jennegatron

My kitty came from a litter of farm cats along with his brother, my sister's cat. My parents, under the advice of the vets, switched them both to wet food from dry food, because in order to make sure both got enough to eat, you had to put out too much dry food, & my kitty would just graze all day and he put on a bunch of weight. When we moved him out here after Christmas, we kept him on wet food until he decided in late January that he would rather go hungry than eat the wet food that he liked mere days earlier. This went for every flavor & food style, and he was a terror for a couple days because he was hungry. We broke down and got him some dry food which he happily is eating to this day. It does mean that we have a ton of wet food that he previously loved, then turned his nose up at, so I'm slowly reintroducing wet food to him (half a can in the morning and half a can in the evening on Fridays & Saturdays) It seems to be working! He's changed his mind, and now likes the meaty bits in gravy & shreds that he refused before, meaning that I don't have to donate like 60 cans of cat food to a local shelter, and that he will slowly eat through my stockpile. I'm unlikely to buy any more after he exhausts this store of gross smelling meat pastes. (If he decides he no longer likes it, I will still donate the cat food, but it's $ I already spent, and am on a budget where I can't give it away without at least trying to get him to eat it.) also, Sean Vanaman brought this delightful thing into the world, if you haven't seen it, mitten.cat

Math-based textbooks (even those designed for non-strictly-math disciplines, like physics) are written by career mathematicians, or scientists with a mathematician's level of mathematical vocabulary. That is why the language of those textbooks is obtuse. (sorry.) In order to be mathematically rigorous, you need to use a very specific vocabulary of words that mean very specific things, and you need to have an understanding of Discrete Mathematics that, in my experience, is barely taught outside of a college class room. This means it's incredibly hard to understand what a math text book is attempting to say unless you know more math than the book's audience has. Mathematicians (for better or likely worse) want every student to understand the theoretical & logical underpinnings of every mathematical concept. This means you're going to learn the definition of a derivative (lim h->0 of f(x-h)- f(x)/h) way before you're given the power rule, even though every polynomial derivative you get from then on is going to be calculated via the power rule instead. Because a derivative means like 6 different things that all boil down to "a change that occurs over such an infinitesimally small time period that it is instantaneous," you have to start somewhere, and the agreed place to start is the mathematical statement (the definition of the derivative) that says exactly that. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about mathematical instruction. I graduated with a Mathematics degree & spent much in the year after graduating (under)employed as a math tutor for roughly middle school aged kids.

I'm still checking in with my villagers, specifically Flora the pink ostrich & Greta the mouse. I didn't get the game till February so I haven't burned out. I will keep an eye out at Crazy Redd's for those pieces.

The kitten I got in middle school in 2004 turns 11 this year, and I had to spend 5 1/2 years away from him between going away to college and moving away from my parent's house after graduating. In December I visited my parents in Illinois and brought him back with me to California. He's over 20lbs, so it wasn't exactly easy carrying him through airports. This week he's decided that 4:30AM is an amazing time to be awake, and that I should also be awake with him, and that he's going to do everything in his power to wake me up, including but not limited to, knocking the metal pull string on my lamp against the metal base, walking on top of me, nipping at my leg if he finds that it's not under the blanket, pawing at my arm if he sees that it's exposed, shredding any paper/cardboard he can find on my side of the bed, chewing on my glasses on my nightstand, & knocking over my metal Return of the Jedi trash can. So what I'm saying is if I were a weaker person I would be asking, who wants a free 20lb nearly 11 year old tom cat. He's been fixed & is strictly indoors. I hope you don't own cords or paper/cardboard because he will destroy everything you love. He also only wants his head and ears scratched, and he will bite your hands when he's hungry.

This is a secondhand story, but the drinking & driving stories reminds me of the story floating around Norman, Oklahoma where the preschool child of OU head football coach Bob Stoops told an authority figure "My dad drinks and drives all the time." Bob Stoops is the closest thing to a celebrity that Norman, Oklahoma has, so there was a great sigh of relief when they pressed a little further and found out that it was Diet Pepsi he drank all the time.

Very successful exchange of one adorable Pokemon for another. Whenever I wonder trade or GTS, I try not to to think about it too much, otherwise I get sad that my dearly loved hand hatched Mareeps & Eevees are going to terrible people who name their Pokemon awful things.

Nice! Sunday afternoon would be a delight. I'll send you a PM here when I'm around tomorrow.

Every year NPR does the Austin 100 including 100 free songs to download from 100 artists performing at SXSW http://apps.npr.org/austin/ I don't know if this will work outside the US, but you are able to click through to the article where you can for now download the zip file with all the songs in it. Everyone is bound to find something that you like. So far Hinds - Bamboo is my favorite, but that's bound to change.

For anyone in the US who doesn't want to drop the exorbitant amount necessary to watch cartoons on TV here, Sling TV has cartoon network (and adult swim, and about a dozen other channels) for $20 a month. If you prepay for 3 months you get a free streaming stick (roku or amazon) to plug into your tv. I really want to try it out. (For cartoons & for live sporting events.) Has anyone here tried it out yet?

On the topic of douche or douchebag, I think it's a really great insult because it was a product invented to make those with vaginas feel ashamed of themselves, and it turns out it's not actually good for you. It is a device invented with largely misogynistic intentions that's physically unnecessary and can cause more problems than it solves. It's kind of poetic in that way.

I'm not terribly worried about the natures. I'm trying to take everything in layers. There's just so much going on in the way of IVs, Shinies, EVs, Natures, Abilities, Move Sets, etc. that I've tried to take things on one at a time trying to comprehend all of it.

I'm not much of a college basketball fan, but I've gone to quite a few OU games, and a game out here in Davis as well. It's way more fun as a casual fan when more teams are good. I've found this to be true in the NBA as well where my allegiances are more distributed than in the NFL where they're laser focused on Green Bay. The Western Conference being so stacked this year (and for the past 4 season that I've paid attention to) means that there are way more interesting games when at least 1 team in the game is worth watching. (It makes it very stressful as a Dallas fan, especially when I look at the dumpster fire that is the bottom 8-9 teams in the east)

It's pretty impressive log jam up at the top of the Big 12 this year.

RIP the 1UP podcast network. All hail the Scarab Lord.

Thanks Tegan! Everything I've read has been relatively vague on what does and doesn't count as "international" for that shiny bump, but it's good to know that our great northern neighbor does not count. I'll dig through my pokemon bank and find a 4-5 IV modest Mareep with those specific stats. Edit: Found one!

Do you have X or Y? I haven't yet made the jump to OR/AS. If you do have X or Y, yes please! I'm not picky on which IVs, as I'll be using it as a parent for further breeding, especially since you're in the US and I won't benefit from the Masuda method. A 4 or 5 IV Eevee with the HA would be great. If not, it's no big deal. I am the one livin' in the past after all. (Which reminds me, tegan do you happen to have a 4 or 5 IV Ditto that you caught in your game? It's probably a long shot, but since you're in Canada, it would help me out. I understand if you mostly focused on getting a good Ditto some other way. I barely caught any myself.) This would go for anyone on here that has a pretty good Ditto who isn't from the US. I could give you one of like 300 Mareeps I have. Pretty much any disposition & IV combo you can think of!

I got wonder traded a shiny Walrein & a (normal) Entei on wonder trade, so I will definitely drop some of them in there too. Because Mareeps are kind of a pain to catch normally, I have had great success with GTS with them. Unfortunately both Eevees have Run Away. You're right though, Magic Bounce Espeon would be super dope!

For sure! The Sylveon & Umbreon are what convinced me to try for a shiny Eevee. I have tried to not get too hung up on the stats since I don't have a good Ditto yet and because I am not super into being very competitive with the battles. So I try to focus on the cool palette swaps. I really like the blue Sylveon and the green Espeon. I continue to put all my old Mareeps on GTS in hopes that someone will give me a Ditto that has even one more IV, but it has been fruitless thus far. Luckily I have like 15 boxes full of Mareeps to trade.

I am using the Destiny Knot! My Mareep & Eevee parents have been 5 IVs. I've been hamstrung by the fact that I don't have a ton of quality non-USA dads to match up with my 5 IV moms & the best Ditto I have only has 3 IVs. (Fixed the pictures. OneDrive was a little too good at protecting my privacy.)

I hatched my first bred shiny Pokemon this weekend! I'm still livin' in the past by playing my copy of X. It was a shiny Mareep, and what he lacks in statistical superiority he makes up for in cuteness. (I also managed to hatch 2 statistically inferior shiny Eevees as well. It can be hard to see the subtle shift to the silver fur. I'm excited to turn them into super cool looking Umbreons and Espeons. Maybe I'll hatch a couple more and get a Sylveon & Jolteon too.) All three of them are 31 IVs in only Attack and Special Defense because RNG is a cruel cruel mistress. Here are Douglas & Ronald, not pictured: Randall (Randall is the second Eevee. I felt that was unnecessary to take a picture of him.) :

I love Shuckle's wonky eyes in that second screenshot. Bringin' the smack down. And by smack down I mean, surviving all your attacks and slowly chipping away at your health.

I'm with tegan on this one. I had a moment where I thought "that is a name so good, that I'm surprised they haven't used it before now."

http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2015-02-25/craig-sager-to-return-to-sideline-reporting-next-month-nba-leukemia-fashion-jackets All that is good and pure in sideline basketball reporting is returning.

It's not video game related, but I had Tegan draw my surly cat, and it came out delightfully. Highly recommended. (Without me knowing, my s/o also bought a shiny Mareep commission because that has been the Pokemon project I've been working on, and that came out delightfully too.)

The tube room was the place that I got really monumentally stuck in my playthrough. I played through a little of the beginning again with commentary after I beat the game, and Manny's inner monologue clued me into why I was doing what I was doing, but only after knowing what I was supposed to do through brute force the first time through? I don't know what they could have done differently, maybe allow me to vent to an NPC about how frustrated I was for