Categories Cats, Dog, Rants

NYs new animal rights law

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Text of the bill is HERE.

ALL it does is allow local municipalities to enact stricter punishments than the state law.  Seriously.  After reading it I didn’t  understand why all the Animal Rights people were jumping for joy over it.

Then I read THIS article.

Money quote:

“I think any police officer should be able to pull over and say let me see your license and paperwork. And if that dog is not spayed or neutered, it would be wonderful if they can fine that individual,” says McNeely.

Christine McNeely is the executive director of the local Humane Association of Central NY.

There are SO MANY things wrong with that statement its not even funny.

First off, can you say HUMAN rights violation, for the cops to be able to stop you and ask for “your paperwork” just because you happen to be with a dog??

Then lets look at the stupidity of mandatory spay/neuter laws, which do NOT work.  If you have a decent low cost spay/neuter program then the only folks who haven’t spayed or neutered their dog or cat either aren’t going to anyway, or don’t know about the program.  All the law does is fine them, force them to give up the animal when they can’t afford the fine, at which point they go to the BYB down the road and get another puppy.  Meanwhile the dog they gave up is sitting at the local pound and probably getting put down for “space”.

And then there’s recent research on the fairly serious negatives of spaying/neutering dogs at an early age, with some research pointing out negatives for spay/neuter at ANY age.  Seriously, we’ve known for a long time that the removal of hormones does bad things to HUMANS, why we ever thought it wasn’t going to do bad things to other animals I do NOT understand.

And, basic fact of life here, if you legislate out all the responsible hobby breeders by making it so incredibly expensive to breed, the only ones left breeding will be the puppy mills who can afford to pay for whatever permits are needed, and the BYBers who don’t care or don’t know about the law and slide under it for various reasons!  Yup, laws like this just make it MORE possible to find a puppy from a puppy mill.  Not less.

If they REALLY want to put the puppy mills out of business then they need to forbid the selling of cats/dogs in petstores or other retail settings, and they need to forbid the selling of them online.  The GOOD breeders don’t sell online, they list their litters planned, and show pictures of the pups, but no transactions are done via the website.  

But of course that won’t happen, cause the folks behind the puppy mills have money, and money talks when it comes to politics!

Categories Rants

….insurance…..

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Just put lots of impolite words where those dots are please!

So I’ve talked before about the fact that I have arthritis in both hands and wrists.  I was diagnosed before I turned 30.  At that point my right hand was so bad I couldn’t turn a door-knob with my right hand, my left was better, but I could already see the progression.

When I originally went in to see my doctor for it the xrays of my right wrist made her think that I might have damaged the ligaments there (at that point my left hand wasn’t hurting yet).  She referred me to an orthopedic surgeon.  Who couldn’t fit me in for another 4 months and who’s office was quite rude about it.  I puttered along for another month, during which time my right hand got ALOT worse and my left started hurting, at which point I went back into my doctor and asked for a different referral.  She was horrified at the wait time to see the orthopedic, and I was referred to a plastic surgeon’s office.

Yes, a plastic surgeon, or more correctly termed a “reconstructive surgeon”.  What wasn’t obvious till I got there the first time is that although they do all the normal “plastic surgeon” type surgeries, they specialize in hand and nerve reconstruction.  Cool!

He quickly determined that the problem wasn’t the ligaments (ThankYouGod), that it was arthritis (to which I responded I was too young to have and he laughed at me), but that it wasn’t anywhere near needing surgery and they’d just put me on a maintenance regimen and keep an eye on it.  Depending on a variety of factors that weren’t predictable it was possible that in the worse case prediction that it would continue to get worse and I’d need surgery in 10yrs or so, but it was also possible that it would just maintain or even fade away till I was in my 50’s or so at which point I might need additional help with it.

I could live with that.  Especially since with the right regimen the pain almost completely disappeared except for some weather related flairups, with the only lingering issue being a weakness of the fingers and thumb when it comes to thinks like opening cans /jars etc.  I now have a lovely collection of “jar opener” type things.

Its been a couple years since I was last in to see him.  Nothing major has happened, but some of the weather related pain has gotten worse, and I think that my finger strength has decreased again as well, so I decided it was time to see him again, just to be safe.  Unfortunately I’ve changed insurances since then.  And that meant getting a new referral.

My doctor had no problem with it.  Her office gave me hell (no, I am not going to explain to the referral clerk why I need a referral to a plastic surgeon for arthritis, ask the doctor), but I finally got the new referral sent in.

My new insurance company just informed us all that there was no way they were going to approve a referral to a plastic surgeon for arthritis…..

*beats head into wall*

So, I’m debating between agreeing to see a new doctor.  Which I don’t want to do, I really like this guy, among other things his “no need to open you up to take a look” attitude was a relief.  Or just going to see him and paying the office fees myself.  Which I can afford, the downside being that if something DOES require additional scans (xrays, MRIs, what have you), much less surgery, likely the insurance won’t cover that either…..

Categories Nothing Much

We have water!

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Actually we had water as of about 1pm yesterday, but I was in TX for my Grandfather’s funeral and so wasn’t able to post.  The section that froze is where the meter is on the pipe, and below that where it enters the ground.  The meter was shot, split right down the back.  The water guy agreed that it looked like the heat tape thats supposed to keep that from happening had failed (it was old when we bought the house).  So new heat tape was bought, and after the new meter was put on a propane torch was applied to the lower section of pipe (which required doing some digging *sigh*), and water ran!  

The pipe was wrapped with new heat tape, and additional insulation to hopefully prevent it from happening again…..

Categories Nothing Much

Waiting for the 3rd shoe to drop

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Saturday morning it was cold in the house when I got up.  Thermometer said 54 inside.  I made a face, started the fire, started coffee and huddled under a blanket to read my morning comics.  Half an hour later my brain suddenly kicked me and I realized that if the house was 54 inside then the furnace wasn’t working (we keep it set to 60).  A check of the thermostat confirmed it was reading the same temp, and that the furnace was indeed not kicking on.

While we were waiting for the repair guy to show up for the Saturday emergency call I got a phone call from my mother.  My grandfather had been in the hospital since before Christmas with pneumonia (which I’d known), but he’d taken a turn for the worse and his lungs had shut down.  The family doesn’t believe in extra ordinary measures, so he’d been given two days to live.

A check of every airline and travel site I could think of netted me 0 tickets out of Syracuse on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday….to the tune of $3k.  Maxing out the credit cards was certainly an option, but with unknown repairs needed to the furnace $3k was out of the question.  Tickets flying out Monday were much more reasonable, but still not plentiful.  My mom called me back to say that the earliest they could get out of Boston was Sunday.  I told her that when she got there to take an evaluation of what was going on and I’d decide what to do then.  If they were saying he was holding on well and might last another couple days I’d get a ticket out then.  If not, well, I’d arrange to come down for the service.

The furnace repair guy arrived, turns out that the only thing wrong was us being new to home-ownership and furnace maintenance.  The furnace was fine, the feed line from the tank is just short enough that it won’t pick up fuel when the level in the tank drops below about 7 inches…..fee for the repair guy $120, and another $100 or so for kerosene from the local gas station to get us through to our scheduled delivery next week.

I took a deep breath and went back to looking at flights out.  Called my work to give them a heads up that I might be calling out with no notice at some point this week due to a family emergency.

About 6pm Saturday my mother called to say that my grandfather had died.  Even if I’d been able to get a flight out within an hour of her first call I’d have likely still been in the air when she called the 2nd time.  So now I’m waiting to find out when the service will be.  He wanted to be cremated and did NOT want any huge service or ceremony, so likely it’ll be quick.  Its still up in the air as to whether I’ll make it down or not.  Planes are flying, but with the cold sweeping the country who knows how long that’ll last, and what it’ll do to the ticket availability……

Categories Gardening

Deer Fence

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So, I’m starting to look at what I’ll need for this years garden.  Its way early, though I’ll be starting some of the pepper plants before long, but I’m trying to plan ahead.

Deer fence.  Last year I used the Plantskydd deer repellent spray.  And it worked far better than any other product I tried, but I still lost most of the pepper plants to the deer.  So now I’m looking at deer fence.  Anyone got any ideas or suggestions or experience?

After a great deal of research I determined that as long as I’m not actually building beds on top of the leach field, and as long as I’m not growing carrots and potato type plants in the closest beds, I can do raised beds fairly close without worrying about icky bacteria etc.  So that means I can expand the garden where its easier to work with, instead of out in the back of the yard.  Though I’ll likely continue to do the tall plants (such as corn and sunflowers) out there.

And the garden will be expanded quite a bit, along with plans for a winter gardening bed.  Seeds have been ordered, and I’m determined to get a decent crop this year!

Categories Review

Mumble gripe grumble

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So, it turns out that the camera only records if a computer has the IE browser window open to the camera’s IP address…..

This makes no sense.  All that is part of the firmware, the access is JUST to modify the settings, nothing is loaded onto the computer, but if that window isn’t open the camera doesn’t record.  How annoying is that??

So, if I have to leave a computer running something for the camera then I’m going to look at the some of the 3rd party software’s that are supposed to work (and add extra options) to the camera.  I’ve downloaded 4 different trial versions to try, and I’ll update with my final choice once I make that decision.

 

Edit: I never did update this.  We settled on the Blue Iris software.  Though the most expensive of the ones I tried it was also by far the most versatile of the bunch.  Not the easiest to use, it took some fiddling, but once I figured it out I’ve been quite happy with it since!

Categories Review

Foscam Camera review–Update

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Original post here..

As stated in my update of my original post I called Foscam and received instructions on how to send it in for repair or replacement.  I received the new replacement camera on Monday 12/23/13, and set it up immedietly.

 

This one definetly fuctions better.  Its not rebooting or anything of the like.  And with fairly minor tweaking of the settings we managed to capture a video of exactly what we wanted to capture:

 

 

you don’t see her till towards the end.  Based on the the tracks in the driveway she came in very close to the right hand fence, and must of triggered the camera as she did so, but since it takes a good second or two to “wake up” it missed her entrance, only showing her when she came back across.  I’ll take it.  Now if I can tweak the settings so that we’re not ALSO getting video triggered by the majority of the cars going by……

(For those of you saying “wtf?  Its a dog??”, yes it is, and she belongs to the folks who’s house is just visible across the street.  They swear she’s trained to stay in their yard…..)

I will however say, I never did get a response to the email I sent them via the tech support contact page on their website.  And I ALSO, since sending them that email, have received a sales email from them EVERY SINGLE DAY except for Christmas.  So although I’m reasonably happy with their product, and their support via PHONE was great, their basic customer service sucks.

Categories Birds

Rough-Legged Hawk

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I keep forgetting to post this.

This past Saturday, Husband and I were out running errands, and decided to swing by one of the locations where Snowy Owls had been spotted in hopes of seeing one.  Unfortunately we had some time constraints and weren’t able to stop and really LOOK, so if there was any there we didn’t see them.  However as we drove slowly past the fields a large hawk flushed from the east side ditch.  Husband was kind enough to slam on the brakes so I could snatch some hurried photos despite the horrible lighting of the day.  The hawk stayed low to the ground, and appeared a bit peeved at us, he (or possibly she, the markings indicate possibly female or juvenile) watched us closely till he was well past the road, aiding my attempt to get photos.

(click to view a larger version of the photos)

 

 

 

She might not be the Snowy Owl we were looking for, but I’m not complaining!

Categories Apollo, Dog, Food, Gardening

A White Christmas and gardening!

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I know, what a pairing right?

I wasn’t sure we were going to have a white Christmas here, we often don’t, somehow always managing to have a thaw right before Christmas that melts the white stuff already on the ground.  Heck, some years we don’t get any snow till after January 1st, at which point Mother Nature makes up for her kindness by dumping feet of the stuff on us.  And sure enough, this past weekend we had temps in the 50’s with rain, resulting in all but the largest of snow piles melting into nothing.

But this year the few flakes that were drifting out of the sky when we left to go to Christmas Eve dinner at my Inlaws had turned into full on white out conditions by the time we left to come home.  Its only a couple inches of snow, but it made driving home interesting.  Apollo’s thrilled though.

Their family tradition is to open one gift on Christmas Eve, and this year my SIL planned to be spending Christmas dinner with HER Inlaws so the gifts chosen to open were the ones from her family to everyone else.  Her gift to us this year was a new “welcome” mat for our front steps.  Our current one is decidedly faded and worn.  Please note the “‘ around the word “welcome”.  Our current mat states “You read my door mat, thats enough social interaction for one day”.  THIS is the new one.  Which sent the entire family into gales of laughter when they read it.  I love it, but when I flipped it over, and stopped to read the attached “warning label” I laughed even harder:

2013-12-25_08-21-50_999

 

The other present I was handed last night was my belated Birthday gift from my MIL.  My birthday was last month and she completely forgot to get me anything, I told her not to worry about it, birthday dinner and cake was plenty, but she insisted.  She ordered several books off my Amazon Wish List, one of them Backyard Winter Gardening by Caleb Warnock.

I’ve been fascinated by the concept of winter gardening for a while, but the large majority of instruction and discussion on it that I’ve found has been done by folks in climates different from mine.  Someone on the west coast, or a zone and a half warmer than I, is going to have different success with different techniques that I would.  Technically we’re zone 5b, however I’ve repeatedly seen plants that are supposedly hardy to zone 5 not survive our winters.  So I was skeptical that any of the winter gardening techniques that I was seeing would work here.   The author of this book lives in the Rocky Mountains, and has recorded winter temps in his garden as low as -17.  So I figure if HE can do a winter garden with these techniques than I ought to be able to pull off something here.

Husband practically lit up when he spotted me reading about winter grown broccoli last night.  After my one disastrous attempt to grow broccoli two summers ago I’ve not tried anything close since.  We may be trying again this next winter.  I will attempt to remember to blog about how what when and what the results are!