Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, holidays, language, rescue industry, Schadenfreude, Sunset on April 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Censorship [is] wildly popular among…those who believe the most terrifying fact of the world is that others beside themselves have free will.
– “Ship of Fools”
[In contrast with the] cost…[of] second-rate, weeks-old grocery store eggs…two hours of literally shoveling shit twice a year…begins to seem like a good bargain indeed. – “Diary #665”
“Nonprofit” merely refers to the organization; those who run it often make plenty of profit. – “Schadenfreude (#1425)”
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, Sunset on March 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »
As you can see, Axel and Speck are now friends. I can’t really claim any credit; Speck was the one who made all the overtures and slowly got him used to her presence. I apologize for this being a poorly-composed picture; that lump under the blanket is my leg, so if I’d tried to get up to catch the shot from a different angle, they might’ve moved. Alas, Axel has not stopped being aggressive altogether; a few days ago a stray cat came into the atrium and if I hadn’t called him off it would not have been pretty. But one step at a time; at least he leaves the resident cats alone. He is now down to 50 mg of trazodone per day, in a single dose at bedtime; that’s a lot lower than what he was on when he arrived in late November, but it’s still quite high considering he’s on a typical human dose despite having only about a quarter of a typical human body mass. Even so, I’m going to keep weaning him off of it slowly; since I stopped splitting the dose between afternoon and bedtime I’ve noticed he’s a bit more antsy in the afternoons, so just cutting him off would still be a bad idea. His next reduction will be this coming Sunday, down to 25 mg, so we’ll see how that works out and proceed accordingly.
In chick news, I typically keep them inside for three weeks, so they should’ve gone out into the henhouse nursery on Sunday. However, the turkey chick is two weeks younger than the others, and the predicted low on Sunday night was -4o C, so I held off on putting them outside until today (it was only a one-night cold snap). So watch next week for a video of them in the newly-rebuilt nursery, where they’ll spend the next three weeks before I start letting them out in the daytime to mix with the adult hens.
Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, Words, tagged animals, blogging, censorship, fascism, language, law, politicians, psychology, Sunset, Twitter on March 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »
There really isn’t an excuse for repeated attempts at social engineering that aren’t even tied to some kind of grift, pork, or fascist collaboration.
– “In the Dark”
Being able to look out a window and see grass and trees and animals…is so much better for my mental and spiritual health then being subjected to a “view” which consists of nothing but concrete, glass, and automobiles.
– “Diary #664”
“Innocence” is merely a fanciful euphemism for “ignorance”. – “Tweetenstein”
For me, no sorrow is ever experienced in isolation; new tears falling into the pool immediately cause it to overflow, and then it’s impossible to tell how much of my anguish is due to the proximate source of the grief, and how much is old pain which has never been fully resolved. – “Pool of Tears“
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on March 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Yellowbird wanted to try turkeys again, and they came in Friday so Chekhov brought them over. Unfortunately, by the next day one of them wasn’t doing too well; she seemed uninterested in the food or water even though the other one went right for them. By Saturday evening she was obviously dying, and before 10 PM she was gone; given that like chickens she was living on her yolk until Thursday, my guess is that she had some disorder that kept her from eating as normal. The other one has joined the other chicks, and though she’s smaller right now last year’s experience demonstrated that won’t be for very long. On Sunday I expanded the enclosure, which will give them more room to run around and should help to keep their water from constantly getting fouled; I was lucky enough to catch them in the act in this video, so you can see how the water needs to be cleaned so often at this stage of development. This coming Sunday they’ll be going out into their nursery in the henhouse; this past Sunday I finished mucking out the floor, bringing in fresh hay, rebuilding the nursery (the old chicken wire had corroded badly in our damp climate), and spreading fresh shavings in there so it will be ready for them this weekend. So tune in next week at this same time for a look at the new nursery and its quickly-growing occupants!
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged animals, disease, Sunset, video on March 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »
If you’ve never had another living creature under your care, you may never have considered how much time and effort is spent dealing with their poop. Babies need to be changed several times a day, and if you’re in a city dogs need to be walked (out in the country they just let us know when they want to go outside); cat boxes need to be cleaned about twice a week, and henhouses need to be “mucked out” twice a year. That means using a shovel to remove all the “poultry litter”, which is merely a concise term for the revolting mixture of decaying hay or shavings, molted feathers, spilled food, and fecal matter which builds up on the floor over time. I generally do it in March before I get the nursery ready, then again in September or early October as it begins to turn cold. But when I did it last autumn it really wore me out (like any shovel work, it’s rather strenuous), so a couple of weeks ago I decided to start filling just one bucket every day (when I go in to check feed & water and collect eggs) and dumping it on the compost heap; that way the work is spread out so as to be less exhausting and less odious. While the chicks are still in the brooder, their poops are generally so tiny it’s no big deal to clean the shavings every week for the three weeks they’re inside; once in a while a chick gets a turd stuck to her butt-feathers, but it’s typically easily removed with fingernails (if you’re a parent you’ve touched worse, and there is such a thing as “soap” when the task is done). But this time one of the chicks arrived with a hardened mass of feces; I’m told this is called “pasty butt” and it can actually kill them if not removed, because their vent gets clogged. And it’s not easy to remove; it’s so hard and baby chicks are so fragile that one can’t simply pull it off, which means filling a basin with warm water and dipping her butt into it to soften the mess before removal. Once I was done I got to see and hear something one doesn’t encounter every day: a chick fart, as she squatted and emptied her chute with an audible “poot”. It has been a week since then and she seems fine now, so I think we’re past the danger. And I’m sure y’all enjoyed this fascinating discussion of literal chickenshit, so it’s a win all around.
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, video on March 10, 2026| 4 Comments »
It’s chick time again! I used to get my chicks at Tractor Supply, but they do first come, first served and a lot more people are buying chicks in the past few years than there used to be, so now I’m ordering them from the feed store over in the county seat. This year I got four Rhode Island reds; regular readers know I rotate the colors to make it easy to keep track of their ages (because chickens only lay for 2-3 years). Technically, last year should’ve been reds, but at the time I still had two reds and only one white, so I got whites last year (and the last one died a few months ago). Our last red died just recently, so it worked out almost perfectly; next year should be some dark color, though these blacks turned out to be disappointing layers, so I’ll need to do a little research on which dark-colored breeds lay as well as the reds and whites. But one way or the other, chick season always makes me smile every time I go into the bathroom where they live, and sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear their peeping through a closed door and all the way in the living room.
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, psychology, Sunset on March 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »
As you can see, Axel has continued his progress from nervous wreck to very good boy. I caught this picture of he and Speck bathing together on the 14th, and I’ve seen them even closer than that on occasion. Speck has returned to her habit of wanting to be close to me while I’m unwinding on the sofa, though not as much while I’m working at the computer (which is probably for the best); he lies on the other side of me, sometimes cuddled very close to my legs, so he and Speck are less than an arm’s length apart for hours. He doesn’t even stare at her any more, nor does he try to chase Rocky or Lilith when he’s in the atrium, so last week I took a chance on bringing him through the chicken yard with me to go up the ramp, and he barely even looked at the hens. Yesterday, I decreased his trazodone from 75 mg/day (where he was for all of February) down to 50, and in two more weeks I plan to just start giving him 50 at bedtime rather than splitting it into two doses; I figure that will give me an idea if we’re getting close to taking him off of the meds entirely, since his blood levels should be pretty low by the time each evening rolls around. I think the warmer, drier weather is also helping, because he can spend a lot more time running around and sunbathing outdoors and playing with Trip, so he has less pent-up energy at the end of the day. Assuming that all goes well, it looks like he’ll be off the meds by June, and I imagine by the end of the summer his bad times should be no more than a dim memory in his little doggie brain.
Posted in Diary, tagged Lost Angels, Sunset on February 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »
My life is made so much easier by the generosity of friends and readers! After my resourceful and generous Australian friend read about my current technology issues, he decided to do some research and discovered a free, open-source PDF-making software which will run on XP! He sent me the link last Monday; I downloaded it and it works perfectly, so now I’m back in the process of preparing Lost Angels for publication. The day before that, Chekhov dropped by, ostensibly to get some eggs and return a borrowed tool, but actually to give me a new TV set he claimed to have got on sale. It wasn’t too difficult to set up, and fortunately I was able to bypass all the streaming-channel setup stuff, which would have just been a waste of time. We did, however, discover that Samsung has planned-obsolescenced their own older soundbars by ensuring there is no compatible means of connecting them to their newer TV sets. Not to be daunted, Chekhov ordered a new soundbar to be delivered last Thursday, and though it was easy to connect I had a new problem: it barely put out any sound. To reach a comfortable viewing volume, I had to set the old soundbar at about 30 (of a maximum 100), but the new soundbar is nearly inaudible at that level; depending on the DVD and other, more mysterious factors, I had to raise the level to 75-100 for comfortable viewing (and it only goes to 100). The internet told me this is a known issue with Samsung soundbars, but provided no useful information on fixing it; every “separate” article I could find was apparently copied from some ur-text, right down to the wording, and none of them are much above the “make sure your cable is plugged in” level of helpfulness. Finally, Samsung customer service via text talked me through resetting the soundbar, so now it sounds good at 60. But I won’t be surprised if I end up having to do this more than once, or perhaps even regularly.
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on February 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Laying chickens are bred for maximum egg output, so they tend to have shorter lives; two of our older hens died in the past few weeks at three and four years old, respectively, and both were laying up until the end. But Jae brought in four Ameraucanas a few years ago, which are now six years old; they don’t lay nearly as often, but they’re still laying at what is quite an advanced age for chickens. When I went to collect my eggs on Saturday, I found this in the middle of the henhouse floor; it’s even smaller than pullet eggs, and since it’s green it’s obviously from one of the Ameraucanas. Presumably, near the end of their lives they experience something analogous to menopause, and this is the result; it does make me wonder just how much longer I’ll still be getting at least some output from elderly hens that have always laid more eggs than I expected.
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged STEM, Sunset on February 10, 2026| 2 Comments »
As I mentioned last week, CenturyLink finally got around to fixing my internet problem; the main issue was a corroded wire in the node near my house which was causing a series of errors that eventually caused my modem to “time out”. The technician said having an older modem, while not the actual cause of the issue, was exacerbating the problem, so he gave me a new one, and everything has been fine since. However, two other tech problems have now materialized, and with Grace gone I have nobody here who knows about this stuff enough to help me. So I figured I’d ask my many tech-savvy readers for help.
The first issue is that the PDF Architect software I bought in 2014 and have built seven books on suddenly decided that my copy was not “authenticated” and refuses to function without a new key PDF Architect will not give because they conveniently no longer “support” the software I bought and paid for which still perfectly fulfilled my needs up until now, and want me to pay for their fancy new subscription-based service over and over again each month, though I only use the software when I’m publishing books. Frank found me free software that will run on my XP machine, but he has never used it himself, so I’d like recommendations; all I need is resident software (not web-based) that will run on XP and combine multiple Word files into a PDF. That’s it; no bells & whistles are necessary, and free is good but inexpensive is also OK.
The other is that on Saturday evening my TV, which has been unhealthy for a few years, did something really strange: I was watching a show and a sharply-delineated vertical white band, bounded by several alternating bands of grey and black, suddenly appeared in the exact center of the screen. Stopping the disc had no effect so it was obviously the TV rather than the disc; I turned it off and turned it back on, and the problem vanished for the rest of the evening. But this smells like a harbinger of imminent catastrophic failure, so I’m going to replace it. Given that the last attempt at replacement was a failure, I should probably get either a newish low-end Samsung (to be compatible with the DVD players) or a 7-8 year old refurbished something else. But again, I don’t need bells & whistles, and I don’t even really want it to connect to the internet; I want the closest thing to a dumb monitor that will simply allow me to play DVDs that I can get. Any advice?
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