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Elvis

It has been quite a while since I have written about Elvis. He is still very much a part of our lives. He is our only permanently indoor cat. He has take over my daughter’s room since she is off at college. Since he is completely blind (we think), it is remarkable that he finds his way around the room. My daughter’s American Girl dolls sit atop their bunk beds under the window. Elvis finds his way up there to sit in the sun beam when he wants to. He comes down and uses the litter box (there are two in diagonally opposite corners) and to find his food. His feeding station has a bowl for half a can of wet food twice per day. Two flavors of crunchy food in an oval bowl and a deep large water bowl.

Elvis walks outside every day that it is not too cold, windy or wet. He used to follow a tapping or dragging stick but something has changed and he is not too good at that anymore. My wife wears flip-flops when she takes him. But since she is out of town, I have been trying to get him to follow my shoes with mixed results. He likes to walk in the gutter next to the curbing. This slight trough keeps him in line until he wanders off in an odd direction. Each time the ground changes texture, he stops to sharpen his claws (leave a paw mark). Whether he can smell those or it is just to let other know he stopped by I do not know. He had a possible stroke in December but seems mostly recovered. Sometimes he walks in a small circle in his room. That might just be because he needs to walk. He is always affectionate when he gets pats or is being held. He is a sweet old cat.

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Virus and not so lucky

I apologize to anyone who got a virus from this site. I normally never use Windows at home as it is unsafe to use except in a corporate environment where you have experts and firewalls and such. Never buy a computer for your home that includes Windows. As such I got the virus from my own web site, this one. The problem has been corrected. My webmaster son noted that there was a vulnerability on Feb 3 and had it on his list of things to upgrade. Too late. Again I apologize.

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Lights and Luck

Yesterday I picked up the Wall Street Journal and looked at the weather map. I saw that there was a cold front with thunderstorms along it due. I put on my hat to leave for work and noted that there was rain just beginning. As my son and I got into the car, the rain began. Ten minutes later as we were moving along the freeway, the rain was very hard and steady. The sky was dark enough that the dashboard lights were quite visible. I noted at this point that moving the bulbs around on the back of the dashboard module had moved the dead bulb to the over-65 side of the speedometer and the formerly dark side now had light. Sometimes you get lucky.

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Smoke

My son reminded me that we should replace the smoke detectors that came with the house. We have been here 13 years and the USFA suggests that 10 years is the life of a smoke detector.

User requirements: Same size as old model – no repainting or touch up. AC power. Common Alarm.

I found a replacement at Lowe’s in a 2-pack. Just what we need. When I told Phillip that he would be doing the installation, he was a bit taken aback. He has never done the electrical work. He found the circuit breaker while I was at work since he had a holiday off. We needed to replace the connector plug for each unit as the new detectors were a different brand than the ones the builder had installed.

He did the first unit but somehow the wire nuts did not connect properly. May they just needed a bit more twist as that is all that I did. On the second unit, he was uncertain that the circuit was dead and was reluctant to work on it. He did point out that the thing had not had power for some time as the hot lead had pulled out of the old plug and was loose in the box. It was a plastic box or it would have shorted and blown the breaker. Even though I pointed out that it was the “middle” of the circuit as a pair of black and white came into the box and another left and we could tell that the other unit was off, he let me do this one.

After much discussion about the radioactive ion detector, Phillip found a source on the web that said that we could dispose of the units in the trash. So I threw them in the covered trash can in the kitchen. A couple of days later, before the trash went out, they started to chirp. I had not checked that the batteries were removed and the decomposition products in the trash were enough to set them off. I had to fish them out and get the batteries out.

We also discovered that the Elvis, our cat that is blind and mostly deaf, can hear the smoke alarm just fine. He starts singing at the top of his lungs when he hears it. If there is a problem, we will not be forgetting him.

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Harry and Adah

While I was working on the car with the dashboard torn up, Harry was up on the roof. Adah climbed up my back with her claws while my head was under the dashboard. She then went into the back seat to feel safe from the other cats. As I was finishing up and putting the screws back in, Harry came sliding down the windshield. If I had had a video camera going, we would better understand the “catspaw” effect.

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Soaring

Saturday was clear and warm and began to get windy. I went out in mid-morning and saw Lorenzo under the Mimosa tree. As I opened the front door, a large bird took off and flew away through the trees in a neighbor’s yard. It was the gray-brown of winter woods and was hard to tell just what it was. Probably a hawk, maybe an owl. I told Lorenzo that large birds like that loved to catch little cats like him. I don’t think that he was listening. Bullet was also watching.

Later, as I took the recycling to the collection point, I saw hawk soaring into the wind by the highway. With the strong wind, it was able to stay over the fringe of the highway and scout for tiny creatures but I did not see it dive. Returning from recycling by a different route, I saw another. I just love to watch the large birds fly.

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Pecking Order

Bullet, aka Little Bear, Mr. B., and Cutie, has grown into his second year. As a result, he is busy trying to establish his rank in the realm. So he jumps Harry (about the same size), Hillard (about 3 pounds heavier), and Lorenzo (about 1 pound smaller). Eventually this will resolve. In the meantime, it is extra scabs and an occasional howl. Yesterday on the front steps, Bullet cornered Harry. There was a bit of a howl. Hillard came to investigate. This did not have a peacemaking affect. I opened the door and let Hillard into the house. The ongoing tension returned to the previous level. There may be a message here for those who make national policy.

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Spread of Language

By an interesting coincidence, I received a mailing from The Great Courses with a free sample lecture on the spread of language through Austronesia just as I was reading the chapters in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel on the very same topic.

The lecturer is very good and maintains interest on the topic but he is also using an overhead or projected presentation as he seems to pause to point or indicate features. I suppose this is one good reason to pay $400 to $1000 to take the real college class as opposed to getting just the lecture for $40 to $80.

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y=mx+b

Income tax time again. The politicians recognize that the tax system is way too complicated. And they all have a proposal to simplify the tax system. Here is mine.

First some definitions. Income is what you have coming in. It does not matter what it is, it goes on your “W-2” effectively in that it must be declared as income. Wages, salaries, and tips. Investment income, capital gains, gains from sales of property and cars. Airplane trips won in contests, airplane trips won gambling, airplane trips provided by you or your employer that go to exotic places for no real purpose. All income.

And you pay taxes on it. That is unless you get someone else to take it and put it on their “W-2”. You can give it to them, employ them, anything you want but it has to get to them from you. It has to actually go to somebody or some organization. That could by your housekeeper, your brother-in-law, your church, the Church-of-It’s-What’s-Happenin’-Now-Baby. It does not matter as long as it is not just you disguised as something else. If you keep it, hold it, retain it, its yours. This year. Income to you. It is no good buying something (except labor) with it because you still retain what you bought.
So how much tax? Well only two numbers matter in my system. What amount of income should result in NO income tax. Let’s call that number “b”. All of the rest is taxed at the same rate. To calculate your taxes, subtract b, the minimum income from your income. Multiply the result by the tax rate the Congress has set. Send in the money.

It is way too simple to sell. For one thing, there is no place for rich people to hide their money. So it will t-off the rich. And it does not gouge the rich people with a higher rate so the little guy will not like it either. But the fact of the matter is the little guy pays most of the taxes because he has no place to hide the money today. And the rich people do hide it, so the higher rate does not really impact them. One rate, one starting point. A fair and simple tax.

And what about all of those now-unneeded-tax-advisors and form-checkers. They can be gainfully employed keeping track of everyones money so everybody knows just how much they have when the music stops on December 31.

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Primary

Yesterday was the South Carolina Republican Primary. Since this area is pretty much Republican, that was the hot topic. So much so that the Public Radio Network preempted Piano Jazz to cover it. For some reason South Carolina Public Radio (scern obsolete link) has been renamed South Carolina ETV Radio. Even though there were no results at 8:00 PM, the announcer remarked, they did have coverage. Better that they had waited until they did have results and use the points provided in the programming to interrupt or preempt.

The election may be hot but the weather is cold, even for January. We have had a bit of snow twice now. And a cold rain a couple of days. This is a good thing as we are way behind on rain since last year.