Because I have nothing better to write about and I really don't want to clean.

( Kitten news! )

I read an article that said that a recent study showed that cats control their owners through purring and crying. To which I have to reply "Duh." Or point to angeleyes1701 who once said "Only people who share their lives with felines know how ironic the term Cat Owner is."

In other news, I finally installed XP on Virtualbox so I really have to say "Yo Dawg, I heard you like Operating systems, so I put an Operating system on your operating system, so you can operate your system while you operate your system."

I currently have 4 versions of IE (two versions of 6 for some reason), Firefox 3.5 (should I download 3.0? What about 2?), Chrome (currently not that popular but picking up steam so I should be prepared), Safari and Opera (do version numbers matter that much on those?) I'm hoping that the number of browsers I need to check will go down eventually, but for now, I need to make sure that every website I built (unless otherwise specified) needs to be at least viewable in all of these.

At least now I have the stats to backup my claim to clients that it's not a good idea to just make a website work for Internet Explorer 6 because that's all anyone uses.

I have watched Doctor Who backwards and forwards (except for some of the lost Second Doctor episodes) and I still think that the most tragic Doctor Who moment is ( cut for spoilers )

My best friend just spent two days in the hospital because of a root canal from hell. I wanted to do something so I brought her husband (who was there since she was admitted) his toiletries.

I asked my Dad if he could drive to me $Hospital and he said sure. I get to the hospital call the husband and ask him where they are. He says $bulding $floor $room. I look around and not only fail to find $room, I fail to find a building that had $floor. Finally after walking around I ask someone... turns out I was at $Hospital-in-completely-different-city!

I finally get to $Hospital and find $building $floor and $room and friend yay! She was out of it on morphine but she came around and talked to me a bit. When she asked how I got there I told her "Through $Hospital-in-completely-different-city." "Ah," she says. "That makes sense, it is you after all."

In kitten related news.

"Aryeh come here." Aryeh comes over. "Aryeh give me a kiss." Aryeh gives kiss. "Aryeh go rob a bank." Seriously, I've never seen such an obedient cat, much less kitten. Now if I can only keep him off the tables. He's also really interested in food. He can't stand that someone's eating something he isn't.

In personal but non-kitten related trivia, I got a new coffee blend from Ilan's called Regavim, Fucking strong coffee man, but not overly bitter.

I have filed all the appropriate paper-work with the appropriate people and I can officially start taking money from people. The down-side, I now have to pay income tax and social security. Oh well. My business is listed as "Building and maintaining web-sites" which is vague enough to cover pretty much everything I do for now at least.

Now if I could just get my kittens to stop distracting me so I can get some work do- aww look they're inside my Dad's shoes.

( Kitty pics under cut )

It's been a while since I've updated, mostly because every time I started writing an entry I got distracted by something shiny and never finished, and afterwards it seemed pointless.

So, the news, the major news anyway. I have kittens! Yes they're adorable, yes there are pictures but I don't have anywhere to upload them so I'm not going to post them here. They're two ginger kittens, littermates, one male, one female. Right now they're five weeks old (we took them from their mother too early, but they were already eating solids and she seemed to have lost interest so we're not sure they would have survived if we hadn't taken them). The female is named Tuna (after I dream I had once) and the male is named Maki (we tried Salmon, we tried Sushi, but he responds to Maki). Right now they're sleeping most of the time, both because of their age and because of the heat, but when they're awake they're playful and loving.

There's other stuff, but I need to get back to work, and I should at least leave something for next time right? :)

You guys remember this quote?

"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music." - Kristian Wilson

It suddenly popped up in my memory this morning when I took my Concerta while listening to Daft Punk (I keep my shutters half-closed in the summer to keep the temperature down).

Once upon a time I had a computer. My first very own completely mine Dad don't touch it computer. I named her Danielle. Slowly but surely each component of Danielle was replaced until I realized that there were nothing left of Danielle and renamed my computer Danielle 2.

Eight years ago I got a new computer for my birthday. 1.7 Ghz, with 256 megs of RAM of pure joy. I made my first music videos on that computer. I stayed up until three in the morning on the internet on that computer. I learned all I know about hardware on that computer. I also lost a lot of stuff on that computer, though one major crash in eight years is actually more reliable than me.

With a little more RAM (very little, the motherboard wouldn't take more than 768 megs I managed to stretch that computer for eight years. Running both XP and Ubuntu with minimal settings Danielle 2 served me well.

Which is why I felt more than a little guilty when I realized that I couldn't put off buying a new computer anymore.

KITT is sleek, quiet and far more power than I actually need (for now, if I have it I'll certainly figure out what to do with it). While Danielle 2, still going strong, has become a familial file server. I was only planning on leaving her plugged into the network long enough to make sure I've gotten all the stuff I wanted off of her, but my parents both like the idea of having a file server so who am I to argue?

I've already installed Ubuntu and XP. I installed Ubuntu first because I had a theory that installing windows on a computer with linux already on it was just as frustrating as the other way around. It was. ( cut for geekiness )

All in all, set-up of both OSes took about five hours, and transferring the bulk of stuff from Danielle 2 took another four. Possibly the quickest computer setup I've ever done.

So in an attempt to figure out which Discworld books I haven't read yet I came across an interesting fact. In the past eight months or so I've read 31 Terry Pratchett novels. I think it's eight months, I can't remember when I started. I think I started with Thief of Time, but I can't remember that either.

Anyway I was actually somewhat surprised after the final tally, I hadn't noticed that I had read that many books much less books by the same author. I've said before that Terry Pratchett novels are like Willy Wonka's gum. If feels like chewing gum as in, it's an easy very smooth read, but you're actually getting a full wholesome meal, it actually makes you look differently at the world you're living in. The difference being that if you remember to take deep even breaths you won't end up purple from reading Pratchett novels.

Discworld

1. The Colour of Magic
2. The Light Fantastic
3. Equal Rites
4. Mort
5. Sourcery
6. Wyrd Sisters
7. Pyramids
8. Guards! Guards!
9. Eric
10. Moving Pictures
11. Reaper Man
12. Witches Abroad
13. Small Gods (Read it many many many years ago)
14. Lords and Ladies
15. Men at Arms
16. Soul Music
17. Interesting Times
18. Maskerade
19. Feet of Clay
20. Hogfather
21. Jingo
22. The Last Continent
23. Carpe Jugulum
24. The Fifth Elephant
25. The Truth
26. Thief of Time
27. Night Watch
28. Monstrous Regiment
29. Going Postal
30. Thud!
31. Making Money
32. Unseen Academicals

Discworld (Childrens)

1. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
2. The Wee Free Men
3. A Hat Full of Sky
4. Wintersmith

So Firefox 3.0.10 is out for Ubunutu and I, like so many others, updated it without giving it a second thought.

After the update my browser said "Restart!" and so, the humble user I am, I followed the instructions. Firefox restart but only as a hollow shell, a shadow of it's former self, my bookmarks were gone! And though all my setting seemed to be there none of them were actually working. Also the back and forward buttons, so long my trusted friends abandoned me, in spirit if nothing else for their shapes were there but greyed out! Oh woe was me!

Oh woe was me!

This was around 2 in the morning so rational thinking was right out! I cursed Firefox and Ubuntu and the Great Gods of Computing and, grouchy for completely different reasons, went to bed.

This morning I created a new profile and restored my bookmarks from a backup months old (at which point I cursed myself for it is not written in the Manual of the Great Gods Of Computing, "Thou shalt backup important documents or thou hast no right to complain when We bring our wrath upon thee!"

I then summoned the Archangel Google and plead on to Her "Oh Angel, thou are knownest in all the corners of the world as an occasionally just judge. I beg of thee, judge me now in all my user humility, please oh wise one, tell me how to restore my Default Profile."

And lo the Archangel Google did say "Completely close Firefox and open it again."

At which point I thought to myself "Google, you're bloody useless." And turned inwards to the problem. I dug deep into /.mozilla/firefox and there I did find the User Profiles. And lo before me was a folder named Bookmarkbackups and I rejoiced! For I had found the truth and lo I did say-

"What the hell is this?" For the truth was in a .json file and beyond my comprehension. Once more did I call forth the Archangel Google and once more I knelt before it. "Tell me oh Angel "firefox bookmarkbackups .json" and the Archangel did grant me kindness and presented on to me the gift of a friendly URL.

Lost bookmarks - MozillaZine Knowledge Base and returned to the tubes from wherest she came!

Thus it came to pass that I did create yet ANOTHER new Profile and named it Test, and the .json were copied over, and my bookmarks restored!

HalleluTheGreatGodsofComputing!

Huh... that went in a completely different direction than I thought it would.

ETA: Coming Soon - Sound Good? Or how I managed to get Ubuntu to play sound on Youtube.