We lost four newtlets today. I don't know what caused it, but the container they were in didn't seem to be completely clean. It had some sort of slime or mucous that didn't wash out with hot water alone. If that's what caused it, it may have clogged up their gills or something.
I may need to clean the containers with a brush instead of just rinsing them.

Oh well. Some losses were to be expected from a first-time newt breeder. We'll see how they are tomorrow; at least they're eating heartily.

We lost four newtlets today. I don't know what caused it, but the container they were in didn't seem to be completely clean. It had some sort of slime or mucous that didn't wash out with hot water alone. If that's what caused it, it may have clogged up their gills or something.
I may need to clean the containers with a brush instead of just rinsing them.

Oh well. Some losses were to be expected from a first-time newt breeder. We'll see how they are tomorrow; at least they're eating heartily.

In case you're interested, read more here in no_lj_ads .
If you want to keep up with stuff like this without having to read a ton of different communities, I suggest and recommend the_lj_herald .

In any case, I've backed up my journal. My spare journal is here.

...who's not feeling down at the moment? It seems that way.

Vibes, hugs and best wishes to all of you who need them. May you feel better soon!

This was a comment but I actually think it merits an entry of its own. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: my experiences with De Vliegwinkel.

futurecatnz  wrote in a comment: I always think buying the tickets is one of the most exciting bits of any trip - suddenly it's not just a vague dream, it's actually going to happen.

She's right.
Unfortunately the experience was spoiled a bit for me because the travel agency was bumbling...

When I went to their shop in October, a nice lady told me to come back on November the 10th, as by then they'd have the fares from all of the airlines for April, and prices might well be lower then. So I did, but prices weren't really lower; that wasn't her fault , of course. But it all went downhill from there.
First, they quoted me a great price and put it on reserve for me so I could talk to gummihuhn , since I was buying his ticket too.
Then, when I came to actually book, it turned out they could not really book it at that price because they'd made a mistake and applied the wrong airline's taxes.
Then I was handed the receipt and the price on that was a whole lot higher all of a sudden! Turned out they'd made another mistake and given me the 'normal' fare and not the 'low' fare I'd been promised. If I hadn't noticed, I'd have ended up paying hundreds of euros more.
And when they finally got everything right, the pin machine wasn't working and I had to go home and pay by electronic banking.
I'd imagined this part to go smoother... and I'm not going to recommend this company if anyone asks.

But hey, we've got tickets... and we've got a stop over in Osaka on the way back!
Only tricky bit is that we'll have to be at the airport in Christchurch at a ridiculous hour on the way back. It's probably best if we just stay awake.
Oh well... it's all going to work out in the end I'm sure.

Today I went to a reptile (and amphibians, and arachnids) fair to see if I could buy my newt some company.
But what happened there made me sad.
Not only:

• I could not buy any newts as they had run out...
• I saw someone buy the very last pair right before my eyes...
• he also bought some firebellied toads, and he was going to keep them together, which you should never do because even though the newts spend most of their time in the water and the toads live mostly on the land, the toads are much more aggressive and will BITE THE NEWTS' LEGS OFF.

Of course, the buyer wouldn't believe me when I told him this. He probably thought I made it up because I wanted to buy the newts for myself.
Well, I did want to buy them, but it was still true and I went home all newtless and sad.

Well they're not... it's Australia. And it's censorship.

As Sugaryfun wrote on the BookCrossing forum:
"Our government is bringing in a new system to filter out content deemed unsuitable for children or illegal. There is no 'opt out' allowed, it is compulsory, even in homes where there are no children. The filters tested will slow down broadband speeds and incorrectly block thousands of websites. The plan is wrongheaded and a total waste of public money."

I totally agree with her, and that is why I'm showing my support by posting this banner that links to a site about this issue:

Spite makes a wonderful pet.
Just feed it every now and then, and it'll keep you company for a lifetime.

(Inspired by this.)

[Error: unknown template 'qotd'] I would have hit the brakes, instead of counting on the sheep to stay where they were. So they would not have crossed the railroad I was riding my motorbike on, right in front of me; and I would not have hit one of them and fallen down. I wouldn't have hit my shoulder on the iron rail, tearing a muscle, and the sheep would not have had its leg broken. And the sheperds would not have come to make us pay for the sheep.

Oh well. It makes for a good story now.

Copied from beckyzoole's blog.

The 24-hour strike will begin at the following times for the following locations:

Thursday, March 20, 2:00 PM -- Honolulu
Thursday, March 20, 4:00 PM -- Anchorage
Thursday, March 20, 5:00 PM -- San Francisco; Los Angeles
Thursday, March 20, 6:00 PM -- Mexico City; Denver
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 PM -- Chicago
Thursday, March 20, 8:00 PM -- Montreal; New York
Thursday, March 20, 9:00 PM -- Buenos Aires
Midnight -- London
Friday, March 21, 1:00 AM -- Paris
Friday, March 21, 2:00 AM -- Istanbul
Friday, March 21, 3:00 AM -- Moscow
Friday, March 21, 4:00 AM -- Dubai
Friday, March 21, 5:00 AM -- Islamabad
Friday, March 21, 6:00 AM -- Bangladesh
Friday, March 21, 7:00 AM -- Bangkok
Friday, March 21, 8:00 AM -- Singapore
Friday, March 21, 9:00 AM -- Tokyo
Friday, March 21, 10:00 AM -- Brisbane
Friday, March 21, 11:00 AM -- Sydney
Friday, March 21, 12 Noon -- Suva
Friday, March 21, 1:00 PM -- Auckland

I've disabled comments on my blog for now. See you all on Saturday Caturday!

Posted by darkrosetiger and translated from Russian by russianswinga. Thanks to both!
I'm reposting it in its entirety, I believe it speaks for itself.

( Click to read if you're interested. )

For a more balanced opinion, there's a different translation of the same interview, and some interesting notes on cultural differences, here. It's good to be informed.
Doesn't make me feel all that different, but you decide.

LiveJournal users are protesting recent changes in the site policy by declaring a 24-hour content strike. The one-day content strike is on for this Friday, March 21, from midnight GMT to midnight GMT.
Read all about it here.
I care about the issues mentioned, and I can deal with not posting any comments or posts for 24 hours, so I'm in.
I'm not going to be angry with anyone who isn't, we all make our own choices; I'm just telling you where I'm standing on this, and spreading the word.

Well, I am.
LiveJournal has decided to get rid of Basic accounts as an option for new members. Existing basic accounts will be allowed to stay. This was announced, or rather not announced at all, in this news posting, which merely says: We streamlined and simplified things so that now it’s faster and easier than ever to create a LiveJournal account.
Users wanted to find out what that meant, noticed differences in the account options as mentioned in the FAQs, and were enraged. That news posting got over 2400 comments so far.
The staff appeared to be taken by surprise by this uproar, after all, as they said, 'existing users aren't influenced by this decision', that they first tried to 'sell'  as an attempt to make the signup proces 'easier'. Users didn't agree, for several reasons:
- Some users want more journals, for different purposes, so many existing users WILL feel the influence.
- 'Basic' users provide content, too. Many of them provide a lot of the content that many of the paid users are here for. In other words, what's left of LiveJournal if your friends don't want to use it anymore, because they have to either pony up or swallow the ads as soon as they do join?
- Many users don't feel that they can recommend LJ to friends anymore.
I'm one of them. I want to tell people 'Come on over to LiveJournal, it's free, and you don't have to have ads on your blog if you don't want to'. But that's not true anymore. Do I have to tell them how to install FireFox or SeaMonkey and AdBlock now, as well?

There's a new news posting out. It's gotten 1968 comments so far. You don't need to read all of those, but you might want to read the news posting itself.
At least, they're now openly saying that yes, it was a 'business decision'.  :-/

I left MySpace for this, only to find it turning into a MySpace clone?
Hell yes, I'm angry!

My dear friends,
We're gathered together here virtually to mourn the loss of three African dwarf frogs (Hymenochirus Boettgeri), aptly named Mike. They have deceased fairly quickly after each other over the past weeks.
They left behind, apart from their bereaved and saddened owner: two African dwarf frogs (Hymenochirus Boettgeri), aptly named Mike.
Mike, Mike and Mike will be missed. Let us remember them as they were when they were alive and well.

One dead froggie is sad, but not worrying. Small animals sometimes just die for no visible reason. Three, however, in a short period of time, is a reason for concern and Googling.

Here is what I found.
Apparently, it's a deadly fungus. The symptoms match. I hope the two remaining little guys make it; in case it helps, I have added seven grams of unrefined seasalt to the tank, as recommended in the article.

I can't help worrying about the shop where I got the frogs, though. The salesman said the frogs were on special because they did a little too well breeding them, and there were 8000 of them in stock at the time. I hope they are being treated...

I'm also worried about the fungus wiping out large amounts of the world frog population. But I can do even less about that than I can do about the frogs in the shop.
I might send an e-mail to the shop... maybe it helps.

Not computer related, though.
We've been having a bit of a mouse problem in the kitchen. The kitchen is rather far from our living quarters, so the mere fact that we have a resident de-mousing service going by the name of Tigger doesn't keep the kitchen mice-free by itself.
So we started storing all of the interesting stuff in closets with properly closing doors, and no holes or other possible entrances. All except for some macaroni, which was stored in a stainless steel container with a lid that doesn't quite close; the mice can still get to that, but they can't get out unless the lid is taken off, and that has allowed us to catch quite a few mice.
But lately the macaroni remains untouched: it seems the kitchen has been deserted by our tiny furry friends.


However, we store food elsewhere, too. There are shelves in the garage/toolshed/workshop where we keep our stock of flour, pasta, rice and other long life stuff. Oh, and let's not forget instant noodle soup.
A few days ago, as I grabbed a bag of bread mix to put into the bread maker, I noticed a familiar looking round mouse-sized hole in the back of the bag. It's funny how much they seem to like flour! I mean, they left the other stuff alone: sunflower seeds, raisins, chocolate... all of these seem more attractive to me than a bag of flour with a bit of yeast in it. But then, I'm not a mouse.

So today we went to Ikea (which is only 5 kilometres from here) and bought some see-through plastic crates with lids. All of the vulnerable stuff now goes into these rodent-proof boxes. From now on, this former mice mall is strictly window shopping only. And while they're gazing lustfully at our stock of bread mix, let's hope they forget to watch their little backs, so Tigger can wake us up by entering our bedroom with a mouse between his fangs, and loudly announcing another victory.

I'm using this user pic because I believe I'm up a creek, as they say.
I seem to have worn out the left mouse click on my Thinkpad.
It's a tiny flexible plastic hat-shaped thingie, that gets pushed in when you push the button it lives under. If you wear it out, the middle part gets torn off from the outer part and it won't give you that nice clicky feeling anymore, and more importantly, it won't work. Either it doesn't click anymore or it never stops. The latter is what was happening.
I swapped it for the one under my right mouse button, because I'd already swapped it for the one under the middle mouse button...
I'm looking for a replacement or three, but so far I've only found stores that sell complete keyboards. Not the tiny round plastic things as such.
I guess I just click too much...

I just found my blue crayfish wedged between the fish tank heating element and the block of wood.
Dead.
Aww, and the tank was getting so nice.

I have mixed feelings about this... he was gorgeous and fascinating. On the other hand, he was dangerous to the fish and I found him a bit scary. I've seen pictures of other owners handling their crayfish with bare hands. I could never see myself doing that.

Oh well. These things happen. Thousands of crayfish like this one are eaten by gourmets and Ikea customers every year. And now that my aquarium is crayfish free, some new options are arising.
I could have kuhliis again! (I had some, but... you know.) Or shrimps. What about those nice little bright red shrimps? Or both...
I see more fish shopping in my direct future.

Anyway, he *was* gorgeous. Here's a nice picture to remember him by. Bye bye, strange and beautiful creature.

Kind of a rant, I guess.

This is a spin-off from a Chit Chat thread. I don't want to harp on about it there, because it might make the person I replied to uncomfortable, but harping on about something that bugs you is part of what LiveJournal is about, right?
Right. So, what I posted there was this:

> the resident grammar/spelling nazi

Sorry to interrupt, but I wish people would not use this expression.
I understand that its meaning feels differently to different people, but to me and many other Europeans (and, I suspect, many people in other parts of the world too) the word nazi can't be used casually. It basically means GENOCIDE to me. That is quite a different concept from 'someone who's fanatical about certain rules'. And it distracts me from what you're saying, to say the very least.

Can we please try not to use the word nazi in a casual way?

Now I know I'm not alone in this, but at the same time I know there are people out there who don't have the foggiest what I'm on about, or think I'm making a big deal out of nothing.
Except to me it isn't nothing.

The war happened, the Holocaust happened, National-Sozialismus happened. And it was (and is) a big deal. It's a deal that literally cost millions and millions their lives. (We tend to know about the over six million Jews, but we don't always realise there were probably over 26 millions of Russians who died as a direct result of this war).
See, this war I'm talking about wasn't really all that long ago. Lots of people are alive today that remember it. Even my own parents (and I'm blessed to still have parents) remember it. And it happened right here. The results can be seen in many places all over my town and my country.
(For those not in the know, I live within crawling distance from the bridge that was made famous by the book and film 'A Bridge Too Far'.)


Picture: what the center of my city looked like, just after the war, after most of the rubble had been cleared away. This is where I go to the market nowadays.

In any case, it's much too close in many ways (in time, in location, in the collective memory of my people and many others) to make light of it. And the word 'nazi' will never be just another word for me.
So if you want to describe someone who's a stickler for rules, in a humourous way, please think of another word, or make up a new one. Let's please not use this one anymore. There are too many memories (even though they're not mine). It's just too hurtful.

No, I didn't enjoy the 'soup nazi' Seinfeld episode much either.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
I don't have a lot of time right now so I'll just say that my cat Tigger has had an operation two days ago. He had trouble walking, which got worse and worse, so we took him to a vet, who found (after keeping him for some days) that he had developed bone cancer in one of his toes.
The toe has been amputated and it's needless to say that I'm feeling very relieved. Tigger's chances of survival are now good and he's clearly feeling much better. The toe caused him a lot of pain. He looks a bit silly but it's great to have him back!

(Originally posted on MySpace)
*does the happy dance*
Tigger is back. One of my housemates found him.
In fact, he and his little boy heard a pitiful meowing in a barn or storage building down the street. They rushed over and told us about it, and we rushed right out to listen.
My boyfriend heard it too, but wasn't sure whether or not it was Tigger. Nevertheless, he was certain he'd heard a cat, and he found an air vent that would permit a cat to get out of the building after the grid was removed.

So he took the grid off and we lied down on the floor and peeked inside to see if we could catch a glimpse of a cat, but no. All was still inside.
I figured it was best to go in there, even though that made this a case of breaking and entering. He removed some stacked-up tiles so I could crawl inside.
It took me a while to find any trace of a cat in the large space inside, but as soon as I heard a meow I was sure it had to be Tigger!
He called for me, and I answered him, but he was too scared or too confused to come to me. It took him a while to realise it was really me, and then he came to me and let me pick him up.

When we came out my boyfriend brought him some food and water immediately, he seemed much more hungry than thirsty. After he'd eaten a bit we all went home.

Tigger is now happily resting on his favourite chair, purring away, with a belly full of food. He's lost a lot of weight, but he seems healthy enough. It feels so good to have him back. I love a happy ending.
*grateful sigh*