Some cool my photos images:
My dad managed to catch a baby horny toad for me... :) it's the first (and last) one I've ever seen.
Image by DeeAshley
This photo is not edited, taken with a canon g-11 about 1.5 years ago. My dad recently passed away of cancer and I miss him terribly. This is a fond memory that I remember him sharing with me. :)
My cat was bitten by a radioactive cockroach
Image by Steve took it
My cat was bitten by a radioactive cockroach. That really is the only logical explanation for her transformation the last few years. Just like Spider Man gained his supernatural powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, she has become the Amazing Cockroach Cat.
TC (named after "True Colors", the Cindy Lauper tune) is going on 20 years old now. I'm considering changing her name to Skeletor. It has been almost three years since she was diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid problem requiring pills and tests and surgery and all kinds of indignities for the rest of her life. After having gone down that road with a puppy that did not survive long anyway, I decided she had lived a long life and I'd simply spoil her, feed her good, spare her the daily medical regime and give her the most comfortable senior years possible. Again, that was almost three years ago.
That must be fairly close to when she was bitten. The first of her cockroach powers appeared shortly after when she began to transform from my neat, fussy, tidy cat into a creature that can tolerate -- no thrive -- in all manner of filth. She pretty much stopped cleaning herself. Her feet stink, she usually trails dingleberries, has a constant secretion of goo coming from her eyes and keeps a perpetual hunk of dried cat food clinging to her nose. I no longer have a small out-of-the way liter box discretely available for her use, but an entire room covered with a tarp and three big litter boxes hoping one might appeal to her. And once in a while one does.
The second cockroach power TC developed was an insect-like bony exoskeleton. Petting her is like touching some kind of tiny crooked, hardened washboard with a tail. She has weighed less than three pounds for over a year, consuming three tins of cat food and a cup of half-and-half a day. Each night she selects a new location to vomit about three quarters of that, which I usually discover in the morning before I get my shoes on.
The third cockroach power she has gained of course, is that she will never die. I've taken her to the vet several times wondering if she is suffering, but she seems to still be hanging in there enjoying her new cockroach life. She's actually become far more affectionate now than in any of her previous 16 years as a cat, purring and climbing on my lap and doing her best stinky cockroach-cute impression. I can't help thinking that is just her reaction to knowing how much I'd like to get new carpet though.
Anyway, here's my TC after one of her baths she must take now, drying out in the sun, and planning how to how use her cockroach powers today.
7/12/09 update - I posted this photo over two years ago. My cat passed away shortly after that. She didn't quite make 20 years but had a great life and enjoyed playing and hindfooting with her toys right to the end. I do miss her.
Thanks to all of people who empathized with one of the toughest decisions there is to make - how long to let an elderly animal live and when to put it down - especially when you can't talk to a cat to hear its wishes, and even humans have vast differences in how much they want to live or die if in pain.
In the end the pills did not seem to do anything and giving them was such an ordeal that we skipped the thyroid medication and just kept taking her to the vet to tell us what to do. Twice we packed her up, said our good-byes and took her into the vet who said she was still hanging in there and no need to kill her yet. Again, its a tough tough tough thing to go through - and sometimes you have to laugh through the tears .
Thanks to all for the considerate concerns - and best of luck to the many of you who have faced similar difficult situations. Take care all.
my desktop - i think it's the coolest evar ;)
Image by insidious_plots
(cross posted to my site/blog/lifestream/whatever christophercornelius.com/wp/2009/07/04/a-tour-of-my-desktop/ )
first i want to point out that this is on a 42" lcd hdtv in the living room and i use a wireless kb and mouse...
second, pretty much everything you see is Yahoo! Widgets, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and Stickies... if you want your desktop like mine, just google those names...
on the left is our budget for the month using Stickies, but, if you look, it is a bit transparent and you will see it is actually the top sticky atop a few others, but this is the only open one - they roll up... (i hide windows desktop icons under my sticky notes...) you can see i have another little note in the middle of the screen, at the top...
beneath the budget are a couple icons of stuff i need to do - check out the PlayOn app, put Iron Man on my mom's psp, etc.... it's sorta' my to-do stack... and the bottom left hand corner - that little blue thing - i can drag a file onto that and it will auto-magically upload it to the 'stuff' directory on my website...
ok, at the bottom edge is ObjectDock - ya' know, like the dock on a mac... it is hidden until i hover my mouse at the bottom of the screen and, as my mouse moves, the icons under it enlarge... in this pic, i clicked on 'APPS' and it opened the assortment of apps i keep handy... not pictured is the other ObjectDock, which i have set up as the system tray/task bar - it's hidden on the left... i have used ObjectDock (paid version) for years and can't live without it... it does many more tricks i won't get into here...
ok, the news headlines are Rainmeter - which is like a widget engine, but not for the faint-of-heart - it is very complex to customize and you need to have some coding knowledge... as you see, i have rss feeds from home-barista for coffee geek discussions, playstation lifestyle for ps3/psp stuff and google for "real" news...
in the middle, since i love love love photography, a Yahoo Widget showing recent popular photos posted on DeviantArt on the left and another Yahoo Widget on the right with recent popular photos posted to Flickr... they are set to change every few minutes... i leave room since the photos come in all shapes and sizes... both have very impressive customization settings as far as what kind of content to show... for instance, the deviantart widget, of course, has tons more types of art than photography and the flickr widget can show your own stream, favorites, photos from groups and/or contacts, and you can even use it to upload to flickr...
at the top, pretty obvious, Yahoo Widgets for date/time, cpu usage, and upload/download speed...
which brings us to the right edge... i have been a webcam junkie for years and this is a Yahoo Widget called WebImages - several instances of it, of course... i have used several methods for desktop webcam monitoring and this one blows all the others away... the depth of options and customization can be intimidating at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SOOOO worth it... the radar is the local weather radar, of course... the rest are cams that update once a minute... i have each set up to sort of a theme and each contains more than one cam - when it updates, it switches to the next cam that one monitors... for instance, the top is local - alternating between a cam in cloudcroft and one in las cruces... the next down is home - albuquerque - four different cams and once a minute, it shows a different view... the next three are assorted cool/interesting places - cams in las vegas, italy, california, and others - all three contain a list of all my favorite cams around the world and, once a minute (or whatever i choose to set it to from once a second to once a day) it cycles to the next cam in its list... or, if one of them has something really interesting going on, i stop the cycling and set it to update in near-real-time and each one has a button when you mouse over it to enlarge it as big as you like... you can hit another button to save the current image, even...
but, now i'm gushing ;P
oh, and the very bottom one is NASATV - the widget can stream the video, but, i just have it set to show a still every 15 seconds...
anyway... that's my desktop...
christophercornelius.com
