Those who can't game - give in

Ok, so there's this game called the "World of Warcraft" out there. It's one of the largest and most popular games on the grid these days with millions of subscribers all over the world.

Since I haven't really had the time or the people around me to find a good game, I gave in and decided to give it a whirl. I've played other characters on the game before, but normally I play for a month and then back off and go back and forth so I can convince myself that I'm not addicted.
This is Malhezra, my Blood Elf character on the server called "Turalyn". A friend of mine talked me into playing this race with only three words. "Aristocratic. Magic. Addicts."

Malhezra is a Warlock, he controls curses and things that cause damage over time rather than direct damage. One of the benefits of having a Warlock is that they can control demonic servants. Yes...that's the small, school-girl squeal of glee.

I have minions.

The most used demonic servant is called a Void Walker (shown here), but you can also have an Imp, a Succubus, etc.

Oh... I also found the screen shot function over the weekend. I couldn't resist posting.

-Tom

Pumpkin Butchering

The poor thing didn't know what hit it. I snuck up on it with drunken, cat-like grace and stabbed deep into it's top. Oh, the screaming that could be heard (if you imagined that I could sneak up on a pumpkin, then you can definately imagine it screaming). I left the blade in the wound for a moment to snap this picture and then begun to scalp off its' top-knot.


The Huron were known for their ability to remove a man's scap before he fell dead to the ground. I wonder if the pumpkin knew what had hit it when I pulled off the 'lid' and gazed down into the bowls of its guts.

Once I had pulled out all of the insides and set the seeds aside to dry slowly in an oven (yes, I'm just that sadistic), I began to wedge the corpus. This is what came from a medium-sized pumpkin. I'll have plenty left over once I dice the body up into bite-sized bits.

Overall, the pumpkin yielded about two-quarts of inch-thick chunks of punkin. I've bagged 3/4ths of them and used the remains to brew up some pumpkin soup.

The soup wasn't bad (thank god for the roasted red pepper to give it something other than a bland flavor), but I would consider it a base; something to add veggies to it to make a stew.

Half and Half

The last of the green was covered this weekend as the remnants of the Lime Green Leisure House fades into memory.

The tan and tan combo almost makes it look like some version of desert camo, but anything is better than the Green.

Let me repeat that:

ANYTHING was better than the green.

The only thing to be done now is to spray the rail white and look into some outdoor carpet for the porch.

-Tom

Night and Day

Over the past week and a half, I have been working on painting my house. The house, formerly known as the "Lime Green Leisure House" was painted a very minty green for years.

Ivy coated almost all of the north side of the house and the combination of forest green foundation and minty green house just was painful to look at.

Well, this fall - after the house next door was painted - my dad, the family's house painter, was "convinced" to help paint mine.

Step 1) I had to remove all of the ivy from the north side of the house. For years, this ivy was the source of bags and bags of decoration for the Winter Rose event for our Shire in Ashland. Even with me whacking off lots of the vines, it still grew back with vigor every spring. So this was a big step to try and kill it.

I've found that you can't really kill ivy unless you engage in chemical warfare. All you can do is destroy most of what you see and hope that you've encouraged it to grow elsewhere for a while.

So once I had all of the ivy off of the house, I had to deal with all the tendrils that clung to the wood. These things are a pain in the ass to remove even with a razor blade.

So that took me a very long time to be able to have the side of the house ready to be painted - even if only just to cover what couldn't be scraped off.

One hundred and fifty dollars in paint later, I have the front three sides of the house completed and trimmed and now my dad is adding the foundation paint to remove the last shades of green.


I'm going to have completed pictures once I get the foundation done, the hand-rail spray painted and all of that completed.

Kitten Pics

Now that I've gotten them into a box and Cinder has accepted that we're not going to play the "hide and go seek the kitten" game, I've got a pic of the remaining 3.

This morning, my mother came over to pick up one of the kittens, one of the all-black ones, and take it to her house to keep the first one company. So now I have three kittens for Cinder to nurse which should be easier for her. A running theory between my mother and myself is that Cinder may have pushed the first kitten away and ignored it because five kittens were just too much on her system.

That's a theory at least.

-Tom

Ref: Phantom Kitty, Phantom Kitty My Ass

Phantom Kitty My Ass

Ok,

So it's 1 am and guess what I found?

Not one,

Not two

Not even three

but FOUR kittens in my living room.

I left the basement door open enough that Cinder could move them through and they all decided to mew at once and I heard them.

So apparently when Cinder just watched the first kitten with distaste, she was being all catly or something and refused to give up the location of the others.

Pics to follow.

Kittens.

Ugh.

FIVE of them.

Ugh.

-Tom

Ref: Phantom Kitty

Papers and Ink

It's that time of year again. The second week in October should have a note in it to make ink. The walnuts have fallen in suffecient quantity that they're easy to find and it's not too hot outside that you can't boil the bejezus out of the slurry to reduce it down to a good concentration. With fall in the air and the pumpkins ripe, it's time to throw some strange ingredients into a pot, stir with a stick and enjoy the moment.

And that's what I did.

Yesterday, my day off, was spent grading papers for my Intro Psych and Soc classes. It was also the day when I put a pot of walnut ink on to boil. As walnut ink takes at least three hours of simmering to reduce in volume, I try and plan something so that I'm able to watch it fairly easy and stay with it so it doesn't boil dry or froth over in the early stages. The process of making Walnut ink is fairly simple; much more simple than grading intro Psych exams.

Preparation of the Walnuts:

1. Gather non-rotten walnuts, at least half a satchel full.
2. Get a veggy grater from Big Lots - one that you don't mind never using for anything else.
3. Find a rubber / latex glove for at least one hand.
4. I use a shallow, plastic plan to collect the walnut shavings when I grate them. I think this one is a cheap litter pan also from Big Lots.
5. Shred up half of the satchel's load of walnuts if they're small.
   
1. With the drought this year, the walnuts were very tiny.
2. You're looking for about a fourth of a gallon of shredded material.
3. Toss the walnuts (not the hull that you're shaving off) into the woods to 'recycle' them.
4. I use the largest side of the shredder otherwise it gums up too fast.
   
6. Add the shredded hulls to about three-quarters of a gallon of water and let it soak over night.

After the slurry soaked over night, pour it into a large pot over a medium to low fire and stir occasionally.

So while I was watching the slurry cook down, I started grading my papers.



Let me give you some background about the Psychology assignment that I was grading: It's a combination extra-credit assignment and take-home test. My students didn't do so well on their first test so I assigned them to take a copy of the test home and using their notes and text book, answer the questions. It was designed to give the students some free points to help bring their grades up since some didn't have their text books until a week before the test. I assumed that I would get a few mistakes here and there but nothing too terrible since it was OPEN BOOK.

What I got back from my students can only be described as laziness. Most of the students missed between 8 and 9 questions out of a 50 question test. This is technically the second time that they should have reviewed the materials. In my opinion, the students shouldn't miss more than four or five to get full credit and no less than 10 to get any credit. Thankfully, over half of the students who actually turned in the assignment, got partial or full credit. However, I caught two students cheating.

Cheating, on a take-home assignment.

I saw that one of the assignments was poorly photocopied. What makes it worse, is that they student photocopied the test AFTER she wrote her answers. (they were mostly wrong to begin with) The copy had a pen used to poorly cover the original answers in hopes that I wouldn't notice the similarities.

As if.

Once I discovered the cheating, I put the tests down for a second to strain out the shredded hulls from the slurry.

I use a strainer that is just for making ink and remove most of the cooked, shredded hulls. Once I remove the material, I can let it boil down to about one-fifth of its original volume.

So then I went back to my papers and finished up with Psychology. There were no more cheaters found but I wasn't happy with the number of students who just didn't put in the effort to get any points. They're just not getting it. Then later, I worked on Sociology and enjoyed myself a lot more.

I've found that this term, my Sociology class is the 'good' one. They're more willing to discuss the topics, debate the issues and generally come prepared. Psych - not so much.

So now I'll be turning in the students for Academic Dishonesty and sealing up the ink for later use.

-Tom

Phantom Kitty

So there I was on Friday afternoon working on the house so that it can be painted. I was scraping and ripping down ivy and all that while trying not to think about my tooth since there were no dentists in or any who could see me until sometime next week.

I hate not having insurance.

So when I sat down that evening, I heard a very odd sound. A kitten was mewing in the basement - in that "I'm lost come find me" kind of way.

So I went downstairs and figured that it was coming from the same place that Cinder had her litter back in August. I knew that she had two and one was dead immediately and the other died within a day or so. What I saw was a black and white kitten around two weeks old. So then I thought: "Did she have another litter?"

Well, I pulled it from the basement and found a box for it. Since my cats are quarantined into the basement for a while, I left the kitten's box under a table so that it would be somewhat out of the way. After about two hours of it crying, I started to wonder where Cinder was. Since she can't get out and she has plenty of food - I couldn't figure out why she was letting it whine so much.

I went down to check on things and saw Cinder and Rusty looking down on it as though it were some kind of alien life form that was disrupting the harmony of their basement kingdom.

So I picked up Cinder to try and coax her into the box, and that's when it hit me. She's not lactating. Her nipples are flat and dry.

This was somewhat confusing but since I don't know that much about the care and raising of cats I called in my expert; my mother.

Since the 'Time before Times' she's been caring for animals. It is this quality of hers that earned me my first nickname while I was still en utero. She had always been taking home stray cats and such and nursing them back to health so I was simply another 'Tomcat' that she had found. At least that's one of the stories I've heard on the topic.

She suggested that I show some attention to the kitten in hopes of getting Cinder to take care of it - some kind of maternal jealousy thing I think. That didn't work. The kitten mewed and cried all night long without so much as a five-minute break between bursts.

Saturday morning came and it was still screaming for attention or food or both. I went down to check things out and Cinder was no where to be found and Rusty looked like a new father who had been up all night long with a screaming baby. Not a happy camper. I got a hold of my expert and asked for some advice. She said for me to bring it over to her house so I bundled up the meow-machine and headed over.

She has a few cats at her place (to put it mildly) and one of them had just finished nursing a litter of her own. The hope was that she might adopt this new kitten. While we were waiting to see if her cat would adopt the strange kitten, I had a chance to look through my journals to find out some dates. There was simply no way for Cinder to have gotten pregnant after her litter and had this kitten that fast. It's only been a month. Maybe 5 weeks at best and the kitten is, itself, at least two-weeks old (due to its eyes being open).

So I have no idea where the kitten came from. I did have a hole in my basement window's screen for about three days so it's possible another cat dropped it off down there - but I would have thought that Rusty - who almost never leaves - would have informed her that it was a bad idea. Also, I sealed the screen gap on Wednesday morning and didn't start hearing the kitten until Friday afternoon.

So where did the thing come from?

Phantom kitty.

My Week

Monday All-Day:
Grading papers for take-home psych tests for extra credit.

Tuesday Morning:
Changed mind on house color from light gray to Tan (Coffee + Cream / Khaki)

Tuesday Evening:
Forgetting to pay cable: Last-minute payment.

Wednesday Morning:
I replaced the water pump on my car.

Wednesday Evening:
My buddy goes into the hospital with some heart problems.

Thursday Morning:
Another friend calls to tell me that she's in the hospital after an emergency Appendectomy.

Thursday Evening:
My tooth cracks and I end up accidentally swallowing it while giving a lecture in class.
It's broken off at the gum line.

Friday Morning:
Plan on buying some paint for the house
Find a dentist to pull tooth?

Saturday All-Day:
Painting the House?

Sunday All-Day
More painting?

A pen can save your life, no really.

My grandfather had mentioned a favorite fountain pen to me the other day when he saw me writing in my journal with my Pelikano. He told me a story of his mother buying him a fountain pen before he went off to war and how it never failed him even when he carried it with him to Spain, Africa, Germany, etc., during the War.

A few days later, he mentioned that he found it again in his desk and asked if I wanted it. An antique, vintage, war-era fountain pen that has been in the family for a few generations and was used to write letters back to my grandmother when he and she were dating?

To say that I wanted to snatch the pen like a pack of dingos in a maternity ward... would be the most polite way of describing my eagerness.

So I got it and held it tight and immediately began to search what it was.

From Penspotters:

The Parker Vacumatic is one of the most avidly collected of all vintage pens. They're fairly numerous (and more new-old-stock examples seem to crawl out from under rocks every day), and they range in price (and desirability) from the smaller, later models up to larger 1930s models, or those with special finishes or other unusual features (like the gold-fill metal caps on some later models). Collecting Vacs is an ideal avocation for those who like to impose order on chaos, since you can spend decades tracking down one of each color, style, and model name produced (and there'd probably be a couple more lurking out there in the bushes that you hadn't counted on).

In about 1938, Parker introduced a “Split Arrow” clip with the name PARKER written vertically. (The pen shown here is actually from the 1940s.) Shortly afterward, some Vacumatics appeared with this clip modified slightly by the addition of a star at its top.

The pen has a refillable reservoir inside that's filled by a pump at the base of the cap.

As with any old pen, I assumed that any Vac that survived the War will require some restoration. According to all the websites I've been able to find, his is emphatically NOT a job for a first-time do-it-yourselfer. The diaphragm replacement is not straightforward and requires a special "vac tool" for wrenching out the filler unit


Though I really wanted to dunk the nib into some ink to see if I could get it to write for me, I'm looking around to see if there are some tips for cleaning it. The nib is bent a little but that just gives it character. According to my grand dad, that's the only thing that's wrong with the pen - he dropped it on the floor of the destroyer he was serving on when they got hit by something. When he reached to get it, something flew over his head and "damn near killed him".

Karma pen- thy name is Parker Vacumatic.

-Me

Bladejester?

So here I am reading through my blogger hits to see if anything odd popped up and what'ya know...

One of the links was from the Chillicothe Gazette; a forum post actually.

So I looked it up and someone named Bladejester made this comment:

"mr. natural -

Contact the person who has the following blog.

http://tomsdigitalnotebook.blogspot.com/

Book binding and script are hobbies of his. He knows what he's doing, and if he won't do it for you, chances are that he will point you toward someone who will. He's a decent sort as a general rule"

So... I'm curious as to who would Bladejester be.

According to the forum profile, they're in software development.

The post was from November of last year and the guy, Bladejester, mentioned me by name.

How... curious. :)

I'm on forums now!

-Me

The Cigarette Diaries

From MSNBC:

"This book contains notes of a nature meaningless, I believe, to anyone else but myself. You are perfectly welcome to read them; however, don’t say I didn’t warn you."

Cigarette Diaries
On Sept. 13, 1944, the B-24 with bombardier Second Lt. Frank J. Pratt was shot down by the Germans over Poland. These are excerpts from the diaries he kept in captivity—many of which were written on the backs of paper wrappers from cigarette packs.

I love hearing that another 'survivor' journal has been found and made public. Though the contents may not be displayed for all to see, the fact that someone held themselves together and made record of such a traumatic moment in their lives with a journal is the closest I think I'll ever come to understanding a religious moment.

A journal is a prayer you make to yourself and to those who come after you. It says within its pages that there was hope and that history shall not be forgotten.

-Me