Teej's Secret Box

As anyone who carefully read this blog (and viewed my pictures), they would know that I have two cats, Cash (~1.5 years old male) and Mitten (~3.5 years old female). They are not exactly the best of friends, but they are partners — comrades in arms when there is an external threat. However, they bickers like a a pair Palestine residents when nothing else is going on.

For those of you who think that cats are incapable of emotions, you are wrong. In fact, they are very much capable of jealousy. Over the past few months, Cash have taken liberty with using my lap for his naptime in the evenings, especially since I switched to jeans for the winter months (never mind you, 72 degree is cold!)

However, ever since I came home from visiting my family for Christmas, Mitten behaved quite a bit differently. Instead of preferring to keep her distance from me, she suddenly have a much better interest in being close by with me, much to my chagrin trying to do some work from home. She is much more assertive with being around myself, despite Cash’s constant fawning over me, especially when I am carrying around food for myself, or is hovering near any external doors (they love to go outside, despite my preference that they don’t.)

Mitten is the kind of cat that loves to play, but would rather not play WITH Cash except on rare occasions. So if I would be flinging a stick with her, she will boldly play, but come to a screeching halt if Cash shows any interest, or is in any immediate proximacy toward where she is heading. She also prefers not to be touched, having much lower tolerance especially for petting all over her back — if you stick with her head and neck, she would enjoy it to a greater degree, but still at a much more limited amount. Cash would go bonkers with delight if you pull out any grooming tools and start manipulating them all over him.

But this past week, Mitten is much more tolerant of my petting, and with her meowing at me while I’m working, I kept puzzling at what she wanted. Suddenly, two days, she jumped on my lap, and while I would hug her, she actually sat down, and eventually curled up and slept. She slept on my lap for a while.

When Cash came in, boy was he jealous. His tail flicking, he watched her sleeping on HIS lap. Overjoyed at a huge barrier between myself and Mitten being overcome, I was guarded against what Cash would do. He climbed on the couch next to us, and started batting his hand on Mitten. I pushed him away, and he sauntered away to my bedroom to use HIS bed instead.

Yesterday, while working on the computer in the kitchen, Mitten jumped up on my lap, and curled up to sleep. Cash saw us, and never approached us. That night, Mitten actually came up to my bed (HIS Bed!), and climbed on my chest, and started purring like a Ferrari, rubbing her face all over the chest. She rubbed it a bit too far, that she limped to one side, and promptly rolled off my chest, and almost off my bed if it wasn’t for my arm stopping her. Eventually, Cash and Mitten came to an agreement and squeezed their body to both side of my body, making for a difficult night sleep as I like to flip-flop like Kerry on his good day.

Tonight was the penultimate in this jealousy bout by Cash. You see, he was very intent on being with me, while Mitten was off somewhere (probably pooping while reading the Economist). Finally, I got the hint, and called it a day at the kitchen table, and sat on the couch. Immediately, Cash was on HIS lap making himself comfortable.

Eventually, along come Mitten, sniffing around. Aha, there’s Cash on one of my leg and the side of the couch, leaving another leg free! Maybe she could get on the other leg, and make herself comfortable. Immediately, Cash’s tail started to swish slightly — indicating an annoyance, and signs of jealousy. He thought long, and he thought hard. He’s a male cat, after all — needing more time to process devious plan without pissing me off.

The plan was brought up — let’s curl up in a ball, and pretend to go to sleep! Yeah, that’s the trick!

He curled up, and bump off goes Mitten due to his large back, and he guiltily looked up toward me, but not with much intent — a subtle look to see if I would do anything about it. I could only giggle with great humor at his antics. He continue to pretend to sleep — closing his eyes immediately if I would look down at him, making me giggle even more.

You see, Cash rarely sleep curled up like a little ball, as he’s attempting to do right now. He vastly prefers to sleep straight or whatever the structure is like (a little bowl, he’ll curve around. But my legs? Definitely not a ball-place that he’ll be comfortable with, considering his large size.)

Cats do get jealous, and it’s a joy watching them acting like a little kid.

Well, I had an interesting day. It started out badly enough with my horrible allergy this morning, and a general grumpy mood when I discovered that my car may need a $900 repair soon (basically, a hard-to-reach seal is starting to leak, and the vast majority of the repair is the labor cost, having to remove the transmission in order to reach that seal.) There’s a chance it won’t get worse for years, but then it could burst tomorrow.

I also spent the most of my afternoon cleaning the house, rearranging the kitchen, and feeling generally grumpy. Finally, it was time for the mail, so I grabbed a nice pile of bills, $59-a-year credit card offers, and a magazine or two. On the way back, I was intercepted by a neighbor. She explained to me that the neighbor who usually take care of my packages and my trash had to go out of town for a funeral, so she took the responsibility, and handed me the three packages that was delivered to my home.

One was from Costco, full of file folders for my new file cabinet that apparently have not arrived yet (but should by next Friday).

The second package was from my sister, and is a gift for my cats. It is a “Cat Pueblo Play Tower”, a four-level cloth-and-plastic-sticks playground for the cats. While I was putting it together, Cash and Mitten was already playing with one part of the tower. Once it was up, and I put Mitten on the top, she settled in, and started enjoying the world from the top, while swatting away Cash who wanted to reign supreme.

Meowr

The third package is from my Sekret Santa in Duluth, Minnesota. ArsTechnica have an annual tradition where two very generous souls organized and send out details on Sekret Santa gifting. My Sekret Santa put together a very nice package!

As you can see, there are five gifts! FIVE! Not one, but two postcards of Duluth, Minnesota (maybe he wants me to move there… nahhhh, too cold!) The other three gifts are:

A Coca-Cola 3-D jigsaw puzzle. My father would absolutely love this, but then he’s not partial to 3-D puzzles yet. It’s pretty damn cool, thou.

“Infinity In Your Pocket” by Mike Flynn — A pretty damn cool looking book that I will definitely enjoy.

The Original CatDancer - Oh. My. God.

When I pulled it out, Mitten was quick to pay it close attention, and started attacking it! When I put it down, she actually would try to climb on the countertop, which is a no-no for her. She is so hooked to that toy.

When I showed it to Cash, and tried to take pictures, it was a blur of fast-motion action that is difficult to follow for my poor camera.

Below is the link to the entire album of the tree, the gifts, and the chasing of the CatDancer. (Click on the picture.)

Thank you, Sekret Santa. Thank you, sister. Thank you all.

And have a wonderful holidays.

Dad and Mom had this wonderful meal that they spoiled themselves with at this restaurant aside Holiday Inn.  It was a Christmas banquet, so nothing was held back, and they had a great time.

Mom then asked Dad for a little tiny eenie bit of a favor.  “Can you please come to the Mall with me, so I can find a Christmas gift for our son?”

Now see here, Dad hates shopping.  Hates, with a passion.  But he loves Mom far more, so he swallowed his pride, and agreed.  Off they went to the mall.  The first store they came up to, Mom took a look around.  Nope, nothing here.  They then trekked across the mall to the second major store.  Mom took a look around.  Nope, nothing, she declared.  Dad sighed, and followed her out to yet another store.  Nope, nothing.

Finally, they reached the end of the mall, to JcPenney’s.  Aha, Mom declared, the perfect gift!  A nice gorgeous belt for their son to wear, something to add to his look, and it’s about time he wear a belt, no?

Slowly they rang it up, and slowly they walked back across the entire mall to their car.  Mom quickly wrapped it up and placed it under the Christmas tree.

Now bear in mind here, that I wear 30-34 at that time.  30 inches inseam, and 34 length.  I’ve since then ballooned up to 34-34.  Yes, I know you are jealous, now shut up and let me tell the story here.

So it remains for weeks until Christmas Day, where we all ran down to the tree, and started opening up the presents we all deserved, us good and nice cold hearted bastards, of course.

Dad apparently had weeks to recover from that laborious trip.  He watched with interest as I opened this present Mom carefully searched for, and Dad suffered through.

“A BELT?  BUT MOM, I DO NOT NEED A BELT!”

Dad continues to remind me to this day how tactless I was that day.

Just a little Public Service Announcement for those who may be getting TVs for Christmas.

There are a number of connections you can make with your TV from many sources (Cable, DVD, HD-DVD, BluRay, PS3, X360, Wii, and so on forth).  The list are as follows in order of lowest to highest quality:

• RF Connection - This is the cable connection you use by default.  This is an analog and/or digital connection.
• Composite - You usually have 3 connections, 1 for video, 2 for audio.  This is an analog connection.
• S-Video - Instead of a single connection, there are 4 small connections in a round cable.  This is an analog connection.
• Component - There are three dedicated connections for video, each encoded for a specific color range.  This is an analog connection.
• DVI - Digitial Visual Interface, a common standard for LCD monitors for computers.  This is a digital connection.
• HDMI - High Definition Multimedia Interface.  Not only does it carry video, but also sounds.  This is a digital connection.

Closed Captioning, by US law, are provided within line 21 of an analog TV signal and is geared toward the hearing impaired.  Unlike subtitles which are usually focused on dialogs only, Closed Captioning are intended to transcribe the audio effects, along with musical vocals (this aspect is due to licensing issues).

DVDs have carried and supported Closed Captioning.  Some companies take it a step further and have a subtitle option for the hearing impaired which output the same information as a Closed Captioning option would but in a subtitle form.  However, this is a voluntary option.

Unfortunately, HDMI connections does not currently have any way to transmit closed captioning as the standards called for it.  There are apparently two separate standards, the Line 21 standard, and the more modern MPEG standards.  The vast majority of televisions available today does not support the second standard over HDMI connection.  Also, the vast majority of contents are using the older Line 21 standard, which can not be sent over HDMI connections.

So, if you are getting a nice new TV, and hook up your DVD player over HDMI to the TV, do not be shocked to see a sheer absence of Closed Captioning.

We need to push the FCC and Canadian’s CRTC to establish a digital high definition standard to support Closed Captioning.  Having an established standard will encourage our manufacturers to fall in line, and give us what we need.

In the meantime, my suggestion is to use Component connections which is capable of doing 720p/1080i signals until the standards are established and better options are provided for us all.

It is disappointing that we dropped this digital ball — assuming that the status quo will still be there in face of changing technology.  I am quite sure there were some of us who did spot this issue.  Let’s start helping them push this forward.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to grease the wheel?

5470 E. Second St., G-J
Long Beach, CA  90803

Sushi of Naples have succeeded in supplanting a very long list of sushi places to become my second most favorite location, right behind Yoshi of Sydney, NSW, Australia.  I do assume that once I get to Japan, there will be a multitude of places solidly placing themselves on the top dozen list, but until then, and even then, I strongly recommends anyone in the Los Angeles region to go here.

There are a number of sushi places I have been to in the valley, from the garnish Japanese hibachi places, to the “elite” locations in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.  None have really given an impression on me, hence the absence of such a review here.  This one place, with Sushi Chef of twelve years, Junji, have only been outrightly defeated by a chef of 26 years.  Pure skills is only the difference, as this gentleman brought out a wide variety of food that successfully pushed the boundary of my taste.

The single moment of brilliance that solidly placed this location at second place is the Albacore Toro sushi.  Toro = Belly location, which can be remarkably tasty, especially for Sake (Salmon).  Look at your stomach, and what do you find?  A nice layer of fat, unless you’re a skinny bastard (I hate you, hate).  With fishes, the fat content is much lower, yet it add a subtle yet brilliant taste to the sushi.  The Tuna Blue Fin (Totobi) is also something I strongly recommends, along with Aji, Suzuki, and Sake.  The sake was the only down point, being too favorable, and not as subtly dry as I prefers.  It is a decent sake, nonetheless.

The second shocker is that the entire meal came to about half price of what I expected.  The brilliant Albacore Toro that would normally go for $12.50 elsewhere is sold for $4.75.  The prices of the other options are just as low, lending to a much more moderate price tag, something I can heartily agree with.

This place is large, well crowded during meal hours, yet not too crowded to demand reservations.  It is my hearty recommendation that everyone who loves sushi go there with a loose budget for a tasty surprise.