A fun weekend, though nothing really ground-breaking happened. }:)

On Saturday a friend introduced me to this show on NBC called "LAX", and let me copy a bunch of episodes he had downloaded. An excellent program, I must say. It's basically a drama that's based at Los Angeles International Airport, where the main characters have to deal with lots of bizarre situations. I've already seen two episodes and plan to watch one a night until I've gone through the ones I have. Downloaded episodes are a wonderful way of catching up when you're introduced to a new show; too bad the network executives hate it so much. They just gained a viewer because of someone letting my copy the eps! Not to mention you folks who are probably reading this now and may want to check out the show as a result... [UPDATE: I found out LAX was cancelled. Dangit! Of course, this is partially NBC's fault... Why put a decent show opposite another VERY popular show (in this case, ABC's Lost)? Are they smoking something? Arrgh.]

Spent Sunday morning at Sawgrass and I helped feed the tigers and cougars at the VSW property in the afternoon. A few tour groups came through at Sawgrass, but there were some great quiet moments when I was able to interact with Junior. He was his usual sleepy-yet-purry self.

The meat of the day at the property was ribs and pork; Nicholas the big male tiger was extremely food-aggressive and wouldn't let Diana (his cagemate) eat, so I had to have another volunteer distract Nikky with food at the other end of the cage while I fed Di the pork!

Nikky's roar has to be heard to be believed. You can probably hear it a few blocks away, and it rattles right through you when you're near him. I'm sure glad that fence is seperating him from me when he's in that food-aggressive mood!

No pictures today; I wasn't really that up to it, having acquired a headache by the time I was done at the property. Just wanted to get some aspirin and go home...

Ahh well, back to work tomorrow.

I was gassing up my car today, and locked the handle as usual so I don't have to stand there with it the whole time. A bit later, I check and notice gasoline is spilling out of my car and onto the concrete!

The automatic shutoff on the pump, which is supposed to kill the flow when the gas reaches the tip of the nozzle, had failed. If I had gone in to get a snack and not noticed this in time, a LOT more gas would have spilled and it would have been an even MORE dangerous condition.

Luckily, it was only a little bit and I was able to wipe up the mess on the side of my car, but I've certainly learned my lesson:

Don't trust the automatic shutoff feature on gas pumps! Always stay with the nozzle when fueling!

And yes, I did report the problem and they decomissioned that pump by putting a plastic bag over it.

So I was at Best Buy today, and I picked up a copy of a Disney DVD starring Chip & Dale. (the ORIGINAL Chip & Dale from the 1940's... yes, Chip and Dale existed before the Rescue Rangers got together...) It was cheap, and I used to love those cartoons, so why not? Anyway, I noticed this gem in tiny print:

Wow, the DVD starts automatically when inserted. What an amazing technological achievement! I must meet these godly DVD developers at Disney and shake their hands!

Err, I have a couple of movies that were released on DVD in 1999, when DVDs weren't even popular yet, that start automatically just fine when you insert them. Apparently, Disney felt that so many films out there throw huge complex animated menus and effects at you upon insertion, that simply playing the film when you put the disc in is now a "special feature".

Well, kudos to Disney for figuring out that people just want to watch the damn film, but jeez, a special feature!!? Not only that, but they even paid someone to come up with a funky-looking logo for this "special feature", and trademarked it!

This isn't the first time Disney misuses the term "special feature", of course. Let's take a look at a little box on the back of the "Lady and the Tramp" DVD... This was when they just started making DVDs, and they have since redeemed themselves in the features department, but... "Full character artwork on disc" a special feature? Next thing you know the hole in the middle will be a special feature! "Allows you to carry the disc more conveniently!"

One more thing, I noticed the words "Disney's FastPlay Patent Pending" at the very bottom of the back of this disc. I guess Disney felt left out of the club abusing the patent system. At least there's plenty of prior art if they DO try to sue someone over it.

So, a couple days ago I received an E-mail from an address I've never seen before, with no subject. Upon opening it, pretty much expecting spam (you can never be sure), I was perplexed by this:

When Is Bambi On DVD & Video Can You E-Mail Me Back At xxxxxxx@hotmail.com

Of course, the lack of punctuation (except for the '&' and in the E-mail address), along with the fact that I had no idea who this was, AND the fact that he was asking me a question that is easily answered by searching for "Bambi" on amazon.com, led me to ignore the e-mail and get on with my life.

A few hours later, I get another E-mail from this special friend:

I Told You When Is Bambi Coming ON DVD & Video Please Send Me Back

Oh, so now he's DEMANDING to know when it comes out. From someone he doesn't even know! Or at least, I think that's what he's doing. From the way he wrote it, it's hard to tell. He should also talk to a third grade English teacher so she can tell him how not to Capitalize Every Word In A Sentence.

Anyway, I ignored this example of Shakespearian-level English and went on with my life.

Of course, the clincher arrived today:

What Does Lion's Live. Can You E-Mail Me Back Please

I can't make any sense of this, can you? After applying various munging techniques, I came up with this grammar-deficient person's likely question: "Where do lions live?"

So I replied on a single line:

In Kenya. (Not Norway!)

Hey, my answer is technically correct, right? }:) I'm really looking forward to his response. Whether I'll be able to decipher it, that's another story. I'm no WWII allied codebreaker, ya know!

So I got home, and noticed that it was eerily silent in my office. Hushpad was off, and so was everything else computer related. It turns out that, after nine years, my TrippLite 450 "BC Internet" has decided to die with honor.

I quickly grabbed the crappy APC SmartUPS 420 that's powering my entertainment center and re-allocated it to the computer equipment, and finally got things powered on, after much annoyance re-routing and cleaning up cable clutter amidst dust bunnies that would probably scare my cat.

I acquired this TrippLite UPS back in 1996, back when frequent power outages were annoying the hell out of me. I'm not sure why the model number has "Internet" in the name, as it has absolutely nothing to do with networking in any way. It was my first UPS ever.

In 1999, its internal battery died, so I went to Batteries Plus and purchased the monstrosity pictured on the left. I connected this sucker to the UPS through a hole in the side, and this extended my run-time from around 15 minutes to nearly two hours.

Unfortunately, this failure doesn't seem battery-related. The UPS doesn't notice it's plugged in, and only seems able to run off of battery. No fuses seem to be blown and the circuit breaker is fine, so I'm not sure why or how it failed. I was tempted to repair it, but after giving me nine years of good service, I'm a bit worried any repairs may increase the likelyhood of fire. Given that this thing runs unattended for over 10 hours of every day, that's not a good thing.

Oh well, maybe it saved my equipment from a hideous power surge. If it did, thank you Tripplite!

I must now replace it, as this APC SmartUPS 420 is inadequate for the load and I don't really trust APC. The only UPS I've ever seen catch fire was an APC, and they also have a tendancy to do strange things to loads when the batteries are near the end of their life, such as randomly power-cycle them instead of just reporting the low battery condition as they should. "SmartUPS" is definitely a misnomer; I would actually prefer their cheaper "BackUPS" line if I HAD to buy APC.

This forum has some scary stuff in it... Fires just waiting to happen!

I headed out to Sawgrass this morning and was happy to see Mickey, a cougar I hadn't met before. He's full grown at 2.5 years and weighs over 200lbs, but was one of the sweetest kitties I've ever met. He just sat there and let me pet him and rubbed his head against me a few times, purring a little. He doesn't purr quite as much as Junior, and he's not quite as friendly with me, but still amazing considering his size and the fact that he's never met me before.

I was then called to go to the property to help out there a bit with some cleanup, but it had started pouring rain by that point, making work a bit difficult. I also helped feed some, and had a cute face-to-face chuff exchange with Tiffany. Unfortunately I had to leave early, which was especially annoying because the weather had actually started clearing up at the time!

Ahh well, getting soaked to the bone was worth it for getting to meet Mickey and chuffin' with Tiff. }:)

No pictures today; my camera ain't waterproof!

So I went to the mall for lunch today, and wandered into an FYE. While browsing the aisles of overpriced music, video games, DVD's, and so on, I saw a package that looked somehow out of place...

"Disney's Pocahontas Screen Scenes"

WTF? So I picked it up, turned it over...

System Requirements:
386 SX/16
Windows 3.1 or greater
4MB of RAM
...etc.

This was software from 1995! What the heck was it doing in an FYE that opened in 2001? It also came on 3.5" floppy disks, and had a very ancient looking, worn out price tag telling us it sells for $16.97.

I felt like buying it for the nostalgia value, not to mention the "WTF!" value, but it would lose the "WTF!" value once extracted from the store that was built in 2001.

I actually bought Lion King Screen Scenes back in 1994, which was almost identical, only with TLK pictures, so it was a strange blast from the past. Of course, with TLK screen scenes, I quickly tired of the crappy software, extracted all the JPGs, and used them in my own software. }:)

So, I'm currently at work and in the process of building a Linux box to replace Mustang, our syslog/fax server. This is kind of sad, in a way.

Mustang is currently a Sun SparcStation 10; the oldest model Sun we still have in production use in the department. This machine is about 14 years old, and is STILL DOING A GREAT JOB. The only reason we're replacing it is because its root disk is starting to fail and it's harder to find a replacement SCSI disk for it than to just build a whole new machine.

I used to be proud of the fact that we still have a 14 year old Sun still doing production work, but soon that machine will be gone and our next-oldest Sun, Mongoose, which is only 11 years old, will be the new "oldest machine still in production use".

Heh, I'm such a geek for being sentimental about this. }:)

Taj, the tiger cub I held when he was only hours old, is getting huge! He's already about four months old and is becoming quite a terror. I tried to take him on a leash and it was a rather stressful experience, because he's quite hyper and just wants to play.

He is an only cub, and thus has no playmates his age to use up his energy on, so he uses it up on us. It is important to teach them not to bite and claw at this age, because when they grow up, biting and clawing can result in annoying things like lost limbs, broken bones, torn skin, and so on.

Overall, it was fun to play with him. He kept trying to walk around me, tying me up in the leash and then attacking my ankle. I must have said "no bite!" about 300 times in all. Later on he calmed down a little and let me pet him. I wish I could spend more time with the little guy.

Other than that, not much of an eventful day. I got some pictures of Nat hamming it up at the property, and Junior being a cutie at Sawgrass. He was really tired and groggy in the morning, but perked up later in the day. Today wasn't a good day for pictures, the lighting was just all wrong at the property with the sun shining in randomly and ruining otherwise perfect shots. It was already dark by the time I saw Taj, so I had to use flash, and flash photos never look all that good unless you have an umbrella system.

Here's today's pictures, including those of Taj