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      Saturday, February 08, 2003



11:08 AM - 02/08/2003

The topic: Yeah, no news is good news…

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Saturday, February 8, 2003 And I’ve got news.  Not really bad, but it wasn’t good.  It was Kirby’s scary adventure news.

If any of you watch the webcams (that’s them, at the top of the page, clicking on a picture will take you to that camera’s page) you may have noticed they haven’t been working correctly the past week or so.  And for quite a while the catcam chair archives aren’t three minutes apart, as they are supposed to be.  Thursday and Friday this week, I got the new cable router working with the help of D-Link support, lots of help from them.  I even had to call Microsoft because the Network Neighborhood icon wasn’t on my desktop; fortunately, you get two calls for support at no charge and this was my first on the Gateway. (I was on the phone over an hour with Microsoft and after all the deleting and rebooting, come to find out the icon was there the entire time, I had just renamed it….I laughed out loud when I realized that.  But it was okay because there was a conflict somewhere on my system that what we did fixed.)  Now, Thursday night, all of the cats but Benny were already in the house when I decided it was time for ‘kitties in’.  That made it very easy for me.  But last night, it wasn’t to be.

Last night I was once again in the office working on the new setup.  For some reason, the 3Com cameras (which are once again being offered under a new manufacturer’s name) weren’t uploading correctly.  The backyard cam and the officecam are both 3Com cameras and they were taking forever to load, if they loaded at all.  I uninstalled their drivers, reinstalled them, with no luck.  I tried one of the cameras on the Dell and there wasn’t a problem with it, so I knew it was something going on with the Gateway.  I finally deleted all of the 3Com drivers.  I did a search for 3com on my system and deleted anything that looked to be connected with the 3Com cameras (just uninstalling a program using add/remove doesn’t delete all traces of it).  Of course, every time I did something, I’d have to reboot and it takes forever on the Gateway (one of the reasons I’m seriously considering reformatting the C drive, which I’ve never done on that computer).  During these breaks, I’d look for the cats. 

Brian mowed the lawns yesterday, leaving the shop door (you can see the shop using the remote control on the backyard cam) so cats came and went.  Well, when he closed it, he also closed in Opie and Richie.  I finally had all cats in and as I usually do, I went through the house doing a visual headcheck.  I couldn’t find Kirby.

I figured maybe he was still in the shop so I went out to the backyard and opened the big shop door hoping he’d run out.  No Kirby.  Brian and I looked all over the house.  I looked all over the backyard, several times with a flashlight.  I checked the pool.  I checked all of the grass around the pool.  I checked the bank.  I checked the doghouse.  I checked under the pool pump.  I checked the tube where Georgie likes to hide out.  No Kirby.

I was also working on the computer and finally got one of the cameras to work the way it should.  So, I uninstalled the driver for that and reinstalled the multicam driver (with the 3Com cameras, you can run up to nine 3Com cameras on the same computer; for those who don’t know about this kind of stuff, a driver is what runs a program.  In windows, you can’t have one driver run two cameras.  If you have an Intel camera, you can’t run two at a time.  But with 3Com, you can when you use the special multicam driver).  I got the second camera installed and they uploaded quickly and smoothly.

Another thing I did was to remove a bunch of programs I no longer use.  It took until almost ten last night until I got everything running the way it’s supposed to.  Even better than it was before getting the Ethernet router.  I left it running for testing and looked more for Kirby.  I checked under the sofa and loveseat in the family room.  I checked behind the sofa in the living room.  I checked every single cat condo.  I checked closets he might have gotten into.

Keep in mind, I was going on the assumption that Brian had seen him when he fed the out fronts.  That would have put him in the house at seven last night.  Brian said he’d seen him, why wouldn’t I believe that?  And I did believe him.  I knew that Kirby must be somewhere on the premises, since Kirby isn’t a climber and doesn’t try to escape from the yard. 

It was around 11:00, I think, that I heard a cat.  I looked out one of the entry way windows and KittyMeeze was looking towards the bedroom side of the house.  I put on slippers and grabbed a flashlight.  I walked out quietly, calling to Kirby.  I walked around the side of the house and saw nothing.  I went back inside.  I laid down on the loveseat (sofa was taken by cats) and fell asleep for about an hour.  Then I looked around again, Kirby still wasn’t in.  I went to bed.  This morning, I woke up at a quarter to four, got dressed and went looking for Kirby again.  I opened the sliding door and let cats out.  I walked back to the shop and shut the door that I’d left open in case Kirby had been hiding in there.  I had the flashlight and I noticed at the side of the house where the bedroom and office are, that Jackie was watching something towards the gate.  I walked over and there was a cat on the top of the fencing.  “Kirby?” I said.  He meowed back.  Oh, crap!  Kirby was out of the yard!  I placed the flashlight on the ground, making sure not to make any sudden moves.  I walked towards the gate, talking gently to Kirby.  He walked down to the wood on the top of the gate, behind the barrier.  I slowly opened the gate and he jumped to the ground.  Now, the mind works really fast, it thinks without thinking, you know?  And mine was thinking “come in the gate, Kirby, don’t go the other way” and Kirby came in the gate and ran into the house. 

I was so happy to see him!  I called him into the kitchen and fed him some of the tuna I’d opened last night.  I petted him and kissed him and he was a happy cat.  He even let me hold him for almost thirty seconds before wanting down.  I got the other cats in (except Opie, who went out the ‘in only’ catdoor and I didn’t see Benny), shut the door and at 4:30 this morning, I went back to bed.  Brian was awake and we talked about how Kirby got out.  Now, I find out that he thought it was Kirby when he fed the cats.  He wasn’t aware that Mickey also goes out there for a little taste of the out front food.  He was pretty surprised, as a matter of fact.  As near as we can figure, Kirby had snuck out when Brian was doing the yardwork.  Brian was done before six last night.  So, Kirby was out the whole time.  Brian said he’ll have to be more careful in the future.  He thought he was being careful last night.  But I’ve seen him when he’s doing stuff and honestly, he doesn’t always pay attention to what the cats are doing (remember the time Kirby was on the roof after Brian, during yard work, had moved the swing too close to the house?).

Then as I was trying to get to sleep, I started thinking “did I give Boney his Lasix yesterday?”  I got out of bed and counted pills and damnit, no, I hadn’t.  I gave him one right then.  Speaking of Boney, he was really good when I gave him the fluids.  Those stupid needles, though, some of them are garbage. I probably couldn’t draw my blood with one, let alone push it into a cat’s skin.  His breathing is a little heavy this morning and I’m sure that’s because of the fluids building up.  Hopefully, forgetting his pill yesterday won’t do too much damage.  He has gotten his other pills when he should (two in the morning, two at night).

I got up for good at 5:30 and let the cats out (I let Benny out of the shop, he apparantly ran in before I’d shut the door this morning at 4:00), fed them chicken, gave the out fronts their morning snack (thanking KittyMeeze for the great job he did last night of taking care of Kirby) and came back to the office and got the cameras and weather station working.  Brian got up at six and took a shower, then I took one.  We went to breakfast and were home at a little before 7:30.  Junior got his shot and Brian left for the day with his brother to do some work up at Ranchita.  So, the rest of the day is mine.  What should I do with it? 

I had originally planned to get the Ethernet router working today, but that’s done.  Tonight, I’m going to defrag the C drive of the Gateway again.  The router has an awesome firewall, so I was able to remove ZoneAlarm. I could always do laundry.  I’m still haven’t done all the stuff in the exercise room.  But I sure don’t feel like it.  Right now, I’d love to lay on the sofa and read a book and maybe take a nap.  I am pretty tired…..

I like days when there’s no news….


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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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