either. But at least I’ve said it and gotten it out of my system.

2009 01 29 Alison General
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Will it Work with Facebook?

I dunno. I’m trying out an app to see if it puts a note on my facebook page when I publish a new blog post. So this is a test. 1, 2, 3. . . You know the drill.

2008 12 31 Alison General Comments (1) Permalink

This is Not Rescue.

(Posted on my APP blog page)

So I was talking with someone the other day about a problem he was having with a neighbor. She’s feeding cats outdoors, which in itself is not a bad intention, but she’s creating a big problem for him. More and more keep showing up, and when they’re done eating at her house, they visit his to relieve themselves. He has to clean up the yard every time his kids want to go out and play. Worse, she is apparently going to shelters and rescues, adopting cats, and then “setting them free” – thereby adding to the feral population. He is furious at her lack of regard for the problems she is creating for the neighborhood, and the problem she is creating for the ever-increasing cat population. When he complains to her, she suggests things he could do (all of them involve work and expense on his part) without offering to make any changes of her own.

I said to him that he needs to change his tack and approach her with an appeal based on her viewpoint – the way her behavior is bad for the cats she thinks she’s helping. As long as she believes she’s got a noble cause, nothing’s going to change. So I’m going to share with you what can happen if you simply put out food for the cats outdoors.

Let me start with disease. . .

Many deadly illnesses in cats are spread by close contact, when cats mate, fight, or even share a food bowl. Healthy cats and sick cats who might otherwise not interact will come together at a ready source of food. The healthy cat who then catches a disease can bring it back to its colony, pass it on to its kittens, or bring it home to the other pets it lives with (another reason to keep your pets indoors!) You have not improved the quality of life for the cats you feed if you infect them with Feline Leukemia, FIV, upper respiratory infections, or infectious peritonitis. If the cats are picked up and put into a shelter, you may also be responsible for the euthanization of a number of healthy cats who would otherwise be adopted, because some shelters cannot take chances with infectious diseases. They will pre-emptively destroy groups of cats that share even cages in the same room to avoid the expense of feeding and medicating cats that may not live in the end.

Even if the group you feed doesn’t, somehow, include any cats with these illnesses, it’s equally possible that they might have ringworm, tapeworm, or roundworm. These parasites are spread by fleas, feces, saliva, casual contact, and don’t go away without treatment. They cause the cats quite a bit of misery, and can kill them over a long time. These critters, since they are not diseases, can also be passed to other animals,and even humans. Treatments have to be repeated, and re-infestation is likely unless the entire population is cleared – not something that happens with a group of feral cats who gather over a pile of food.

The bottom line is that if you indiscriminately feed cats, don’t trap/neuter/release, or add cats to the outdoor population, you’re doing more harm than good. If you selectively feed so you can gain the trust of a cat, you can catch it and get it tested for illness or parasites so it doesn’t pass on what it might have. You can spay or neuter so that it won’t catch disease when mating or fighting over mates or territory (or lessen the likelihood) or pass it on to its offspring. Sometimes, sadly, you will have to euthanize, but that is better than a lingering, guaranteed death, and certainly better than allowing the cat to infect other, healthy animals.

If you’re aware of someone who does this, pass this information along, please. If you know people who own cats and let them roam, pass it to them, too. And if you know someone who is repeatedly adopting shelter or rescue animals and letting them out, pass the word on to the local shelter so they can place the person on a “do not adopt” list. Saving animals is a lot more complicated than pouring food into a tray outdoors.

2008 12 23 Alison Cats Comments (0) Permalink

Squeezy Puppy!

Stopped at the dollar store – saw this hideous thing – had to have it. . .

squeezy-puppy.jpg

It’s ugly. It’s filthy. It has an unpleasant texture. It’s a hideously unnatural color. But it gets worse.

squozed-puppy.jpg

It’s filled with little bones. I was laughing so hard it hurt. Then Audrey made it worse – she said, “It’s squeezy. It’s a puppy. What’s not to like?” Anyone who remembers what I used to be like when I heard “This is an unsuccessful encyclopedia salesman. This is two unsuccessful encyclopedia salesmen.” can imagine what I was like at that point. I almost walked into a newspaper machine. My family will torment me by saying “squeezy puppy” to me when I least expect it now. . .

2008 12 21 Alison Humor Comments (0) Permalink

My First LOLCat. . .

funny pictures
moar funny pictures

2008 12 19 Alison Cats
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Typing One-Handed!

Oh, the things we do for our kids! Saturday was the day of the band competition hosted by our school. Lots to do, much rushing around, and of course I had made enough cookies to feed an army. I came into the school holding them in one large metal tray, and as I made my way through the doorway, the corner of the heavy steel door smashed into the back of my hand, sandwiching it with the metal tray. Ouchies.

Of course, I then stayed until the competition was over, and took the band daughter home before heading to the emergency room. Lucky for me, the hospital had a minor emergency department (which was just about to close) so I was in and out in no time. Nothing’s broken, but I’m in a splint for a couple of days.

Good thing the metal splinter I got under my fingernail on the right hand doesn’t hurt too much. Got that moving band equipment on Friday. Marching Band is one heck of a dangerous activity!

2008 09 29 Alison General Comments (1) Permalink

How do I Get a Bailout?

Come on, I’m looking at the credit card statements, the current value of our house, the gas prices and the utility bills, and I’m thinking that if Mr. Bush wants us to contribute to the rescue efforts for Insurance and Banking, he should be sending a little our way, too. After all, we didn’t get into this situation by making ass-backwards investment decisions, and we don’t have well-padded portfolios and personal assets to fall back on, so don’t we deserve it even more? Oh, wait – maybe that’s what you need to have to qualify.

The way I see it, though, we’ve already paid enough to the “decision-makers”, and giving them more of our money instead of making them pay the consequences is so incredibly. . .gawd, there is no way to simply express the absolute depth of the asininity of this. This is like giving your kid a brand new Maserati to replace the Ferrari he trashed when he got drunk, drove it into a house, set it and the house on fire to cover it up, and said it had been stolen when he was found the next day passed out on the front lawn next to the smoking wreckage.

Make the company owners pony up for their own bailouts. Take it out of the pockets of the folks who stole it in the first place. Either that, or let’s be fair and use that money to bail out the people who were hurt by these companies in the first place. That’s not the real world, I know. In this world, we have an in-group that sneaks provisions into things like the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that make corporate bailouts an unprotestable, no-voting-needed automatic gimme. If McCain gets elected, with Phil Gramm in a position to get even more of this kind of one hand washes the other legislation put through, there’ll be more of the same.

These are the folks who are trying to convince us that the other guys are “elitist”. This little club that gets to take things away from other people, and keep all the good stuff for themselves. Well, at least they’re not the undesireable kind of elitist, whatever that’s supposed to be. Oh, wait – that would be the rest of us, complaining about footing the bill for their selfish, stupid, wasteful investment schemes. Those of us who will be paying the bailout billions, not receiving them.

2008 09 22 Alison Politics
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Drinking the Sarah Palin Kool-Aid

I haven’t been astonished at the reactions I’ve been seeing among certain people to the nomination of Sarah Palin. Honestly, there are still people out there who think that Saddam Hussein engineered the 9/11 attacks, that we need to fight terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here, and that George W. Bush is one of our greatest presidents EVAR. They write lots of letters to the editor, and they leave poorly-thought-out comments on blogs. Without exception, they sound like they have gone to the Fox News website and copy-pasted directly into their brains. Yesterday, though, I was shocked to see a Palin endorsement on the blog of someone I once considered a critical thinker. Yowza.

What did I see? Well, the complaint about the press coverage of daughter Bristol’s pregnancy. The argument that it’s a private matter is generally put forth by people who are unaware or unconcerned that Ms. Palin wants every child in the US to benefit from the same kind of sex education that got her daughter that way in the first place. Admiration that she can field dress a moose (a very important thing for the leader of our country to know.) A casual disregard for the fact that Ms. Palin did not know what the Bush Doctrine was – only one detail of what she does and does not know, as seen in her interview with Charles Gibson:

For me, this shows that during the time that she was secreted away, protected from the press, she was learning not about issues, or filling holes in her knowledge, but how to use approved Republican sound bites to dance around the issue without actually answering any questions.

What blows my mind is that the only issue mentioned where there is a difference of opinion between Palin and this person is abortion. I cannot fathom why there is no concern about the fact that Palin believes the world is only 6,000 years old, that man walked with dinosaurs, that she wants the Bible to be used as a history and science text in public schools, and that we’re living in the “end times.” I was surprised that nothing had been mentioned about her attitude towards Israel, since that is pretty much the top subject of the blog, but I wonder. . .most of the rapture-ready are very pro Israel only because they’re certain that the return of all the Jews to Zion will get the Revelation ball rolling. If I were concerned about electing a candidate who supported Israel, I wouldn’t want one who wanted to ship all the country’s Jews over there so the end of the world would come faster. In fact, regardless of that, I wouldn’t want a president or vice president who wanted to hasten the end of the world in any way whatsoever.

Why is there no concern about the Wasilla librarian fired by Palin because she wouldn’t take “objectionable” books off the shelves? Doesn’t it rankle that she lied about her support for the “bridge to nowhere” and earmarks in general? Is it unimportant that her geographical closeness to Russia is represented as “foreign policy experience”? That when she (or McCain) are caught distorting the truth, they manufacture outrages rather than issue corrections or apologies? (Lipstick on a pig is now a sexual slur, but it wasn’t when McCain said it a few years ago? Cut me a break. It’s a sexual slur the way “pot calling the kettle black” is a racial one. Which is to say, not.)

Nope. It looks like there is one overarching qualification Palin has that subverts any of her other shortcomings. She has a vagina.

Around 3:19. . .Samantha Bee is parodying this attitude, but to see it in real life is disturbing. No matter how you expand it into an argument in favor of putting more women in positions of authority, when it comes down to that, it doesn’t count as a rational position. To see it coming from someone who purports to be a rational thinker is truly unpleasant. The thought that people all over the country will be so easily hoodwinked into the idea that voting this woman into office will in any way represent progress for women makes me fear for my daughters’ future.

2008 09 16 Alison Politics
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