Might I suggest myself? For only 120k a year I'd certainly be able to write a better one than "80153005". What does that even freakin' mean?

All I know is that I get it every time I try to download the Orange box demo on LIVE, I previously got it a few times for blacksite 51, but it went away.

How about "This download is available for Gold Members only"....or "Silver memberships sit in the back"...maybe even "This demo is not for poor people, go away you vagabond, eat your hobo beans from a can and try not to freeze to death on my property this winter".

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GZAZ_enUS229US230&q=80153005

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

omg....bioshock is so cool. Makes me long for the good ol days of system shock, then again I'm probably just excited that I got a new game to play after selling back Residient Evil 4: Wii. Got 50% of what we spent for it...yeah baby. Thank god/santa I have a wife who understands gaming!

Tomorrow is Juliets vet checkup....here's hoping I won't have to give her any more sub q's

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Congrats!

Gave the first subcutaneous fluid treatment today, have to say it was easier to shove an 18 gauge needle into her than I thought it would be. She really did a great job.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So we brought Juliet back yesterday from the emergency care clinic. Her BUN values dropped down to 41 (ideal range is 16-36 avg) so we could continue her care at home using subcutaneous fluid injections and medication. No word back yet on her urine cultures, but I'm sure we'll hear back eventually.

Julie is still skinny as hell, and a little beat up, but she mentally seems pretty much back to normal. Now the real question will be how her body bounces back. Without 24/7 care and diuresis, it's still up in the air about how her kidneys will function.

Time will tell I guess.

The bill was another surprise of course. Care like that doesn't come cheap, but it was a lot more than we expected. So for Christmas this year we're gonna just pet the living hell out of her until we get our money's worth. Or maybe Jen will knit me a pair of mittens out of all her fur or something. We'd be ok if we hadn't replaced the roof this year, but I guess nobody can really see something like this coming.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been almost 2 years since I put up a paint booth in the basement for spray painting, and yesterday was the day that we finally took it down. I had put it up with the thought that having a booth in the basement would allow me to paint not only at any time of the year, but contain the god awful mess that a power sprayer makes.

I really only used the power sprayer for the 6 panel doors, because nothing else works really quite as nice. But one of the nice things about having that area setup was also having place to go and make a mess without thinking about it. No need to worry about where overspray would go, or drips or anything. Still....Friday I finished up the last of the doors so it was time to get rid of it...*sniff*

Anyways, I took some pics before we took it down just to show how dirty it got.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just got off the phone, it's only been 24 hours but her readings have improved

BUN:
was 214
now 110

creatinine:
was 9.9
now 5.8

phosphates:
was 13.9
now 7.9

At least it's some good news, even if it doesn't tell us what is going to happen in the end here.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the last week we've been noticing that our cat Juliet (was my mother's before she passed) has been losing weight. At first with everything going on in our lives I attributed it to the recent change in food, but yesterday we got worried enough to bring her into the vet.

Turns out things are a lot worse than we thought, and her kidney's were shutting down. The sad part of this is usually by the time you can see a cat's kidney's are failing, they are already almost 75% gone. The point is between her age and progress of the disease, she's pretty much almost guarenteed to die or need a lifetime of daily care.

We were given two options; euthanize her or give her expensive and immediate 24x7 emergency care at a local animal hospital that runs.....well runs 24x7 (our vet closes on weekends past noon on Saturday). As it stands right now Juliet is in 24 hour care receiving diuresis (which is massive amounts of fluid to flush her system and hopefully restart whatever is left of the kidney's at this point). It takes 3 days at least to tell what she will bounce back with in terms of kidney function, and at this point the odds are very poor she'll have anywhere close to enough to live normally. The question really is how much, and will it be enough to make it.

Juliet is a cat, and one that normally doesn't even like me. She didn't even belong to me, nor did I purchase her. On top of that we can't afford the multiple hundreds if not thousands of dollars this is going to run, and even if she survives she'll never be herself and almost always require daily care to survive.

So the fuck what. It doesn't matter how I feel or am inconveinienced, she is a life, and when I took her into our house I accepted responsibility for that life. I'm not going to put her down just because it's the easy choice, and placate myself with soothing cliches like "it's for the best" or "she was in pain but now she's not"....not while I know there is still a chance for her to pull through, even if it's a slim one. So what if I can't afford to buy the latest video game or beer to drink. I'd rather go through life with none of that then so rashly and calously kill her because it's annoying to have to deal with it.

I'm not going to pump her full of drugs and make her a zombie, but while I could end the lives of a thousand cats, I still can't make a single one. That just tells me that I want to make sure we do everything we can.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

omg.....maybe we wouldn't be so sick if Connor would stop sticking his gooey little hands in our mouths.

Damn his cuteness...damn it to hell!

Bought some new shelves at IKEA, they were a little expensive but I need more space around my desk for all my books. My desk is currently a freakin' mess of papers and hardware....just not enough room anymore.

Jen also was finally able to get the other two night lights to match the first one we bought.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Writing papers again is proving harder than I thought it would. It's really difficult for my mind to switch gears from examining data packet captures, and then next trying to figure out if I'm using a semi colon correctly and without comma fragments. My brain just doesn't work that way.

At least I've got my first revision of my paper due Sunday completed already. That might give me enough time to actually install a curtain rod in Connor's room so we can hang some curtains up there. Crossing our fingers that it will help him nap better during the day.

- Who said pit bulls were the only dangerous dogs? Penis eating Dachshunds are pretty scary as well. Seriously....there has to be more to this story. What kind of a fool leaves a baby on couch, and how long does it take a dachshund to knaw through a diaper? I can't believe that kid wasn't crying during that. I guess Norm McDonald was wrong...weiner dogs are dangerous.

- A Star Treck chandelier....might look cooler with red bulbs on the end instead of while though. Jen already said no to this though :(

Here's a pic I never got time to upload until now:

Posted by Dennis Judd at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you.

- Oscar Wilde

Posted by Dennis Judd at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I learned two things yesterday.

1. You can get a great deal on a replacement light fixture if you convince the guys to take down the floor model and sell it to you. $22 bucks is not to shabby. Funny thing is instead of buying the fancy fluorescent tube ones, when the ballast goes you'll end up paying more to fix it. Instead just buy a normal screw base light fixture and buy compact fluorescent bulbs. Much easier, and not quite as cheaply made as the other ones. (we had a ballast damn near catch on fire)

2. Great Stuff Expanding Foam....does not come off your hands. Evar :(

Posted by Dennis Judd at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I couldn't believe this when I read it this morning, but how can you make this stuff up?

From the Wall Street Journal:

With the worst housing market in recent years, St. Joseph is enjoying a flurry of attention. Some vendors of religious supplies say St. Joseph statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses.

Demand for the statues has been growing. Ron Weissman, who sells the statues at Good Fortune Online, says about six months ago he switched to online transactions because the increase in calls -- from about two a week to 25 calls a day -- was too much to handle. Richard Weigang, owner of www.catholicstore.com, says he sells about 400 statues a month, double the amount he sold a year ago.

Ya know, there was one of those in our back yard when we moved in. Guess they didn't realize they were supposed to take it with them? Or perhaps they figured it didn't work since we refused to budge on our offer for 3 months until they gave in. Either way stupid crap like this just gets my goat.

With the housing market feeling the hangover of the latest bubble pop and credit crunch, people stupid enough to believe that burying a piece of plastic in the ground (in the shape of a catholic saint) will help deserve to be miserable. I'm not even religious, but holy cow is the idea of people gleaming onto it to sell a house offensive.

Let's not deal with the fact that any market that goes up, also will come down. Let's not deal with the problems that predatory lending cause with ARM's that were basically time bombs with double digit interest rates after 2 years, or the fact that lack of regulation in the mortgage lender field attributed to loans being given to people who could barely fog a mirror. No. Let's spend more money on purchasing a silly little statue on line and burying it in the lawn.

Want to sell you house? Drop your price to market standards you idiots....not what you thought you'd get after watching a marathon of Flip that House.

Posted by Dennis Judd at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)