Category: Life with Pratts

Down and out in New York

I’m back home from my New York visit with Denro. Friday and Saturday were good, but I fell ill about 4 am on Sunday. I don’t know how I survived the Amtrak train ride back to suburban Boston, especially because Dennis and I had to stand for the first half hour due to overbooking. Eventually they opened the business class car.

Driving home from the train station I nearly passed out twice and swerved off the road, but I made it. Fell into bed fully clothed at 8:30 pm, not bothering to even brush my teeth, and didn’t wake up until nearly 10 in the morning, except for a bathroom visit in the middle of the night. Carol suspects food poisoning. I haven’t eaten in 42 hours and I still haven’t fully recovered, so it’ll be a while before I post more.

The Birds

We’re under attack! Birds are trying to take over our house.

First, they built a nest in some exposed insulation in the garage, after taking some of the insulation to build nests outside, accounting for why the insulation is less pink on the right.

Bird\'s nest in garage

And now there’s a bird attacking the roof. Look at the hole he made!

Hole in roof from bird pecking

Several mornings recently, including today, we heard pecking outside our bedroom window, and this afternoon, while cleaning the gutters (again), I saw the damage. It’s been below 40° at night, and I can’t imagine there are insects that are attracting him, so I don’t know what’s inspired the activity. Maybe they’re upset that I had two trees taken down from that side of the house.

Before going to bed last night, I concluded there’s no way some birds, except a woodpecker, could have created such a large and deep gouge, and we didn’t hear a woodpecker. I figure what happened is a large branch hit when one of the trees was taken down. The birds have been mistaking the hole for something they would expect to have insects in it.

Global Reach

A guilty pleasure of mine is looking through the Global Industrial catalog whenever it shows up at work. It has almost everything. Hasn’t everybody imagined decorating their living room like a doctor’s office reception area?

Reception Area Furniture

How about lockers for the mud room? And wouldn’t one of these magazine racks be great, assuming you still get magazines?

LockersMagazine StandMagazine Rack

But what I really have my eye on is the pre-engineered mezzanine…

Metal mezzanine

I want to get one for the backyard, so when K3 come to visit they can address the admiring throngs below, like they do in Belgium and the Netherlands. 😉

K3 in Holland

Halloween Hijinks

Here it is, already a week since Halloween, and I’m only now getting around to this entry. We had a good turnout this year, but we had way more than enough candy. Two years ago we had a more modest amount of excess.

I enjoy decorating the front porch for Halloween. Some webbing, simple lighting, a fog machine, and creaky old radio shows make a nice effect. One kid, about ten, who came to house said he remembered coming here “when he was little”, and he always liked the way the house looks. Eric took Bismo’s son out again to make the rounds, and he wore the same getup as last year, but with a new mask.

Halloween 2008Halloween 2008Halloween 2008

Eric was goofing around with the digital camera and came up with a fun little video. He designed the pumpkin faces and I carved them. The old time radio program “The Whistler” is playing. Trivia note: Gerald Mohr, who says “likes to do it the hard way” was the voice of Reed Richards in the 1967 Fantastic Four cartoon. I posted one at this link, and you can also hear Mohr’s voice here. You’ll even find a picture of him on the blog. How did so much of Gerald Mohr get on DogRat.com?
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/NOV/Halloween08.flv 440 330]

Chex Quest 3

Chex Quest 3 is available for download! In 1996 Eric was a wee lad of four years. Back then I was doing a lot of the grocery shopping (or, in deference to SamJay, food shopping), and one day I saw that Chex cereals had a promotion with a computer game on CD-ROM. It was called Chex Quest. The discs were manufactured by AOL in return for Chex including the then-ubiquitous offer to join AOL. Although I had no interest in America Online, I couldn’t pass up the free game.

Chex Quest menu

My computer was an 83 MHz Pentium with 8 MB of memory and a 300 MB disk, that I’d upgraded from a 40 MHz 386 with 4 MB and a 170 MB disk. The upgrade made it possible to run Windows 95 no slower than I’d been running Windows 3.1. Internet access was a 33.6 Kbps modem dialing into a local service provider, and at that speed it took about an hour to download Chex Quest 2.

After installing Chex Quest, I recognized it immediately as being a DOS program based on the DOOM game engine. I watched the introductory video, with the background story for the game. I’ll let Eric explain the premise…
Continue reading Chex Quest 3