The Peristaltic Testator

It is finished! The heated hummer feeder! Right now, I've got it going for an hour simply to test high temperature of plain water after a continuous hour.

I know I promised pics, but… it seems we've lost the data cable for our camera (I know, we still use such things, being old). Instead of gripping graphics, I'll just summarize construction ( with words. )

For those in the greater Seattle area, I have a desperate request.

My poor old cat——we don't know how old, but the evidence is mounting that she is very old, probably pushing 17——is dying. Slowly and painfully dying. She is all but paralyzed, unable to move more than a twitch in four days.

I thought it would be easy to call up our vet and arrange euthanasia. Not so much. They need me to make an appointment; and they are booked up for a week. Getting in earlier would mean "emergency" charges (more on that later).

I called around, did local searches. There are in-home vets that will help peacefully end your pet's life; but damn, they are expensive. (And, for some unknown reason, the one that called me back had "no availability;" I have no idea what that could mean. I suspect I sounded poor.)

And right now, due to some shit timing, this is an expense I cannot afford. In mid-March, I had an on-the-job accident; since then I have been reduced to 60% of wages until I return to work.

Last week, I had reconstructive knee surgery; I cannot walk on, let alone put pressure on my knee, let alone kneel on it to even pet our poor suffering kitty. Given the reduction in wages, my savings will be all but depleted by the time my knee should be able to let me work again… and that's without the cost of helping kitty die peacefully.

Does anyone know of affordable euthanasia (my limit right now is $200) in this blighted, cruel, God-forsaken area?

Addendum: Kitty finally rests in peace… no thanks to the veterinary community that added 6 painful days to her suffering.

So I'm yakking with the sisters after The Obligatory Feast™, catching up with family gossip. A cousin, always notoriously flat-chested and close to the older sister, had a bit of surgical enhancement a few decades ago that recently "popped" and had to be cleaned and replaced. (I saw her recently at a family gathering; the enhancement is hardly porn-worthy.)

I realized and said, "So that means that breast enhancement surgery has a rack life?"

This is weird. A few weeks ago, I got a video through that big subscription-based DVD rental program, a biopic of actor Tab Hunter. A few minutes before the end, the movie just stopped, froze mid-sentence. The player would not respond to any commands except Eject.

No problem. I sent the disc back, reported the non-playability, and got another.

The exact same thing happened. Figuring someone got lazy and just polished the disc before mailing the same one back, I reported once again that this disc would not play. Before slipping it in the mailer, though, The Wife™ wrote down the serial number.

New disc, new serial number. Same problem. Freeze frame, no play.

We slipped it into the newer player in the other room, and it played.

That was last week. This week, a new movie about independent video game designers.

This time, the movie froze once again… in both machines.

I can only assume that someone out there is using a popular video editing/formatting program to code these into DVD format that has a glitch, but a glitch that only glitches in older DVD players (we don't buy the latest and the greatest when the old machines still work just fine).

If this is the case, I see doom on the horizon, since I appreciate small, independent productions a heckovalot more than big-budget flicks.

Anyone else stub their watching on this?

Which is good. Throughout this ordeal, though, I noticed something.

My allergies disappeared. I mean nothing. No sneezing, no coughing up stuff that snuck behind the nose (post-nasal drip, which I have constantly).

Years and years ago on LJ, I dipped a toe into a smattering of research that was looking into the connection between allergies and parasitical infestations. It turns out, for one remembered example, that residents of Borneo don't sneeze when flowers pollenate. Like ever. They also have a pretty constant but mostly benign population of various critters making homes in their bodies.

I wonder if the initial infection (whatever the fuck it was; it has yet to be diagnosed) somehow reminded my body that there are worse things to fight than cat dander, and took a break from doing so while I was wracked up in bed for damned near a month.

And now, this initial unknown pain in my ass/ear is nearly healed, and the body is bored again and keeping me up coughing and sneezing.

I must say, being able to breath normally for weeks on end (without doping pills and drops and the like) was a refreshing treat I would welcome back.

…there are any doctors reading this, do deign to listen to your patients, especially when they tell you they are in a great deal of pain.

I did not appreciate having to find another doc that could prescribe the pain killers and antibiotics I said I probably needed in the first place.

Another doc, this time in an Emergency Room.

At 1:30.

AM.

I got a good shot of… hard to explain.


An eclipse at 92%
as viewed through cedar trees.

Essentially, a whole wall at work was filled with the same crescent image. It was cool.

There's a new bridge under construction here in town, a floater (just like the old one) that bobs atop Lake Washington between Seattle and the north part of the East Side (as opposed to the bobber that bobs betwixt Seattle and Mercer Island, farther south). I've been driving across the newest section since the day it opened to traffic. Compared to the old bridge (still being demolished right next to the new) it's a smooth ride.

With one exception, that is.

Since this is a floating bridge, and since the level of the lake varies from day to day (sometimes from hour to hour, in a heavy downpour), the bridge requires a flexible section bridge people call an expansion joint. You feel these joints when you cross bridges, generally; they're like an old cattle crossing gate, a series of bars perpendicular to the road's direction of travel. As the bridge flexes with the movement of the water below, the bars either get closer or farther from each other. Given the number of bars involved, this allows quite a bit of movement. Think about it: put twelve bars down and an inch difference between the bars is a foot of overall travel.

There is one grumble from the neighbors, though. Since they opened the East section, peeps living nearby have noted the noise. It has increased compared to the old bridge.

There were some significant changes, of course. The new bridge is taller, for one. And I believe the expansion joint is larger. Whatever the cause, be it placement of the noise maker or the overall size of same, the state bridge builder has been scrambling to find a solution.

So, Wednesday comes along, and my friend secures me a tour of the new section, still under construction. And I see this thing.


It's called a sinusoidal plate.

Sinusoidal, like the wave form. (The construction guys giving the tour, though, kept calling it a sinus plate, which my friend and I found pretty funny. Nose jokes galore.) Look carefully, and you can see the parallel straight bars below the waveform plates; those are the standard compression joint elements with the waveform pieces simply bolted atop.


Here's another pic, but not as crisp, due to [reasons].

The theory, and it's a good one, is simply that car tires hitting that plate will not hit the plate in the same perpendicular plane at once. Rather, the leading edge of the tire footprint will hit the nearest "point" and follow the curved sinusoidal shape. Different impact points means a smoothed impact sound, just like a muffler allows the escaping exhaust gases to not bang out the pipe, or a spiral cut gear doesn't clack when it rotates.

Sadly, given the size, the other compression joint on the east side (we were touring the west side, still getting built) cannot be easily adapted. Replacement would be required, and that would cost multi-millions.

Here's a thought: could you just buy out the neighbors? Pay for the houses they cannot easily live in?

Here's another thought that should put that cash outlay in perspective: the neighborhood affected by the rumble of passing freeway traffic has as one resident Bill Gates. He's about a mile from the rumblin' joint.

It'll be interesting to see what they can do.

My power company sends out these Home Electricity Reports every year or so, just to let folks know how they are doing in comparison to their neighbors (those within a one mile radius, at least). Wouldn't you know it? I finally mad the naughty list of those who suck waaay too much power through that wire. Ah, but did I drastically change into a incandescent holiday display weirdo, or start practicing with my Tesla coil-based garage band?

Watch on YouTube

Not me.

No. What I did is below, in the letter I just sent them. Enjoy.

Dear Power People,

I just got your "Home Report" in the mail, and I have a quibble: it's nonsense.

Don't get me wrong; this is not nonsense I noticed before, either. But really, am I now, after years of moderate use according to your previous letter, suddenly an average over-user of energy compared to my neighbors in a 1 mile radius?

No, no I am not, when one factors in that I bought an electric car last year. But then I realized: you don't know that, do you? I mean, how would you?

And that got me thinking: you don't know that my wife and I also rely on an electric water heater and range/oven as well, and that our prime television is a smaller (relatively, anyway) LCD, not a wall-sized mongo plasma monster.

Which got me to thinking even more: what if you gave everyone a survey asking about what power suckers we have in the house, uh, before you accuse us of being "energy" spendthrifts?

Until you actually do that, please take us off what I am renaming your shaming list. You're preaching to the choir here, and we're having none of it.

Sincerely,

Perry Staltor

Oh, and I decided not to supply any other identifying information on my part because, hey, it doesn't matter to the overall Report: unless you have everyone's data, you may as well have no one's.

Hey, LJ,

Has anyone else out there noticed that email desktop clients seem to no longer work like they used to?

Specifically, in my old client (Eudora), the program would access email, delete the email from the email server, and move to the next message.

Now, I can't seem to find a client that will do that. Instead, they all have accessed email, copy it to desktop...and that's it.

I don't want that. Is anyone else informed on this issue? Can you explain what is going on?

TIA,

Perry Staltor