I collect computers like some people collects stamps. Except stamps don't require as much maintenance.
There is a box in the basement which contains all the old motherboards of all the old computers I've ever owned since 1992. I counted them. There are eleven. Eleven dead motherboards since 1992. And there are eight working computers scattered throughout the house in various states of functionality. That's a total of nineteen computers in the last fourteen years. On average, 1.73 computers per year.
My collection does not include the old TRS-80 which was purchased by myself and Marc Montoni back in 1983 or so, the computer we "shared" while in college. That is, he got it one semester and I got it the other. Which is the only way we could actually share it, since he was back in Virginia and I was in St. Louis. Nor does it include the Commodore 128 which I purchased from Sears when I lived on Long Island, circa 1986. Nor does it include the Compaq PC XT clone I bought in 1989 (for $900). All of those old relics have long since disappeared.
Oddly enough, I still have the original 8080A microprocessor chip I picked up out of the Clearance Bin at Radio Shack back in 1979, the one that formed the basis for my first homebrew computer project. I saved the chip but tossed the hand-wired circuit card.
And I still have the original Z-80 microprocessor I picked up while in college, and the 1K RAM chip which together formed my first really functional computer (the one with the fancy front-panel switches and the LED blinky-blinky lights).
Perhaps I should start a museum.
One of my back-burner projects is to go through the stack of old motherboards and mount them in wooden frames and hang them up on the office walls. With little gold labels depicting their Model Number and Years Used. And perhaps their Cause of Death.
In the meantime, the rest of these computers are being put back to work after a long rest, now that the office is sufficiently in shape to be used.
The oldest machine has an AMD K6-based motherboard running at 300 megaHertz, with 32 megs of RAM. It still runs Windows 98, but it doesn't do much of anything other than IP forwarding for my local network, sharing the DSL connection to the Internet with the rest of the computers. Right now it's using the FreeProxy program, but eventually it'll be running Linux. Once I figure out how to set up Linux to do the network sharing.
The next slowest, what the kids call "the medium machine", is a genuine Asus Pentium II motherboard running at 450 mHz, with 64 megs of RAM. It used to be the premium machine for video and audio editing, so it has the sound card and the ATI All-In-Wonder TV tuner card. It comes in handy for watching the news while working in the office. Plus the kids have some games loaded on it, so occasionally if the other machines are busy, they can play Civilization II or Age of Empires or something like that.
The "fast" machine is an Asus 2.6 Gigahertz Pentium 4 motherboard. It's got lots of fancy bells and whistles on it, like built-in gigabit Ethernet and RAID and serial ATA, and it's been the biggest pain in the butt to work with. We've had it now for about a year, and it took me forever to get it set up right. At first I couldn't figure out how to get it to recognize the hard drives correctly, if there was more than one installed. And it never did recognize the DVD drive (but that was probably due to an internal failure on the part of the DVD drive).
The BIOS is not easy to work with, and the documentation is pathetic. Either that, or I'm just a moron who can't understand it. In any event, it always takes me several tries to get the BIOS right when adding new components. Next time, I'm going shopping for a less-complicated motherboard -- if they make those anymore.
There are two "slow" machines, Dell GPX1 systems I got for $40 each at the used computer store, that run at 350 megahertz or so. They're not fast, but they're relatively solid, and generally reliable. Cheryl uses one for her work, and I have the other one down in the office as my Ubuntu Linux machine.
The maintenance on these machines consists mostly of replacing or repairing fans. When the fans start making too much noise, I pull them out, oil them up, and put them back in, and they're generally good for another six months or so. The worst ones are the hard drive fans in the removable trays. Why they put fans in the removable trays, I don't know - but they're tiny and cheap and pressed up tight against the hard drives, so it's no wonder they wear out faster. But still they respond well to a bit of lubrication.
Occasionally something else gives out, like a CD drive. We've lost two of those in the last three or four months. One actually burned out, with a blackened and smoking chip (a power regulator, I believe). The other one's motor controller went bad and it wasn't able to get to the correct rotational speed. It was a simple matter then to go down to the used computer store and nab a couple used CD drives for $10 each.
There are also two old laptops sitting around. One is an ancient Toshiba TX1200 with a black-and-white display; the other is a Compaq 75 megaHertz with VGA. The Toshiba has an 80 megabyte hard drive that is going bad, and the Compaq (which survived three or four trips to Denmark) has lost one of the metal hinges for the display. They are going to need some serious repair. The Toshiba has a special BIOS that does not recognize non-Toshiba hard drives (and even then, only recognizes either the 40 or the 80 megabyte drives); and the Compaq needs a new case. Neither of them have working batteries anymore. I rebuilt the battery a few years ago for the Compaq using those 1600 millamp-hour NiMH batteries from Radio Shack, but since moving to Michigan haven't used it at all and so took all the batteries out to use in cameras and things. Eventually I'm going to take the whole thing apart and remount it in something else, something with a standard power supply. Maybe something like these beautiful wooden cases.
In the meantime, I've got to figure out a way to get off Windows and run only Linux on all these machines. Except the one we use for gaming. Why can't they make cool games that run on Linux?
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
PC woes
Back in the Good Old Days, when computers knew their place in the world, it was easy to figure out what was wrong when they didn't work.
A PC was basically composed of three things:
1. A power supply.
2. A motherboard.
3. An I/O system (keyboard, mouse, monitor).
If the power supply was bad, nothing would happen when you flicked the switch.
If the motherboard was bad, the power supply fan would come on, but nothing else would happen when you flicked the switch.
If the I/O system was bad, it was a simple matter to swap in another keyboard, mouse or monitor to see which of those components had gone bad. And replace it.
Nowadays, of course, not only do you have to worry about the hardware components, you have to worry about the software components.
The BIOS. The operating system. The I/O drivers. The network components. The Internet. Viruses. Hackers. Trojan horses.
The computer is a Tool. It is not intended to be a source of entertainment. It is supposed to help us accomplish a task, whether it be managing our affairs (budgeting, accounting, etc.), communicating with other people (writing documents, emails, etc.) or creating even more useful tools (spreadsheets, accounting packages, etc.).
Where did we go wrong?
I keep dreaming of the day when the true Email appliance will appear, a one-button-push combination voice-and-text client. Is it here yet? Did I miss it?
Or the day when the AI Accountant will do my bookkeeping for me, gather my receipts from the stores I frequent, track my income and outgo, and tell me how overdrawn I am at the bank (so my lovely wife doesn't have to do it).
And if perchance I choose to abuse the privilege of owning a PC to try and turn it into a gaming machine, could I perhaps have a game that doesn't eventually lock up and die?
Just asking.
A PC was basically composed of three things:
1. A power supply.
2. A motherboard.
3. An I/O system (keyboard, mouse, monitor).
If the power supply was bad, nothing would happen when you flicked the switch.
If the motherboard was bad, the power supply fan would come on, but nothing else would happen when you flicked the switch.
If the I/O system was bad, it was a simple matter to swap in another keyboard, mouse or monitor to see which of those components had gone bad. And replace it.
Nowadays, of course, not only do you have to worry about the hardware components, you have to worry about the software components.
The BIOS. The operating system. The I/O drivers. The network components. The Internet. Viruses. Hackers. Trojan horses.
The computer is a Tool. It is not intended to be a source of entertainment. It is supposed to help us accomplish a task, whether it be managing our affairs (budgeting, accounting, etc.), communicating with other people (writing documents, emails, etc.) or creating even more useful tools (spreadsheets, accounting packages, etc.).
Where did we go wrong?
I keep dreaming of the day when the true Email appliance will appear, a one-button-push combination voice-and-text client. Is it here yet? Did I miss it?
Or the day when the AI Accountant will do my bookkeeping for me, gather my receipts from the stores I frequent, track my income and outgo, and tell me how overdrawn I am at the bank (so my lovely wife doesn't have to do it).
And if perchance I choose to abuse the privilege of owning a PC to try and turn it into a gaming machine, could I perhaps have a game that doesn't eventually lock up and die?
Just asking.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Pictures from Long Ago
I've always been an addict of History. My favorite courses in school were those that told stories about the people and places of Long Ago.
History is, after all, stories; and stories allow a listener or reader to place himself in a time or place different than his own, to experience the as-yet-unknown, to imagine the what-ifs, to see what the world was like before they were aware it. And to learn lessons from it.
But in order to learn lessons from History, one must first grasp its innate reality. That is, one must actually believe that it happened.
We of the modern age have an advantage because there are pictures, photographs, audio recordings and motion pictures of practically every major event over the last hundred years. One has only to obtain and view/hear these to start to believe that, Yes, it really happened.
It is even easier when dealing with events from the past forty or fifty years because the images we see are nearly the same in format as those of present times, embued with color and clarity and sharpness so often absent in those of the long-since past. For this reason, we can relate to this much more than, say, the old black-and-white Civil War photographs, when the subjects had to stand still for long periods of time or else appear as nothing but a blur on the glass plate.
Until recently, the same could be said for events of the early 20th century. But then, much to our surprise, and no doubt due to the flood of information caused by the Internet explosion, it was revealed that color photography had actually been invented - and used - in the 19th century.
I was completely blown away by that news. And excited. And thrilled.
Two or three years ago, an obscure website surfaced which featured actual color photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia.
What goes through your mind when you look through the colored window into the past?
In Russia: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
In France: http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/
History is, after all, stories; and stories allow a listener or reader to place himself in a time or place different than his own, to experience the as-yet-unknown, to imagine the what-ifs, to see what the world was like before they were aware it. And to learn lessons from it.
But in order to learn lessons from History, one must first grasp its innate reality. That is, one must actually believe that it happened.
We of the modern age have an advantage because there are pictures, photographs, audio recordings and motion pictures of practically every major event over the last hundred years. One has only to obtain and view/hear these to start to believe that, Yes, it really happened.
It is even easier when dealing with events from the past forty or fifty years because the images we see are nearly the same in format as those of present times, embued with color and clarity and sharpness so often absent in those of the long-since past. For this reason, we can relate to this much more than, say, the old black-and-white Civil War photographs, when the subjects had to stand still for long periods of time or else appear as nothing but a blur on the glass plate.
Until recently, the same could be said for events of the early 20th century. But then, much to our surprise, and no doubt due to the flood of information caused by the Internet explosion, it was revealed that color photography had actually been invented - and used - in the 19th century.
I was completely blown away by that news. And excited. And thrilled.
Two or three years ago, an obscure website surfaced which featured actual color photographs from turn-of-the-century Russia.
What goes through your mind when you look through the colored window into the past?
In Russia: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
In France: http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/
Monday, May 15, 2006
Drywall Complete
The office is now practically useful.Most of Saturday and the majority of Sunday afternoon was spent hauling, measuring, cutting and hanging drywall in the office room. Funny how it all seems so easy at the beginning - "Oh, I can knock this room out in just a couple hours, because there isn't going to be much trimming needed" - ha!
The height of the room varies due to various pipes and things, so I had to trim the sheets from their normal 96' to anywhere between 91.25 and 94.5. Then there were pipe cutouts for the gas line and the water lines, plus the area in the back corner where we have to leave an access for the water shutoff and sprinkler drain.
Oh, and there were a few spots where I had to get creative with the wall supports because there wasn't anything to hang the drywall on, so several pieces of 2x4 had to be cut and adjusted and secured in place.The worst part was the cutouts for the outlets, especially when it ended up in the middle of the sheet instead of the edge. I'm paranoid about those, probably because I've messed up so many of them in the past. "Measure twice, cut once," they say. I say, Measure ten or twenty times, cut once. Then toss that board and buy another one, because I still managed to muck it up!
Oh, well. By Sunday night, all the walls were covered and it was beginning to look like a real room.
The floor is still missing the top layer, and the ceiling is still incomplete without the insulation and panels, but it is a major accomplishment.
Still, I couldn't resist putting the computer desks inside it, just to sit down and get an idea of what it will be like when it is complete!
 |  |
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Catrant
One nice thing about having a blog that no one ever reads (for the most part) is that I can rant about insane subjects and not worry about any backlash. If you are reading this, you probably won't waste your time responding, anyway. You've already wasted enough time as it is. Best be off with you, then!
So. To my rant. Can you guess what it's about? Of course you can!
It's cats. Specifically, cats as house pets.
I grew up with cats. My sisters and I all had our own cats. I used to like cats a great deal. My first cat was a beautiful Calico who gave birth to a litter of kittens underneath an Ottoman (the furniture, not the person).[1] Lovely, lovely kittens, all colors and shades. Unfortunately, when we moved to Arkansas, we had to leave all our cats behind. We were all heartbroken. There, after a time, we got a couple more: Charlie and George. Two gorgeous black half-Siamese cats with wonderful dispositions and very clean fur.
My family has always welcomed cats. Even after that infamous episode when we came home from church one Wednesday night to find that one of my pet mice had escaped from its cage, and the cats had got him. [2]
The only time cats were not part of my life was when I left home. The University certainly didn’t allow pets in the dorms, and neither I nor my roomate had one when we rented an apartment. And I didn’t get one after starting my first job out of college.
Now that I'm thinking about it, it actually never occurred to me to have a pet in those days. I didn't have time for one, not with work, and involvement in church, and living in a rented room I only saw between midnight and six in the morning. Not even when I moved to Seattle and found my own apartment, or when I rented a house with a group of guys from church. Never had the need for animal companionship, not while being constantly surrounded by people. Never had the need to cuddle up to some fur-bearing creature when I came home. Not that any cat would’ve tolerated the general disorder and aroma of the ‘bachelor pad’.[3]
No, I was waiting for real companionship. Human companionship. Of the female variety.
Perhaps that's why I was so upset when, after being married a mere six months, Cheryl and I “got” a cat, a stray rescued by a friend of ours. At the time, I certainly didn't feel the need to share my new wife with anyone, even a pet, and was rather hurt that she decided to keep it. Made me feel inadequate, like I just wasn't man enough to fill all her needs. I was jealous, although I tried hard not to show it. But it didn't help that the cat was psychotic. Due, of course, to her stray-cat, dodge-the-cars-and-dogs lifestyle.
Angie. Wonderful, sweet, psychotic scaredy-cat. Afraid of shadows. Hid behind the furniture (or under it) whenever guests would come by. Eventually she learned not to be quite so fearful. I think. Or perhaps she never really got over her kittenhood trauma. It as difficult to be certain. Does anyone ever really know the mind of a cat?
She survived the move from the apartment to our first house. She survived the arrival of the children. What she couldn't survive was competition.
We brought in a kitten one day, thinking she might enjoy a playmate, and in response, she tried to kill the poor thing outright, hissing and spitting the whole time. Definitely not a good idea. Out it went.
Years later, after it appeared she’d had time to mellow out, we tried again, and this time she reacted by trying to kill it and by spraying in the house, marking her territory. We talked to the vet about it, and the vet assured us that, once she started spraying, she would not stop, even if we immediately removed the offending intruder. So Angie went away, and the kitten stayed. And then later the kitten's supposed father, another stray, took up residence in our house. Erin and Alfred. What a pair!
Throughout our tenure in that house, the cats behaved like ... well, cats. They scratched the carpet. They tossed hairballs. They scratched the deck posts. They brought us 'gifts' of small rodentia and birds. The left their hair and dander all over the place. They scratched and clawed at the children who played a little too rough with them. They tried to jump up on the table to eat our food when we were finished with dinner.
Nothing out of the ordinary for cats.
They’re not to blame, of course. We invited them to live with us. We brought them into our house to provide ... whatever it is that cats provide. We’ve both had cats before. We both knew what cats were supposed to do. They’re supposed to sit on our laps, purr, be petted, snuggle up to us in bed, or sit at the window and stare out at the squirrels and think catty thoughts, while we watch them and try to figure out what’s going on inside their brains.
But Erin and Alfred are not lap cats. They don't really like to be around people unless they're in the mood, and they aren't in the mood most of the time. They don't like to be picked up or held. They definitely don't like to be brushed. They put up with petting, probably because they realize it helps to shed five or six pounds of fur and dander from their backs every time we do it. They rub against our legs when they want something, usually food. They follow Cheryl everywhere. They can sense that she is their protector.
It has taken them a long time to get to the point where they can tolerate the children. Actually, they seem to put up with James best, because he pays them the most attention. Alfred even puts up with being picked up and carried around occasionally. But one look at his face is enough to know he doesn’t like it.
As for myself, they both know I'd just as soon toss them out on their ears as look at them.
Not to be mean or cruel, of course. I just don't see the practical advantage of having them. As the dog says in the Warner Brothers cartoon, "It just don't add up!"
On the plus side, they occasionally allow me to pet them, which only results in my hand looking like the first stage of a werewolf transformation, all black and hairy. On the minus side, they shed. They shed everywhere. And I'm allergic to their dander. And we don't vacuum enough to keep it out of the air. They sleep on my bed at night, so that the comforter is covered with fur (and I get to breathe it all night long). They "nest" under the bed during the day, which leaves a huge amount of fur on the carpet, which drifts through the room during the day and eventually settles in my sinus cavities.
They also throw up hairballs all over the place. (Sometimes it appears like they are merely using their mouths to transport their breakfast from the plate down in the kitchen to some random spot on the carpet somewhere else in the house, with stomach acid thrown in for good measure.) They poop on the floor in my garage for some unknown reason.
And they destroy the carpet.
It was one thing for them to destroy the carpet in that forty-year old house back in Everett, when the carpet was old and stained after years of use and we knew eventually we could sell it to somebody else and they would want to put new carpet in it and that would be fine because we’d gotten our fair use out of it and it was about time for it anyway.
But this ... this is a brand-new house, and we're not even done building it yet! We're planning on finishing the basement rooms downstairs, hoping to put nice carpet in our entertainment room or den or whatever it will be. And those cats have already managed to shred at least two different areas of the existing carpet on the main floor. Do you think I fancy the idea of spending thousands of dollars to put brand-new carpet downstairs so they can rip that up, too?
Sure, and you can just go downstairs and start whacking holes in my new drywall, too. Might as well give you my Visa card as well so you can go buy a new car and then smash it into a lamp-post because it accomplishes the same thing - taking my money and throwing it out the bloody window.
I’ve mentioned the problem to a few friends at work and they’ve all suggested the same thing: de-clawing. Which seems like the obvious thing to do, if we’re intending on having totally indoor cats. But that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Personally, I’m not into modification of animals to fit a particular lifestyle. I mean, God made these cats a certain way, and they’re here to fulfill a purpose, right? And for me to bring them inside and say, I want you to live in my house with me, but in order to make it work, I’m first going to rip out your claws so you don’t damage my stuff... Well, it seems a bit unfair to start making all these caveats and exceptions and special rules, like changing their bodies in order to make them fit my little world. It doesn’t really add up, either.[4]
I’ve seen many cats without claws indoors, and it makes me sad to watch them try to scratch things up, and accomplish nothing. They were born to scratch, and I empathize with their frustration in trying so hard and getting nowhere. And it doesn’t solve the main problem – they’re still going to throw hairballs and have territorial disputes and chew on wires and do all sorts of things that cats are just born to do. They still possess the ability to destroy my house.
I much prefer that cats remain the way they are, doing their job, chasing small furry animals and birds around outside, eating them (if necessary), eating grass and tossing hairballs outside, pooping outside, climbing trees and scratching posts outside, and maybe perhaps occasionally coming to the deck when I’m sitting outside and allowing me to pet them (while all the ticks and fleas and other assorted vermin leap from their skin to mine, carrying dread diseases which will put me on the next episode of House). Not only would it reduce their interaction with the interior of my house, it might also reduce my pet food bill.[5]
The alternative is to modify my house so that there is no way for them to destroy it. Which means removing anything that they might scratch or rip or tear or stain, including carpet, comforters, furniture, and children, if necessary. Because if they destroy parts of my house, I’m going to defend my house. Do you understand? The castle is under siege! I have invested hundreds of hours of my life working to pay for this house – and I’m not done yet! – and so every time they destroy part of that house, they invalidate all those hours of my work. They take my work and spit on it, turning it into waste. They make it so I have to work even more hours, hours which cannot be spent with my family. In effect, they steal precious time from me.
Some may argue that I’m being hypocritical; after all, I have children, and children destroy the house, too. And they do, with a vengeance. But I put up with that because they are long-term investments. They can be taught to not cause damage. In fact, they can be taught to repair damage, to restore the house to its previous condition, or better.
But cats? What can they do for me? What can they learn, or un-learn? How can they un-do the damage they have done?[6]
You may think I’m being unfairly focused on cats. Believe me, my attitude does not restrict itself to cats alone. I feel the same way about all pets. In my life, I’ve had cats and mice and gerbils (and, for a very short time in a car long, long ago, a bird) – and, of course, there was ol’ Chumley, my sister’s beloved dog – so my opinion is not stated in a vacuum of experience.
Let me clarify. I like pets. But I do not like pets in my house. In fact, I have come to believe that animals do not belong in a house with humans. I believe that animals belong in the environment in which they were designed to live. Animals were not designed to live indoors, but outdoors. They are free to visit indoors anytime it is permissable by those who do live indoors. If a human wants to devote the time and energy and money to bring an animal inside to be a ‘pet’, they are free to do so. But before they make that choice, they must be prepared to carry through with the commitment.
Which means, in short, pet owners must provide an environment which does not cause mental, physical, or spiritual harm to themselves, their pets, or others.
If you live by yourself, have all the pets you want. You’re the only one who has to deal with it – until the moment you invite your friends in for a visit. In which case you shouldn’t be surprised when they make disparaging comments, especially after seeing what kind of damage your pets have done to the place. Or, if they suffer from particular allergies to animals, don’t be surprised if they flee from the building immediately.
Also, don’t be surprised if your own character is judged by the way in which you care for your furry friends. You may think nothing of it, but your human friends can tell a lot about you merely by observing the health and well-being of those who are in your charge.[7]
For those who share a residence with other human beings, it may be the case that those with whom you live do not share your love for the animal(s). Therefore you may have to resign yourself to making every effort to prevent those animals from acting on the worst of their animal natures. Read books. Ask professionals. Look into behavioral training, genetic modification, hypnosis, surgery - whatever it takes to force them into the desired mold. Spray the furniture with nasty-smelling Pet-B-Gone spray, scoop up the hairballs, buy the expensive vacuums to suck up vomit and/or feces before it sets into the carpet, take a carpet-laying class so you can replace the sections they destroy, teach them how to go outside and come back in without shredding the screen door (and leaving long scratches all over the front door), clean the litter box every day, get them out-of-doors at least twice a day, make sure they have adequate food and clean water, brush them often, run the vacuum over the entire house at least three times a week, station a guard at every entrance to make sure they don’t bring any wild game inside, file down their teeth so they can’t gnaw through the phone wires, give them a place to rest that they can call their own – and make sure it isn’t in your bedroom.
If you are willing to do all these things, go ahead and have a pet. Enjoy the fruit of your labors.
But if you aren’t willing to go the distance, then don’t even start, because otherwise you’re going to end up with filthy houses and resentful housemates and lots of pointless arguments which go nowhere – and let’s not forget the repair bills for the damaged furniture and the vet bills for all those interesting pet diseases. I wish you luck.
As for our house, we are not getting rid of our cats. At this point, they are a part of the family, like it or not. Getting rid of them would be like getting rid of an eccentric relative. It’s unthinkable. And we’re not de-clawing them, either. They’re going to stay as God intended - other than the fact that they cannot breed - and they’re going to prance about the house at night, knocking things over and causing all manner of disruption, and they’re going to sleep during the day, leaving mounds of fur all about the place, wafting through the air and into my nose so that I’ll spend an inordinate amount of money toking up on antihistamines and caffeine tablets to remain functional; and every so often I’ll go off into a frothing rage because of something they’ve done, and have to take a long drive somewhere in order to calm down again. And then we’ll go right back to vacuuming the carpet and scooping up the accidents and brushing out their fur and cleaning out the litter boxes and calling up the vet now and then and spending scads of money to keep the house in good repair.
And when they’ve finally passed on to the great Catnip Garden in the sky, we’re going to stop all this pet nonsense and get something reasonable like a goldfish.[8]
--
Notes
[1] Oddly, I don’t remember her name.
[2] It wasn’t their fault. They were just being cats. Actually, it was the fault of mouse psychology which prevents daddy mice from staying with mommy mice after the offspring are born. She almost killed the poor guy, so we had to separate them. As we didn't have a second Habitrail to put him in, we had to get this budget wire-frame cage which was not designed for mice but for larger rodents, like hamsters or gerbils. Consequently, the vertical bars were just a tad too wide apart to keep the mouse from escaping. So that night he squeezed through the bars – freedom! – and scurried around on the floor, having a wonderful time until, unfortunately, he attracted the attention of Charlie and George. They made short work of him, and no doubt had a wonderful time as well. A little exercise, followed by a little snack, and all that was left was a little red smear on the bathroom floor.
[3] Five guys from extremely disparate backgrounds, newly acquainted and trying to figure each other out: three who had lived on the streets before, one barely out of high school, only two with steady jobs. We were supposed to be the Light in the neighborhood. In reality, we were running a street Mission, bringing in stray folk off the street and trying to talk to them about spiritual matters. There was an incredible number of people streaming through the place at all hours of the day, and they weren’t the kind that remembered where the trash bins were kept, or their purpose for that matter. You can imagine what the inside of the fridge looked like. And the top of the stove, which only occasionally got cleaned. The backyard never got mowed, so for all I know, we might’ve been harboring several stray cats back there unawares, but none ever came into the house.
[4] We also neuter our pets, but that is not a modification performed for the sake of our convenience; it is done to prevent the neighborhood from being overrun by litters of unwanted kittens. Some may argue that this is splitting hairs, and they may be correct. Were I living on a farm where the cat performs what I consider a necessary function, there would be no need for neutering because they would be subject to the same predator/prey laws as all the other animals. But we live in a suburban area where they are relatively protected, and thus subject to overbreeding.
[5] I’ve always felt that a cat’s place is on the farm, getting rid of the mice who try to eat the grain. It makes perfect sense. I don’t really understand why a cat would need to live in a house where there isn’t a rodent pest problem. What is their function? Why do we spend so much time and money on them? Wouldn’t that time and money be better spent on the other people who live in the house? Does the cat really offer so much companionship that we can overlook their obvious incompatibilities? Or have we been merely unlucky in our choice of cat breed?
[6] I’ve heard that cats can be trained to use the toilet. But I’ve not yet heard of cats being trained not to throw up hairballs (although some vets claim they have medicines and things that keep them from getting hairballs). Or, in our case, just throwing up for fun. Most importantly, I’ve never heard of cats pounding nails, driving screws, hanging drywall, or replacing carpet. Until that day, don’t talk to me of ‘training’ cats. The only ‘training’ associated with cats is the ‘training’ of owners to come up with all kinds of excuses for putting up with ill-behaved cats.
[7] Many years ago, there was a very nice girl in whom I had more than a passing interest, and we had a wonderful friendship, and she was hoping that it would blossom into something Really Special; and one day when it was obvious that it was not going to become something Really Special, she asked me why. And I didn’t know how to explain to her then, but the one thing that spoke volumes to me about her true character was the way she treated her dog. That is to say, she did not take care of it. It was unkempt, wild, miserable, and was driving her roommates crazy. I could never have a serious relationship with a person who would not take care of her pets.
[8] There currently exist a marvelous set of fish aquarium screen savers for the PC which are remarkably life-like. Perhaps I’ll set up an extra monitor just for this purpose, so as to avoid messing about with cleaning the water-tank, maintaining the proper pH, not to mention having to purchase fish-food flakes, which smell horribly.
So. To my rant. Can you guess what it's about? Of course you can!
It's cats. Specifically, cats as house pets.
I grew up with cats. My sisters and I all had our own cats. I used to like cats a great deal. My first cat was a beautiful Calico who gave birth to a litter of kittens underneath an Ottoman (the furniture, not the person).[1] Lovely, lovely kittens, all colors and shades. Unfortunately, when we moved to Arkansas, we had to leave all our cats behind. We were all heartbroken. There, after a time, we got a couple more: Charlie and George. Two gorgeous black half-Siamese cats with wonderful dispositions and very clean fur.
My family has always welcomed cats. Even after that infamous episode when we came home from church one Wednesday night to find that one of my pet mice had escaped from its cage, and the cats had got him. [2]
The only time cats were not part of my life was when I left home. The University certainly didn’t allow pets in the dorms, and neither I nor my roomate had one when we rented an apartment. And I didn’t get one after starting my first job out of college.
Now that I'm thinking about it, it actually never occurred to me to have a pet in those days. I didn't have time for one, not with work, and involvement in church, and living in a rented room I only saw between midnight and six in the morning. Not even when I moved to Seattle and found my own apartment, or when I rented a house with a group of guys from church. Never had the need for animal companionship, not while being constantly surrounded by people. Never had the need to cuddle up to some fur-bearing creature when I came home. Not that any cat would’ve tolerated the general disorder and aroma of the ‘bachelor pad’.[3]
No, I was waiting for real companionship. Human companionship. Of the female variety.
Perhaps that's why I was so upset when, after being married a mere six months, Cheryl and I “got” a cat, a stray rescued by a friend of ours. At the time, I certainly didn't feel the need to share my new wife with anyone, even a pet, and was rather hurt that she decided to keep it. Made me feel inadequate, like I just wasn't man enough to fill all her needs. I was jealous, although I tried hard not to show it. But it didn't help that the cat was psychotic. Due, of course, to her stray-cat, dodge-the-cars-and-dogs lifestyle.
Angie. Wonderful, sweet, psychotic scaredy-cat. Afraid of shadows. Hid behind the furniture (or under it) whenever guests would come by. Eventually she learned not to be quite so fearful. I think. Or perhaps she never really got over her kittenhood trauma. It as difficult to be certain. Does anyone ever really know the mind of a cat?
She survived the move from the apartment to our first house. She survived the arrival of the children. What she couldn't survive was competition.
We brought in a kitten one day, thinking she might enjoy a playmate, and in response, she tried to kill the poor thing outright, hissing and spitting the whole time. Definitely not a good idea. Out it went.
Years later, after it appeared she’d had time to mellow out, we tried again, and this time she reacted by trying to kill it and by spraying in the house, marking her territory. We talked to the vet about it, and the vet assured us that, once she started spraying, she would not stop, even if we immediately removed the offending intruder. So Angie went away, and the kitten stayed. And then later the kitten's supposed father, another stray, took up residence in our house. Erin and Alfred. What a pair!
Throughout our tenure in that house, the cats behaved like ... well, cats. They scratched the carpet. They tossed hairballs. They scratched the deck posts. They brought us 'gifts' of small rodentia and birds. The left their hair and dander all over the place. They scratched and clawed at the children who played a little too rough with them. They tried to jump up on the table to eat our food when we were finished with dinner.
Nothing out of the ordinary for cats.
They’re not to blame, of course. We invited them to live with us. We brought them into our house to provide ... whatever it is that cats provide. We’ve both had cats before. We both knew what cats were supposed to do. They’re supposed to sit on our laps, purr, be petted, snuggle up to us in bed, or sit at the window and stare out at the squirrels and think catty thoughts, while we watch them and try to figure out what’s going on inside their brains.
But Erin and Alfred are not lap cats. They don't really like to be around people unless they're in the mood, and they aren't in the mood most of the time. They don't like to be picked up or held. They definitely don't like to be brushed. They put up with petting, probably because they realize it helps to shed five or six pounds of fur and dander from their backs every time we do it. They rub against our legs when they want something, usually food. They follow Cheryl everywhere. They can sense that she is their protector.
It has taken them a long time to get to the point where they can tolerate the children. Actually, they seem to put up with James best, because he pays them the most attention. Alfred even puts up with being picked up and carried around occasionally. But one look at his face is enough to know he doesn’t like it.
As for myself, they both know I'd just as soon toss them out on their ears as look at them.
Not to be mean or cruel, of course. I just don't see the practical advantage of having them. As the dog says in the Warner Brothers cartoon, "It just don't add up!"
On the plus side, they occasionally allow me to pet them, which only results in my hand looking like the first stage of a werewolf transformation, all black and hairy. On the minus side, they shed. They shed everywhere. And I'm allergic to their dander. And we don't vacuum enough to keep it out of the air. They sleep on my bed at night, so that the comforter is covered with fur (and I get to breathe it all night long). They "nest" under the bed during the day, which leaves a huge amount of fur on the carpet, which drifts through the room during the day and eventually settles in my sinus cavities.
They also throw up hairballs all over the place. (Sometimes it appears like they are merely using their mouths to transport their breakfast from the plate down in the kitchen to some random spot on the carpet somewhere else in the house, with stomach acid thrown in for good measure.) They poop on the floor in my garage for some unknown reason.
And they destroy the carpet.
It was one thing for them to destroy the carpet in that forty-year old house back in Everett, when the carpet was old and stained after years of use and we knew eventually we could sell it to somebody else and they would want to put new carpet in it and that would be fine because we’d gotten our fair use out of it and it was about time for it anyway.
But this ... this is a brand-new house, and we're not even done building it yet! We're planning on finishing the basement rooms downstairs, hoping to put nice carpet in our entertainment room or den or whatever it will be. And those cats have already managed to shred at least two different areas of the existing carpet on the main floor. Do you think I fancy the idea of spending thousands of dollars to put brand-new carpet downstairs so they can rip that up, too?
Sure, and you can just go downstairs and start whacking holes in my new drywall, too. Might as well give you my Visa card as well so you can go buy a new car and then smash it into a lamp-post because it accomplishes the same thing - taking my money and throwing it out the bloody window.
I’ve mentioned the problem to a few friends at work and they’ve all suggested the same thing: de-clawing. Which seems like the obvious thing to do, if we’re intending on having totally indoor cats. But that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Personally, I’m not into modification of animals to fit a particular lifestyle. I mean, God made these cats a certain way, and they’re here to fulfill a purpose, right? And for me to bring them inside and say, I want you to live in my house with me, but in order to make it work, I’m first going to rip out your claws so you don’t damage my stuff... Well, it seems a bit unfair to start making all these caveats and exceptions and special rules, like changing their bodies in order to make them fit my little world. It doesn’t really add up, either.[4]
I’ve seen many cats without claws indoors, and it makes me sad to watch them try to scratch things up, and accomplish nothing. They were born to scratch, and I empathize with their frustration in trying so hard and getting nowhere. And it doesn’t solve the main problem – they’re still going to throw hairballs and have territorial disputes and chew on wires and do all sorts of things that cats are just born to do. They still possess the ability to destroy my house.
I much prefer that cats remain the way they are, doing their job, chasing small furry animals and birds around outside, eating them (if necessary), eating grass and tossing hairballs outside, pooping outside, climbing trees and scratching posts outside, and maybe perhaps occasionally coming to the deck when I’m sitting outside and allowing me to pet them (while all the ticks and fleas and other assorted vermin leap from their skin to mine, carrying dread diseases which will put me on the next episode of House). Not only would it reduce their interaction with the interior of my house, it might also reduce my pet food bill.[5]
The alternative is to modify my house so that there is no way for them to destroy it. Which means removing anything that they might scratch or rip or tear or stain, including carpet, comforters, furniture, and children, if necessary. Because if they destroy parts of my house, I’m going to defend my house. Do you understand? The castle is under siege! I have invested hundreds of hours of my life working to pay for this house – and I’m not done yet! – and so every time they destroy part of that house, they invalidate all those hours of my work. They take my work and spit on it, turning it into waste. They make it so I have to work even more hours, hours which cannot be spent with my family. In effect, they steal precious time from me.
Some may argue that I’m being hypocritical; after all, I have children, and children destroy the house, too. And they do, with a vengeance. But I put up with that because they are long-term investments. They can be taught to not cause damage. In fact, they can be taught to repair damage, to restore the house to its previous condition, or better.
But cats? What can they do for me? What can they learn, or un-learn? How can they un-do the damage they have done?[6]
You may think I’m being unfairly focused on cats. Believe me, my attitude does not restrict itself to cats alone. I feel the same way about all pets. In my life, I’ve had cats and mice and gerbils (and, for a very short time in a car long, long ago, a bird) – and, of course, there was ol’ Chumley, my sister’s beloved dog – so my opinion is not stated in a vacuum of experience.
Let me clarify. I like pets. But I do not like pets in my house. In fact, I have come to believe that animals do not belong in a house with humans. I believe that animals belong in the environment in which they were designed to live. Animals were not designed to live indoors, but outdoors. They are free to visit indoors anytime it is permissable by those who do live indoors. If a human wants to devote the time and energy and money to bring an animal inside to be a ‘pet’, they are free to do so. But before they make that choice, they must be prepared to carry through with the commitment.
Which means, in short, pet owners must provide an environment which does not cause mental, physical, or spiritual harm to themselves, their pets, or others.
If you live by yourself, have all the pets you want. You’re the only one who has to deal with it – until the moment you invite your friends in for a visit. In which case you shouldn’t be surprised when they make disparaging comments, especially after seeing what kind of damage your pets have done to the place. Or, if they suffer from particular allergies to animals, don’t be surprised if they flee from the building immediately.
Also, don’t be surprised if your own character is judged by the way in which you care for your furry friends. You may think nothing of it, but your human friends can tell a lot about you merely by observing the health and well-being of those who are in your charge.[7]
For those who share a residence with other human beings, it may be the case that those with whom you live do not share your love for the animal(s). Therefore you may have to resign yourself to making every effort to prevent those animals from acting on the worst of their animal natures. Read books. Ask professionals. Look into behavioral training, genetic modification, hypnosis, surgery - whatever it takes to force them into the desired mold. Spray the furniture with nasty-smelling Pet-B-Gone spray, scoop up the hairballs, buy the expensive vacuums to suck up vomit and/or feces before it sets into the carpet, take a carpet-laying class so you can replace the sections they destroy, teach them how to go outside and come back in without shredding the screen door (and leaving long scratches all over the front door), clean the litter box every day, get them out-of-doors at least twice a day, make sure they have adequate food and clean water, brush them often, run the vacuum over the entire house at least three times a week, station a guard at every entrance to make sure they don’t bring any wild game inside, file down their teeth so they can’t gnaw through the phone wires, give them a place to rest that they can call their own – and make sure it isn’t in your bedroom.
If you are willing to do all these things, go ahead and have a pet. Enjoy the fruit of your labors.
But if you aren’t willing to go the distance, then don’t even start, because otherwise you’re going to end up with filthy houses and resentful housemates and lots of pointless arguments which go nowhere – and let’s not forget the repair bills for the damaged furniture and the vet bills for all those interesting pet diseases. I wish you luck.
As for our house, we are not getting rid of our cats. At this point, they are a part of the family, like it or not. Getting rid of them would be like getting rid of an eccentric relative. It’s unthinkable. And we’re not de-clawing them, either. They’re going to stay as God intended - other than the fact that they cannot breed - and they’re going to prance about the house at night, knocking things over and causing all manner of disruption, and they’re going to sleep during the day, leaving mounds of fur all about the place, wafting through the air and into my nose so that I’ll spend an inordinate amount of money toking up on antihistamines and caffeine tablets to remain functional; and every so often I’ll go off into a frothing rage because of something they’ve done, and have to take a long drive somewhere in order to calm down again. And then we’ll go right back to vacuuming the carpet and scooping up the accidents and brushing out their fur and cleaning out the litter boxes and calling up the vet now and then and spending scads of money to keep the house in good repair.
And when they’ve finally passed on to the great Catnip Garden in the sky, we’re going to stop all this pet nonsense and get something reasonable like a goldfish.[8]
--
Notes
[1] Oddly, I don’t remember her name.
[2] It wasn’t their fault. They were just being cats. Actually, it was the fault of mouse psychology which prevents daddy mice from staying with mommy mice after the offspring are born. She almost killed the poor guy, so we had to separate them. As we didn't have a second Habitrail to put him in, we had to get this budget wire-frame cage which was not designed for mice but for larger rodents, like hamsters or gerbils. Consequently, the vertical bars were just a tad too wide apart to keep the mouse from escaping. So that night he squeezed through the bars – freedom! – and scurried around on the floor, having a wonderful time until, unfortunately, he attracted the attention of Charlie and George. They made short work of him, and no doubt had a wonderful time as well. A little exercise, followed by a little snack, and all that was left was a little red smear on the bathroom floor.
[3] Five guys from extremely disparate backgrounds, newly acquainted and trying to figure each other out: three who had lived on the streets before, one barely out of high school, only two with steady jobs. We were supposed to be the Light in the neighborhood. In reality, we were running a street Mission, bringing in stray folk off the street and trying to talk to them about spiritual matters. There was an incredible number of people streaming through the place at all hours of the day, and they weren’t the kind that remembered where the trash bins were kept, or their purpose for that matter. You can imagine what the inside of the fridge looked like. And the top of the stove, which only occasionally got cleaned. The backyard never got mowed, so for all I know, we might’ve been harboring several stray cats back there unawares, but none ever came into the house.
[4] We also neuter our pets, but that is not a modification performed for the sake of our convenience; it is done to prevent the neighborhood from being overrun by litters of unwanted kittens. Some may argue that this is splitting hairs, and they may be correct. Were I living on a farm where the cat performs what I consider a necessary function, there would be no need for neutering because they would be subject to the same predator/prey laws as all the other animals. But we live in a suburban area where they are relatively protected, and thus subject to overbreeding.
[5] I’ve always felt that a cat’s place is on the farm, getting rid of the mice who try to eat the grain. It makes perfect sense. I don’t really understand why a cat would need to live in a house where there isn’t a rodent pest problem. What is their function? Why do we spend so much time and money on them? Wouldn’t that time and money be better spent on the other people who live in the house? Does the cat really offer so much companionship that we can overlook their obvious incompatibilities? Or have we been merely unlucky in our choice of cat breed?
[6] I’ve heard that cats can be trained to use the toilet. But I’ve not yet heard of cats being trained not to throw up hairballs (although some vets claim they have medicines and things that keep them from getting hairballs). Or, in our case, just throwing up for fun. Most importantly, I’ve never heard of cats pounding nails, driving screws, hanging drywall, or replacing carpet. Until that day, don’t talk to me of ‘training’ cats. The only ‘training’ associated with cats is the ‘training’ of owners to come up with all kinds of excuses for putting up with ill-behaved cats.
[7] Many years ago, there was a very nice girl in whom I had more than a passing interest, and we had a wonderful friendship, and she was hoping that it would blossom into something Really Special; and one day when it was obvious that it was not going to become something Really Special, she asked me why. And I didn’t know how to explain to her then, but the one thing that spoke volumes to me about her true character was the way she treated her dog. That is to say, she did not take care of it. It was unkempt, wild, miserable, and was driving her roommates crazy. I could never have a serious relationship with a person who would not take care of her pets.
[8] There currently exist a marvelous set of fish aquarium screen savers for the PC which are remarkably life-like. Perhaps I’ll set up an extra monitor just for this purpose, so as to avoid messing about with cleaning the water-tank, maintaining the proper pH, not to mention having to purchase fish-food flakes, which smell horribly.
Monday, May 01, 2006
More Office Progress
There’s something about a closed-in space that’s special.
After finishing up the other door in the office – and by ‘finishing up’, I mean just barely enough that the door will stay shut – I had to stand inside the office with the doors shut and just listen to the silence. And breathe.
The basement is normally a very noisy place. The furnace is down here. The ductwork is down here. The aluminum pipes carry sound up and down and all around the house, so sometimes you can hear conversations from the bedrooms while sitting at the computer. You can definitely hear when people are moving about upstairs, plonking or shuffling or stomping their feet. Sometimes you can hear the children singing (either in the shower, or in their bedroom).
But here, now, with the doors closed and the insulation in the walls, it is quiet and comtemplative, and I can look around the room and imagine what it will look like when the office is complete and the drywall is up and the furniture is in place and my wife is sitting happily at her vast, expansive desk with the bookshelves behind her, doing our taxes or studying for her Bible lessons or clucking over all the money I spent at Radio Shack or trying to figure out how we’re going to put four kids through college. It will be nice to have at least one portion of the basement done.
The insulation still needs to be put up between the joists above, and the drop ceiling still needs to be hung, and the flooring needs to be laid down, and then there’s all that drywall to be taped and mudded and painted. But for just a moment, I’m going to stand here and marvel at the fact that this room is becoming a room.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)