If you've ever had any doubts about the varied and magnificent species that is Homo sapiens, might I suggest you head to your nearest movie theater? There, even the most casual of viewer can meet many of our species' most colorful and interesting specimens…

…and want to kill them all.Some anthropological notes from our previous expeditions follow. Some of these breeds are flighty, rarely seen, and must be observed with the greatest of care.

Captain and Mrs. Obvious

Good things: calls to Andrew and Joy, watching movies with Jeff, cuddle time with the cats, and oh yeah, code-fu.

Notice I didn't say that it was my code-fu. In today's case, it isn't. More correctly, it would be a large bit of whimpering on my part and twenty minutes' worth of code-fu on Gareth's part. Never mind thef act that I spent multiple hours tracking down a code problem that turned out to be a correctly named variable in the wrong scope.

It's the kind of thing that'll drive you to drink. Questing for missing parentheses I can deal with, but this was sheer and utter madness—and all this for multiple log files! Oi, the things I do…

So what got accomplished today? Not much, in truth. The big part was getting the pesky variable problem solved (and, as I check the scoreboard, I see that the current score is Gareth 347, domesticats zero). I did, however, finish up my first full page of the admin section today.

I usually try to stay off of bandwagons. They always seem to have large amounts of scratchy, smelly hay, and you come away from the bandwagon trip just wishing that you could get a shower and not see any of your bandwagon mates for a while; a few hours with 'em and you realize that you really need something else to talk about.

But I'm jumping on this one—Verisign sucks. Sure, there's the whole thing about hoopla.com and Verisign totally fubaring things and not being willing to undo their mistakes…but I've got my own gripe to add.There's a domain I've wanted to register for some time. (Some of you can probably guess what it is, but I'm not going to repeat it here so that I don't inspire others to go questing for it as well.) I got disappointed when I did a search—turns out that .com, .net, and .org for this particular word were all taken.

Proposal for Contract For New Website Owners, herein to be referred to as "You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride" or "Hey Idiot" for short.Whereas, the population of coder-type folk have noticed an alarming increase in personal websites, and

Whereas, given that the population of the planet is only allowed a fixed amount of intelligence spread across all personal websites and,

Whereas, the likelihood of security failures increase as the number of personal sites (running on scripts beyond their maintainers' technical expertise) grows, and

It's official: not only am I an adult, I'm also really, really boring. Upon discovering that I would have the house to myself for all of Wednesday (due to Jeff's attending a conference out of town) I felt that I should do something to celebrate.

So what do I do? Do I go wild, dance naked in the streets, party until the cows come home, stage a wild drunkfest at my place, and frantically run around that evening trying to hide the evidence of the day's debauchery?No.

In the midst of the seriousness that is normally domesticat.net, I present a thoroughly silly and amuzing pop quiz. Examine this photo carefully: the kitty in the laundry

Your question: based on the tail in the picture, please identify the name of the cat, and whether the laundry is dirty or clean.

Disclaimer: Kat, Gareth, and Jeff are automatically disqualified, because Kat and Gareth already know the answer, and Jeff took the picture.

Go forth and conjecture. I'll post a comment with the answer soon enough.

Your task from Friday: given the photo of the kitty in the laundry, determine both a) the name of the cat in the laundry and b) whether the laundry was dirty or clean.

The answer lies in the shape of the tail. While Edmund and Tenzing do admittedly look alike (being brothers and all) they have very different tails. Tenzing's tail has a very broad, blunt end, and Edmund's tail ends in a sharp, well-defined point.

The kitty in the photo had a blunt-ended tail…and therefore was Tenzing.

So how could you tell whether the laundry was dirty or clean based on which cat it was?

"What sets apart Rice-Boys from normal performance enthusiasts is that they are more concerned with the image of speed than they are about actual performance."—riceboypage.com

Is it just me or do the twentysomething males of the world have far, far too much free time on their hands? Kat and Sean had to explain the concept of "ricing" one's car—in other words, taking a car [generally Japanese, thus the nickname] that isn't really designed for speed….…and making it look like it was made for speed.

I still remember the book I was reading at the hospital; I never finished it. I remember the position of the chairs in the room. Leatherette. I wore combat boots for most of the time Dad was in the hospital; if I couldn't actually combat death I could at least look as angry as I felt.

Part of me will always be twenty-five, bracing my current spot in A Confederacy of Dunces with my left thumb while I reached out to Dad with my right hand. Knowing that a touch or a voice would soothe him. Knowing that it didn't matter a damn how uncomfortable I was; I had to do what was necessary.

I hated touching Dad in the hospital. It felt…wrong. At least around me, Dad was not the kind of person to reach out and touch people. Only after his aneurysm surgery did he ever reach out to hug me; he probably had the same unusually-large sense of personal space that I have.

With time comes healing, and with healing, some degree of acceptance. With time, comes the willingness to talk.

To some degree.Today, I'm making available something that has been up on cat.net for quite some time, but that I wasn't ready to share: a cancer diary. Behind the scenes, I kept track of all the entries relating to Dad's diagnosis (and everything that happened afterwards). I knew that eventually, I'd want to compile the entries and make them available in a slightly more accessible format.

But I don't read those entries. Don't really even like to think about them. Even now, when the random-entry generator turns up an entry relating to Dad's illness, I reload the page to get a different random entry.

Am I in denial? No. Denial would be easier.

It's that time of year, when friends start magically appearing from far corners of the country, gathering for a weekend in which we really don't have a lot of stuff actually planned.

I picked up Gareth tonight at the airport, fresh in from the other side of the planet. The Atlanta->Huntsville flight was early, as usual, and Gareth actually arrived at the Huntsville airport before I did. He was at the baggage claim counter, calmly speaking with an attendant."Where will you be staying while you're here?" she asked. Gareth turned to me, and I recited my address.

"Lost a bag, eh?"

"Yep."

"How many?"

"Only one I checked. I saw it in Atlanta, though, so I know it at least made it to the States." A bit of a relief, that; always nice to know what continent your luggage is on. "I did pack things like a razor and whatnot in my carryon, so it's not like I'll be desperate in the meantime."

Ever heard the saying, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should"? Today's interaction with a grocery-store cashier brought this axiom to mind. Granted, I had plenty of time to think about it, given that it took her an exceedingly long period of time to ring up my order.

Me: "Kinda weird. We're having a geekfest on the second anniversary of domesticat."

Jessica: "Oooh. We should have a cake!"…and so year three of writing for this site begins in much of the way that years 2 and 1 began, with me sitting in front of the computer in my pajamas.

In television, it's customary to wrap up a season with a nail-biter of a plot twist, to keep the viewers hanging until the beginning of next season. While online journal writing is often a lot like screenwriting (how does one present the daily events of one's life in a fashion that's both interesting and compelling, even to those who don't know the players involved?), the idea of 'seasons' is a big difference between the two.

Note: this is being said after a rather late-ish night of geekfesting.

Enter three people into the living room, having left the kitchen after obtaining glasses of water.

Person B on sofa bed, groaning, with arm thrown over eyes: "What time is it?"

Me: "Eight-thirteen."

Person B: "You people are ill! Fuckers! Go back to bed!"

Close the door. No need to be quiet; for now, there is no one else here.

The lock on the door slides home with a satisfyingly solid click. Two sets of whiskers slide cautiously into view from behind the divider; they are followed moments later by four cautious, reddish-golden feline eyes.

"It is—absurd—I know—but what other—explanation—is there?"
        —Dr. Daniel Schreber, Dark City

A man wakes up in a bathtub. Gingerly, he touches his face; there is blood on it. His? Or someone else's? The phone rings, and a stranger's voice crackles through the line: "You are confused. You have lost your memory." The line is suddenly disconnected…and there is a body of a dead woman in the living room. A body whose death appears to be of his causing, and whose murder he has no remembrance of.

Welcome back from the rather suddenly-imposed hiatus, everyone! Glad to see that a few of you are still around and kicking. We at casa domesticat are doing the happy dance, now that our web server is back online.I'm pleased to report that you've missed virtually nothing in the meantime. The cats are still rotten, the house is a bit cleaner than it was last week, and everyone (except Gareth) has gone home (alas, geekfest is over…).

Jane. Right out, along with Heathcliff. Visions of cinched corsets and unrequited longing.
Maria. Those blasted Von Trapp children. Definitely out.
Owen. Hey, wasn't he that short guy who spoke in CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME? Ugh, not going there.
Roxanne. She may not have to turn on the red light, but who wants to write about a character which comes with a pre-made soundtrack?

Most of the regular readers of this site know that domesticat's web server was down for a few days due to a very bizarre set of circumstances. Fewer of you know that I maintain a Hotmail drop box, which I use to protect my real addresses from spam.

Since I had a bit of warning that the server was going down last week, I sent out an email to friends saying that they should use my Hotmail dropbox until my @domesticat addresses were usable again.

There's something inherently wrong about being a geek, and yet cackling gleefully at the flaming heat death that is WorldCom. The underlying twinge of guilt has something to do with knowing that many of the employees were normal geeks (look, just avoid the oxymoron and run with it, ok?) like the rest of us, putting in the hours to pay for houses and kids and college debt and trips home to see Mom.

The twinge of guilt has something to do with knowing that, given only slightly different circumstances, those anonymous 'Affected, Downsized Employees' could just as easily have been people I cared about. Twingey bits aside, you know what I said when I first read the news? "Hey, maybe this will make house prices a little more reasonable out in the D.C. area…"(That sound you hear is Heather and Andy cackling.)