freeform goodness

When we selected Bailey at the pet store, he was in a cage with 3 or 4 other small rabbits. They were all cuddled together at one end of the cage, as small mammals tend to do. I realized quickly that it would ease his adjustment to his new home if he had a companion in his cage when we brought him home.

We stopped at a Dollar Tree on the way home and bought a very small stuffed animal, a brown puppy (it was almost exactly the same length as Bailey at the time.) We placed the stuffed puppy into his cage before we put him in it, with the hope that Bailey would think it was another bunny.

Sure enough, after a few hours, we noticed Bailey cuddling up to the stuffed puppy. We were always careful to keep them together — when we took Bailey out of the cage to take him somewhere, we’d bring the puppy too. Over the next few days and weeks, as Bailey grew larger than the puppy, he continued to be very attached to it. If we gave Bailey timothy hay, he’d always drop a few stalks next to the puppy. He pulls the puppy around the cage to keep him close.

We bought him a stuffed elephant yesterday from the same store where we got the puppy. It’s the same size, from the same company (so it’s made from the same fabric).

And Bailey is terrified of it.

He grabbed his puppy and took it over into the opposite corner. He’s keeping them both far away from this weird new intruder. We’re going to give him another day or so, I think, to get used to it before we give up.

:: Dave Walker 20:26 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

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Apparently, cats aren’t the only pets who stare out of windows.

:: Dave Walker 21:47 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

:: Comments (0)

:: Dave Walker 20:23 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

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:: Dave Walker 09:42 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

:: Comments (1)

A few weeks ago I went through a lot of trouble to embed a short video in the “right” way here on the blog. Frankly, it’s way more of a PITA than normal people are going to put up with. I saw a note that Vimeo had introduced “universal” embed code so I decided to revisit the subject. I’ve had a Vimeo account for a while, and I’ve never really used it. It’s a much less noisy place than YouTube, really — it seems like they’ve actually put a little work into interaction design.

Curly and Chet II: Electric Boogaloo from Dave Walker on Vimeo.

Thanks, of course, to Ilkae for the soundtrack.

:: Dave Walker 08:45 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

:: Comments (1)

I liked the way the light looked, streaming through a side window and into the aquarium.

Download Video:
Works with most devices: “MP4”
Works with neckbeards: “OGG”

Obligatory geeky details follow:

Video was shot on an iPhone 4, and edited in iMovie for iPhone. Soundtrack is Whirling Of Spirits by Balil.

I converted and downsized the video for h.264 platforms in Handbrake, and converted to Ogg for Firefox with ffmpeg2theora. I’m using the Video For Everybody to serve things with the HTML5 video tag. Flash fallback is untested, because I can’t be bothered.

Oh yeah, the oranda is Curly, the shubunkin is Chet.

Writing entries without an HTML5 aware version of Tidy is painful. Suggestions welcome.

:: Dave Walker 12:47 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

:: Comments (4)

Congratulations and all the love in the world for my parents, Roberta and Charles Walker, who were married 50 years ago today in Detroit.

:: Dave Walker 20:10 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/family]
:: tags: family

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Tessa and Emily.

edit: apparently using “enhanced privacy mode” (e.g. no cookie) for a YouTube video breaks whatever magic MobileSafari uses that allows embedded YouTube videos to be played back in the native YouTube player instead of The Flash Abortion™.

:: Dave Walker 19:44 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal/pets]
:: tags: pets

:: Comments (0)

Every few years I get burned out on the concept of hair care (though, as I get older, my hairline has gotten burned out on the concept of me) and cut all of the crap off.

Morning hair maintenance now consists of a little pre-electric shave lotion and about 45 seconds with my shaver.

:: Dave Walker 10:36 (EST/EDT) [+]

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:: tags: personal

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I’ll be uncharacteristically concise and economical with my words because this sitting in a chair thing isn’t really working out all that well for me yet.

Saturday morning, I had my morning coffee and sat down to play a little WoW. I had a few things to take care of, but largely I’d planned a pretty relaxing day. It was not to be. A little after 9AM, I felt a very sharp, very noticble pain in the upper right (from my POV) part of my abdomen. It felt like a particularly nasty gas cramp at first, so I popped a couple of simethicone caplets and sat back down again. They didn’t help. As a matter of fact, the pain quickly ratcheted up, followed by a sudden, intense burst of nausea. Another burst of nausea followed and I, er, returned my morning coffee to the sea. Did I have food poisoning? Bad cream in the coffee? Another burst of nausea and things were getting decidedly unpleasant — since there was nothing in my stomach at all by this point, the only thing coming up was pain. Really, really intense pain. Worse than any pain I’d ever felt before-type pain.

Uh oh.

See more …

:: Dave Walker 19:35 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/personal]
:: tags: personal

:: Comments (1)