Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: Ahem,

<i.but distilled river water</i>

With the addition of some Hordeum vulgare and mediated by various Eukaryota?

[Nods approvingly]

I would raise a nice glass of Kilchoman but it's before noon..

parts of the south refer to the Civil War as "the recent unpleasantness"

Because they don't want to admit to being beaten by those northern barbarians?

Re: Ouch

the cure is to go to the local zoo and get a bucket of lion (or tiger) dung and spread that around your garden

Only the boss cat of a particular area is allowed to poop in specific places. However, I severely doubt whether lion or tiger smells anything like silvestris domesticus so I'm sceptical that it would work..

Re: Ouch

She came to step two, and got a shock right on the nose

Happens regularly to ours (particularly the big ginger cat). He now won't come near me (especially in summer) until he's seen me touch something metal.

Given how thick he is, I'm really surprised he learnt that trick!

Re: Agree

95/98 was easily a 6 monthly occurrence. And a lot more annoying to fish out drivers etc

Which is why, when I got a setup (home or work) working as well as could be expected, I'd burn a CD with the full driver set I'd used. That means, if I had to rebuild, at least I could get the normal functionality and, if desired, update any drivers that needed it.

Of course, sometimes the driver update would seriously bork things so it would be back on the nuke/re-install gravy train.

Re: Looks like Windows 11

I started on GUIs with MacOS System 3

Newbie :-)

(Atari ST for me - 1987/8 (ish). Followed by Acorn Archimedes. Then (at work) Windows 3.11.)

There is no need for dual bars, top and bottom

In MacOS both the dock and top menu bars can auto-hide..

(Not sure about desktop linux - last time I used one [1] it was KDE 3..)

[1] All my linux & freeBSD VMs are console-only.

Re: Moving to FTTH

I had VM cable

We have a Vermin Media network case on the pavement right outside the house. I would only ever take service from them if they were the only ISP available.. (and said so to the door-to-door marketing guy who called by after they had installed it.

And they need a better class of location case - half the time one of the doors is open and you can see all the gubbins inside. It's really sparsely populated inside. I've just enough decency to stop one of my dogs peeing in it..

Re: Moving to FTTH

I've had FTTP for just over a year now (with Zen). The only downtime is when CityFibre were cabling up the street and managed to knock out my fibre completely - to th extent that BT had to replace the NTE (or whatever they call it nowadays) in my house as it would never get beyond showing a red light - even with a complete power-down and reset.

CityFibre claimed innocence and tried to blame OpenWoe ("all their work is shoddy so I'm not surprised it failed" was the quote from the cabling gang foreman.. considering I'd just seen one of his workmen jump down into the telecoms duct without bothering to look where he landed I wasn't about to take his word). Or that of the CityFibre project manager tht rang my doorbell 15 minutes later. Or the probably-senoir CF manager that rang my doorbell that evening. At leaast she was willing to help - offering to phone BT and get a call raised as a priority. I'd already contacted Zen and they'd raised a call for me (I have a business-class line as the SLA is considerably better and means that the IP addresses I have are not flagged as residential for anti-spam purposes)

Strangely, the BT engineer who came to the house said that the majority of the calls he'd had to fix fibre installs were in areas where CityFibre were laying cable..

(For clarity - CityFibre were using a 3rd-party cabling company to do the work - a German company if I remember correctly. The workers were British though)

Re: Network Switches Like the Heart of Gold's Onboard Computer

how to make tea the proper British way

In a pot, using freshly-boiled water and loose tea leaves.

Put tea pot under tea cosy and leave to steep (time required depends on the type of tea and the strength desired).

Once at the desired strength, pour into a cup/mug that has already got the desired amount of milk in.

Drink, accompanied by sandwiches/cakes//biscuits (delete as appropriate).

Simples.

Re: Litter Tray?!?!

and in the fancy rose garden

It's probably got nice soft, well dug earth. So much nicer on the paws :-)

(Only the top cats in the area don't bury their waste, subordinate cats will always try to)

because cats tend to be more active at night

The term is 'crepuscular' (the period just before nightfall and just before the dawn). They need *some* light to hunt by.

Re: Do these guys actally live with cats?

Tail langage - most of cat communication amongst themselves is via the tail and body posture

I call it 'tailography'.

And, if dogs are not used to it, it confuses the hell out of them because it's pretty much opposite to a dogs' body language..

Dog - tail wags because it's happy or appeasing. Cat - tail wags because it's agry and *something* is going to lose patches of skin unless they go away

Dog - ears go down to show appeasment. Cat - ears go down as a prelude to attack.

Dog - rolls on it's belly to show submission. Cat - rolls on it's belly to thhat it's best weapons (claw) are facing the enemy.

Fortunately, our dogs are all cat-trained and kmow what the various signs mean - especiallly when accompanied by the various noises. The still get nervous when youngest cat headbuts and fusses them - she's a pure black cat but acts more like a tortie than our actualy tortie..

You married The Old Cat Lady up the street?

My wife jokes that she married the crazy cat man. She's not wrong either..

She's why we are not knee deep in cats!

Re: On the other paw

they are embarrassed by your inept hunting and disembowelling skills, and want to demonstrate how it's done

Our first cats (a brother and sister0 were really good hunters[1]. When we got the third cat who, despite officially being a farm cat, had been pampered to the extent that she had zero hunting skills, the male cat brought her in an intact adult blackbird and dumped it in front of her and then took a couple of steps back as if to say "go on, show us your technique". The little cat was pertrified..

We managed to rescue the blackbird and kept it shut in our bedroom for a couple of hours, then put it on the window ledge. After a few minutes it flew away safely.

[1] When they were about one we went through the 'summer of slaughter' - it was a rare day that we didn't wake up to something being crunched under the bed (we started putting plastic sheeting under there) or a small pile of unidentifed guts under the kitchen table. The male learnt the hard way that neither house martins or shrews are edible - both resulted in a kitchen floor that looked fairly horrific.

Re: On the other paw

If a cat could stand on your sleeping chest and lick your nose to say how it felt, it would

Or, like my oldest cat, side on my bedside cabinet and bash me on the head/arm/hand (delete as appropriate) until I wake up and give him treats. If that doesn't work, stomple up and down me until it does. At which point, the little tortie and then the youngest cat mysteriously appear. Although the youngster requires her treats to be on the floor (for two reasons - it means she cant see her hated rival (the tortie0 and because she leaves the crumbs for the dogs to cleam up - hoping that, when she leads the overthrow of the household, they'll join her..

We think the oldest cat has got a lot of Siamese cat in his ancestry. He's bright enough and has a loud enough voice to make it believable.

Re: Three states of catter

we have extra/leftover meat, and are willing to share.

Plus we have nice soft and warm places to sleep..

Re: My Feline Overlords

best a human can do is “pet”

Cats have a fairly defined heirarchy. It's perfectly possible for a human to be boss, they just have to know what they are doing.

Much like with dogs but using different methods. And language.

Re: My Feline Overlords

Introducing new felines into a cat system that has achieved stability is asking for trouble

Not always true. It depends on several things:

1. How old the cats involved are (resident and incomers)

2. How gradually it's done [1]

3. The nature of the cats involved (and the neutered status of the cats[2])

Our cats range in age from 16 to 5 - we got the first two while we had an existing 17-year old cat (they got on fine). Then a year or so later, we got two semi-feral ex-farm cats (they got on fine with the older cats - it probably helped that they were ex-farm cats and used to living in a colony). Then we fostered (and later kept) a street cat with 5 very sick kittens (one died, the other 4 survived and we kept the mother and the smallest of the kittens). That introduction caused problems - the oldest female really resented that an intact queen, with kittens, had come into her house (cat society rules meant she was top of the pile in the female side of things) and the existing cat felt threatened (despite outweighing the mother by a factor of 3). Senior female never minded the kittens - just the mother. Even after we got the mother neutered. Youngest cat was probably 4-5 months old when she came in and senior female greeted her like her long-lost kitten!

Our introduction process works like this:

New cats are kept separately from the others (back bedroom with the door shut - well supplied with cat trays, food, water and toys. We go to and fro but the other cats don't get in and new cat(s) don't get out. This lets current cats get to know the new cats smell and also allows them to start to smell like us (from us handling/stroking them). We also (at one point) had a very tall pet gate that the cats couldn't jump over - the next step was allowing them to see each other through the bars but not physically interact. Then new cats are allowed out of the room in a supervised fashion. Once we are confident, we allow them out of the room unsupervised while we are at home. Eventaully, we leave the door open all the time - by that point, the new cats have that room as their territory to retreat to if needed.

It's worked for us in introducing new cats but can take several weeks or months (depending on the cats involved). I've met plenty of people who say that you can't get groups of cats to live together and that they are, by nature, solitary.

Which was, and is, utter rubbish. You just need to look at feral cat colonies - they volunarily form groups for protection and to make sure that there are sufficient hunters around. And in the home, as long as the people owning the cats have a clue what they are doing, it's perfectly do-able (within the boundaries of personality clashes).

Re: My Feline Overlords

Recently one of the youngsters has begun bullying the oldest one

Are the cats neutered? Because, if they are not, then you introduce an extra level of tension in the group[1]. sadly, like with people, some cats just *don't* get along (our youngest delights in tormenting our oldest cat - but not to the extent that he's frightened. Also, I tell her off (in cat [2]) when she does and, since she's very human-orientated, she tends to listen to me. Over time, her behaviour has improved. We also don't feed them all together since food is another source of tension - 4 of our cats are perfectly happy to feed together, the other two, not so much. Youngest cat *really* objects to be given food or treats if the older tortie cat is around (to the extent of swiping at me even though she's my lap cat)

There are several possibilities why: She may have disciplined the kittens when they were first allowed to mix and, now he's bigger, he's paying her back [3]. Or, she's got an illness and her scent has changed (cats have a much, much better sense of smell than us) because he doesn't recognise her scent as one of the clan. One of our previous group of cats (a brother/sister pair plus an unrelated one) the sister started spending a lot of time next door and would come home smelling of slightly rancid chip fat and cigarette smoke. Her own brother attacked her because he didn't recognise her scent. We had to keep them apart until she lost the scent - at which point he was quite happy with her again. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the box but a lovely cat otherwise.

It's also rare for males to harass females [4] - they are usually much more interested in status & domination games with other males.

[1] Neutering toms is the quickest way to reduce their aggression. Our 2nd male is about 7kg in size and formidably armed. I suspect that, if hadn't been neutered, he'd be a bit of a Greebo.

[2] I speak fairly fluent cat - I can't do all the postures and, frankly, can't put my ears down flat against my head or lash my tail around. But I can do the vocal bits fairly well.. I also speak fairly good dog (with the same obvious limitations)

[3] I've seen this in our current 6 cats - senior cat (a male) tormented second cat (a female) when they were both youngsters - he's 3 months older than her so was a good bit bigger. She is now (they are both nearly 16 now) bigger than him and, when she did get bigger than him, she did pay him back..

[4] Females don't bother with all the posturing and shouting that the males do - they just go all-out to try to main the other cat. Presumably a hardwired protective instinct - why give an aggressor warning?

Re: Foolproof

they'll only get a better idiot!

Like the British Standard Idiot - the person that they get to flick a switch 500,000 times to check that it reaches the manufacturers claims..

(That was a very old joke, made in the days before robotics..)

Re: More Context

easily passed over or otherwise ignored

The 'block element' feature in Brave does come in useful..

(Most often used to block those utterly irritating auto-play videos that US websites are so enamoured with! Or the irritating survery questions that El Reg has started infesting the bottoms of pages with)

you need a procedure for dealing with them

In our place, we send regular updates (which everyone ignores) then the senior management sends out the same updates as part of their regular updates. Then we send the team leads and managers the same updates with specific instructions to pass onto their teams. Then the senior management does the same thing.

We *still* get people who complain that they were not warned. Fortunately, it's now very rare that they are important enough for us to have to grovel to.

Re: Content

I feel this has less to do with a person's internal wiring and more to do with their exposure to technology

Many eons ago (subjectively - it was during the y2k kerfuffle) I was Evil Kontract Scum. And the contract I was working at was replacing all the old OS/2 desktops at a large Bristol-based insurance company. The idea was that all the logisitcs would be done beforehand (new machines delivered, still boxed up to site) than we would go in after-hours and unbox the machines, set them to re-image (newer version of OS/2 with all the business apps pre-installed) and then swap out the old units for the new units.

This would take however long it took - we were each paid for 10 hours per night[1], whether it took 5 or 15 hours. Usually, because we'd got it all pretty streamlined ("you two unbox and move the PCs to the right desks, I'll start the imaging, you swap them over post-image and you clean up and move the old ones to the disposal area) it would take us between 4 and 5 hours a night.

Such a shame we were pretty close to some great curry houses :-) I think I ate more curry on that contract than ever before or since. Sadly, after a couple of months they realised that they were going way over budget and started shedding contractors. Sadly, being the last one to join the team, I was the first to leave. Still, it paid off my 'company' motorbike!

One office we arrived. The site team leader signed us in and basically told us that she didn't know why the company was bothering - she'd never used a computer and never would. To which my response was that. if she maintained that attitude, her only future inside jobs would be stacking shelves in the supermarket because pretty much *every* job other than purely manual ones will require the use of computers. And, even with her job, sooner or later, she would also have to be using computers, even if it was only to read reports.

[1] I suspect that none of the permie team wanted to be spending late nights with a bunch of sweaty EKS's and decided that the cost of paying us a flat fee per night was preferrable to paying a permie or two double-time and then having to go through the hassle of signing off timesheets..

Re: EV Smugmobiles

I can tell you that I've not been on a plane since 1998

Neither have I. But I also don't have a dirty old diesel smogging up the place..

(Of all the ICE engined vehicles, diesel produces the most pollution. Even newer ones.. especially ones that haven't had the cheat-to-pass-emissions-tests settings removed)