Beau Jackson

This morning, my daughters got up before I went to work (they’re usually asleep when I leave).

We have 3 kittens who made the transition to being outdoor cats, but the girls wanted to let them in to play. They like to carry the kitties around, so Allena wrapped them up in blankets like babies.

Elizabeth (the 4-year-old) referres to them as burritos when they’re wrapped up like this – actually she says “beeritos”, but you get the idea. Anyhow, she was carrying her little pink kitty beerito around and the kitty made it’s escape. Elizabeth said “aaaww…the spilling came out!” I’m sure she meant filling, but either way the thought of a cat being the filling in a burrito…very amusing.

The cats names are “twinkie”, “zinger”, and “tootie” – but “tootie” was originally named “ding-dong”. We had this whole snack cake theme going. Maybe we should have named them “chicken”, “beef”, and “frijole” instead…

Well…I wish it would really rain here…it’s awfully dry. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

The ranch grew in population rather spectacularly over the last few days. First, we had a chicken we thought was dead turn up with a couple of chicks in tow. So we got four more chicks, and four duckies too.

Today, we brought home our sheep…we got two shetland sheep, and some cross-breeds.

After getting them settled, we got a phone call from a friend offering us two feeder pigs for a great price, so I guess we’re going to get them too.

Oh – and a couple of weeks ago, we got three new kittens. They’ll be barn cats eventually, but for now they’re fuzzy terrors racing around the house.

It seems I’ll be building even MORE fence in the near future. Still, it’s kind of neat to have all these critters (even if some of them are just for eating (insert evil laugh here). It occurred to me today that I never had kittens or puppies growing up, and I sure didn’t have anything that would be considered livestock. I had cats and dogs, but they were grown by the time I was old enough to remember them. I had some fish, and a salamander for a while.

Several years ago, when we were moving back to the farm a friend of mine (*cough*cough*mike*cough*) made a comment about our children rolling around in a dirt lot with the animals. He thought it was funny…I think I was a little put-out, because I didn’t see myself as all that rural at the time – it was just a place to live that had 75 acres attached. Irony is a wonderful thing.

Well, we don’t have any dirt lots (does a big garden plot count?) but somehow our kids find enough dirt to warrant baths on a regular basis. They don’t roll around with the animals either, because the animals are either too big to roll around with (i.e. horses) or too fast/smart to get caught by small children (chickens). They do maul the dog on a regular basis, and they have learned to catch the kitties, who seem to enjoy beeing caught.

The funny part about it is I’m very pleased with it all. I can get all the critters I want. Sometimes I think “sigh…another animal to feed”. It’s not the cost of the feed…it’s just one more chore. But mostly, I really enjoy having all the animals, and look forward to having more.

I’ll have to let everyone know when the pigs are big enough to eat…I’m thinking “big ol’ bbq!”.

At Mike’s suggestion, I installed Gallery tonight.

I’ve only got a couple of pics in there so far – just kicking the tires as it were. I’m going to have to fiddle with it extensively so that I can get it to match my theme at least a little bit. I recognize some of the functionality – I’ve seen the random picture thing on Richards site, and I’m guessing it’s from a Gallery installation. Fun stuff.

As an asside, Fantastico is great. So far, everything I’ve wanted to install has been available as part of Fantastico, and Gallery was no exception. It sure makes life a LOT easier when the stuff you want is already waiting for you on your web hosts machines, and all ya gotta do is click a couple of links and it’s up and running.

I saw an article in the news today about Richard Hatch – the guy that won
the first season of survivor. It was even classified as “Top News” by the
AP.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060810/D8JDLFEO0.html

I’m thinking the network is missing a golden opportunity here…he’s
getting ready to start his jail term for tax evasion. Can’t you just see
it? “SURVIVOR…THE PRISON SEASON”. This season, we’ll be introducing 30
people into a maximum security prison and seeing who lasts the longest…

The beautiful part is, there probably wouldn’t be much complaining about
who gets kicked out of the game. “Oh well…I got voted out of
prison…at least I won’t have to share my bed with “Bruno – the – homicidal – maniac – who – likes – reality – tv – show – constestants – too – much – for – comfort” any more.

I’ve never been a fan of reality tv, but it might be an interesting twist.

Actually, I think you could have a lot of fun with the genre – imagine
signing people up for a $1,000,000 prize…but you don’t tell them what
the game is until you start taping. Sure, it’s easy to say “I can stick
it out on a tropical island”, but what if you didn’t know where you were
going to go or do? How ’bout an Asian sweat shop? Maybe a Siberian
gulag…the opportunities are endless.

Tomorrow (the 7th) is our son’s b-day – he’ll be turning 13. We got him a robot kit for his birthday and let him have it early – it’s called a BOE-Bot and I gotta say, I’m a little jealous. BOE is a pun of sorts, and stands for “Board of Education”. It’s basically a little circuit board with a little bitty processor on it, and I/O ports for various doo-dads, all mounted on a little metal chasis with a couple of servos and some wheels.

It comes with a programming environment for the PC and uses a variant of the BASIC programming language called P-BASIC. It also has a serial port, so it plugs right in to the computer for easy downloading of your programs.

Dominic (my son) has come to me a couple of times to help him debug a program (dang typo’s will get you ever times) or to help him figure some other thing out. It’s all I can do to let him learn and explore it on his own. It makes my geeky-father’s-heart swell with pride to see him programming his own robot that he built and wired up all on his own. ;)

I may have to get one of these for myself…hehe. If you’re interested in your own bot, you can get refurbs on e-bay for a LOT less than a new one costs.