Little Lost Kittens

Posted on 23 June, 2004 by steevithak

Susan and I were walking in the park this weekend and saw an abandoned animal carrier lying on the ground. It was a hot day and the carrier was in direct sun. The door was open but when I looked inside there were three cats; a mother and two kittens. They were too frightened to leave the carrier despite the heat and obviously being badly in need of food and water. It was impractical too carry a large plastic box full of cats 2 miles back to the house so we decided to walk home and drive back to pick them up.

When we returned in the car we noticed an SUV parked on the street nearby. It turned out someone else had noticed the cats and while they were looking at them, one of the kittens got spooked, made a run for it and lodged itself up under the rear wheel well of the SUV. I managed to crawl underneath and, after a bit of fumbling around in crevices, retrieved the kitten. We returned it to the carrier and loaded the lot of them into our car.

They were all pretty terrified initially. We moved them from the tiny carrier into our garage and gave them some food and water. They’re all very skinny and both kittens have injuries. One had completely lost its tail (I suppose it’s possible this is a natural mutation and not an injury?). The other was missing part of a rear foot. It looked as if it had been bitten off. The injuries weren’t life-threatening and appeared mostly healed. The kittens are still nursing but will also eat solid food.

The mother cat is a beautiful combination of pure white and a range of browns. It has blue eyes and looks like a mix between a Siamese and something else. The tailess kitten looks like a Calico and is still very frightened of humans. The kitten with the injured foot is mostly black with some white highlights and, along with the mother cat, has become quite friendly with us. The little black kitten also likes to explore and get into trouble at every opportunity. The personalities of the kittens made me suggest Zippy and Griffy as names but Susan prefers Trouble and Callie. We haven’t thought of a name for the mother cat.

We can’t keep them, of course, though it is tempting; particularly the mother cat. I’ve never seen such an amazing looking cat before. They’ll probably be headed to the DFW Humane Center this weekend and from there, hopefully, to a new home where they’ll be well taken care of.

Van Helsing

Posted on 26 May, 2004 by steevithak

Susan and I saw Van Helsing recently. It was bad. It was so unbelievably bad. It’s another one of those movies where a few live actors have been stuck into an otherwise completely computer animated movie. And it’s not very good computer animation at that. The animators seemed to think that bigger was better and made everything so much bigger than life that it simply became unbelievable. Castles were higher than 100 story office buildings, My Hyde was about 16 feet tall, the wolfman was about 16 feet tall, Dracula was about 16 feet tall. And all these 16 foot tall monsters appeared to be operating in some other universe with completely different physical laws that allowed them bounce off walls and stick to the ceiling. Every five minutes Van Helsing or one of the other rare human characters would fall hundreds of feet out of a giant castle, land on the stone floor, on their head, and suffer no apparent harm. Some of the animation was done at ILM and they must have had a special that week because they threw a few hundred Ewoks into the deal. That’s right folks, Dracula had an army of Ewoks wearing welding goggles to do his bidding. Oddly the Ewoks walked and talked exactly like Jawas. And despite being way too long, no time could be found to have anything resembling intelligent dialog or character development.

Andrew Litton Invited us Backstage at the DSO

Posted on 4 May, 2004 by steevithak

After the DSO concert Saturday evening, Susan and I ventured backstage at the invitation of Andrew Litton. Following instructions printed from an email, we made our way through a nearly pitch black corridor of the Meyerson known as the green room and knocked on the appropriate door. But I should start at the beginning.

Susan has for some years been maintaining an Andrew Litton discography on her website. Mr. Litton’s 8-year-old daughter was learning to use Google image search recently in a class and stumbled onto Susan’s site. She showed it to her father, who was in the processing of having his own website put together. A few days later Susan received an email from Mr. Litton asking permission to use her discography on his official site. Susan offered to provide a copy of the discography on CD and that brings us back to the green room door.

To our surprise Maestro Litton opened the door himself. He was standing in the corridor next to the door talking to someone so it was perfect timing on our part. We waited our turn and he invited us into his office. A couple of musicians stopped to chat on their way to wherever musicians go after a concert and we got to meet Emanuel Borok, the concertmaster of the DSO. Susan and Mr. Litton chatted about website details for a few minutes and then he progressed to other after-symphony duties. But not before Susan got one of her CD inserts autographed.

Emanuel Ax

Posted on 30 April, 2004 by steevithak

Earlier this Month, Susan and I were able to see a perfomance of John Adams‘ Century Rolls at the Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth. It was performed, of course, by Emanuel Ax, for whom it was originally composed. Generally you have to drive to Austin or Houston to hear a symphony play anything by a modern composer, since the DSO is so reluctant to venture into the 20th century.

Unusual Mammal Report

Posted on 24 April, 2004 by steevithak

So, a few days ago we were walking in Campión Trail (location of my infamous Campión Trail chigger adventure) after a thunderstorm. As we came around a curve in the trail near the river, we saw what looked like a very large feral house cat lying in the grass watching joggers go by. We stopped and approached a little closer. It had a very short tail that was twitching back and forth like a rattlesnake’s. The cat didn’t seem frightened of us at all, but when we got close enough, it stood up began to walk slowly away. When it stood up, it became apparent that it was a good deal larger than a house cat and it revealed a leopard-like pattern on its legs and underside. It also had strange little curling tufts of hair at the tips of the ears and alternating white and black lines on its face. What we were looking at was a Bobcat. They apparently adapt quite well to populated areas. We’ll be returning to the location with camera but I don’t have much hope of seeing another as they are normally nocturnal.

Robots and Robotron

Posted on 31 January, 2004 by steevithak

I’m finally within sight of being mostly caught up on a lot of the work around here. Susan and I managed to find time to make two DSO performances in January. I might even have enough free time to keep my weblog up to date or work on a few non-work-related projects during February.

Work on the DPRG‘s non-profit status continues. We received our certificate of incorporation from the State of Texas this month. The next step is filing the 501(c)3 application with the IRS. The Tuesday night RBNO meetings at the DPRG World Headquarters (aka the “warehouse”) continue to grow in popularity. We now have two live webcams and an IRC channel during the RBNO.

I had to squeeze in a little time during January to open up the Robotron: 2084 cabinet and tune up the joysticks. A fellow VAPS member has challenged me to a game. This is the first time in 15 years or so I’ll be playing against another expert level player. In the 80’s I don’t think anyone could beat me – but I’m a bit rusty these days, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

I’m thinking about updating the Robotron logic board to the slightly newer blue ROMs from the yellow/orange ROMs I currently use. At one time this would have been a simple matter of going to any of dozens of Internet ftp or web sites that offered the ROM images for download and then burning a new set of EPROMs. But it appears there has been some sort of crack-down on arcade game ROM images online. Several fellow collectors emailed me the ROM images but it’s sad that this has gotten so much harder than it used to be.