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December 23, 2006
Poop-Off is liquid miracles
I have, in my house, wooden flooring, with the exception of a cream colored carpet square in the lounge room.
I also have a dog.
With unerring aim, when she is feeling unwell - and she is unwell everytime it rains heavily (projectile diarrhea and vomit) - she will find the carpet.
Under advisement from the carpet cleaning company, I didn't try cleaning it myself, and simply scraped the worst out myself, and waited for them to come clean it. Apparently whatever I, the non-professional, clean it with would have locked the stains in, never to be removed.
They set anyway. Even after two steam cleans, there was a very noticable darker stain on the rug. Being a cheap bastard, I don't really want to buy a new rug. I tried several brand-name cleaners, and not one helped.
Yesterday, I found something called Poop-off, and thinking the name was perfect, I gave it a try.
My god.
The stain has utterly vanished (it works on urine stains as well). With one application and very little effort.
If you have a pet that has a penchant for staining things, get some.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 04:24 PM
December 20, 2006
Not so Secret Santa
My Secret Santa gift arrived.
Some of the favourite memories of Christmas morning are of the family gathering together and the extracting and unwrapping of small, wrapped gifts from the stockings. They were knick-knacks, inexpensive little things, but definitely fun. Often odd.
Malfouka sent me a box of little, wrapped gifts. It made me smile just opening the box (and a quite astonishing card). And so I started, slowly, opening one after the other, and enjoying every moment, wondering, after having seen a myriad of flying dildos, buttplugs and vibrators on the card, what they were to be.
Allow me to present a list:
Travel Pack of wet ones (always useful)
Mini Travel Uno (card game, to while away the hours)
Travel version of Mad Libs (not sure how to play it, but it looks interesting)
Hand warmers (with winter coming upon is, this is something truly appreciated)
Flavoured dipping sherbet and candy dipper (I remember these. I loved these)
Strawberry Shortcake temporary tattoos (Not the peculiar purple pieman)
Cake Decorations (though I tend to snack on them instead, sugary little things they are)
Six little boxes of bugs
Dried bugs.
Flavoured dried bugs.
Three boxes of worms, variously in BBQ, Cheddar Cheese and Mexican Spice.
And three boxes of crickets (the other green meat), in Bacon and Cheese, Salt 'n' Vinegar and Sour Cream and Onion flavours.
(Click to enlarge)
I can't decide if the bacon and cheese ones or the salt'n'vinegar ones taste best. (These treats are made by HotLix, who even have scorpions in candy and chocolate coated crickets)
Thank you, Malfouka!
I'll try get you a can of witchety grubs when I get back to Australia (they taste like runny eggs raw, nutty and creamy when roasted).
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 02:52 PM
December 14, 2006
The February Dragon came early this year.
When eight years old, I learnt the phrase 'Ash Wednesday'. I did not realise it was the name for the first day of Lent; it had a far more ominous meaning for me.
There had little rain for two years, and the land was in the grasp of one of the largest droughts recorded in Australia. On February 16, 1983, a Wednesday, and, coincidentally enough, the first day of Lent, the February Dragon was born in a pair of shorting power lines, sparking a blaze that ripped through tinder dry forests and fields. And they could not be controlled nor stopped until they burnt their way to the coast, two weeks later. The state was blanketed in smoke and the sun glowed a malicious red at dawn and dusk through the haze.
Where I lived, ash fell all around. The smoke haze restricted vision and the night sky was lit from the north east by the infernal light of the torrid conflagration.
I remember my father, christian, standing out in the rains that came towards the end, praising Jove. I always imagined that he'd exhausted all the other rain gods in the weeks before.
A total of half a million acres were burnt out. In many areas, regrowth was slow and even ten years later; the blackened trunks of surving trees were a scarred reminder of the fire. The animals suffered terribly, both wild and livestock.
In 2002, the current drought began, again the worst on record. Four years later, it has been declared a “1000-year drought event”.
Two weeks ago, the dragon returned. Jove has turned a deaf ear.
In some areas, the flames are stretching 50 yards into the sky.
The government department that tracks such things currently lists an area of 1.36 million acres - larger than Delaware – as ‘Going’, largely in national parks thus far.
A ‘Going’ fire is one completely uncontrolled and spreading.
Small towns are coming together, as they do, with pubs putting on free food, soft drinks and beer for the firefighters. The Country Fire Authority always bears the brunt of these fires. It consists of 400 full time fire fighters and 700 or so assorted command and control staff and administrators. And 58,000 volunteers. Thank you.
And because there is always a certain element of society that should have been smothered at birth but weren’t, police down there are hunting a several arsonists for lighting deadly blazes.
Here's hoping theres some bush justice before the police catch them.
And it looks like I'm not alone in that thought. Mr Dosser was killed
Mr Dosser, 48, died on Thursday night trying to help his friend, Liz McCarthy, save her property at Old Joe's Creek Rd from the Cooper's Creek fire.Best friend Colin Walsh said Mr Dosser was always helping others.
"He was one of the best blokes I've met in my life," he said.
"He knew it (the fire) was getting close to his friends. He was going to stay with them until it was over."
Mr Walsh said words could not describe his feelings for those who had lit the fire.
"You could not put it in print," he said. "I'd like those people in a round yard surrounded by Don's mates."
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 10:39 PM
December 04, 2006
Should the learning curve swoosh up like that?
I get called on to do the computer related things at work. Or, more accurately, I get called on for anything that plugs into a wall or runs on batteries.
Now its websites. Graphic design is not my strong point. However, judging by the varied expressions of shock, loathing, disgust and fear when quoted by a design firm, it will be another task for me.
For a very long time, I've been using Paint Shop Pro (from Jasc software, recently acquired by Corel) for all my image editing needs. Being of sound mind and limited budget, and with an impatience born of general unwillingness to spend hours mastering complex software, it has the perfect blend of features and usability for me. I can pick it up after months of neglect and be very nearly instantly productive.
Whilst I have used PhotoShop and appreciate its power, after any decent term of disuse the interface always seems largely alien to me and needs to be relearnt.
Unfortunately, Paint Shop Pro it doesn't do everything I need it to for this task (though it comes close), so the bullet has been bitten and a copy of CorelDRAW has been purchased, which I have vague memories of using a decade ago.
It looks complex. Very complex.
Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at 03:12 PM