So if you are a Race Car Driver...

So if you are a Race Car Driver... Is your Mantra "I can't Drive 55"???

Last Space Shuttle Mission

How does this affect you? Are we giving up something that the USA has "Owned" for almost 40 years? How do you feel about NASA not replacing the Shuttles with a newer vehicle?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

Caylee's Law

I don't want to harp here on what I think about the Casey Anthony Trial, nor the outcome of the verdict. What I will ask you is to follow this link, and if you believe that our laws need change, sign this petition please. So far, 18 States are drafting some sort of version of this law... All due to this petition. Link: Caylee's Law You CAN make a difference!

I'm sorry I took the Picture down because for some reason Google Adsense is giving me stuff about something and shut down any earnings potential, so anything that looks like it could be Copyright infringement will have to go. Although I've written and have the rights to all my previous blogs, I will now remove any reference to any other Social Networking sites now...? 

The Feeding of the Kat Army - Written Jan 2008

Ok, what on god's green earth could someone write about a mundane chore as feeding the cats? Lots… Because I have a lot of them. If you only have one or two cats, you're not going to understand what it's like living with nine... Yes, I said nine and they have formed a Pride, just like you see on Discovery or TLC.

This is a typical Sunday afternoon around here…

"Meow… Me-ew… Eh meow"… That's Sam, my Big Boy. He's rather vocal and we have wonderful conversations when he's in the mood to talk. Since he only likes to talk when he's hungry, we have this conversation frequently: He's ALWAYS hungry. "Sam, it's early, you have to wait half an hour, it's not time yet." This is usually answered by something like this: "Me me ek eh mow me ow eh." The Language of Cat, being a vocal language is not very friendly to the written word so I'm not sure if I got that just right there. There's some subtle hiss and purr with a touch of guttural in there that I cannot really convey.

"No Sam, it's early, sorry dude, you really have to wait and that's final." Now, I don't know how to say "F**k You" in Cat, but I'm pretty sure that's what this means: "Meeek ehhhwww." He always says that the same way every time I tell him he has to wait, so I'm going to assume I have that translated correctly.

Now, you need to realize that this cat is standing on his back legs to be as tall as possible during this entire conversation, much like a 2 year-old. He's also a rather large cat so he really is trying to look me in the eye and talk. He puts great effort into anything food, be it getting into the pantry and chewing his way through a plastic container or learning how to open the fridge. If it's food, he's motivated and I admire his tenacity for it. If only people were this dedicated to things that are important to them.

So, it's finally time and now we go through the "Round up" procedure. "Who's Hungry? Do I have any customers? Places everyone places! Kat, round up the troops!" No, dead serious… I say this every day, every time and these guys know what it means! Little furry blurs come out of the wood work. Why do we go through this? Well, you didn't think that nine cats would all be on the same diet did you? Silly you, of course not!

Let's see, Beau, Scooter, Max and Foxy get feed in the dining room, Sam, Katrina, Biscuit (AKA A$$hole), Sparky & Molly all feed in the kitchen. So the first thing to do is get them separated, hence the announcement that it's now time to stop watching Cat TV and get their furry little butts where they belong.

After role call, I go through the "Where's the bowls" quest. Usually they're were we left them last time, but sometimes they like to knock them behind things and the like. Now there's also a timing issue here. Who woulda thought, right? If the cats in the Kitchen finish eating before the cats in the dinning room, opening the door to give them water usually leads to A$$hole bolting through the tiny space with Sam & Molly hot on his heels.

So first things first, all bowls in the kitchen? Check. Bowls laid out in order of feeding? Check. OK, this is the tricky part. I have Sam and Biscuit with their paws up damn near to the counter trying to sell me, in Cat no less, that they are starving and their master hasn't feed them in a week. We have Sparky sitting on the couch verbally confirming their plight while Kat is circling the two boys and me. She is truly "Rounding up" the troops. She runs the show around here and they know it, so they pretty much go where ever she happens to be circling, which is always around me, so it works out… Our newest addition contents herself to becoming a Cat Trap, wrapping herself in and out of my legs, in what I truly think, is an attempt to trip me so I drop the food all over the floor prematurely.

Here's comes the timing part. Both Kat & Sparky will eat out of the same bowl politely, the Boys & Molly will not, hence we have one big bowl and three smaller. I hook the two small ones with the fingers of my right hand and grab the girls bowl in my left. "OK, Places! Ladies first, Germs Second" I call out. Molly is a head diver so I always throw her bowl down first so I can walk without getting tripped.

Kat stops her dizzying spectacle and hops up on the couch and I drop the bowl between the both of them just as she arrives. The whole time, I'm waving the bowls in my right hand to keep the boys on the floor begging. First one bowl, then the second and a quick head adjustment to get Sam's head out of Biscuit's and into his own. Told ya, he's the kitty with the plan. If he can eat the other cat's food first, who's gonna know, right? Now that we have Molly, this dance has become a 3 ring circus.

Here comes stage two and this is the part where timing is essential. I lay out the other 4 bowls, glance at Sam to make sure he's still occupied and open the pantry where we keep the dry food. As quickly as I can, with grace that only someone truly has done this countless times before, I grab the dry food container, pour the required amounts into the bowls and whisk the container away in a flash. I mean, I have this down so fast it's like 3-5 seconds and the door's closed.

I stack the 4 bowls in the order that the feeding will take place on the other side of the door. Checking again on Sam's progress and redirecting his head yet again to his own bowl, I make the dash to the door, slip through and intercept Foxy who is trying to get into the Kitchen. I drop her bowl and get a "Meow" of thanks, plop Beau's in front of him while he stares at me in disappointment that it's not wet food, Scooter and then… where the heck is Max? "Max? Max?"

Now Max is the cat that cannot be touched. We got him a little too late, and although after many hours of working with Scooter to get him to allow me to pet him, it's still a no go with Max. He just doesn't want people to touch him. If you try, you better count your fingers and toes after because you're gonna get hurt. He also likes to sing for his dinner but it takes a few minutes for him to warm up.

"ehh.. ehhh…. Ehhh Meow!" from under the safety of a chair where he's been watching my feet. "There you are, here." Now, I mean feral when I say no touchie with Max. I SLIDE the bowl over to him so he will eat without freaking out.

I grab their water dish and listen for Sam on the other side of the door, no shadows so either he's still eating or he's eating someone else's food again. Slipping the door quietly, I slip inside to get water, checking Sam's position in the room. "SAM!!! GOD DARN IT! GET OUTTA THEIR DISH YOU FAT SOB!" Since this is normal, I get the customary "Meeek ehhhwww" from him as he grabs one last mouthful from the Ladie's bowl and runs back to his.

Getting the water to the other cats go without a hitch and there's no food left in the Kitchen, now I get to clean up and… ZIP, quick as an eye, A$$hole slipped past me going back in. I swear he must have super kitty powers of slipperiness because trying to catch this cat is like a greased pig sometimes. "Hey! Get back here Biscuit!" And now you know why I call him "A$$hole"… Much crashing, Max is hissing at me, Scooter is looking at me like I'm crazy and I have a grip on Biscuit only to lose it again as he dashes toward the next bowl. He finally is out of bowls and sullenly "Allows" me to catch him and return him to the kitchen.

Imagine, this was a Sunday and not a Monday morning. Good thing I like animals or there would be Kitty stew for dinner one night…

Why Blog?

I've been writing little short stories for years, some good, some bad, they litter old hard drives from computers long gone. All tucked in my lower right hand draw of my computer room. Yes, in that mess that I call a "Room", there is a little bit of organization. Why? Because each time I sit down and write, it's usually about something that has either happened, or inspired me to write about it.

This is the same guy that got told in English that I'd never be able to write anything worth reading, failed English so many times I lost count. Well, maybe not with a pen and paper, this seems to work much better for me considering I sometimes can't read my own handwriting.

Books have always fascinated me. We have learned how to document, using characters that mean different things to different cultures, all kinds of information. We use this gift for everything, no need to list anything, think about it.

I guess I started liking reading with CS Lewis' Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe when it was given to me as a child by Joann, my God Mother. She sent me the 7 book set and to this day, it's always been one of my favorite series to go re-read. Every time I read them, I get something new that I missed as I get older.

Add Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, Ann McCaffery, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Etc. The list is endless of who and what I've read over the years. Each book an effort from a creative mind and a story to be told.

So, even though I've always loved to read, because I can't spell a damn and would be sunk without Speel Chick (Gets through EVERY Time, hee hee), I was too embarrassed to share any of my Mental Musings. I also get bored after a few pages of a topic and prefer to keep things short and sweet, so there's no Stephen King Novel in me, not interested.

Anyway, this is a part of me that I have suppressed from public view for a variety of reasons. The Humor, Irony and Satire style is the way I think, it's a fun style to write in, and perhaps it explains how I can still be "Me" after all these long years. If I cried every time life got tough or something bad happened to me, I would be LONG GONE mentally. So I guess blowing off steam with little blurbs that probably border on insanity is what keeps me ticking.

I hope that I make you laugh and you can delight in the little stupid things that we face in life, things that seem SO serious and yet really doesn't mean shit in the scheme of the larger picture. If I can get a chuckle out of you on a bad day and you feel better after reading my blog, then I'm happy that I've helped someone get through another day a little easier.

Thanks for reading and the kind words.

Fid

Fid and his Keyboard (AKA, the true meaning of the word "Yeechh!")

Written in 2005

I noticed the other day while gaming, that my keys were sticking a tad on the left side of the keyboard, especially the QWERTYASD keys. Being a smoker, I immediately suspected nicotine invasion of the keyboard. The part that puzzled me is that my ashtray is on the RIGHT side of the keyboard. Surely the right side should have cancer before the left? Being in a slightly ambitious mood I decided it was time to clean the keyboard.

A little back history on this particular keyboard is in order. I have one of the original cordless keyboards that Logitech made, so this baby is fairly old in keyboard years. It's ergonomic and I can type fairly quickly and for long periods on it so replacement isn't an option in my mind unless it dies.

Considering I'm also a gamer, the Proud Keeper of the Sacred Bullet Magnet© at Ioncross and a programmer, it's surprising that it's lived this long considering the punishment it takes when a program crashes before I save the changes or I die in a game. You wouldn't live long either if every time this happened a fist pummeled you. Considering whose keyboard this is, you can imagine that this is a frequent occurrence.

Anyway, since I'm getting old and my eyes aren't what they used to be, I figured that I should remove the keyboard to a well-lighted area so I could inspect it. Big mistake! What slob owns this keyboard??? Yech! Uh, OK… Um, I guess I shouldn't put things off so often because this thing was disgusting! How could it possibly still work through all this dirt, dust and nicotine?

So, I break out the box of Q-Tips (Cotton Swabs) and the Windex (Cleaning Fluid). I remove the batteries and decided to take the plunge. Dousing the keyboard with a generous helping of cleaning fluid, I noticed that as fast as I was spraying it on, it was dripping globs of brown goo off. Double-Yech! OK, over the garbage can it goes.

As the offending results of my mad cleaning efforts dripped into the can, I noticed that it's dripping from the edge of the keyboard where the plastic seam is. That can't be a good sign at all! I must have gotten it inside the device and now it's completely soaked on the inside as well. That's just great! Now I have to take it apart and make sure I dry it out so it doesn't short out. I get out my little screwdriver set and prepare to go in.

Now, mind you this is a really old keyboard and it's never given me a problem so I have never had a reason to open it. I carefully unscrew each screw being careful to not lodge it loose from the hole until I'm ready to remove them. Once they're all loose I quickly flip it upside-down so that all the screws will land directly under their corresponding holes just in case some are longer than others. Immediately all eight screws go flying all over the place thus proving to me once again that Murphy's Law will always visit my house no matter how well I plan for his arrival.

After finding the last stubborn screw that had conveniently found the nearest piece of furniture to hide under in of course the darkest shadow, I start to carefully pry up the plastic release tabs that are holding the front cover on. Once the last clip lets go without breaking I sigh a breath of relief that at least that part of the Operation went without any major catastrophes. The top is finally separated from the bottom and I'm ready to move on and dry everything out.

I carefully lift the top cover off the bottom a little bit and peek in the crack. I immediately drop the top cover and step back a few steps! Yechhhh!!! What kind of slob owns this keyboard? Where'd all that GUNK come from? I've been touching this thing? Double-Yech! Shudder…

Well, it isn't going to clean itself so I bravely move on. I warn The Wife that I'm going in and that if something should happen to me I love her dearly and my Life Insurance policy is up to date and paid.

Using more cotton swabs than I've used on my ears all year, I start wiping out the MUCK from the keyboard. I gently pry up a few keys at a time, working from the sticky left side to the right. It immediately hits me that I do not have this entire keyboard layout thing memorized and that the "W" key does NOT belong all the way to the left. Otherwise why would they call it a QWERTY keyboard? I now have a WEQTRY keyboard, and even though I'm a bit eccentric, even I don't want to be THAT different.

K, back to carefully prying off the keys and replacing them in the proper order… I'm going to remember that that for the first time an employee aggravates me at work by spilling something in their keyboard. I'll tell them it's the latest craze: The ACBDFE layout!

As I'm cleaning, I'm noticing two things. The first thing is that there's enough DNA evidence in this thing so that I never have to worry about being identified. It's amazing how much body hair you shed and I guess I know where it's been going all these years. Yech! The second thing I notice is that this keyboard was built before things got really cheap. There's a plastic tray that protects the actually flex board and all the Windex that I was worried about is safely sitting in the tray instead of lying on the business part of the keyboard. It dawns on me that I never had to take it apart and that it would have been fine because the Windex would have dried without ever touching anything important inside.

I finish removing all the offending yechiness and start to close like a heart surgeon. It's a good thing for me that all the screws are identical and the same length, especially after "The Great Screw Disaster of 2005" that occurred when I first started. I finish assembling my baby, pop a set of fresh batteries in and I'm ready to test out my ancient keyboard.

The first thing I notice is that I actually have to type on the keys that were sticking. No more semi-dead keys. I guess I was getting lazy and my left pinky took a break for a while. The second thing I noticed is that I can actually read the letters!

An extra bonus surfaced from this exercise. That sticky sensation I used to get on my fingers while typing on it has all but vanished in the garbage can along with an entire bottle of Windex! It's almost like having a new keyboard without the hassles of actually going to the store and getting a new one!

So here I sit typing away on my nice, clean keyboard sharing one of the most disgusting experiences of my life with you. Do any of YOU have the guts to clean YOUR keyboard?

***Update, this keyboard was replaced with a Logitech G-15. It's already met a quick death and I'm sure it's replacement will meet the same fate! ***

Got Cherry? - Written Jan 2008

OK, any one that knows me knows that I have been a gamer from WAY back in the day. That being said, just playing a game gets boring. I like to explore all the different things that you can do in a game. I'm the idiot that will actually map an entire section of a game just to see what it looks like. So, is it any surprise that as a hyper personality, I have a whimsical side when it comes to Player vs. Player (PVP) style gaming? That doesn't surprise anyone, does it?

I used to play Freelancer a lot and we wrote a mod for it, including a total music re-write. So I got to spend a lot of time sailing around in a spaceship and being Victor's little Bullet Magnet. We never did figure out why if there were 3 of us flying together, the ship that usually took the full barrage of the first volley was mine. I still to this day think that Vic somehow had some custom code for my player name… I am convinced that there is some bit of Victor code that reads:

If Playername = "Fidgaf" Then BulletMagnet = True

So, anyway, before that mod, there was one previous that Vic had written and it ran on the Ioncross server. The mod was a hit across the Freelancer community and I was lucky enough to have found the server for which it originated. The only problem was that the mod unlocked a whole bunch of things that were good AND a bunch of things that weren't so good.

There was the "Uber" ship that everyone wanted to fly called the Anubis (AKA an-N00B-us), worm holes that weren't available in the regular game, all kinds of cool weapons and the Nomads for which it was to die for their guns because they used zero energy.

The basic premise of the game was to either take a bunch of missions or a bunch of cargo and work for various "Houses" to gain reputation, money, unlock new stuff, etc. You'd get attacked by various things, kill them or run, blah blah blah. The Pirates had the best missions so you had to temper working for them vs. working for an established house. Meaning you had to go work for the police and do their chump change stuff to offset the Pirate missions which always paid WAY more, otherwise you couldn't set foot (thruster, wing, whatever) in certain areas of the game.

The map itself was pretty large and it could take an hour or so to get across the vast universe. The solar systems duplicated our earth's structure where the "Liberty" forces represented the USA, Britonia = Britain, The Kussari = Orientals, Rheinland (spelling intentional) was Germany, etc…

Since it took so long to get from point A to point Z, you'd usually hang out in a system or 3 and look for ways to make money that didn't take all night. Unless if you had money, you couldn't make money. The first week on this server was spent driving water all over New York at a profit of about $4 a unit. Since the ship could only hold 20 units, you can see what a slooooow start it was. You could have 5 characters on the server, and with the help of a friend you trusted, transfer cash among them, but that first one was a bitch.

After acquiring the Anubis, going out to the wastelands to get Nomad weapons, the best tail gun & shield in the game and finding just the right setup of thrusters, I decided that I was going to hang out close enough to the Pirates so I could work for them AND still be able to work for a house to keep my "Good" rep up. Somewhere along that time period, we learned the art of jousting in a space ship.

There was this nifty little thing you could do called "Free Flight" that was their attempt at duplicating space flight, frictionless, what ever you did to turn was all thrusters and would drift and bounce off of things. This caused hull damage and if enough occurred, you had to fix it with some onboard Nanobots, Shield Batteries recharged your shield.

We'd get together and "Duel" practicing various tricks, getting the timing right to shoot someone coming at you at 800 meters per second while you were doing the same. Ever try to hit something moving at 1600 meters per second? We got pretty good at leading a ship so the person would literally fly into your hailstorm of fire. I won a LOT.

Why did we work so hard to get this good? Well, there was a small group of punks that learned how to use certain things to cheat. We called them the "Torpers" because they would sneak up on ships and use torpedoes on them without provocation or fair warning. They would attack a helpless Cargo Vessel, threaten to blow it up and extort them rather than earning their own credits in the game. Why did the Cargo ships pay? Because they were usually carrying something "Illegal" in their hold and didn't want to loose their investment.

Contraband, the only way to make a decent buck in the game. Smuggling was the fastest way to make money and boy, was it hairy. I decided that since I had already made a decent amount of $$$ I'd invest in a cargo ship. Now, somewhere along all that, I met Ricman. I didn't have the VoIP (Voice over IP) servers setup yet, so we're talking around 1999-2000. We had been doing the hardest missions together and raking in the $$$ so I trusted him.

This is when I started to discover the psychological aspects of online gaming. Most gamers are male and they are a SUCKER for a female gamer. I have YET to see an exception in ANY game I've played PVP. The older the male, the more this is evident, the more susceptible they are to female charm.

There was a group of us that hung out all the time, and I decided it was time to start smuggling in the cash. We had a ranking system, and although my kill rate was rather high, I could never be number 1 on the server until I got my cash maxed out. I created a new character and very quietly enlisted Ric to help me move over 20 Million Credits to it. This is the birth of "Little Red Flying Hood". Now, you can see where this is going, right?

There was a wormhole in the same system that we used to hang out in. It popped over to a Pirate base that sold "Cardimine", an illegal substance in the game. Using the largest (and slowest) Transport, filling your hold and running it to the mother planet in this system made killer profit. It also attracted every free loading brat that was on the server.

The transports have guns, but trying to kill anything in this view is difficult at best. The run could be done as long as the little dick didn't have cruise disrupters that would knock you out of high-speed flight. If you got hit, it was far better to negotiate a deal ASAP before a patrol caught you sitting there with a hold of stuff that they were going to confiscate. Having an escort is a far cheaper option though.

Ric escorted me for a while, but it does get boring for him. I created another character and set that one up Identical to my main character. One cool thing about this game is that you could "Park" in space and leave a ship pretty much anywhere, no need to land. Hence the birth of "Little Red Fighting Hood". Seeing a pattern here? I used to park this ship aiming at any place where I saw someone hijacking or attacking transports. A quick F1, switch characters, aim, hit thrusters to accelerate the speed of the shot and BOOM! Goodbye asshole! F1, switch back to my transport and get the hell out of there!

Now, on this server, we had a rep and everyone that thought they were a bad-ass came out to see how good we were. That being said, the last thing I wanted anyone to know was that I was smuggling. I'd be the target of everyone in the game, hence the Gender switch. Yup, Little Red was a 21-22 year old Red Haired woman that happened to also be Fid's younger sister. She was in collage and that's why she didn't get to play too often. Since we used the same computer that would explain my absence when she played.

Why do this you ask? NOBODY knew except Ric so my friends and even past enemies FLOCKED to her and helped her out. I had an ARMY of escorts that didn't want to get paid. I was getting even for all the times they blew up my Ric's or my original transport costing us millions of credits!

Since Little Red FIGHTING hood's rep was getting pretty well known and I'd made a fortune with everyone's help, I decided to give smuggling a rest, let things cool down and have some fun with the character. Considering I even changed the WAY I typed in the chat window, nobody caught on. Fid typed "Where U B Dude?" and Little Red typed "Where are you?". This mental separation became second nature to me and I credit it for giving Little Red Life.

We went back to jousting, me acting like the tough little n00bie Red Haired chick that I was supposed to be and they "Taught" me how to Duel. It never occured to them that I was a REAL fast learner and kept winning a LOT, perhaps something wasn't on the level? Na, Fid's Little Sister, must have the same reflexes... YA THINK? ;)

One guy really took a shinning to me and was my "Free" escort there for a while (coulda been all that dirty chat I sent him… ;) ). He was totally convinced that Little Red was a real breathing woman, that she thought older guys were "Hot", talked dirty to him and he was hooked.

Someone would threaten me? He'd jump in and defend me. I'd want to go somewhere, he'd want to go with me. This was a pain when I was trying to meet Ric to do a cash transfer, but hey, we got around it. Little Red had him wrapped and boy, did I get us in a peck of trouble… Guys cannot resist a Damsel in Distress, it's got to be something in us, but a woman in trouble needs to be rescued. Meet "Cherry Picker"… Gee, I wonder where he got that name from…? I totally had him wrapped and he was eating it up like it was going out of style.

Several years later, sitting on my Voice Server and chatting with a rather large group of people, we were reminiscing about the old days. We had the whole original crew hanging out and we were talking about what was fun about the game.

I made a comment to Ric along the lines of: "How about that Little Red? She was a Wild One, eh" and we both started laughing. Everyone was like "What are you two laughing about?" So, with much giggling, I simply said: "I don't have a little sister". Everyone cracked up because they understood that I was posing as a Chick back in the day and they all fell for it. Much "Good Job" and kudos at fooling everyone, all's fair in Love and Gaming, good play.

Then I realized… I had NEVER told Cherry the truth about that, totally forgot to fess up… And he was in the same channel… His shocked reaction was "You don't have a little sister? Who's Little Red then?" More laughter, and then dead silence as it finally filtered through his head… "Uh, I knew that… I just didn't want to blow your cover!" My response? "Sure you did… Still want that date Big Boy?" More laughter, kidding, Cherry Jokes ensued. Good times!

Got Cherry? I sure did!