Send more catnip

I'm usually of the opinion that there is a reason why the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats, not dogs. I mean who would ever mistake a dog for a deity? They are known to eat their own feces after all!! To make matters worse, after eating something nasty, they want to lick your face. Definitely not a candidate for the false god list.

My cat is usually a well-mannered, well-behaved critter. However, this winter she has developed a bad habit that recently left me with a rather stiff neck. Cats have this passion for finding the warmest place on the premises and then parking themselves there.

I had been working on some documents on my computer for awhile, and decided to take the trash out. When I came back, my cat was sprawled comfortably across the computer keyboard, presumably for the heat generated by it.

Once I had kicked her off of my computer, I discovered that the screen now was presenting things upside down. I would have had to turn the screen 180 degrees to have the display back in the usual anatomic position. I figured fixing it wouldn't take very much time... I mean if a cat could figure out how to adjust the display so that she could read it while her head was upside down, it shouldn't be that hard. About an hour later, after trying every computer control screen on the system, I had a very stiff neck and still had an inverted image on my screen.

Fortunately, Al Gore invented the internet for us years ago, and I eventually googled fixing the upside down screen. It turns out toddlers have been pulling this trick for decades, and after reading the upside down advice on google, my screen was righted.

Now if I could only figure out how to keep the cat away from the computer. Yesterday she locked the keyboard. However, she was kind enough to leave the instruction panel displayed on how to unlock it. So if you get an email from my address asking for catnip, please disregard it.

Long time no post

Yeah, I've kind of been busy.

My life in Chattanooga is sort of on a downward slope now. I'm trying to get some of those remodelling projects done that I've been procrastinating about so that my house will sell. I've even started packing some stuff. The fact that I won't need that stuff for several months is a sign that it might be better served by being taken to the dumpster. Maybe my little sister was right though, stuff has feelings too.

Fortunately the real estate market in Chattanooga really hasn't declined at all. Property prices are pretty stable from where they were at a year ago. Hopefully that will hold until my place is sold.

I've found the economic politics of the last year to be very interesting. Both parties have missed the key point about the housing collapse... the problem was due to people consuming more than they were able to afford. People took on more debt than they were able to handle. The solution to this is to give banks gazillions of dollars, and then chastise them when they don't lend the same way to the same people who got us into this mess to start with. On a federal level, the consensus seems to be that the problem can be solved by the government spending massive amounts of money and thereby taking on massive amounts of debt. Wasn't it debt that created this problem in the first place? What ever happened to people trying to live within their means?

Recently someone commented to me that at least things can't get any worse. I was rather baffled that someone could say something like that, and asked them if they had ever been to Haiti. People feel entitled to our current way of life, and have no concept of what most of the people in the rest of the world live like. I'm sure that Obama will soon wave the magic wand that he promised to wield, and no one will ever have to work again, health care will be free for everyone, food will magically appear in the kitchens of all, and all of our cars will always be brand new.

How is that for a rant?