Now, if someone could just tell my ratties to stop being sick, tell the quail to stop crowing at 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, 6 am, etc., and write about 80 pages of research papers for me, life would be grand.

Well, the ratties are finally getting better and the Matrix quail have been temporarily rehoused with Celia. I can’t imagine what kind of terror their being with me has wrought on their little birdie psyches, but hopefully they’ll stop their incessant crowing now that they’re back at her place. I do miss the little guys and I plan to try and take them back as soon as this quarter is over. But for now, I can’t even say how much better I feel now that I can sleep though the night once again.

Grr, so much work to do right now. I know I need to revamp the website again and get a blog going so people can comment/harass me (heh, assuming that people still read anymore). Trust me, it’s on the to-do list, just farther down the line than I’d like. I also need to get a villains section up again some day too, because let me tell you, some people are really starting to chap my ass right about now. Grrrrr!

On another note, not only did I clearly traumatize the Matrix quail, but they are spreading the madness to Celia’s other quails. I swear I don’t know what I did to them! Honest!!!

Well, Kim, I appreciate your efforts to distract me from my work, but your charge is just going to have to be taken up another day. The only kind of posts your going to see in the next few weeks will involve some ramblings on the philosophy of science (oh yeah, uber-geeks rejoice) and some confused musings about French studies on crimes of passion. That is, unless someone else wants to write these papers. I’m still looking for a good topic for a Victorian Science essay…
(Yeah, a comment box would be useful here, huh?)

Just when things had been looking up…
I love you little Martha.

Sometimes you just get sick of everything. Sick of heartache and exhaustion, work and the assheads who make your work that much more difficult, etc., etc. So what do you do at times like these? You get into the car with your friend on her birthday and you drive your ass up to Madison, WI, for some of the best sushi in the whole damn country. You eat until you’re ready to explode, come home and play with the wonderful rats you have left, and you go to bed without doing one lick of work. We all deserve a vacation every now and then. Happy birthday to us!!!!

Addenda: WordPress blog testing is underway.

I am currently looking into WordPress so that I can have a true blog with comments and whatnot. So be patient a little while longer. Also, I see that many of the hits I get from search engines relate to rat health questions (and one asking “what s france all about” In a word: cheese). I’m starting to realize that I’m not the only one who’s sat up many a late night, desperately combing the web for information on how to help my sick little rodent buddies. So I’m thinking about redesigning the rat section of my site to be more informational rather than purely anecdotal. Not that I’ll ever stop talking fondly of my little guys, but anything I can do that might help out a fellow rat owner would make it worth the effort. In short, despite the fact that I have a million other things to be doing right now, I’m going to play with my website.

Okay, I’m going to be testing out WordPress for a while, but already I don’t like the damn themes crap. Thank you, I know how to make a webpage and I know what I want it to look like so why the hell does everyone make these stupid blogs contain so much pre-designed style crap that it will take me more time to change all the stupid css than it did to build my website in the first place?! Why can’t someone just design some bare bones blog software without all the fluffy sh*t, huh?

As you can see, I’ve got the new WordPress blog up and running. At least, I hope it’s up and running–you never can tell with these things. It isn’t pretty, but it’s going to have to do for now. I’ve already spent far too much time trying to get it to look right. If you encounter any bugs or whatnot, you can email me at master at canniballsall.com, but don’t expect many changes any time soon. You all better appreciate this.
(Also, I’m in the process of converting my old posts, just in case you really want to see them again. However, only the most recent are currently available.

I admit it, I don’t like kids very much. Especially babies. Yes, I realize people have to have them to keep the human species going (unless you don’t want to keep the human species going, which is fine by me too), but I find nothing cute or appealing about them. Maybe if they were furry like kittens or something?

Anyway, aside from my personal dislike for babies, I’ve been rather unplesantly surprised by the pressure that people put on you to give pregnant people stuff. I always thought that baby showers and the like were sort of personal things. Like, you invite friends and people in your social circle to these things. Not the people you have strictly professional relationships with, like your coworkers, collegues, students, etc. Now admittedly, it’s not usually the pregnant person that puts these pressures on their professional affiliates, but other coworkers who decide to throw a shower, or try to make everyone pitch in to buy a gift. I understand the sentiment, but it’s it a bit obnoxious to make coworkers, or worse say people in professionally inferior positions, feel obligated to make such a personal contribution? Really, am I just a total jackass to think this kind of thing is really inappropriate?