I have decided I'm going to keep my furdragon Matkah. Originally I was thinking of getting a female white raptor and naming her Matkah and releasing my furdragon of the same name once she hit 40. I then would have gotten a blue furdragon as my last dragon. But I don't want to have a released dragon on my record. I want to be done with the game as far as getting dragons is concerned. I think a lot of the original old accounts are gone from inactivity. When I click people they usually only have one or two dragons. It's weird. What happened to all of us that started with version 1? I rarely see anyone else with five or six dragons so I'm proud to now have one of the oldest accounts there. Anyway, I decided that the color I'll double up on will be white since it's a bit scarce. I will get a white raptor and my last one will be male and his name will be Darzee like the bird in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. I wish I could rename my dragons. I'd love all the names on Owen's account to be Kipling related. I would like to rename Talon and ProPhage. I like dragon accounts that have themes. It's nice you can change colors if you screw that up, but I'd like to be able to change name and gender too.

I worked a little bit on my story today. I can't wait to finish this section. Once this is done hopefully the worst is over. I'm still on the same part I was stuck on the last few times. It's a Halloween scene since the Copes celebrate all the holidays.

Ok, I'm going to post some videos behind the cut because schneeschaf and I were talking about birds and I want to show her how different kinds of birds can be cuddly. Most of you have seen these so you can ignore if you want.

( Bird Videos )
.

Ok, Here is the video of the guy with no lawn. He turned his whole front yard into a vegetable garden with raised beds. This is a long ten minute video but you get he gist in the beginning and skip half way to see a different view. But he rambles on pretty much. I had a hard time watching the whole thing which is why I recommend skipping to key points. It is such a nice oasis in the ugly expanses of lawns. You can't see it in this view but the first bed is right along the sidewalk. My only concern would be people stealing his food with no fences. If I did something like this I would probably make it a hummingbird garden and keep my veggies in the back or fenced where jerks can't steal or smash them. He's too trusting and I'm sure he'll find that out eventually.

I was reading Birds and Blooms and was pleased to find a section where someone asked what a bird was and the editor didn't have an answer. I wrote in and gave them a description that it was a little diamond dove. I used to breed these birds. So hopefully I'll get published again. Here's what I said.

I enjoyed your Sept 2009 issue. In Glad You Asked on p. 19 Beth Mitchum asked for a bird ID. The little dove that visted her yard was a Diamond Dove (Geopelia cuneata). They are a popular pet bird originally from Australia. They are small sparrow sized doves about 7.5" long with a pointed tail They come in several different color mutations. This one looks like a normal silver. The little guy was probably lost from his home. I'm glad to see he found some food.

I have got to work on my story sometime soon. I need stronger will power.

My first two dragons could use the most clicks please.



BTW, if anyone has a level 90 or 80 Reptile Scales Leg Bracellet for growth you no longer need, I could use it and will buy it from you.
.

Today we let off two bug bombs in the house. Hopefully this will kill all the darn seed moths that have been flying around. It still stinks so I'm leaving the birds out over night. I got a chance to work in the garden today and cut some of the huge weeds by their stems. I made a small hole, but still have a long ways to go. One thing that I should have done was ripped out all the muscadine grape vines since they take over everything. They compete with my Dutchman's Pipevine. I'm hoping I can relocate that thing because it's such an awesome plant and has the coolest fleshy flowers.

Speaking of Pipevines, one reason I got it was to have it be the host plant to the Pipevine Swallowtail. Here is a nice website about them. It's short but the pics are what I wanted to share. It's a mostly black butterfly but in the right light the upper side of the hind wings are irredecent blue. The underside of the hind wings can be blue too with orange dots that are very beautiful. I've never raised these so it would be something fun to do. Of course since we just sprayed I probably won't be bringing in any bugs that I want to live for a few days. Perhaps in a day or two I can set up tanks and go caterpillar collecting. The caterpillar is rather ugly though. It's black with fleshy orange spines. They feel soft and smooth though, but they're ugly bugs to look at.

I wanted to share a video that I found out about by a guy in a country band called Son of Maxwell. They took a flight on United Airlines and United broke their guitars that were worth $3,500. This was no accident the crew was throwing them around. Of course he demanded they pay for repairs. United admited they were at fault then basically told him, "Yes we broke your guitars. But too bad for you, shove off." So he made this video which has now cost United 180 million dollars and caused their stocks to drop 10%. Oh btw, you can click the little square in the lower right to turn off the annoying text boxes.



And he only demanded $1,000 in repairs to boot. So what would have simply cost United a thousand bucks ended up being a 180 million dollar lesson in better customer service. Taylor Guitars got wind of this and offered to repair his guitars and give him a new one. United finally said they would pay him, but by now it was too late and they said that the money should be given to charity so long as he gets a recipt proving that's where the money went. Haha, that's halarious because he really didn't need the thousand bucks after all that. After the losses they suffered he's been more than paid back. What's cool is I actually like this song and have been listening to it over and over. It's up-beat but still has that hint of sad cowboys country feel to it. I think you guitar players on my list will empathise with him. Even though I know they were empty I kinda cringed seeing those cases flying through the air.

Prophage FINALLY turned 80 and I was able to pass on the jewelry to the other younger dragons.


.

Not much to say tonight. I hope I get my computer back soon and that I don't lose anything. I'm worried about possibly losing some of my Sims, but since I recently did a back up I might have them on a CD somewhere. I must look for that. If that's the case I may be able to make an update for the Four Bad Sims but not sure yet. There are only a few characters I didn't upload so I'll have to check if I have them on back ups. Here's hoping I won't need them at all.

Anyway, I went ahead and made that comparison with Major Tom and Heathcliff and was amazed at what I found. It was so interesting I made it a video so you can see for yourself what I mean that these two songs are basically the same.



That's pretty neat huh?

Alex just left with my computer but despite that I'm in a good mood. We had a very fun time chatting while he was here. Seems like I might be having memory problems or it's just a stupid virus again which means we'll have to whipe everything for the nth time. But I showed him the pics of the Sims I made, and my Deathclaw drawings. Mostly I showed him the real pencil drawings on paper since all the other stuff was on my computer. But I did show him stuff on my journal here. Thank goodness that my journal is a bit of a back up for pics in a way. I'm so glad I uploaded that pic of Owen with the gun then because I don't have those to look at anymore.

Chris found this awesome Inspector Gadget parody the other day. Check it out.



How I wish that were real! My only complaint was that Penny is supposed to be a 10 year old girl. But I LOVED how they made Gadget's hair. It's perfect! If Gadget had been that dark in the cartoon I might have respected him. Some of you may know that I have always hated Inspector Gadget himself. I was such a young kid when the show came out and didn't know that good guys always won. I would watch the eps hoping to finally see the Ep where Dr. Claw would win. He had to right? Hehe, yeah I was like 8. Dr. Claw was also my first fictional crush and he still holds a special place in my evil heart. They did a great job on Dr. Claw in this too. His voice I think was more powerful and frightening than the original. It had more reverb. Minor complaint. His bracelet should have been bronze. Yeah I'm a picky nerd, but this is much better than the Disney crap that I refused to watch. As handsome as the guy was they got to play Claw was, you weren't supposed to see his face!! YARG! Anyway, if I got to direct this film I'd have Gadget go around and kill all the Mad Agents and make it into Dr. Claw's Castle. But by the time he makes it there he's badly hurt but still has fight left in him. Claw keeps his end of the bargin and lets Penny go on one condition, Gadget needs to give up. Or something like that. I'm making this up as I type. Point is in the end he totally obliterates Gadget. Forget eliminate, he OBLITERATES him. The End. Ah, that would rule.

I bet I could write an awesomely dark and serious Inspector Gadget story. And probably because of this and because of the music I'm listening to I'm nostalgic and back on my 80's kick. Speaking of 80's stuff, those of you in my age group, have you noticed that the music break in Major Tom (the Coming Home part) sounds just like 50s do-bop from Heathcliff's theme? I wonder who was first with it? And I have to say it: Heathcliff could kick Garfield's fat ass all over town. Heathcliff is way cooler but tub lard gets the popularity. Figures.

I didn't get any writing done today. I couldn't sit still long enough to actually write in a book. I do miss my computer and it's wierd using Chris's. But I don't want to log him out of everything, though I should. I bet I have tons of youtube comments in my inbox. ARG.

Hum, I want to talk about what it's like for me to be an NT but I don't feel I could sit still long enough to type it all out as it would be extensive. Perhaps I'll save it for tomorrow as I'm not comfortable at this puter and chair. I do know something I've been meaning to mention. I'm really getting the urge to use a very supressed creative side of mine. Apart from being an artist and a writer (the artist side is blatant and everyone knows about it) I'm also a musician. I'm a violinist and I played for seven years. I haven't played because my violin broke. My tuning peg on my D string is cracked and the little needle slides causing it to go out of tune. I haven't been able to have it fixed. I feel an urge to play and I want a new instrument or a substitute for it. I've been thinking about the Charango. I really would love to get one and try to teach myself. I'd HAVE to be self taught as no one teaches such a rare instrument I'm sure. It would just be me, youtube and my Inca CD's. Sigh.
.

Ha, you all knew it wouldn't be long before I made a Deathclaw icon. I hated to use a screen cap I found but this was one of the cooler looking ones. I have quite a few saved that are great references but not so good for icons. One of my few gripes about this game is that enemies are so darn hard to see because they are the same color as the background. This is true of everything even humans as they tend to wear brown clothes and have tan skin. ARG. And at night it's even worse because everything's in night colors and still the same hues. So while this is a great pose for my Deathclaw I think he's still hard to separate from the background. This is why I need to make my own art. I really want some icons that I've made 100%. They are definitely forth coming.

I'm too popular on Youtube and because of that I've kind of backed away from it for a little. Of course I can't forever and I'll have to face it but it caused me to go totally introvert for a while again. When that happens I tend to withdraw from everything else too. At least this is a good reason for withdrawing. It's all been very positive it's just been too much is all. Many of my vids are on the first page when you do a search for that topic. I screen all my comments so if people aren't on my friends list I have to approve all posts. And since I'm picky about friends this means I have to approve lots of stuff. Yes, I make more work for myself wanting so much control but that's just the way it is and I have to deal with it. A lot of my videos fall under the HOW TO category though they aren't really a how to. It's more of a "This is how I do this. This is my way. Here's what I do." But this leads to a lot of questions, many times the same question. Remember the snake videos I had to close commenting on? It's getting to that point again. The one I always get is "What do you feed the baby pigeons?" Ok, so there's one vid that's my fault and I forgot to put it in the description. I must rectify that so no one has an excuse. But on the others there is no excuse. Perhaps I should make a hand feeding video and show exactly how I feed babies and what formula I use and where I get it from. That way no one should have any questions though they always think of something I left out.

Another thing that's weird is sometimes people will sub to me for a topic I've put up once and will only ever put up once. Like the two snake vids. I have several snake people watching me. I hope they like all the bird and garden stuff they have to sit through because I'll probably never make a snake video again either. My Saints Row 2 vid is also very popular still. It's in my top 15 last I looked. I think I'm done with SR2. I had my fun with it and I won't be making anymore. Sorry to the guy that I said I was going to make Ghandi. It's one of those things I really meant to do but now it's more like, "Eh, don't feel like it." My obsessions come and go and I think it's safe to say my Youtube is mostly for my bird and garden/nature stuff. Sometimes a fandom will creep in there but I wish people didn't watch me just for that one thing. I do feel bad that because I've disappeared not only do I have so much to catch up on I also need to respond to those I'm subbed to that always respond to me. It's only fair. I think I caught up with that today. I don't like ignoring people and I do my best to answer every comment I get. It's been very nice. It's just overwhelming when you keep getting the same stupid questions over and over. They're genuine questions too so I can't get mad at these people. Heck I get PM's about the snakes still since they can't post. So all I can do is withdraw until I'm ready to face it I suppose. But I am counting my blessings. Better to be too popular this way than popular getting flamed for no reason.

I DID make an update today though. Check out now nice my garden is coming along.



I posted this on Gardening and picked up two more people for my gourd community so hurray!! Well I think this post is long enough.
*Reminder to self: Talk about Chenille Chicks next time.
.

I forgot to mention we got a machete yesterday. Sweet another sword for the collection. I was out chopping plants with it. On the other side of the blade it's got a saw so that's neat and it came with a little sheath. I'm very happy about the garden. Today I saw the first female flower on my Hubbard Squash. What's odd is that male flowers are supposed to be first. I can see the little pumpkin behind the flower and hate that I'll probably lose this one. The one veggie bed is so nice and lush.

I was surprised that Chris told me his mom asked when I'd be visiting his aunt. She must have told everyone I was coming over. Extroverts, sigh. Not for a while and nothing's set in stone. I'm not sure myself yet and it's all tentative so far. I do have to call her back eventually. See I wouldn't mention something like this until everything was for sure.

I got one of my ebay orders today.



White Chenille chicks for my collection. I collect these the way I collect budgie statues and Peeps. I've never seen white before. So these are rare. And I still don't have blue. I also want to get some blank Russian dolls and paint them like budgies. That would be neat.

I must make time to work on my art tomorrow. I should ink one of my Deathclaws. OH speaking of which. Check out this awesome video!




I love how this guy set up this fight. Fallout 3's biggest enemy is the Super Mutant Behemoth. But he's not the most powerful character. The Deathclaws are. I didn't know that until watching this. I'm amazed a Deathclaw can take out a Behemoth. They are so fast and beautiful. I love the bloopers the best because the Behemoth kept running away. I've never seen one run away from anything, but then I'd never seen a Deathclaw take one on. That's the one beast that can strike fear into anything it seems. One of the best done fallout videos I've seen.
.

Happy St. Patrick's everyone. I didn't do anything to celebrate it but I observe it. I did get a new Worm from Arvyre.



Meet Emerald. I snagged two others that I'm not going to advertise much named Shamrock and Patrick. I think the week waiting period for hatching is really stupid actually. If they level to 3 they should just hatch. Why make us wait? The Valentine's worms aren't even done and he's put up these now that probably aren't done either. And now there's a special paid one for $2. I wouldn't pay for one and I have the money. Arvyre isn't run well at all. Dragon Adopters is easilly the best sever wise, fun wise and forum wise. The latter part is sad because the forums suck. Artwise Da needs help. Big time. I got all of Talon's level 50 gear now. Yes I'm almost broke. Sucks. I need to rebuild all those resources. I'm doing some thing wrong. At these higher levels I shouldn't be so broke afterwards.

If you see my sidebar I've started playing Fallout 3 finally. I made a very nice Owen considering the limited creation engine I had to work with. My biggest complaint about his looks is his eyes and lack of a protruding brow. But he's close other wise. I still haven't found the right glasses though. One thing I loved was that one of the options for hair color was Cornsilk Hair, and that's always how I describe Owen's hair. It's that light yellow verging on white but soft and silky. But it doesn't matter that he isn't right because you're almost always wearing a full helmet and can't see anything anyway face wise.

I got those two videos up. Check 'em out.

Garden update

and

Pigeons flying

I didn't feel like posting the embed codes this time.

And here's Budgie because it's time he grew up.
.

Yeay!! Four cave born ice eggs. I'm not allowed to hold more than four. Let's hope I get males and females all even and I don't have to abandon any. The project is off to a good start. It's really lame that the names have to be unique. They should have numbers like DragonAdopters so you can name it anything you want. Speaking of DragonAdopters, Registation is open again! So tell all your friends that missed out.

I planted three rows of Zinnia seeds in the garden. I hope they'll come up. The humming birds love them last time. The seeds are cheap so I should probably just get lots of bags and plant the whole garden with Zinnias. Gosh I hope we get our tax return soon. I want to put some of it towards the garden. Mainly I want to use it to build the gourd arbor.



Chris and I set this up yesterday for cucumbers. The posts are 8 feet tall. I'm sure we'll need more netting on the top part but I can't reach above six feet hehe. I know the vines will get tall so once they get close I'll have him add the last sections. If any cukes end up in the sky he'll have to harvest them.


I'm really touched by what I found on Youtube today. Some one made a tribute to all the budgies that passed away on Youtube and included Gaus in the mix. It got me choked up. I'm really amazed how much my two tribute videos have affected people and they can share in my loss. She made it a video response to mine and she'd lost her budgie girl Sweet Pea recently.



Remember how I was worried I was neglecting my guys? Worry over. Those thoughts have returned and I'm getting a strong urge to work with them again and draw them. What I don't know yet. I still need to finish the Lab Fight, Solan's Office and Sad Firewings.
.

I have a new icon. I LOVE this icon. It's got three different types of gourds on it: A dipper, a birdhouse and a corsican or canteen. Of my seeds the Ball Luffas are the first to sprout. Probably because I cut the tips with a nail clipper. I do that because the seed is so hard that last year they just weren't sprouting. This gives the embryo a chance to escape.

I felt very good today and got creative. I made a video on how to sex budgies. I've gotten really good at telling males from females even in itty bitty babies. I've not seen a video like this up on youtube and for that matter I've never seen a good explanation of this anywhere. All my life I heard, "You can't tell what young budgies are." I KNEW that wasn't true and that the typical "Males have blue noses and females have brown noses" is true only half of the time. So I explain all that here.



I'm going to make a part two to this because the shape of the head and sometimes the eyes help with the age and sex of budgies. I'm thinking of doing a video on basic mendelian genetics for cockatiels too. I would do it on budgies but the genetics of budgies is was more complex and hard and I don't understand it. Too many colors hee hee.

I've started on the firewings drawing again too. Renewed energy or not it's still kicking my butt. I must resist the urge to color it the old way. I'd have been done by now doing that.

And here's some neat colorful news. Peeps now has checks out. Two awesome designs Here and Here. Two different companies but I'd love to have both. I think I like the first ones from Image better though. I want return address lables too!!

Edit: Happy Friday the 13th everyone! Almost forgot. And because of that a new Jason movie comes out today. I had a great day to day like I always do on Friday the 13th.

I had to share this phrase that I've been using to death about Dragon Adopters.
"Aura. The socially acceptable way to say 'Dragon poop'."
HAHAHA. I can't take credit for that. Coldwin told me that one. But he's absolutely right!! What are we farming folks? Sheddings and poop!! My dragons make red and white poops. hee hee.
.

I think I have the same virus again on my computer. It starts slow at least with minor annoyances and takes a long time before you just can't do anything. But now I KNOW where I got it from and I shall never go there again. I'm more upset that I think Alex is mad at me about it. It is my fault for going there I'll admit but I didn't know that's where it had come from. No one purposely goes to a site where they know there are viruses so I hope he understands that. It's just that I know how he ripped out his hair trying to fix my computer then I go and do the same stupid thing so yeah in a sense he's validated. Sigh. So because of that I'm still going to avoide some of my regular rounds until this is all sorted. Swell. Just when I thought things could get back to normal online.

One of the sites I've been neglecting is Youtube but I did make a big update today. Since I uploaded so many videos I'm not going to embed them this time. I'm just going to make them links and you guys can check them out at your liesure.

Pigeon Hatching. I finally made this one. It's cute and you never see him hatch completely, but Thrust didn't want me to see anything.

The rest of these are from Epcot. These are songs that they no longer play on the rides. It's a shame because some of the rides they've really ruined by taking them down and changing so much, not to mention all educational value flying out the window for cheap laughs. Universe of Energy is the one they've totally ruined. Read my descriptions in the vids for a bit more detail.
Canada song from the Epcot exhibit. I think of the Epcot series this is the best video I've made with the most beautiful images.

Tomorrow's Child. This was the song that played at the end of Spaceship Earth or the big ball.

Energy. This was the song from the pre-show in Universe of Energy. They have ruined it by doing away with the original movie and adding animatorics of Ellen Degeners (sp?) making dumb jokes. Can we say wonder, awe and learning out the window?

The Universe of Energy. Second favorite song from my second favorite ride. Well what used to be my second favorite ride. This played at the end after the dino ride and the second movie. Oh how I miss all this. It was all so wonderful, gave you a sense of awe and really gave me a love for science. A bit of trivia. I'm totally convinced that it was The Universe of Energy that was the inspiration for the Mr. DNA ride in the first Jurassic Park movie. Even the seats they sat on were big and similar.


Listen to the Land. My favorite song and favorite exhibit The Land. Oh I was so amazed by all the giant fruits growing there, the space studies, the lab, the boat ride, the fish farm, the greenhouse oh just everything!! Luckily this is the ride they changed the least and only renamed it Living with the Land and got rid of the song. Not good but not as bad as what they did to Universe of Energy.
Oh man, I'm so nostalgic for classic Epcot and Disney. I wish I had a time machine. I keep thinking that Cope and Owen would have felt the same way if they had gone there as kids. Well provided they weren't together and concentrating on each other. They would just be speechless, wide eyed and absorbing everything that they saw. Each ride would be bliss for them and like a dream come true. I'd love to make a video for Universe of Energy with Cope and his flying car. But even a two minute song would be impossible for me a lone at 29 frames per second.

But things have gone very well today. We went to the eye doctor and Chris bought me a much needed set of new contacts. It's nice to be able to see. I made a deposite as well and have been watching Chris play games. Tonight it's going to be 29. Last I checked it was 38. This will be the worst night yet. I brought in the budgies again and covered the outside pidgies. Seagrass was in with the tiels again.

Ok well I'm going to spam everyone's dragon on my post here. I told a friend I would do that for her and everyone else. This should make the page all colorful and active. These are all the people on my buddy list so far. Feel free to help any of them grow. This will be fun figuring out the coding. OOh this post is so colorful now! In alphabetical order.


EDIT: Chris got a dragon! His is the fourth one in!!
.

Gosh I'm sleepy. I went to be late last night and I think it's finally catching up to me. Chris and I took the pigeons out today and flew them from three miles. They did very well and beat us home. For a while there they were flying along side our truck. That means they had to have been going at least 50mph. That is so awesome.

Oh gosh. I just realized I didn't work on my story today. Bad! I was waiting for Chris to get home. We finally got to play SR2 in Co-op. It's so fun and definitely something that needs to be planned out. We did a few mission together and it's amazing how much you can do with two people and a bunch of super guns with infinite ammo. The best thing was he played as Cope and I played as Owen. We got into some fights and took turns killing each other. That rocked!! I loved seeing both of them suffer. I did record some of it so I'll have to make screen caps once I finalize the DVD.

Well I've been meaning to do this. I have finally made a video to show how I draw my art. I don't draw like most normal artists. I show how I made Cope so I think you guys will find this interesting.



I have also uploaded Equilibrium's Unbesiegt. Watch out Kalmah, you may have competition. I love the whole album. It's folk metal but you can't not love a band that adds Inca flues and budgie noises to a song. That was the best. Here's the link.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/7ly8jg

I'm too sleepy to think. If I'm forgetting anything I'll just add it later.
.

Merry Christmas everyone!! Christmas Eve has been great for me. I just stayed home. It was sunny, clear and in the 80s. The pigeons loved their flight today. I love tropical Christmases. Oh man, I am soooo glad I recorded the snowglobe on Xbox yesterday. I was very disapointed to find it was gone today. Why would they take it down when it wasn't even Christmas yet? I miss it. Who'd have thought something so simple would entertain me so much? And it wasn't until I looked at the screen cap that I realized you could push the A button and shake it. I never did that!! Oh man! I wonder if everyone would have fallen over?



I got the idea from Suzi to repost my Christmas card for all of you. I hope all of you got yours by now. Merry Christmas!

I have been working on the art for the final chapter for my Owen's Lost Memory story. I'm half way done inking it in Illustrator. I'm taking a break from it right now. I don't know why but this one isn't too hard. So may-be I'll have a chance to color it tomorrow. I'd like to have it done for tomorrow so I can show you guys. Oy though it would be a spoiler. I am getting ready to start the final scene. I hope I can pull it off as I don't see all of it yet.

I made a little video of Seep Seep today. He's my tame Gouldian Finch. Stupid youtube ate the quality. The setting must have changed because my vids no longer look good.



I put up some lights to decorate the house and my little bird tree is on. It all looks so pretty. Nothing fancy this year but it's nice.

Talon is at level 8 now!

Click to help him grow.

For those of you on my friends list that recently got eggs I've been watching you. They hatch at level five so be sure to go visit you eggs.

Speaking of eggs!! A pigeon hatched today!! Christmas dove! I hope this one will make it to be an experience flyer and join the current squadron. I need to name my pigeon squadron.

EDIT: New word! Budgieness. Used the way you would use "highness."
"Yes your mighty Budginess."
HAHAHAHA!!
.

We hit three different fruit stands today. No Hubbard Squash. I think the season is over for unusual winter squash like that. Darn. Looks like I'm going to have to just order some seeds. The only ones left are Butternut and Acorn squash. But I still had a wonderful day despite that. We went out to the park to do some bird watching. We climbed up onto the "cliff". That was a lot of fun and very unusual since everything is so flat here. I saw a blue headed vireo. I brought my field guide expecting to see lots of fall migrants that I didn't know. But really there weren't many birds. It was rather uneventful bird wise. The coolest thing was a kingfisher but I wasn't able to get too close. Armadillos were everywhere.

My homepage when I open my browser is My Yahoo. I usually check my email first then come to LJ. I have My Yahoo set up the way I like and apart from my email I see science news first. I have two, Discovery and Reuters. I LOVE Discovery's science news. Reuter's not so much. I don't buy everything they say. But they did have one article up that made me happy. Tiny Indonesia Island to Honor British Naturalist. When I first read that title I thought it was going to be David Attenborough. But then I found out it's for Allfred Russel Wallace! I have always admired Wallace and felt sorry for him. He's the second forgotten guy no one hears about. What did he do? Well he lived in Darwin's time period and was in Indonesia studying life as well. All on his own he came up with a theory for how life developed. Basically he intuitively just by observation came up with the notion of evolution. He was aware of Darwin and he actually sent Darwin a letter telling him what he'd been thinking of and asked Darwin what he thought. Of course Darwin gave him a general answer that it was Ok. Now Darwin had long since returned from the Galapagos and had been sitting on his data for years. He'd been nervous about publishing because he knew it would be controversial. But now Wallace was around and he could beat him to it. So this was the kick that Darwin needed to get off his butt and he finally published On The Origin of Species.

I can only imagine how Wallace must have felt. I wonder if he resented Darwin and wondered if Darwin had stolen his idea. But Darwin hadn't stolen the idea. Both men came up with the same idea at the same time. The difference was that Darwin had the proof to back up his claims and got to the press first. Now the Indonesians are planning on making a museum and a monument in Wallace's honor. I think that's great. Can you imagine if Wallace had published first? We would go around saying things like "Wallacism", "Wallacian" and "Wallacist". And it wouldn't sound strange to us.

I've actually had something like this happen to me recently and I'm not happy about it. But I'm happy I found out NOW and not AFTER I had printed. I have to change the name of my fictional town of Stoney Brook, Connecticut. Seems there's a children's series out there with the same town. WTF!!??!! Ok, may-be I'd understand if someone had the same town, or even the same state, but BOTH? No no no!! That's worse than if it had turned out to be a real city. That was supposed to be Cope's home town and I loved how easily it rolled off the toungue. I'm sure I can come up with another name but it won't sound as nice. And I'm keeping it in CT because the geographic location is important to my story. Grrrr. I know how Wallace must have felt. What are the chances??

I'm supposed to call my artist friend tomorrow for another session. So luckily I have that phonecard I can use. He says he's going to give me an excersize. Hehe, this is becoming like a real class. I'm a bit nervous but looking forward to it at the same time. I hope my card will last a good while since it's only five bucks.

Lastly I want to share another video. The name of it is Techno Parrot. It started off rather normal with a parrot stomping around. But what happened after that had me laughing so damn hard I couldn't breath. I couldn't see past the tears. And then I lost my voice. But it was worth it because this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.


.

WTF?? What's wrong with my Nicholas Cage "I'm Me!" icon?
is NOT the icon I had uploaded if you guys can even see it now since I'm going to delete it and RE-UPLOAD. This is the second time LJ has lost one of my icons, but it has never totally replaced it. That's NOT my icon!
THIS is my icon. Welcome back Castor Troy. Hum, the fact it didn't become an X after I deleted it isn't good. That means any icon you upload stays in LJ's server. I don't like that either.

Anyway, I have done it!! I have made a video and put it up on youtube of Cope on his flying Motorcycle. Everyone please watch and let me know what you think.



I LOVE seeing him in the cinemas. He looks so much like my art it's amazing. He even looks great for in game graphics. I timed the action very well to the music. The song is Touch The Sky by Meduza and is a song I've always associated with Cope since he love to fly and has flying vehicles. Lyrics are here. I did something very difficult by reaching the top of the Ultor building from the front. You can even see the big ULTOR letters. There's a point where I had a one star wanted level because I accidentally ran over a pedestrian in front of a cop. The cop chased me and you'll see me get shot three times. If you look below you'll see the cop chasing me on foot up to the wall. But I got away because I went up the wall. The footage is so pretty it's too bad youtube ate the quality of the original video. But it's not just the Ultor building I climbed. I picked another near by tower to go up. And I used three different bikes. The Kaneda which has the neons on it and a red and green Kenshin. The red Kenshin is my fave because it looks just like Cope's bike. BTW, if anyone wants to see this in good quality, let me know and I can AIM it to you or put it up on sendspace.

Well despite all this I'm now depressed. You guys know I never get depressed. Once in a blue moon. Well I had all these ideas to try and record for Saints Row with Cope and the Xbox got a red ring. It's broken. Being the nerd that I am I am officially down now.

I printed some of the Christmas Cards today. They look very good. I just have to cut them and make the envelopes then I can send them out.

Well at least I got some footage of the UFO in SR2. I'll make a short not so great vid just to show you guys. Gosh it's already December. My calendar is almost over. It wish I could have made one for 2009.

EDIT: Man I keep forgetting stuff. I'm at the point where I've posted almost all the parts I've writen for my story. So I may not be posting on schedule until I catch up with the writing part again. The next part I put up is a deep one and the one I was so excited about when I wrote.

EDIT:EDIT: Ok hopefully I haven't forgotten anything else. This is my newest icon, apart from the Castor Troy one. This is Cope on the Billboards in the game giving two thumbs up.

What do you think? I had to use the UFO to get that close and it still doesn't look as nice as when you look through the sniper scope. I like it but not sure if it's that visible for this. He's so flat too.
.

I'm over half done with the Introvert book and so far I really like it. The chapter on relationships was a bit dumb, but then I never like those chapters because they give silly advice and people are in the relationships for the wrong reasons. It doesn't aply to me so I don't care. I did like the section on children because even though I don't like kids or have any I could relate to the examples from when I was a kid.

Well I have closed the character poll today. You can see the results Here. Ignore the one vote for Solan by that idiot alexisds or whatever. Some teacher that can't even follow her own advice of "Read carefully and follow directions." Showed her at least. Well that might explain why she's not a real teacher and just a substitute. Is it any wonder that the public school system sucks now a days?

Anyway I decided to participate in my own poll before closing it. It wasn't easy for me as I love all my guys but I chose Owen. Really my favorite can change everyday. Had I voted when I posted the poll I probably would have picked Cope as I was fixating on him so much. But gosh, poor Thanatos. No one loves him. In fact here's what he has to say on the issue.



Yes he's mad at everyone even me. I have got to develope him better. I really do. He's quite cool but I don't spend enough time with him like I should. And what I do know and have developed I can't talk about so it just happens that he falls into the mysterious unknown bin. I'm happy with how quick I made this doodle.

I've made a very cute video about pumpkins in the pumpkin patch. I love the song I set this too. Check it out.



.

I love reading Discovery news for my science info. I read one of the funniest stories yesterday. After a probe for NASA failed to track the movement of river flows in glaciers a rocket scientist got the awesome idea to float a whole bunch of rubber ducks down the glacier and lable them with a phone number to see if anyone calls him if they are found when they come out the other side. So far no results. I think the best thing would have been to put GPS on the ducks. I'll post the article behind the cut. Here is the article.

( Rubber ducks a hoy! )

I wonder how much this guy is getting paid to float rubber ducks down a glacier. That's the kind of science I want to do. Man I'm in the wrong field. I love the two pictures too.

Speaking of finding lost birds, I had someone PM me here on LJ. They are out west and had found a pigeon with a legband. Unfortunately his cat had killed it. But it was an AU band like the ones I used and he wanted to track down the owner. So I looked it up on the website and found it the owner had ordered it through Seigel's just as I do. So despite the sad news of the bird dying I'm happy to have helped find a lost pigeon so far away from me. That's a first.

Have any of you had trouble loading videos on Youtube? This has been happening to us for weeks now and there's no explination for it. Some videos we sit around waiting forever up to a half hour for it to load. Usually they are short under a minute. But longer videos load right away. I hope this isn't just us. Anyone else experience this?

Check out my latest video.



This is a video of my budgie collection.
.

I need a Gaming Icon. I think there's a good one of Patrick on one of my back up disks. I need to use that. Well I'm going to put this behind the cut because of the videos and pics.

( Spore. Are you sick of this yet? I'm not. I'm obsessed. )
.

Oh man I'm so relieved right now. Alex fixed my computer. Turns out that it wasn't the anti-virus but the EA updates download manager. If you buy the game DON'T install that. Seems this is happening to a lot of people. I'm amazed so many defective CDs made it out to the market. They say it's better to buy the game online and downloaded because it's updated and doesn't have this problem like the CDs do. ARG, I'm so glad my game finally works. But then I had another HUGE scare. None of my monsters were on there. I thought you could log in anywhere and they'd be there since I have most of them uploaded to the site. Luckily we were able to get them off of Chris's computer. That means each time you switch computers even if you're logged in you have to share your own monsters with yourself. Whatever. I'm glad mine are back.

I still don't know how to get the monsters off of other people's pages. I can't find PNGs even when I go into their pics. When I right click it only gives me the option to save the background. And something else that doesn't make sense. How can saving an image file cause you to have a whole moving rendered character? You put the PNG in your creature folder then it's alive in your game. Whatever, I'm glad it works. But trying to wrap my brain around that one boggles my mind.

I made a decent budgie. Still not quite budgieish enough for me but it's the best I've made so far. I colored him to look like Phage. I made a video of him and his babies dancing to Popcorn. Check this out.



Two other features I wish Spore's site had. One, you should be able to respond directly to people that have commented so you can say 'thank you'. And two, there should be a favorites feature or a watch feature for your favorite gamers. There's one guy that also makes Burgess animals and I'd love to watch any new stuff he might put up. Well it's late and as much as I want to play on my own computer I need to get to bed.
.

I'm home right now. I'm supposed to go to visit Alex but Chris is on a job so who knows. We just had a big storm go through and I filmed it. Check it out. I'm not going to leave this movie up long as I only want to share it with you guys here. So watch it when you can. That's also why I didn't put it into a viewer. It started to flood the patio so that was neat. And I got to sail my flip flops across it. Watch the background when I go to the window and you'll see how grey it was and how hard it was coming down.

Well I got a bit of inking done today. I just couldn't sit still for this drawing. I don't know why. But eventually it will get done. I've fixed some of the problems it had like perspective.
I'm on a bit of a Disney kick now. Not sure why. Chris got me The Hunchback and Cinderella on dvd yesterday. We bought them used so we didn't pay the extortion price of stores. All my Disney movies are on VHS still and I want to replace them on DVD. I'm going to have to pay extortion to get Beauty and the Beast. I wish Disney wasn't so stupid to make limited runs of their DVDs. I hate that! How many remember when that happened with the Little Mermaid on VHS and it was up to $100 if you could even find it. That's rediculous. For a VHS!! Anyway the movie I'm going nuts about is Atlantis I've had it for a while now and only just today has it come to my realization that it's my FAVORITE Disney movie. Sorry Aladdin you're now bumped down to 3rd place and Lion King goes into 2nd. One thing I noticed right away that made this film better than the rest was NO SINGING!! OMG!! When I first saw it I couldn't figure out why it was different. Well that's why!! Singing in cartoons = instant quality loss. Not to mention that this movie had a wonderful creative plot. I love the mix of super technology with anchient cultures. I have the collector's edition and was watching the bonus features for the first time. In the film itself they'd made a reference to Teddy Roosevelt. On the Bonus disk I was thrilled to actually see him!!



Check it out!! I love it!! But they drew Teddy too skinny. Only complaint but I love it!
Ok now if any of you have seen it do you know if the sequel to this is any good? Usually straight to DVD Disney sequels suck worse than rotten eggs. I want to get it but since I haven't seen it or heard anything about it I worry they may have ruined a good thing.

Remember a while back I was talking about how funny Spiderman was on The Electric Company? They would open a comic book and then he'd be in the boxes with live action mixed with comicbook art. The costume was very nice actually and they picked a good guy to play him. The narrator was a mean kid so it's even funnier. And Spiderman is the only one that doesn't talk. He makes word bubbles that make noise when they appear. Here's a funny one of him vs the Yeti.



I used to love these as a kid. The rest of the show kind of sucked and was about Grammar. I prefered 3, 2, 1 Contact which was much cooler and about science. Of course I would.

EDIT: This is for my own knowledge. This is the link that actually still shows the old xcolliber lay out that I love to use. Going through the normal way you won't find it. It's hidden for some reason.
http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?view=schemes
.

My friend Julie stopped by today to see the house for the first time. She didn't stay long unfortunately, but she gave me a gift of some plates that had parrots on them. They were very cute. She got to see my pigeons fly too. I've figured out her type to be an ESxP possibly. And now I think I've noticed something about extroverted sensing types that's a bit annoying. They have very short attention spans. I noticed this with Chris's aunt when she visited me. They'll ask you something and you begin to explain it then they'll interupt you and ask you something else totally throwing me off. Uh I wasn't done with the first question! Totally derails my train of though. I'll answer that next question but being a J that needs closure on all issues I'll go back to the first question and finish what I was talking about. I know they aren't doing it to be rude but goodness it's so weird. I can't think that way. But I'd rather put up with that than all the wrong conclusions of NFs. I don't think I've dealt with an ST in real life yet. That should be interesting. Perhaps one day. I'm curious about ISTJ's.

I got another gift in the mail today from silvolf. Look at the cute stuff she sent me.



Two budgies and a pumpkin card!! I love the art on the card. I set it against my monitor and it looks like Sorath is looking down on them.

It's interesting. I now have 61 videos up on youtube. I only have TWO related to snakes and THOSE are the most popular. I have people that watch me just for snake info and it really bugs me. I'm not going to make any more snake videos. Snakes aren't my main focus. They'll be waiting a long time for nothing. Don't they realize this? Sometimes I'm tempted to take those down. But it's not like they are trolling or anything. It's just not what I'd like people watching me for the most. Oy!

Anyway I have two more videos on what it's like for me to be an INTJ. So have a look. Some of the pictures I chose this time around are really funny.







These are meant to be watched in order because the second one starts where the first one left off. I think I'm done making these. Chosing images is getting harder and that's one reason I'm stopping.
.

It's been raining a lot. Sometimes twice a day but it's always beautiful. My luffas really can use it. I saw my miniature luffa has a new female flower forming on the end. I wonder when it's going to start forming side vines? I've read side vines are where most of the female flowers come from. I've also read you have to cut off the tip to get the side vines to grow. I hate to cut it and I'm a big scared to since I want it to grow as long as possible. But after this flower forms I may do that. One central vine won't cover the whole fence which is something else I want these luffas to do.

I had some coffee today. It was so nice to dip cinnamon gram crackers into it. I like my coffee black but I like dipping breads or cookies into it. Oh and it's funny that we went to K-mart today and picked up a pair of panty hoes. They aren't for me. I'm going to cut them up and cover some of the tomatoes with them. The stink bugs and shield bugs are a big problem. I don't want to spary my plants with anything especially since I feed the caterpillars not to mention I don't want to be eating poisoned tomatoes. Killing the annoying bugs by hand isn't working either. They just keep coming. So for now I'll just have to protect the biggest and best fruits. I hate how many we've lost already and some of the plants are prolific producers.

Anyway I have two videos I want to share. First up is one of the snake fireworks. I love these fireworks. They are so simplistic but fun. They form a carbon snake when you set them on fire.



And here's the latest moth video. This moth was so hyper when he emerged. I've never had one like this. Luckily I had just as much energy to keep up with thim.




And it's been a week since I vaccinated my birds. I think I can let them fly tomorrow.
.

I went to visit Janet and Dave yesterday. I walked over and had a very nice time. She gave me a yummy iced tea. It's July so this is my caffeine drinking month again. YEAY how I've missed it. I'm having a delicous Coca-Cola right now. Anyway, she showed me her garden and bird feeders. They were cute. She gets Birds and Blooms too and I saw Dave had used some of the designs from the articles. Then she showed me her little vegetable garden with garlic, tomatoes and potatoes. While we were there the parrots came and landed in her tree. We got very excited. I got some decent pictures of them in her feeder and an ok movie. I wish I could have gotten closer shots but I have a cheapo camera that's really starting to get on my nerves with its limitations. But that's a rant for another time. Then we had lunch and she made eggs and potatoes that were good. We chatted a while and Dave let me borrow the live trap he owns so I can catch the cat that's been getting in our yard. If I catch him I'll take him to the humane society. If it's someone's pet they'll have to go there and pick up their cat and learn to not be irresponsible and let their pets trespass on other people's property. Dave showed me his classic car he has. He restored it and it's shinny and pretty now. Very cool. Even though I live so close, Janet offered me to take me home. I accepted because then I could invite her and show her my garden. I showed her my birds, the pigeons, my caterpillars and the garden. She wants to get together again and have Chris come over. So we'll have to set up a time to meet. As always it depends on Chris's schedule.

So that was really fun. I don't know why such a common species like Carolina Sphinx the Hornworm is so hard to raise. How do they survive in the wild? Going into the pupa stage is the hardest thing. I've never had this problem with Tersa or White Lined Sphinxes. I've been using the soil method since that's more natural for them but the problem with that is that my cage is probably too small and they dug each other out of their chambers. Without the chambers it seems they can't pupate properly. The soil helped as they started to shed their skin but three of the four didn't form right. They didn't form probosis. One I think has died because it doesn't move anymore. The other two look horrible. I have one left that did manage to form a chamber at the bottom and looks like things are going normally. So either I need a bigger container with more soil or I'll try that tupperware suggestiong I was given. I used it on the whitelines but I think it's more important with these guys. Well I'd better figure out what's the best method because I now have NINE new tiny caterpillars I'm taking care of.

BUT there is good news! My first Carolina Sphinx that pupated emerged yesterday. Chris found it in the tank when we were looking at the other caterpillars. Check out this little guy.



What beautiful patterns on the wings. They blend in perfectly with bark.

I'm going to put the rest behind the cut. There's only two more but I want to put up a video of my pupas as well.

( Moth stuff and vid )

And tomorrow's the 4th of July! I'm so excited. This will be fun. I'm looking forward to getting together with Alex and watching fireworks and blowing up our own. I'd love to film it but I don't know if my camera could...no actually I know my camera can't film at night. I hope his camera has as video feature and is better than mine. So yes I'm feeling all patriotic and want to celebrate. I downloaded two midis of Battle Hymn of the Republic yesterday. One's a banjo version and it sounds pretty cool.
.

Well that flamewar went well. After deleting the last comment by that loser because he completely missed the point and was just going round in circles I found out that I really won. See the reason I froze and deleted everything was because not only was he wrong as you all saw and were most amused by but he could not follow simple directions and was distracting from the discussion. The posts have been nice ever since his mess was cleaned up. Well, I found two posts by the mods about the rules and not deleting/freezing things. But not until I'd already frozen the post yet again. That's what happens when I go to the thread instead of the main page first. Oh well. Funny how this is now a "rule" when there are no rules listed on the profile page. And again I brought order where there was chaos. So the mods can beat their chests all they want, but I'm the one that actually moderated my own thread. I set the parameters from the start of what I expected of the discussion and I enforced the consequenses of not following them through. And how did the mods even come to post this? Most likely loser boy cried. Add that to my list of grown men I've made cry, horrified or whatever. But that's what idiots deserve. What are they going to do anyway, ban me? Oh big loss!! I'm so scared. Just let them. It would be no loss for me.

I have decided to take my buddy's advice and joined the desert leps yahoo groups. Let's hope I don't destroy that place either. I find it amazing how going to these forums and merely starting a topic of discussion or just plain saying "hi" will cause freaks, jerks and dorks to come after me. Well they start it but I end it. So, I'm hoping to ask questions about raising caterpillars there. Perhaps some of them have raised the species I now have. I didn't want to join at first because I'm not from any of the states the group represents but my buddy did point out that yes we do share many of the same species. I had thought of that and some do range through the whole continent. So I shall give it a try.

I keep forgetting to mention that Chris rented Bully for 360. We have it on PS2 but the new 360 version is the scholarship edition. I like how it has classes the other didn't have like Geography, Math and Biology. The awesome thing about geography is that each time you finish a class it reveals on the map where the hidden objects are like rubber bands and Grottos and Gremlins cards. This is so much nicer than going by the book trying to make sure you didn't miss anything. Also we like that it's in the general area so you still have to do a little bit of hunting and it's not cheating.

I got further along in Godfather today. I've recorded some really nice cinemas. I can't wait to get them all so I can finalize the disk and start making screen caps. I may even put some up temporarily on youtube or on my site for you to watch and see Owen in action. I would be done a lot sooner if I only did story missions but I do want to take over 100% of businesses. So that's what takes forever. But I may play through again as Solan and just do story stuff to get all of his cinemas as well. Gosh I love Owen in this. He looks just like himself and looks like such a bastard even when he smiles and is nice. Solan is the opposite. He looks sweet and nice even when he's angry. They rock!

One of my hornworms has started to pupate. And I finally found the one that's been running loose through my tomatoes. Chris found another poop today and I told him he'd be big because the poop was full sized. I found him sure enough he should be pupating soon too. I can't wait for my black swallowtails, my other hornworm and my five White lined sphinxes to emerge from their pupas. Eclose is the official entomological term for emerging.

And tomorrow I must write! I must force myself to write. OMG July is almost here. My special month!! The 4th of July is right around the corner. I need to get into spirit of it.

BTW, I leave you with the most adorable caterpillar video of White Lined Sphinxes. I have no idea what they are eating. I've asked the guy but he won't respond to me. I love the smaller green one with the dots. That's my favorite color form.


.

I think I'll put this post behind a cut because I'll be putting up at least four videos and several quotes.

( Stepping on people in youtube )

I checked my voicemail this morning and was so happy to hear a call from a man named Darrell. He said he's the one that found Push Pigeon and tracked me down through the American Racing Pigeon Union leg band. I'm so glad he was able to figure out the code on that. So I called him and thanked him profusely for saving her. He said he found her in his barn and was badly hurt. Her legs were all cut up and she couldn't walk. He had to cut off the band because it was cutting off her circulation. Him and his wife fed her and took care of her. They liked how sweet she was and kept her in the barn. Then one day when she was well she flew off on her own and came home. He just wanted to make sure she made it. I let him know I was so glad to see her two weeks later. What a great story!!
.