Dobie & His Cat, Rocky… or Vice Versa

Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Well, time for my once a month post again, I guess. Except I have kinda sorta made up my mind I’m going to start blogging daily or almost again, even if it’s not much of nothing but a couple of sentences or even if it’s just - whatever.

As for me & what all’s going on with me, things could not possibly be much worse than they are right now and have been for a few months now. I guess there’s a few things that could be worse but really, comparatively, at this point most of those wouldn’t make much of a difference. I’ll spare you and me both the gory details for now because it’s just too icky to all get into, and since I live with it day after crummy day after crummy day, I’d just as soon not infect my blog with it the way it has everything else in my life. So for now, let’s just say it’s pretty bad and just move on from there.

In other news, Rocky left our happy little zoo a few weeks ago. He was ten years old and this more often affects older cats, but he had been in old-age kidney failure for some time and when a respiratory bug hit most of the felines in the house in January, he was unable to withstand it. I have another older one also in declining health who is still struggling a bit with the bug (she’s 16), but she’s improved and back to her usual grumpy and neurotic self now.

Anyway, here is one my favorite pictures of Rocky with his dog, Dobie. I never really knew whether Dobie was Rocky’s cat or Rocky was Dobie’s dog. The night Rocky passed, two of the other cats (”little sister” Missy, and Schuyler) and Dobie stayed right by his side until he was gone.

Somehow my laptop has become the preferred bed in the house.

Maggie looks like I felt Thursday morning after being up all night and probably will feel all day today. Bleh. I wish I could curl up on my laptop and go to sleep.

One of these days I’m going to snap Missy when she’s really doing the seriously dead looking cat thing.

Little getting pleasantly more well acquainted with Tojo, the newest (and accidental post-accident) member of the family.

Here’s someone you don’t see much of… Little, who holds the titles of both oldest and crankiest of cats in the house.

(Also known as paybacks are you know what…)

(And, my camera appears to be dying. Sorry.)

Pardon me while I go all Kerry Woo & Smiley on you for a moment, but lookie what arrived this afternoon, and it wasn’t even supposed to have been delivered until Thursday! Yay! (Click the pic to see full size pic and specs.)

I lost my MP3 player a few weeks ago, which was a cheap Nano knockoff anyway so it was no big loss, and I decided I would use part of my birthday present moola for a new and better one. I pretty much use mine in the car 100% now instead of lugging along CDs - as well as other occasions - so it was getting to be a must.

I am a lifelong Apple hater (though Vista may well send me to a Mac next computer buy) and I loathe iTunes, so an iPod was out of the question. My mom bought one of those teeny 4 giggers from Creative a couple of months ago, but I wanted something bigger. As I usually do, I spent hours the other night researching all the usual tech places and reading expert and user reviews, I decided the TrekStor vibez was the one for me. I was kind of leaning towards the newest Creative 30 or 60 GB ones, or the Toshiba Gigabeat, but I just don’t need all that video stuff and all the other non-audio bells & whistles right now. Sure, it would be nice to be able to carry around 100% of what I own musically, but I just don’t need all that extra crap at present and since I’m going from having a 1 GB to a 12 GB, I think that’ll do me just fine for a while. They have a 15 GB to be released this year, but especially after taking a long drive last weekend without a player, I just didn’t want to wait (plus this one was temporarily marked down, woo).

The big selling point for me, besides the awesome sound it’s supposed to have and the largish storage space, is the removable & rechargeable battery. Even though it’s just a little less than half of the storage space on Creative’s 30 GB M Vision, I’d much rather have something I can swap the battery out of and just buy a spare battery for about 25 bucks than have one with twice the storage space, but in which the battery is not removable and if it just dies completely eventually, your best option is just to buy another one (another player). And video capability is all very well, fine, and good, but I have a laptop as it is and I just wasn’t into having all the video and photo junk on my MP3 player too, I’m really not that interested in what it can do for me other than audio-wise. If Creative and Toshiba and the big guys ever come out with big 30 & 60 GB and higher ones that have the removable battery, now we’re talking.

But for now this will suit me just fine. It’s German and it’s techy (con for some folks but a plus for me) and it’s supposed to have really awesome sound, and for the most part got some really excellent reviews from most of the usual experts as well as users, especially compared to the other top products in the hard drive and microdrive and flash categories. I haven’t loaded all my stuff onto it yet and listened, but I’m about to! I’m so tickled it arrived a day early (and only about a day and half, or less, after I ordered it).

And here is an insane kitten, who was trying to “help” me open it and open all the stuff that came with it.

Just to not leave this weekend on a bummed out note, here’s more of my “nephews”, Jinx and Tidbit. You’ve seen the Paris Hilton sex tape, you’ve seen the Pam & Tommy Lee sex tape, now get your Jinx & Tidbit sex tape via The Lynnster Zone…

Oh wait, we don’t have one. Oh well, see you Monday!

Meet my “nephews”, Jinx and Tidbit. They are a bit older now, this shot’s from their younger years.

I’m posting this today because I ran out of time to write about my L.A. trip (because I read five billion thousand blogs during the night and got enamored of Technorati and Google search scores over and over again), and because the Cobles are good people, and because I know Kat Coble is kind of an Eddie Izzard fan, and so is Tidbit.

What, you say? Yes, you read that right. Tidbit totally has a crush on Eddie Izzard. Or something. You think I’m kidding, I’m sure, but I’m really serious, he’s a huge Eddie Izzard fan.

Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill from several years back, that’s been rebroadcast on TV over and over again? Tidbit will sit and watch the whole thing. Totally enthralled. Every time.

No word yet on whether The Riches got a recent Tidbit thumbs (paws) up. I’ll have to ask and find out.

Jinx is kind of like having a house plant around. A plant that looks like a cat, yes, but a house plant all the same. They kind of share the same personality.

If Schuyler (black cat) was as big as he used to be before he became elderly, there would NOT be enough room on top of that box for the both of them.

Speaking of Quincy…

I wish I could get the, literally, HOURS of my life back I have the lost the past week or two searching fruitlessly for a mini-mouse that I distinctly remembered buying several months ago, and even using, but haven’t been able to find for the life of me since I started looking for it. It’s the exact same mouse as I’m using on my work computer right now, and I bought it because I thought it would work pretty well with my laptop, which it does.

It’s one of those smaller ones, with a retractable cord. It’s got a very tiny and thin - even more thin than your general, say, cell phone battery charger cords. Like, rubberband thin. Like, really REALLY thin.

And THEN - finally, last night, I remembered.

Yes, I finally remembered discovering the cord, sliced with precision as if by a Ginsu knife, when I left the laptop alone once for ten seconds and came back. The Orange & White Menace With Teeth hath struck again.

De-toothing would be cat abuse, right?

At least you can kinda see Schuyler’s ear to the right… black cats, tough to photograph.

Quincy acts like he’s on drugs anyway, so this photo - albeit messed up - is fitting.

Rocky, sleeping on the job.
Originally uploaded by LynnsterZone.

Rocky the tech geek, sleeping on the job when he should be transcribing my blog or optimizing my templates in preparation for Blogger Beta…

Cats. Pfft.