Don’t be alarmed; earlier today I went to a Google Adwords seminar and learned all about the crazy/cool algorithms that Google uses to read a website and then match it up with appropriate ads.

That got me thinking: What the heck would Google think of my website? What ads would it match to my content?

So I decided to carve out two spaces on my website to show Google ads. I’m going to be taking periodic, random screenshots of the ads that are running there, and in a few weeks I’d like to write an Article about what Google thinks of me. I think this will be a fun experiment.

So don’t worry; I haven’t sold out or anything. But I won’t complain if someone clicks on an ad and sends a couple of cents my way.

I wonder what kinds of things I should post on this blog. It seems that posting things like videos and links here is a li’l redundant because I post so much of them on Twitter and Google+ now. So should I concentrate more on musings, ruminations, and autobiographical happenings that don’t easily fit in a 140-character format? But then, when will I find time to type such thoughts even if they occur to me?

Well, first off, does anybody actually read this blog? That might help me decide how much effort I wanna put into it. Those of you who do read it, what do you like to read the most? For reals, I wants to know! Comments, please!

While you think about it, here’s a funny video with NSFW audio!

I really wanted to write an article about my Favorite Things from 2010, but I couldn’t in all good conscience write a 2011 article until I was done with all the stuff I was supposed to be done with from 2010. So that’s why with one exception all of my posts in January have been movie reviews, then when I finally finished those I put up the article.

So now that ALL of that is out of the way, I can finally get back to the business of posting things that interest me, or random thoughts that occur to me, or interesting happenings or dreams (and maybe even *gasp* being able to write more than two or three articles during the course of the year). In fact, on Thursday I went to a museum and an art gallery, then yesterday I went to a rock show in Seattle, so tomorrow (and maybe even the next day) expect a post or two about that stuff.

Why did I get so behind? Well, because in many ways 2010 was a really crappy year. A lot of really good stuff happened, too, but still, 2010 had some of the more stressful times in it. I didn’t get done basically any of my goals because I was too busy being stressed out about dealing with stressful stuff. 2011 is so far shaping up to be much better, but it’s still dealing with the ramifications of what transpired in 2010. I am just going to take this moment to pro-actively dub 2011 as “THE YEAR OF MASSIVE CHANGES” (most all of them good). Just wait, you’ll see. I’ll post about one of those up-coming changes around the end of this month.

To tide yourselves over, please indulge in Super Mario Crossover, a version of Super Mario Bros. where you can play as Mario, Link, Simon Belmont, Bill (from Contra), Samus Aran, and Mega Man. Yes, it is actually as awesome as it sounds. Just click the image:

(via Newgrounds)

In the very final days of 2009, Kitty Fantastico started throwing up, stopped eating, and lost a lot of weight at an alarming speed because of it. These are all, of course, very bad signs, so we took her straight to the vet where they discovered (A) that she had a urinary tract & kidney infection and (B) that her kidneys were basically shot all to hell. When the vet got the results of the kidney test and the numbers were all several times higher than they shoulda been, he called me and told me that I should take Fantastico to the emergency animal hospital. Like, immediately.

This was horribly traumatic for Carrie & me, as you might imagine. Her kidney numbers were so bad that there was a good possibility that she would not ever come home. But a good sign: she started eating again, quite heartily. And when we went to visit her the next day she did purr at us despite being very uncomfortable what with being shaved and a-tubed with I.V stuff. But a bad sign: her kidney numbers weren’t significantly improving. They were going down a li’l bit, but not with any speed. Like (for example) one of the chemicals might have a normal range of about 20-30, and when she went into the hospital it was 110, and after two days it was down to 104. That was improvement, but not significant improvement.

We were told that we might as well come get her, because there wasn’t really any reason to have her sitting miserable in the very expensive hospital when she wasn’t improving. She might as well come home where she’d be relatively comfortable while, y’know, she waited to die, which would probably happen pretty quickly. We didn’t go home empty-handed, though; they gave us special “kidney diet” food, antibiotics, and an I.V. bag full of fluids that we were to administer ourselves subcutaneously.

Yes, every evening we had to hold Fantastico down and stick an alarmingly large needle into the scruff of her neck, and make sure that she didn’t move while a large volume of fluids drained from the bag directly into her body.

after several days of this and meeting a specialist and getting re-tested, a good thing happened: her kidney numbers started plummeting. They weren’t anywhere near normal, but neither were they in the “instant death” range they had been in. The antibiotics were clearing up the infection, which helped a lot. But a sonogram confirmed that her kidneys were basically shot, and probably had been for many months before she even showed any signs of sickness.

The antibiotics also, though, made her nauseated so she didn’t want to eat very much. She was already dangerously underweight (down to a scant 8 pounds), so that wasn’t good. I got an alternate food that wasn’t quite as kidney-friendly, but that she liked better and could be sucked up into a syringe and squirted directly into her mouth if she didn’t want to eat it naturally.

After another week and another check, I was told that her numbers had improved to the level that we could reduce subcutaneous fluid frequency down to every other day instead of every day. And we were told to bring her back in a month—the antibiotics for the infection were a six-week course, and the vet wanted to see her when they were gone. So she’d gone from “dying any day now” to “come back in a month.”

During that month she slowly gained back some weight. And at the end of the antibiotic course we brought her in for more testing and were told the infection was completely gone. A lot of her kidney numbers had dropped significantly, some of them down to just outside the normal range. One of them, though, wasn’t doing so well, so we were switched back to the special kidney diet, which Fantastico now loved because she was no longer nauseated from the antibiotics.

When I asked when I should bring her back in again to get tested, the vet said, “Oh, in three or four months.” So Fantastico had gone from dying in a few days, to lets see if she’ll survive the full six-week treatment, to bring her back in three or four months unless she shows signs of worsening, which she probably won’t.

Her weight shot back up to almost ten full pounds, and as her weird shaved bits (under her chin, one forepaw, and her belly) grew back you would never even know she was sick. She was acting basically like she always had. Here are some videos I took over the past three months:

She’s not better, though, of course. Kidneys don’t get better once they go bad. She’s still on a special kidney diet, I have to shove two pills in her throat every morning and one every evening, and we still poke her neck and fill her with fluids every other day. But she’s happy and playful and all that stuff, so it’s all good considering we were basically told she was a goner three months ago. There’s no telling how long she’ll be able to maintain, of course, but she’s nine years old now so that’s nothing out of the ordinary for a kitty who is going on elderly. She could very well live a relatively normal lifespan as long as she’s able to keep this up. We’ll see how she’s doing when I bring her in for more testing next month.

The only real behavioral side effect from all of this is that Fantastico is now way more talky than she used to be. She serenades us with lovely, angry, extended rowrs when we give her subcutaneous fluids (though less than five minutes afterwards she’ll be crawling all over us and purring like crazy), and she’s much quicker to growl or hiss than she ever was. But somehow it’s in a way that’s funny and cute rather than scary. Like an adorable grumpy old lady. But any such displays of displeasure are always very fleeting and she often purrs immediately after hissing. In fact, as I sit here on the couch typing this entry, Fantastico is sitting on my lap. She apparently thinks my hands are dirty because she’s licking the backs of them. And periodically growling at me when I jiggle her too much. Pretty darned cute.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL, FOLKS!

Around the same time as all this was happening, Suki Puppy developed a disturbing growth in the corner of her right eye. At first it was just a tiny white lump. Then it started periodically spewing pus across her eyeball. And then it started growing actual tissue.

We took her to the vet at that point and they recommended removing it (the growth, NOT her eye). The vet was a little concerned due to its coloration, and he wanted to send it to a lab for analysis. So one day we took her to the vet before work, then picked her up after work with a cone of shame around her neck and a bandage on a paw where they stuck in her I.V. needle.

Then we had to wait a week for the lab results to come back to see whether or not our puppy had the cancer. That was not a fun week.

Results came back good: it was completely benign. It was not cancer, it was just a “weird growth.” There was a chance that it might grow back, but it could always get cut out again if necessary.

WHEW! After all the bad news with Fantastico, this was a welcome relief. Suki is perfectly fine, and her blood tests came back being just about as healthy as physically possible, so she’s all sorts of good. Here’s a funny video starring her (with a cameo by Fantastico) that I took just a couple of weeks ago:

My parents, meanwhile, were not so lucky as their cat Ace had problems with fluids putting pressure on his lungs, then he died of a heart attack shortly before Easter.

In short: 2010 = not a good year to be a Harris pet.

In conclusion: I wrote this post to update everyone on the status of my pets, so that if you heard Fantastico was sick but didn’t know how she was doing, you wouldn’t have to pussyfoot around and be all, “I don’t know if we should mention Fantastico around Chris & Carrie because I don’t want to upset them.” She’s doing fine. We are doing fine.

I DID NOT write this post to elicit sympathy for us or our animals. I don’t want anybody to be all, “Oh, I’m so sorry for you!” or, “I feel so bad for what you’ve been through!” or any crap like that. The pets don’t feel sorry or bad; we don’t feel sorry or bad; there’s no reason for you to feel sorry or bad for us. That’d just be weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved.

Here at the end of the post let me go on a little tangent: All of this pet health stuff was not cheap, and continues to be not cheap. The special food and medicines and bags of subcutaneous fluids all tend to add up. But there was no way in Hell that I was going to be that guy who let a loved one die because he couldn’t afford to keep her alive. I know several people who are rabidly against credit cards, but let me just say this: If Carrie & I did not have a credit card, Fantastico would be dead right now. We in no way had the money to hospitalize her immediately after a holiday season in the middle of a recession, nor to pay for the myriads of tests and specialized medical stuff that were (and are) required for her continued survival. I highly recommend everyone have at least one good, reputable credit card in their name in case of an immediate emergency when you don’t happen to have an extra few thousand dollars just rotting away in your bank accounts. Plus if you’re not stupid with credit cards they’ll actually help you get good credit.

I’ve added a new feature here on this here website right here: I’ve compiled a page that has all of the reviews for movies that I’ve given four stars. There are a bunch of movies I’ve given four stars without ever writing reviews for them, but they’re not on this page because they have no reviews to read. And as I write more reviews of four-star movies, I’ll add them to the top of the page.

I know it prolly seems like my website has been nothing but movie reviews this month, but that’s just ’cause I’ve seen a lot of movies this year (hooray!) and I’m trying to actually keep on top of my reviews for once. I only have two more reviews to write before I’m all caught up! I’m not letting myself see any more movies until I’m caught up, and there are a couple that I really, really want to see, so that’s good incentive for me to get crackin’. So expect to see another one tomorrow. But I’ve also got a rather epic Article lined up, so look for that this weekend as well. Honest!

In the meantime go ahead and amuse yourselves by reading my reviews of four-star movies. Partake… and enjoy.

I’d actually made a 40-cent version of one of those really expensive “light boxes.” I took a cardboard box, flipped it on its side so that the open flaps were now the front of the box. Then I cut out the roof and the two sides, leaving the back. I taped white tissue paper to the cut-out parts and then taped a piece of plain white wrapping paper to the back and floor.

Problem was, the etchings were way too subtle to show up on the plain white background. Like taking a picture of a snowball in a blizzard. I discovered they work much better with natural lighting and a darker background, like, say, my backyard:

See? Clear as can be!

So I posted about half a dozen glasses on the Etsy store and am going to post many more as the week goes on. I also added a little widget to my blog here. Look at the bottom of the right-hand column there →

See? It shows a couple of things from our Etsy site! Well, I think it’s pretty neat at any rate. Now I just have to sit Carrie down and have her post more than the one necklace she has up there, and we’ll be cooking with gas.

Anyhoo, go check out the newly improved:

ThirstyRobots.com

This weekend Carrie is out of town in Canada with the Lovejoy family, leaving me all alone with Fantastico. She’s even taking the dog!

Next weekend Carrie is out of town in California for a wedding, leaving me all alone with Suki & Fantastico.

The weekend after that is my sister’s wedding. Fortunately Carrie will be home for that. Whew!

Whoo! Lotsa stuffs going on during the weekends.

FreakAngels
Very cool, very British post-apocalyptic fun from Warren Ellis.

Girly
Terrifically appealing, very fluid artwork and crazy adventure fun.

My First Dictionary
Vaguely uncomfortable and disturbing retro children fun.

Pictures for Sad Children
Hilariously depressing fun.

I suggest you all (or “y’all” if you prefer) go check ALL of them out. Simultaneously if possible, but I understand if you’re somehow more “limited” than I am in that regard.
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Anyhoo, no April Fools Day joke on this site for me. I’ll post the April “Of the Month” stuff later this afternoon.