This Cheating Cat Is Told Off, Big Time!

This cracks me up every time, I just can't help it!

*Yawn* I'm Tired

Finally, a weekend without rain! I celebrated by getting off my lazy ass and getting a few things done. After eating some cereal for breakfast and fueling up on coffee I ended up doing all of the following, after feeding my Zuma addiction of course:

• Cleaned one of the bathrooms
• Watered all three dozen orchids
• Fed the cat his special treat 4 times. He's picky so his special treat is a quarter can of nasty smelling wet cat food microwaved 8 seconds to warm it up with a bunch of crunchy food stirred in. It has to be stirred in just right or he licks all the good stuff out and leaves all the crunchies. Yeah, he's spoiled but it makes him eat a lot so he stops losing weight. He wasn't eating the plain dry food and was down to 13.5 pounds which was way scrawny, he looked horrible. Now he's back over 17 and climbing so he's getting back to normal weight.
• Cleaned the catbox, there's been a lot of that since what I just described. Blech!
• Washed a sink full of dishes the wife left from her dinner of leftovers last night.
• Cut up a few potatoes, a couple carrots and an onion, threw it all in the slow cooker with a giant slab of beef I'd browned in some oil then added some beef bouillon then cleaned up all that mess.
• By then I was hungry again so I cooked my normal weekend breakfast of three pieces of bacon, two eggs, some toast and a banana all washed down with coffee then cleaned up that mess.
• Scrubbed the glass cooktop until it was freaking spotless (clean enough to eat off of... hahaha I crack me up sometimes), then cleaned the counter tops and disinfected them before cleaning up the sink area.
• Now refueled I went out and raked a bunch of leaves and bagged them up, mowed the grass then did some garden cleanup until it was too dark to see.
• After a shower I vacuumed, then broke out the Swiffer and mopped the kitchen and laundry room floors.
• Oh yeah, laundry. I washed, dried and put away a load of that, almost forgot.
• By then that bigass pot roast was done so I made some gravy from the juice and ate about half a cow and some potatoes and washed it all down with an ice cold Warsteiner Dunkel (mmmm... good beer), then cleaned up all that mess too.
• Reorganized the dishes in the dishwasher so I could fit in a couple more (there's always room for more then ran it and afterward put them all away.
• In between all that I picked up and put away little odds and ends as I found them.

Now I'm kicked back and relaxing with a glass of wine, just finished watching a great football game and doing my damnedest to keep my eyes open long enough to type all this. So what did you slackers do today?

Windows Updates Failing To Install, Part 2

Well well well, what do you know? It's once again time to install more updates and once again some of the updates rated as "Important" just won't install. I guess it's too much to ask for Microsoft to create updates which actually work on their own products. So anyway, here they are:

• Security Update for Microsoft Office Excel 2003 (KB973475)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office Word 2003 (KB973443) and
• Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB975958)

Just click the download button on each of the three pages, you can either run them from Internet Explorer or if you use a real browser save them to your computer then run them at your leisure. 

Windows Updates Failing To Install

Have you ever had Windows updates fail to install? It's happened to me a couple of times now, and after some three dozen failed attempts to install four updates rated by Microsoft as "Important" I was starting to get more than a little annoyed. They were released thirteen days ago (Oct. 13) and if they're so damned important I figure I should be able to install them even if Microsoft can't figure out a way to do it themselves in their own operating system.

So, I said "Hello!" to Google and started searching. Eventually I stumbled across the solution, one so simple that I'm fairly shocked that Microsoft themselves haven't found a working solution for the automatic download and install process. Ready? Install them manually. Yep, that's it! Close the Automatic Updates window and do it yourself.

The updates which wouldn't install were:

• Security Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB973705)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB974554)
• Security Update for Microsoft Office 2003 (KB972580) and
• Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB974771)

To install the updates just click them in the list above. You must use Internet Explorer for this or it probably will not work, Microsoft is funny like that. Click an update, it will open in a new window or new tab depending upon your settings. Then click the "Download" link on the Update page, click the typical multiple "OK"s and "Accept"s and "Allow"s and "Run"s until you eventually get the little alert window telling you the update was successfully installed. At that point, come back here and click on the next one and repeat the whole process until you've done all four.

You can then either check for new updates by clicking the icon and link near top right of the Update pages, or run Update from your Windows Control Panel and check for new updates that way. If all went well the problematic Updates should no longer appear on the list of updates you need to download and install. For me it didn't seem that rebooting my computer was necessary but you may want to do so anyway just to be safe.

If you try this with a browser other than Internet Explorer and it works for you, please let me know.

Yep, Still Blah

So it's two weeks into the new job. I was right, I don't really like it. I'm bored and I haven't worked for minimum wage in 30 years. There's really no motivation to get out of bed.

Everything else is still a mess. Go me.

Blah

That one little word says it all. Ok, maybe almost all, it could use a little help. *insert profanity here* blah. There, that about covers it and pretty well describes how I feel.

Ever have one of those days where you just plain can't be bothered to give a damn, about anything? That's what I'm having except it's been going on much longer than a day. I don't seem to care about much of anything these days. I've lost all interest in the projects I started after I lost my job. I've not worked on any of them for weeks, none of them are finished and I don't really care.

The only thing I've really paid any attention to at all is getting rid of the weeds in the lawn. It's a nice mindless job pulling out crabgrass and nut sedge. I can't even begin to guess at how many hours I've spent sitting in or crawing around on the lawn. A lot of it comes back because I never seem to really get all of the roots so I just pull it again next time around.

I start a new job in just a few hours yet I feel zero excitement about it, it will be just another day where I'll wake up, do something to occupy my time, eat dinner then be bored by television or internet until I fall asleep. My life has become boring beyond belief, I look forward to absolutely nothing and have no motivation to do anything. I just don't care.

I need out, but that would be a decision. All this free time has left me a lot of time for thinking and I've realized that every major decision I've ever made which has had any meaningful impact on my life has been the wrong one, so I'm not real keen on trying another. At least I'm consistent! Of course deciding not to make a decision would probably be a wrong decision too. It may even be a good thing that things have unfolded in the way they have, it has relieved me of the responsibility of making decisions so that's less chance of making yet another wrong one. There's that silver lining I was looking for. Woot!

I've lost all confidence in my ability to recognize what's best for me, or even good for me, which makes me wonder if I'm anywhere near as smart as I thought I was. I've missed clues to things which I should have seen coming a mile away yet didn't, though in hindsight some were so obvious that a blind man would have probably seen them.

Maybe I'm just having a mid-life crisis. I'm 45 and accomplished just about nothing, maybe that's messing with my mind. There's got to be more to life than this.

Is It Really Music?

If you've never heard of Nora the cat you can check out this Wikipedia article about her. I'd seen a YouTube video and just figured she pawed at a couple keys once in a while but apparently there is more to it than that, even scientists are interested and her behavior is unusual.

I know people can beat, blow or stomp on just about anything and call it music so I really shouldn't really be surprised that some consider this cat's playing deserving of that term. Hell, maybe on some level I don't understand she's actually a musical genius and her compositions are technical masterpieces. I've never studied music theory, what do I know?

Is her playing good enough to warrant being featured in her own concerto (or catcerto)? It seems the answer is....... Yes!! The first minute or so is fairly boring, mostly all orchestra and no cat but it gets better. Take it away Mindaugas and Nora!