A Cat Tale

Ya see, we own cats. I never wanted cats and would have been happy with just some feeder goldfish in an aerated tank. However, my wife wanted a "real" pet, since she grew up in a home where animals weren't looked on as companions, so we got a cat. From that one cat we expanded to owning six cats, which is where we stand now.

Before I owned a cat, I didn't like them. That was truly a prejudice born from ignorance. They have more personality than I had expected and not as aloof as a non-cat owner would think. I admit that they don't listen and it is a rare cat that recognizes his or her name, but I'm glad we have them.

There is a site called Kitten War. As may be divined from the title, the site allows kittens to "fight" over who is the cutest: Pictures are presented of two kittens and you are supposed to choose which you think is cutest. After looking at the site for a while, we submitted pictures of the new cats from two-and-a-half years ago. Only one was accepted and it can be viewed here. (Kemper is the upside down one.) If you want to decide a battle or two, scroll down to and then click on "Start a new kitten battle!" I'll warn you, the site can eat up your time.

If you want to see something that only a cat owner has ever seen before, go here, but you've been warned. It is as equally a captivating time waster.

Movies I Have Seen 2005 Edition

Two years ago in his bi-weekly column in the back of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King mentioned in passing that he keeps a movie journal where he records all the movies he has seen. For some reason, I loved that idea and began keeping one, too (and wishing I'd started one twenty-five years earlier). Without comment, here is the complete list of every movie I watched this past year and, yes, I did watch some movies more than once.

January
1: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
3: Pride of the Yankees
The Magnificent Ambersons
Of Human Hearts
The Gorgeous Hussy
State Fair (1945)
4: The Ice Follies of 1939
10: The Many Loves of Edgar Allan Poe
12: Finian's Rainbow
15: Finding Neverland
16: Beau Brummel
Elektra
20: The Cookout
Pride and Prejudice
21: Little Black Book
Napoleon Dynamite
25: The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
28: Million Dollar Baby
29: De-Lovely
Sideways

February
5: Are We There Yet?
7: 12 Angry Men
11: Hitch
12: The Wedding Date
The Jazz Singer (1927)
White Banners
Little Caesar
13: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931)
16: Longitude
. . . And Justice For All
18: Raintree County
25: Forbidden Planet
General Spanky
26: Constatine
28: Cleopatra (1934)

March
8: Funny Girl
10: Cimarron (1931)
In Old Chicago
12: Be Cool
13: The Great Ziegfeld
19: Lives of a Bengal Lancer
Disraeli
22: Between Two Worlds
King's Row
25: Guess Who
26: Julius Caesar (1953)
30: On the Waterfront

April
1: Sin City
Beauty Shop
16: The Stand-In
17: Twelve O'Clock High
27: Captain Blood

May
7: The Story of Louis Pasteur
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
13: XXX 2
14: Kingdom of Heaven
15: Hell is for Heroes
16: Dodge City
17: How the West was Won
18: Alleghany Uprising
19: The Revenge of the Sith
20: The Died with Their Boots On
25: Our Town
26: The Cocoanuts
27: Madagascar
28: Black Narcissus
Gentlemen Jim

June
2: Objective Burma
3: The Longest Yard (2005)
Kim
5: The Kennel Murder Case
The Bishop Murder Case
8: Nick Carter, Master Detective
Dick Tracy (1937)
10: Cinderella Man
12: Destry Rides Again
14: The Secret Garden (1949)
17: Batman Begins
18: Becky Sharp
Ah, Wilderness! (1935)
23: Beyond the Sea
25: Bewitched
28: The Caine Mutiny
A Few Good Men

July
1: War of the Worlds (2005)
7: Gabriel Over the White House
9: Fantastic Four
12: Raintree County
15: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
17: Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
28: Sky High
Must Love Dogs

August
2: Yankee Doodle Dandy
3: "G"-Men
5: Ride the High Country
13: The Wedding Crashers
20: March of the Penguins
23: Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie
Words and Music

September
2: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
9: The Man with the Screaming Brain
10: So I Married an Axe Murder
24: Bobby Jones
Just Like Heaven
25: Boogie Nights
30: Serenity

October
1: A History of Violence
7: Battle Circus
8: Crash
Fever Pitch
9: The Upside of Anger
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
14: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
17: The Strawberry Blonde
20: tom thumb
21: Young Tom Edison
The Incredible Shrinking Man
20: The Legend of Zorro

November
3: War of the Planets
From the Earth to the Moon
13: Caddyshack
18: Walk the Line
Harry Patter and the Goblet of Fire

December
4: Luther (1973)
5: One of the Hollywood 10
6: Holiday Inn
7: Good Night, and Good Luck
9: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
16: King Kong (2005)
30: The Ringer
The Cooler

There Comes a Time When You Have to Accept Things As They Are

Basically, if I want to have any kind of Internet life I have to accept the fact that, for whatever the reason, I am going to be disconnected from a/the DNS server requiring me to reboot my modem and router. It makes no sense that I have to do this since our home network worked fine for years, but if I have to, I have to. It is easier to do that than to fight a battle with my provider over an event that they seem to not appreciate or are unwilling to admit occurs. Besides, over Christmas, I was looking at the forum for another provider when I was in Pittsburgh and their customers have the same problem. I guess I found inner peace knowing that I am not alone.

Our Long National Nightmare May Be Over

Well, actually, it isn't a national nightmare; it is more like my personal pain in the neck. After almost two months, three routers, a network expander, and having the cable company come out and move the modem to a different location in futile attempts to have Internet service that didn't just decide it wanted to stop working whenever it wanted, we've had a stable signal for over twenty-four hours. None of our computers have been dropped from the Internet and things are coasting along with a problem. Hopefully, this is the harbinger of better things (on that front).

The problem, for those who care--and if you don't you can skip down to the nest paragraph--appears to have been the modem. Since the beginning of this mess, I've always suspected that the modem was at fault, but because the provider can remotely check it, they never saw a problem. After we had the modem moved, I was able to connect my Xbox directly to the new wireless router and I found that I was still not always able to connect to my Xbox Live account. I used the Xbox troubleshooter and found that the Xbox (and by extension all of our computers) was unable to connect to the DNS server. Calling customer support, the person on the phone started walking me down the merry path of rebooting the modem and router; I just cut him off, told him I've done this far too many times to do it again, and that I shouldn't have to do reboot the modem every other day. He transferred me to the "local" office (good bye, India) where the person there started the ritual of telling me how to reboot the modem. I cut her off and plainly told her the problem and that I want a new modem. I installed it Tuesday and no problems. Here's hoping things stay this way and I can try posting more regularly.

As a gift for reading this after all this time, may I offer this site and/or this site as today's time wasters. Enjoy, but if you don't get enough work done today, I'm sorry.

The Forbes Fictional 15 - Forbes.com

Anyone who knows me knows Forbes isn't even on my list of magazines I would consider reading. However, you can't beat the conversation starter that this presents. For instance, I would have put Richie Rich in second place, moved Scrooge McDuck to third, while placing Scrooge'e nemesis, Flintheart Glomgold, in fourth. slid Daddy Warbucks in the fifth spot, removed Arthur from the list altogether, and then moved the rest down appropriately.

The Forbes Fictional 15 - Forbes.com

DC Comics Characters to be Featured On U.S. Stamps in 2006

Still having Internet connection problems, but I would be remiss if I didn't post a link to the story.

I don't talk enough about comic books here even though they are my first great obsession. If I ever get reliable Internet service again and I am doing something where I'll feel less guilty about avoiding work, I'll post my thoughts on which characters and the art of which artists should have been used.

Yeah, I Know What I Said

I didn't mean to not post, but life in the form of the patent bar exam got in the way as I began studying full blast for it almost right after my last post. For all that work, I didn't pass it, but the results weren't so bad as to be disheartening; a few more correct guesses and I'd have passed. It is disappointing, and I hate having to spend the money to register again, but I know now more what to expect, so I'm sure I'll pass next time. The next time I hope that my new brain doctor will actually be able to help me work better when I'm on the medicine. I don't care who you are, I just don't think anyone is going to pass a test that consists of 100 questions over six hours and it takes an hour and a half to answer the first six questions.

The other problem we've been having is that our wireless network that has become incredibly unstable over the last month or so. As long as we’ve had the network (“home”), there's been a competing network (“Olivetti”) that our wireless devices saw, but it was more a thing of interest, not a nuisance. At the start, the cable modem and wireless router has been in the basement and we had coverage throughout the house and into the backyard; within the last month, though, something has happened. You have to be almost directly above the router for a stable signal. If you take your computer into the back of the house, well, you can forget being able to do anything. If a wireless network is even detected, all too often the computer sees Olivetti only. If home is detected and an IP address it assigned (neither assured these days), the speed of the connection can jump all over the place and/or the computer will start looking for an IP address again and/or the connection will break.

I’ve put a lot of time and money into trying to correct this problem, but nothing has worked. Last week, support finally agreed that moving the cable modem might be the best bet, but when the cable guy came out the bastard wouldn’t move it. In fairness, it worked relatively fine again for a few days, which I used to actually look for work, but come Thanksgiving, the problem returned. The cable guy comes back on Wednesday and this time he either finds the problem or he moves the modem.

Updates as my connection permits.