No
more coding for YOU! Hobbes
the Wonder Cat's predilection for sleeping on my lap while
I'm at the computer, like he's doing now, does have its
advantages. My lap is warm, for one thing, and I have the
use of a furry, if uneven, wrist support. Plus, when my wife
gets home and walks through the door, she'll see him there
and love how cute we look. This should never be discounted,
no matter how good your relationship is.
Aside
from the inevitable cat hair in the keyboard, the
arrangement works rather well, at least during coolish
weather.
But
a few weeks ago I was working on this column, cat in lap,
when all of a sudden the HTML went all to hell. That is to
say, I didn't know what was going on. It was the
craziest thing I've ever seen, with everything on the page
twitching and shifting. The image I was trying to position
kept trying to escape, and i thought the 8600 was melting
down before my very eyes. As quickly as I could, I hit
command-S, then forced a restart. Wow! But my amazement at
the Mac's willingness to reboot and the fact that suddenly
everything worked fine were nothing compared to how I felt
the next night watching the "Phantom Typist."
I
was writing an email message. Suddenly a line of ones
starting marching across the message window! My hands
weren't even on the keys, but somehow half a dozen lines of
ones filled in across the screen, then stopped. I kept on
going. A few minutes later, the same thing happened, only
zeros this time. Holy -- hey, wait a minute. Holy HOBBES,
that's what! The little bastard was lying in my lap, but his
chin was on the number keys, the ones I never use on
the right side of the keyboard. I pulled his head back, and
the zeros stopped. Ohforgodssake, typing with his
chin. That would explain the ones, too. And the previous
night's madness? That would have been the cat's chin resting
intermittently on the arrow keys, oh yeah. Stupid
cat.
Absence
of the lambs There
is no justice in this world (duh!). If there were, we
wouldn't be about to send high-school grads to die so their
social betters can buy cheap gas for their SUVs.
(Must.....calm....down....) But let's not blow the theme
I've got going here: if there were any justice in this
world, I'd already have a million bucks for for what you see
below. Maybe I'll just pass around a plate. What that
critter is, besides being intolerably, awe-inspiringly,
nauseatingly CUTE, is a cross between a pygmy goat and an
angora called a, um, "pygora." We spotted this thing in a
pen at the Taos Wool Festival on Saturday. My wife thought
it was, well, adorable, at least until I told her how it
came to be, whereupon she wrinkled up her face and said
something like, "Why can't they just stop messing with the
animals?" As good an injunction against genetic engineering
as I have heard anywhere.
The
Taos Wool Festival is a dandy event, however. People come
from everywhere, but mostly New Mexico and Colorado. That's
where the woolies live, after all, and if you looked like
that you'd want to live where the humidity was low, too. All
the animals in these pictures are for sale for breeding
purposes (I hope). Besides the livestock producers, there
are the yarn sellers, weavers, handbag makers, and shearling
slipper salesfolks. It's one helluva show and I can't
believe I've gone a whole other paragraph without dropping
some more cute, so here goes.
This
one was ready to climb out of its pen and follow me home,
and that's just what could happen to you guys if you have
any sense at all. What am I talking about? Well now,
think. Who weaves? Who knits? Who wears big wool
scarves? Who looooves to look at animals like these? For
that matter, who mostly raises them? Finally, who goes to
"wool festivals"? THINK! But yes, it's true. I
swear to God, this is better than the produce department at
an organic supermarket. If you're a reasonably clean lonely
boy and pass up a chance to visit a freakin' wool festival,
you're an idiot. This is some of the best advice ever given
and I'm proud to offer it up. Hey, that's worth at least a
million, too.
Okay,
so we got sheep, goats, llamas, alpacas, even angora
rabbits, but no lambs. I guess you can figure out where this
is going, at least if you're hungry enough. No lambs
gamboling about the festival grounds, no lambs in the pens,
no lambs in the booths. We saw a fresh baby alpaca
("awwwwwww..."), one baby goat, but no lambs. WHAT DID THEY
DO WITH THE LAMBS?!?
Oh,
hahaha. I get it. There are lambs: lamb sandwiches,
lamb kabobs, lamb stew, lamb plates (w/ beans and cole
slaw), but no lambburgers, and I can't imagine why, unless
the little guys are just too tasty to grind up. I mean, that
would take too long, you see.
Aerial
observer sidelined? The
raven hasn't been up to doing much lately. I think the poor
guy is still choked up over finding that our favorite CEO
made darn near half a million dollars a day during
the second quarter of 2002. I don't know, I guess that's
fine. On the other hand, is it really possible to be paid
that much and still think straight?! Wow. The best spin I
can put on this tidbit, which went largely unmentioned on
Mac Web, is that our man Steve obviously isn't in it for
the money. How do I come to this conclusion? Simple. If
I were paid half a million a day for say, just one week,
why, that would be it. I'd quit! "Bye-bye!" Three million is
plenty, and I certainly don't hve room under the mattress
for any more.
Well,
so what. The wheels of industry must keep grinding -- er,
turning. Whatever. Accordingly, I booted the lazy bird back
up for one last run before uploading this column, and
wouldn't you know it, the squawker came back with a
migraine. I tried to get him to talk, but he just kept
waving this note at me. He'd flown over New York City and
caught the latest reasoning from the Bloomberg
News
market site:
"History
suggests that when U.S. stock-market losses get as big as
they have been the past three months, a turnaround is
near."
Well,
it's hard to argue with that (?)... Me and the raven
are gonna curl up with a nice bowl of lamb stew, turn on
CNN, and watch the indexes shoot through the roof.
(Bye-bye!)
"Grack!"
Senior
Applelinks editor and columnist John
H. Farr
invites your comments and wishes everyone a great
week!
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