Today was a sad day.
BZ was 16 and sick, and we put him down.
His thyroid was either hypo- or hyper, but I’m not really sure which. We gave him a pill for it.
He was diabetic. I’m guessing I gave him close to 1000 shots.
And seizures. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a seizure. More meds.
It was time.
We got a gift of cash when we got married, and we bought a cat with it. Two of them, actually, and BZ was one of them.
BZ was a shelter cat, and he wanted out. He clawed at me through his cage door as I walked by. We locked eyes. He had me.
BZ was bi. An indoor – outdoor cat. He lived a life of luxury indoors, but he liked to rough it too. BZ was a hunter, and he played with his food before he killed it. He ate his mice brains first, and he picked his teeth with their toes. He brought home mice, chipmunks, squirrels, frogs, birds, and even a rabbit to show us. And if I wasn’t there to admire them, then … Down the hatch!
In the dead of winter, we used to let BZ out for 15 minutes in the morning, and he’d do his business and he’d be done for the day. His litter box never had to be changed.
I wish I was as Regular as BZ.
And Mary wishes my bathroom were so neat.
BZ never got skunked. Somehow, he knew better.
BZ didn’t like dogs. Or cats, for that matter. And he wasn’t above picking a fight. It would end in a chase, and he’d get away and brag about it. He was a fast cat before he was a fat cat.
BZ was a lap cat, and he fit in mine like a pinkie in a nose. I’d prop a book on his butt, rub him down, feed him ham, or let him lick my bowl. He loved me for my personality.
BZ was a licker, but he only licked you if he liked you. (I liked him, but I didn’t lick him.) And I’d rather be licked by a cat than a dog any day.
BZ would let you know what was on his mind. Late one night, a couple years ago, I was coding at my desk, and BZ came in, jumped onto the desk, and made a pest of himself. He wanted some love, so I worked him over and then went back to my work, while he settled in just left of my keyboard. And when I looked up, BZ was asleep, and my screen was filled with ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’s.
I was BZ’s human, and BZ was the best cat ever.
The empty nest is over-rated.
Ever since I cut off my finger, what’s left of it has been a little stiff.
For the first couple of years (ok, maybe not the first year), I had a full range of motion, and even now I can still bend it and straighten it just as far as the other hand. But it clicks and it catches, and it works best when it’s all the way straight or all the way bent.
(I like to think of it as a digital knuckle that used to be a quantum knuckle. 😉
Anyway, the other day, for the first time, my knuckle got stuck, and I couldn’t get it un-stuck. It was an unexpected crisis dropped in my lap out of the blue, and my glands kicked in with a dose and a half of adrenaline. Suddenly, I was on a mission to get my knuckle un-stuck, or die trying.
I soaked it in warm water.
I studied the mechanics.
I googled it.
I decided which way to pull it, I pulled it hard, (it worked perfectly), and then I sorta passed out.
The blood in my brain went straight to my hips, and I sat right down on the floor, held my knuckle to my head, and waited for the spinning to stop.
And I thought to myself, ” How about we just keep that finger straight from now on?”
December’s trial assembly went well, so I took my robot totally apart.
I added worm adjustments, glued the drive collars, and put the whole thing back together again. Tight this time. I ran the wires, nice and tidy, and pretty soon, there was nothing left to do but plug it in and tell it what to do.
Usually, when I get to this point, I have a pretty good idea about what’s going to go wrong, but there’s always a surprise. I’ve seen sparks, ground loops, oscillations, the shakes, a howling sound, and the smell of burning flesh, but Never has Nothing gone wrong.
This time, I can’t think of any bases I haven’t covered . I know something will break. I just don’t know what.
So allow me to make a prediction that we can all look back at and laugh at:
It’s gonna be perfect.
After all, what can go wrong?
I started off slow, and I ran it through some motions I knew it could do.
I noticed that sometimes the machine ‘twerked’ when it started up, and we can’t have that. I tracked it down. I tweaked the code. I fired it up, and …
It crashed at full speed with a mighty bang. The linear bearings sailed past the end of the rail and smashed the idler pulley. The hip and waist motors over-torqued and went dead. The shoulder, which is supposed to only go +/- 90 degrees, was spinning at 120 rpm. Two timing belts was shredded. The basement shook.
Way too late, I hit the E/O switch. Shit!
The post-mortem was quick. I was dumb. I was lucky. C3PR was intact. And all it needed was 2 new belts and one less bug in the code. If you had seen the violence, you’d be impressed that there’s only one scratch on it.
Don’t worry. I fixed it. Won’t happen again. Promise.
Innards everywhere!