Update of many things

Sitting in my truck on a site, waiting for the shack to be hauled onto site, leveled and powered so that I can begin my work, I am struck by the fact I have not blogged for far too long an interval. And despite the fact I might claim otherwise, there is so much to blog on. I guess often we get to a point where there is so much to do, inactivitiy seems the better option. Well, not any more. So many aspects of my life need attention, I guess I simply need to tackle them one at a time. The good thing about blogging, or diary keeping or whatever you want to call it is that is forces us to take stock to some degree and focus attention on our actions. Even if only to record them, but hopefully a bit more.

Recently much has happened. We have been working hard, and I have put in a few 80 hour weeks. These can be tiring, even exhausting as endless early wakings follow late nights. But time passes quickly and money starts to slowly accumulate.

Also, we have a new kitten, a ball of fun, nuisance and happiness. Java, as we have called him, certainly upset the brittle balance of feline power in the household, but our other two seem to have settled back into their lives. Butter is still a bit put out, but change normally takes her months to overcome, so there is no reason to stress.

My attempts to study towards my CISCO assocaite level have been stalled by the endless work, and despite valient tries, my efforts to study after a 14hr day fail. No reason to panic though as there is time and summer will be a lot more sedate. I have been learning a little of linux also, and happily have Kanotix running on this laptop. In fact I am presently using it to type this blog.
As much as I know I should love Ubuntu, being of high south african content and possibly the future of the desktop, I find it confounding and have exhausted my patience with it. I need a root password, simply because that is how I work. I want to be able to watch movies and play music right out the box and I really hate spending hours getting such things running. If I wanted a system that takes 5 hours to build to a level of usefulness I would be using windows!

The latest Kanotix has been rock solid, even working with my wireless card be default. This has me rather happy with life and I am trying to set it up to be useful for everything at work. Already I have found a networking tool far better than anything we have on windows, a packet sniffer called ethereal. Nice!

White horse wall murals

Just because I have them, lets publish them. Here are some shots from a while back in white horse. Random street art. I like it, especially the last

A new de vlieg

We have been talking for a while about adding to our family. No, not a little Wen-Shu just yet, but rather another cat. Why exactly is hard to say, but if we can help out another street cat all the better. So a couple weeks back, on a Sunday, we headed down to the local SPCA to see what they had avaiable. Sadly, we did not have all the paperwork in order at the time, so left a little heartbroken and kittenless. I have been keen on getting a grey tabby for a while and they had the cutest little kitten.

Finaly this week we got our paperwork into some form of shape and had a moment to spare when we could get to the SPCA together during the day. Work has been mad for me and Wen-Shu has been grinding out the hours, and coffee beans recently, so it took some scheduling, but we managed to get a chance today.

Shame, my poor wife did not want to face a room full of needy cats knowing we could only take one home, so the choosing was left up to me. I wanted two things: A grey tabby, and a young cat. Our two other cats are very well established and we needed a kitten so it could grow up knowing its place in the pecking order, rather than an older cat that our two nearest and dearest felines would have to adapt around.
I found a little grey tabby a few months old. A male with medium length hair, so not perfect, but full of spunk and personailty and we have since adopted him and named him Java. He is presently meowing and complaining locked away in the bathroom. We are introducing him slowly to the royal highnesses that rule the house and I have been spending a lot of time with Oreo (and around Butter, she doesn't like me too close!) to try and alay their fears. This is not the first cat we have brought in to meet them. Over the years they have had another cat, Santa who staywith us for a good few months, as well as visits by a kitten, a dog and a rabbit.

Lets hope they all get on well!