Oh man, Aaron, did you have 2 cats screaming in the car the whole way back? I wouldn’t be able to handle that…

No, the little angels enjoyed the confines of sparsely-accomodated, but comfortable kitty containers. With exception of a few stomach-curdling bouts of nausea and a couple sad attention-seeking meows, they seemed to take it all pretty well.

Melissa kept a close watch, offering soothing words and a finger of two through the screens.

The official DDC stance on Interstate Pet Travel states: No animal, be it of rodent form or otherwise, will “roam free” during travel. No “lap rides” or “neck rides” shall take place. Calm, quiet and compliance are key in “making good time on the open road.”

This rule shall remain in effect until we are blessed with an official DDC “man’s best friend”, in which he’ll ride shotgun, checkin’ the map and “honking” at truckers.

V nd I have to drive our little champ Swift Scout 4 to Mpls on monday. She gets the kitty in the car, and I get the moving truck. Not sure who got the worst deal there. Hi Melissa.

Glad yr back up there. Hope all is well.

Just spent the better part of this last night/this morning’s “wee hours” playing Fetch with my buddy’s pooch, “Bam” on the beach. I love the canine types. Wonderful critters. They know their own names, don’t climb on the countertops, shit outside, go for car rides without puking, play games, drag you from a burning helicopter wreck by your shirt with two broken hind legs, etc. And they don’t vibrate when you pet ‘em. That’s just creepy.

So Ryno, I take it yer gal don’t vibrate when you pet her?

I wouldn’t say “vibrate.” ‘s more like a “human earthquake.”

A noisy one. Lots of howlin.’

Sure, she howls “get the f*ck off me you drunken longhair slob, I need to get back to sleep!”

Dogs are great and everything, but you have to always take ‘em outside to evacuate their bowels and bladder (several times a day), and the kicker is that you have to pick up large piles of shit, while still warm, and transport them to a trash can. City-livin’ ain’t no kind of living for a dog/human team. While not an ideal situation, cats can be left to their own devices for a whole weekend, provided they have ample food/water and clean litterbox. And they don’t drool all over you. I’m a cat-man; most dogs stink and require too much of everything.

I like both dogs and cats. Living single, it’s harder to take care of a dog unless you have the type of job where you get home on a regular schedule. Would love to have a dog, but my schedule, which changes every few months, does not permit it.
Cats are a bit easier to take care of.

And Ryan? My cats DO know their names and respond when called. Also, “lot of howlin” sounds like she’s laughing at you.

Dogs’ll look you in the eye and mean it.

Cats look through you.

That’s enough of a character statement for me. Cats…you just can’t trust ‘em to back you up. Plus, traditionally, those in the “cat people” category are just plain creepy. All needy and nervous and shit…

A dog experiences it all with you. Cats are always in the peripheral.

(HOMEFRONT NOTE: Melissa, take no heed of these statements my dear; all is cool with those little bastards that are slowly, hair-ily taking over the factory floor…)

Man, you guys are right. Its much better to have a house that smells like Cat-Ass than to have to go outside and walk yr. dog. Wake up with scratches on your nuts and a pint of blood missing. Rubbing their butts on your mouth. Digging poo out of the toilet.

Hoss is very correct, though. Dogs ain’t made for Chicago-like Bigcity livin. But neither are humans. Fuck that ultra-metro shit. I’m rockin’ the 612.

You fellas better stick with your house-cats. Y’all couldn’t please a woman with a 13” corrugated tongue.

Man, I just typed out this great comment, and I must have deleted the fuckin thing. (SONOVABITCH!) So, here goes again….

PJ’s right…it would suck picking up steaming dog shit. There is this lady in my neighborhood that walks this huge white husky everyday, and the dog shits on my lawn, then she bends down, picks it up, puts it in a baggie, and then in her pocket, and they continue on like it was nothing. Meanwhile, I’m mortified by the prospect of having hot dog shit in my pocket.

I like Cats and Dogs. I have a Cat only because I’m not home enough for a dog. I do have a really cool Cat though. The fucking thing does flips and thinks that we’re married or something. I have had plenty of dogs in my life though and I look forward to having one again someday. (But I’m not picking up hot dog shit!)

Hey Melissa! Welcome to your new home! I’m glad you and your kitties made it there safely and as always…I wish you love and happiness! Be good to her Aaron. She is very much worth it as I’m sure you know. Ok, enough mush…

chow!

I dated this chick last week who, after dinner, invited me up to her apartment “to meet the cats.” I spent a lot of time looking for a quick exit.

Too many cats = weird female.

Ryno- Cat ass? When have you had this experience?
And when did any cat ever scratch your nuts out?

If you don’t want a cat disturbing your sleep, one could always shut the bedroom door.

Cat ass?

Hey Cam, you wanna give PJ some Movable Type support? His went all screwey and shit suddenly and now he’s running the full gamut of emotions- all the way from angry to sad.

Draplin, I won’t say that I’m surprised because we’ve had the “cat” conversation, but as to cat people being untrustworthy? I don’t know, I think PJ and myself are probably the most reliable, solid folk you could meet. Strong minds, strong convictions. If you ask us, there is no mistake of where we stand on most issues (sorry for dragging you into this PJ, but you seemed like an excellent example.) And I will go on record as saying “I am up to my eye balls in cat love.” always have been, always will.
And I like dogs, especially the black lab I grew up with, but there is a needy, overeagerness about them. They are too easy and transparant. I want more of a challenge from my pets. Besides, between Kurt’s needs, the cat, and a dog? I do need a life, you know.

Draplin, you sayin’ I’m creepy? I’m gonna sick the little almond chicken on your ass.

Andy, thanks for the advice. I had never thought of that. I’ll give it a try.

I currently do a lot of work from home and my window overlooks the backyards of a couple brownstones in Brooklyn. Three of these backyards contain dogs, all day long, every day. I watch them pace, lie down, stare at the back door, pace some more…waiting for their owners to come home and give them just a little bit of attention. I watch them explode with emotion when they hear the key in the front door.

I give a lot of credit to the people who shell out the bucks for a dog walker service, since it must be a miserable, lonely life for a backyard dog.

Re: PJ’s Moveable Type

It appears that PJ knows what the problem is: a corrupt database, which is the fault of his hosting provider.

My recommendations are to switch hosting providers. I use Pair.com and I also host draplindustries.com on my Pair account for Aaron. Pair has very stable MySQL databases, and as long as you optimize them regularly, there shouldn’t be too many issues since I believe Pair does nightly backups of all their servers, including the db$.pair.com MySQL servers.

Cam-
May I ask why you prefer Pair.com? Besides movable type compatibility issues. I’m shopping for a host myself.

And does your house smell like Cat Ass?

V- I think Aaron was joking with the whole “untrustworthy”. Aaron slept at PJ’s apt. (in seperate beds) with two cats, cat owner PJ, 2 girls, and a puking drunk guy. Trust was held by all.

Although PJ’s cats aren’t the Cat Ass smelling, bloody nut scratching demons Ryno has encountered.

LOL!

Hey Maniotes, I use Hurricane Electric for my hosting- www.he.net. Is good, but from what I hear, Cam is the man with the intranut, so maybe you should trust him… But He.net has good pricing.

Hurricane is the best - in my opinion. I’ve been hosting with them for over 6 years, have a number of domains with them, and have only ever had one period of downtime - it was approximately 4 hours (that’s over 6 years).

I’m tellin’ ya, Hurricane is great. Good prices, all sorts of services available, and some of the best tech support I’ve ever seen.

-andrew.

I have also heard that HE is good, but I specifically chose Pair in April, 1999 to host my sites because they had free PHP/MySQL capabilities.

Because it’s on my account it only costs Aaron $12/year ($1/month) plus $18 for the domain name for a total of $30/year to host the entire thing. Much cheaper than anywhere else unless someone offers free hosting and support.

Cam, certainly can’t beat the price.

Just so I’m consistent, here’s a little info about HE’s services. I like em so I’ll whore myself a bit.

http://www.he.net/hosting_prices.html

Later.

Hey Jenkins, maybe Cam, do either of you guys have any experience with HT Access files? I’m trying to get one up on my site to deny access from a certain IP, so that LiveJournal.com users won’t be able to hot link my stuff to death anymore. I have the code, but I’m dumb and can’t make the file (or install it) correctly. If any one wants to do it for me, I’ll pay you.

Kurt, it’s pretty simple.

1. Create a file in the directory you want to block access to (like /images). Call this file .htaccess (note that it starts with a period)

2. Locate the IP number you want to block and put it in this code (replace the fake one I put in):

<Limit GET>
order allow,deny
allow from all
deny from 123.123.123.0
</Limit>

3. Save the file.

Thanks Cam, do I just make a SimpleText file for that or what program should I use? I tried once using a SimpleText file and then I messed up my whole site…

Kurt, ideally you want to do it via the Terminal App (if you are using OS X) by telnetting or SSH’ing to your server ad using pico or vi to make the file.

If that’s too complex, then I recomemnd using BBedit to create the file, making sure you give it Unix line breaks, and then FTP it using Fetch, Anarchie or Transmit to your server.

I’ll email you a pre-made .htaccess file that you can upload after you replace the fake IP number with the one you want blocked.

Note that if you are on Mac OS 9.x, you cannot create files that start with periods (it’s a file system thing) and will have to change the name of the file once you’ve uplaoded it to your Unix/Linux- based server.

Wow Cam, thanks. That would be great if you could e-mail me a pre-made file. I have BBEdit, but I don’t know anything about it or unix line breaks… I am running OS X (v2.5), unlike PJ, who wants to remain in the land of dinosaurs.

Goddamn Com-Puter peoples. I c’not understand a word yr sayin’