Cats and storms

(It's Sunday, and a storm is rolling in. It's dark outside, and we can hear thunder every few minutes or so. I am standing up playing Rock Band 3; Calle is sitting on the sectional. Josie comes around the couch, low-walking to where I am.)

J: OMG DO SOMETHING BIG LOUD NOISES OMG WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!
C: We're not going to die. Stop being such a baby.
J: CANT YOU HEAR THE LOUD NOISES? OMG OMG OMG ...
C: It's rained like this before. Now shut up. He's about to play Roundabout, and I like that song.
J: You don't care because you're old!
C: I don't care because I kicked cancer's ass. WTF is a storm going to do to me? Now go and hide under the bed. We all know you're going there anyway.
J: AM NOT. (Runs off to hide under the bed.)

Old cats, new tricks

So recently, Calle has been meowing at me with a particular volume and frequency that means something. To a cat, the meaning is perfectly clear, but to me it means one of the following:

• Feed me!
• No, with fresh food.
• I'm bored, pay attention to me.
• I'm going to throw up, where should it be?
• There is a dangerous intruder in the house, ready to steal all of our tuna and catnip ...
• or maybe it's just a beetle.
• Open this door, I forgot what's behind it.

Normally, I ignore these meows so that they don't set any more of a precedent than they already have, but given that there was, in the past, a similar sequence that eventually led to I can haz cancer (warning: may contain weepiness), I figured I should investigate more closely.

I put fresh dry food into the bowl. I sit down and watch the cat eat. It turns out that she's eating, well, like I did when I had my braces on. Carefully. This is somewhat good (she has energy, so if the big C has come back, it's still early) but mostly bad (because normally cats that like dry food will eat it normally).

Next test: tuna. I get out two small plates, put tuna on one and broth on the other (for some reason, Josie is one of about four cats in the world who won't eat tuna). Calle's tuna is gone. OK, that makes it seem like wet food might be an option. (She's 16. I'm lucky her teeth have lasted this long.)

So I stop at the store, and among other things, pick out three different types of wet food. (These cats are picky; more than a couple of types of food have been rejected.) I come home, and the Meow Parade returns. I open one can, split it about 60/40, and serve it.

All gone

Yep, this one too

Yeah, so that's pretty much definitive. Yes, both plates are pretty much clean, which means yes, Josie ate her food too. (Also, Calle went back to both plates after I'd taken the pictures, just to make sure they were really clean.)

Sooooo ... I guess we'll be buying wet food from here on out. So glad I just bought a big bag of Science Diet ...

Humans and Their Ability to Live in Higher Gravity

I found this on my computer. WTH?

Purpose: To determine what effect, if any, higher gravity has upon humans.

Method: Examine a human performing a normal, everyday task, first at normal gravity, and then under successively greater gravity.

Details: Subject was seated in front of computer screen and given a simple task to execute. (Task appears to be called Zuma Blitz; further details irrelevant.) Subject was allowed to repeat task several times. Scientist C then approached to closely observe subject's motion. After establishing baseline performance, C aligned head with subject's arm so as to properly measure exertion under normal and strong gravity, gradually increasing pressure with each repetition to simulate increasing effects of gravity. After completing application of sufficient gravity, C left the subject and began thoroughly washing contact areas.

Conclusion: Humans are ill-equipped to perform even cursory tasks in stronger gravitational fields. Performance decreased as increasing force was applied. Also, Zuma Blitz is boring.

Listing slightly to starboard

Or port. I can't remember, I don't drink any more.

ha ha.

I was working on my homework – discussion can be very difficult for me at times because it's tough for me to focus sometimes on subjective work, and unfortunately virtually all of my work is subjective right now – when I noticed something odd about one of the cats. I had to fight them off to keep the space around the balance board clear. Josie stayed on the drum throne, but Calle returned to the floor as soon as I was done. Well, actually, as soon as I stopped watching her, she sat right in front of the balance board, and stayed there after I moved it back to its resting spot by the TV.

Calle was in her usual paws-and-tail-tucked-under position, but she was leaning toward her left side, somewhat unnaturally. I thought I'd check to see what was going on, just in case, so I got down on the floor, and she suddenly sat up straight and looked at me like "I know what I was doing. What did you think I was doing?"

And by "sat up straight" I mean "returned to a vertical position without moving paws or tail."

So basically, she was starting to roll to one side as she fell asleep. I thought only people did that. ha ha.

And I looked it up. It's port. I'm not exactly a water person, give me a break.

Cooperation

So finally, after six years of cohabitation, the cats are working together.

I'm in the living room, half-watching the Colts-Chargers game as I work on my homework, and I hear a light rattle in the kitchen, as if something had been knocked off the counter. (ems volunteered to take my big-ass coat to the dry cleaners on her next trip, so I emptied my pockets on the counter.) No big deal, Calle sometimes forgets what she can and can't play with.

But then I heard a lighter rattle, almost like something was being batted on the floor. Time to investigate.

As I came into the kitchen, Calle was making her way along the counter by the sinks, as if to suggest that nothing was happening here, she was just passing through to see if perhaps I'd left any tuna on the counter, but it was too late. I could clearly see what was happening: there was a black-and-gray cat on the counter, carefully knocking stuff onto the floor, and a white-and-black cat on the floor, batting at each item to see if it was actually a toy.

Naturally, I'd prefer that they cooperate in other ways, like lying next to each other so that I don't have to Photoshop a Christmas card picture, but I guess this is a start ...

Follow-up

Today, I start by discovering a solution and a problem.

Solution: IE 7 and Firefox 3 do not treat <button> elements the same. If IE sees a button of type submit, it will assume that what you want to do when someone clicks this button is to submit the form; if there is any JavaScript in the onclick event, it will run that in addition to submitting the form. Firefox sees the JavaScript and runs it instead of submitting the form.

This is kind of a problem if your JavaScript calls the submit() function. :)

So I changed the type from submit to button and everything was fine.

Then I found my problem. We have passwords in a database, I want to check the user's password against the database password. Done: I use <cfqueryparam> in the query to ensure they don't put funny little things in there.

But you can also change your password. If you do that, and you log out, when you log in again, I want to check for your new password. I can't do that if the query is cached. The problem is that I can't make the query un-cache (we don't have CF 8 on this server, although I'm not sure that would help much) because you can't use cacheafter or cachewithin when you use cfqueryparams.

So I need a solution for that.

After a sub-optimal day, I return home and find poop in different places, of course. Here's one spot, right by the box I want to use to return my defective headphones. And look, there's something sticking out of it, like a twig. (Um, these are indoor cats ...)

And I pick it up, but it's light, and I drop it on my hand ... oh, at least it's dry ... wait a minute.

That is kind of a twig. This isn't poop. It's a leaf.

d'oh.