And the Weiner is...

Yes, I admit it... Epic Fail.

I could complain about my wife being out of town and, therefore, not only not able to help me with my Venom costume, but causing me to be distracted, as I don't operate well (at all) when she's not around.

I could also blame the time I spent on reviewing stuff for the websites or helping to run the ACM Regional Programming Competition at LSU, but that would be unseemly, now wouldn't it?

Or, I could blame it on the red paint not drying on the rubber snake (it didn't for about a week, actually) or the fact that Hancock Fabrics didn't have enough of the material I wanted. I could even say it's all because my sewing machine refused to work the night before the contest... which is true, but hardly the one thing that went wrong...

The truth, of course, is that I tried to do too much, in too short of a time. I didn't even wear a costume for Halloween this year. Live and (hopefully) learn, I suppose. My plan is to keep working on the Venom costume over the next year, in my "spare" time. I am generally a busy person, but I'm going to try to set aside a few hours a week to work on "Personal Projects," such as building a full-sized R-Series Droid, modifying my car, dabbling with electronics and making costumes, not the least of which is this Venom costume.

In other news, my best friend, neighbor, fellow Game Vortex game reviewer and partner in crime, J.R. Nip, did throw together a costume in a single night, and not only did it come out nice looking - he actually took first place at Lamar's Corporate Headquarters Costume Contest. He went as Dilbert, with black shoes, white socks, black pants, a white shirt, a flip-up red tie that I helped rig up with a metal coat hanger and a mask he made of poster board, skin-tone material and enough chemical adhesives to tranquilize a horse. He did an awesome job, and won a hundred dollar prize, to boot!

Ah, well... Venom will have to have his day next year. . .

Battening down the hatches...

So it's been a while since we've really had a bad hurricane barrel right down on us. The last one that affected me was Katrina, although I was lucky; Rita did a good bit of damage that same year.

Now, it looks like Mother Nature may just be making up for lost time. Hurricane Gustav is headed straight for us with all of the computer models in general consensus that it's not turning until after it's made landfall. And, it's not a small, wimpy storm; it's currently a Category 4 storm, and it's waltzing through the Gulf, which gives it the opportunity to gain strength before its arrival, which, according to the forecasts, is due to mess my life up this Monday. Happy Labor day! I brought you some rain and wind! Ug.

As if that wasn't bad enough, it looks like Gustav has a girlfriend that may be showing up to the party, albeit a few days later. Hanna is currently a tropical storm, but it appears that she is making a bee-line towards the Gulf of Mexico. I am personally hoping that either she changes course or Florida knocks the wind (and rain) out of her. We really don't need a couple of hurricanes within a week of each other. That's just poor scheduling.

For anyone who was afraid that I might climb up a tree and cut my limbs off, I wasn't able to go into Harahan, due to traffic from people evacuating. Hopefully the tree won't fall into my Mother-in-Law's house before I can get down there and remove it. I did, however, spend all day today and yesterday preparing my house and my neighbor J.R. Nip's house for the coming hurricane. I had to round up all of the small things that were outside and put them in storage, and take all of the larger things, such as outside furniture, and put them all close together in my carport and cable them all together so they won't go flying out of my yard. Will that work? I dunno... it worked last time, but time will tell. I have about one more day of preparation and about one more day before it hits, so it should work out. I'm also trying to get as much of my reviews and other site work done while I still have power and Internet access, as these become scarce commodities when a hurricane hits.

Until later, this is the Geck0, signing off.

Aquatic Calamity

I like fish. I like to watch fish go about there activities, interacting with each other and exploring their environment and so forth. I find it peaceful and relaxing.

My wife and I maintain two 55 gallon marine aquariums in our home, as well as a 90 gallon pond in the back yard. Additionally, we have a 10 gallon freshwater tank on the bar area to rehabilitate one of the pond fish who had a falling out with the others. Finally, I have a small "executive" aquarium for a blue Betta fish named "Dudey," who recently came down with velvet and I've moved him home so that I can better control his environment and properly treat him.

Which leads me to my topic. We have had the worst time with disastrous "events" with our pets this year, especially our fish, but it actually goes beyond that; one of our outside cats was attacked in our yard by a dog from down the street... and that neighbor is beyond negotiation and animal control can't do anything unless we basically gift-wrap the dog for them.

Anyway, when we came back from our Gatlinburg trip, one of our pond fish, "Lucky," who, to that point, I was sure was the luckiest fish in the world, was dead, without any obvious cause of death. I got this fish from a coworker who couldn't keep it. He had been experiencing fish loss in his small pond in his back yard. They weren't turning up dead, they were simply not there anymore. Then, one day, he sees a snake slithering away from his pond with a lump in it. He kills the snake, slits it open and out comes Lucky, none the worse for wear. That's where the legend began, but since that time he outlived his pond mates in two locations and survived a mishap in our pond where all of the water got pumped out and the bottom floated up, causing the pond to become wrinkled and malformed. One of the smaller fish that my wife loved died in that event, but Lucky lived through it, swimming in place in an area that had less than an inch of clearance around him. And he was nearly a foot, nose to tail-tip. He was an amazing fish. And I don't even know what happened to him. JRNip was watching our house for us and said he had seen him the afternoon before we got home and he was fine.

We have one porcupine puffer in each of our two 55 gallon marine tanks, and a lawnmower blenny in each to help clean the tank. Well, as far as we can determine, one of those blennies apparently went after a piece of food that the puffer was going after and got the business end of a poisoned spine. We assume that, since his mouth swelled up and wouldn't close and his head turned dark in coloration. He was unable to eat for a few days, but we took care of him to the best of our ability in a hospital tank and after about a week, he was good enough to return to the marine tank.

This same hospital tank is now occupied by my fish-away-from-home, Dudey. I'm dosing him with Maricyn 2, keeping his temperature constant and slightly elevated, and covering the tank with a black T-shirt to slow the growth of the velvet.

Additionally, my wife's porcupine puffer was acting all sick and lethargic yesterday. I was trying to determine if he was trying to look pale so he could blend in with the sand to better prey on the new little blue fish we added to the tank or if he was sad or in pain or what. (Puffers are smart... that's the problem with smart fish... they can actually get upset or even mad at you and behave strangely based on that. When we first separated the male from the female to give them each a larger tank, he pouted and pined for her for a week, until we put him in a small tank next to the female's tank for a few hours so he could see that she was still around and then moved him over the course of a couple of hours back to his tank, a few feet at a time and then 15 minutes between moves. After that, he was cheery again.)

Luckily, after a couple of hours, the male puffer seemed to be over whatever the issue was, so perhaps it was something he ate. I just wish that fish would all get better and stay that way. I suppose we've been fairly lucky up until this point; we would have the occasional emergency, but they were never stacked up on top of each other all at the same time. Hopefully they'll soon get back to a sense of normalcy. I'm hoping so, because just the maintenance on four aquariums and a pond is a lot of work and it's mostly heavy lifting, so it's pretty much up to me. I get to clean the pond filter this weekend, by the way. (yay.)