Our unpredictable cat, Ness, loves to hunt. Showing we humans his prize, particularly the unexpected which would catch us unaware, was a highlight for him. One could almost detect a certain sparkle in his eyes or imagine a smile on his face in the course of these occasions. Evenings were his prime time for hunting. However, he would want to be inside the house relaxing and sleeping by 10 pm.

One fall night around 9 pm there was a muffled ‘meow’ at the door. Automatically opening the door to let him inside, I glimpsed something out of the ordinary about his mouth. Upon second glance I realized it was a bird! By this time he was halfway down the stairs into the basement. Yelling to my husband something about a bird as I was hurrying down the stairs, persuaded him to hurry in the same direction.

Arriving downstairs, we witnessed the cat catching the winged creature in mid-flight, dropping to the floor, releasing his ‘toy’, and re-catching it. Realizing this was a game, my husband, acting on instinct, ran to grab the bird when it was free to fly. He missed, startling the cat. Ness took a second or two to get his wits about him to go after his prey, where it was 7 feet or so off the floor. Gathering all his strength, that cat managed to hurl himself to a height in order to hit the bird with his front paws—hard enough to knock it to the floor. My husband was ready. He grabbed the defenseless creature, ran up the stairs, out the door, and opened his hand to let it freely fly away. Being semi-stunned, it took several seconds to make flight. As it flew away, we humans realized we were very glad to have the bird out of our house.

Ness, however, spent the rest of that night in the basement searching for his prize. The Bird had lost feathers during the fracas and down sticks to carpet and upholstery like glue. We thought all the evidence was entirely vacuumed, but periodically Ness would come out of the basement with a piece of down stuck somewhere on his furry body. From that day forward, whenever he was outside and ‘meowed’ to have the door opened, I made sure his mouth was empty before he gained entry into the house.

TAS by Timo Taipaleenmäki (aka. Shinryuu, TaoTao, pirohiko & FinalFighter) in 24:33.5 minutes.

Ah, the sweet glory days of Mega Man. Easily my most favorite title concerning the blue bomber. The graphics, music, and gameplay harmonize well together and truly make the video a joy to watch, even if you’ve never played the game before.

As far as quickness goes, 24 minutes may seem like a long time, but in a game like this, it’s pretty amazing. There are a number of whacked-out glitches and shortcuts that normal people can’t do. The lead-in and the fight with Bubble Man (starting at 12:32) is a great example of what I mean. Another bizarre happening occurs with the mechanical dragon boss at the end of the first Wily stage (starting at 16:21).

*Note: the game used is actually the Japanese version, known as Rockman 2, but it’s the same stuff.

I’m pleased to officially announce that the site has been upgraded to what I’m dubbing version 1.2. Not a whole lot of aesthetic changes, but a few new features, site redesigns, and general code cleanup.

Some highlights include:

• Subscription button at the top of the sidebar. Include themusings in your feed and know exactly when we’ve added something new!
• Recent and Popular posts shown in the sidebar.
• Individual posts have been restructured so that they flow smoother. No longer are they divided into blocks (ad, post, comment, reply); instead, they are one crisply defined segment. A share button has also been added.
• New pages: Contact, About (redone), Donate, and Beast’s Recommendations
• Category, Month, and Author archive pages have also been redone to display the date and color-coded link of the post (green=Beast, pink=Susie Q) instead of displaying each blog posting in its entirety.
• Numerous back-end coding changes and fixes to posts which were not W3C compliant.

After three long months, I’m proud to announce the completion of the WoW Head Enchant table v2.0. Aesthetically, not much has changed; for now you can compare it to the shoulder enchant table and see that there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two. However, underneath the hood, there are a ton of changes. Too many to list in fact, but the main source of time consumption came from rewriting the entire core from scratch and transforming it from html into javascript so I could take advantage of a few specific JS elements. And while I’m still not 100% satisfied that this was the best way to go about it (there are three scripts being called to run, totaling 122kb, which is massive), the thing finally works and I’m extremely satisfied with how it all turned out. Hooray and enjoy!

Subsequent enchants *should* go much more smoothly.

[part I]
[part II]

Shortly after our arrival at my parents’ farm, my husband and I had a serious discussion over whether or not to replace the yellow Corvette. Neither of us was willing to trust it for the return trip to Alaska. It just so happened that he had already scoped out the local car dealerships and guess what? One of them had a new 1969 white Corvette on the showroom floor with a price tag of $6,005.00. So we said good-bye to the yellow and ‘hello’ to the white. My mother, who was not a car person, kept calling it a “Corvair” (a five passenger compact car) which was blasphemy to my husband’s ears.

A picnic at John Brown’s Mound with family and friends signaled the end of our Missouri stay. The following day we packed and loaded the new Corvette, bound for Washington to catch a ferry. Our mission was to keep the new car off gravel roads as much as possible.

Stopping in Seattle, I was introduced to my husband’s uncle and wife. Spending the night at their house proved to be interesting. The only unoccupied bed available was a twin size. The Uncle said, “You two are newlyweds, you won’t mind sleeping on a twin bed.” We had been sleeping in the car since leaving Missouri, so a chance to stretch out horizontally - no matter the width - was great.

We left the following day to catch the ferry bound for Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where we disembarked and spent the day sightseeing. We enjoyed the opportunity to visit the island with its lone city of steeples and spires. After a good night’s sleep, we headed for the ferry terminal at the northwestern portion of the island. One more boat exchange in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and we were on our way to Alaska. The whole trip was exciting as it was my first ship ride. The scenery was spectacular, particularly along the Inside Passage.

The voyage back to Alaska was relatively uneventful compared to the road trip we had experienced just weeks before. Our budget did not allow for staterooms so we slept in deck chairs. We learned to pick our “beds” early in the evening as we were not the only ones sleeping on the deck, and the lounge chairs went quick. The ship was heading for Petersburg, Alaska where it was rumored that a group of locals would board for a little bit of fun and laughter around midnight. I remember wanting to stay awake to witness the event that would take place in an hour or so. However, I was so tired that sleep overtook my best efforts to stay awake. The next morning, my husband told me that I was the star of the night. Seems as though one of the Petersburg locals tried his best to wake me, but to no avail. Others came to observe and help, but I was zonked. No one could fathom how I could sleep through all the noise, much less the tormenting!

Five days on the ferry had flown by when we found ourselves anchored in Haines, Alaska, our disembarking site. It was now time to drive the new car on gravel for 350 miles before reaching the Alaska/Canadian Border, and pavement. We were on pins and needles, hoping that the new car would survive this stretch of road. Once we finally hit Alaskan pavement without incident, all three of us released a collective sigh of relief. The remainder of the trip proved to be smooth sailing.

“Be it ever so humble there is no place like home,” a quotation that had vivid poignancy for us as we climbed out of the Corvette to greet our unassuming dwelling place. We vowed not to take this home for granted, but more importantly, never to drive a Corvette over the Alaska Highway again. Lesson learned!