Author: Snoskred

If You Need A Hacker

3 Comments Posted on December 30, 2015December 27, 2015 by Snoskred

Sometimes I get some brilliant spam. The reason this one stood out to me, though, was the email address. It was quite similar to one The Other Half used to use when I first met him.

I have removed the email address obviously, because spamming that to the world was their entire reason for posting the comment. It turned out when I searched for the IP address it tracked back to Nigeria – so this is another new scam format.

I did leave in the fact that it is a gmail address – for the most part, real hackers would probably steer clear of gmail, I suspect. I could of course be wrong!

scams, spam

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

4 Comments Posted on December 28, 2015December 11, 2015 by Snoskred

This movie is by far my most favourite of the Indiana Jones trilogy. But there are four, you say. Not in my world. I do not own the fourth, nor have I seen the fourth. Perhaps this is down to movie snobbery, perhaps it is down to reading some bad reviews..

No, I will admit it isn’t either of those things. It is that the third movie essentially ends at the greatest point possible – Indiana and his Dad riding into the sunset, literally. They could not improve on such perfection. I could not fathom a fourth movie. I never got around to seeing it.

Why is this movie my favourite of the three? This was sheer genius on the part of the movie people – taking a character we already know, love, and care about, and then raising the stakes by adding in the father of that character. Despite their long estrangement, it is apparent these two people care about each other.

The choice of Sean Connery as Henry Jones Sr was a deeply inspired one. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford have some amazing chemistry together – but when you add in some brilliant writing, well, movie magic does not get any better than this. All these two have to do is look at each other and it is comedy gold. There are some of my most favourite movie lines of all time hidden away in here.

Our situation has not improved.

River Phoenix plays a young Indiana Jones and that was also the best choice possible. Released four years before his untimely death, he is fantastic and believable as young Indy. What a career he would have had! It is a great shame.

Michael Byrne plays one of my favourite baddies of all time in this movie. He is deeply hateable as Vogel the Nazi.

Alison Doody is incredible as Dr Elsa Schneider.

Did we ever think that Indiana Jones would meet Adolf Hitler?

I prefer this meeting, myself.

I love that they actually went to Jordan to film the Al-Khazneh scenes. It looks completely like it has been filmed via green screen in the movie but they really did go there.

The scene where Walter Donovan sips from the wrong grail and then instantly ages and dies is a little scary, especially for younger audiences, but it is very well done.

Overall, this movie is a incredibly watchable over and over again, and I say that as someone who had this on laserdisc back in the days of sound lounges selling speaker systems, I have seen some of the scenes in this movie more times than I could ever count, and even to this day I get caught up in what is going on in the movie rather than what I am supposed to be doing – in this case, taking screenshots took a lot longer than it normally does.

For those of us with arachnophobia, there are thankfully zero spiders in this film. For those who do not like snakes, there are some snakes right at the beginning when we learn the origins of Indiana disliking them. There are also quite a lot of rats at one point.

As far as action movies go, this one has a little less action than most – however the snappy dialog between Indy and his Dad more than makes up for it. If you have it at home and have not seen it for a while, re-watch! ;)

Here is an awesome article to read if you want to know more – 15 Things You Might Not Know About ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ – plus Wikipedia has more info on the movie overall.

FYI – I realise there are some movies I love which I have never written about here, so during 2016 I plan to change that, adding one movie review each month to the post schedule. :)

Movie Reviews

Sunday Selections Week 52

8 Comments Posted on December 27, 2015December 26, 2015 by Snoskred

I have to get serious about going through the old photo folders next week – this week I only have the one shot for you. It was taken in 2006 at Ulladulla.

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Weekly Wrap Up –

Over the past few weeks here, we’ve had what seemed to be an explosion of white tail spiders in the house. They always seem to crawl along the cornices on the ceiling. At one point I recall three within 24 hours, and that is three too many for me. So we came up with a plan for Christmas Day.

As we were going to my parents house, we decided to take the kitties with us and insect bomb the house while we were gone. This might seem like a simple concept but it is a huge task for a lot of reasons. First you have to put all food preparation items eg toaster, kettle, plus anything edible away safely, plus pack away anything you don’t want exposed to the insect bomb fumes, eg your toothbrush. Then, packing up the cats, their water fountain, their kitty litter tray and tent, and ourselves. It took us an hour and a half to get out of here.

Grumpy had a super great time exploring my parents house. She especially loved the staircase. Happy was quite a scaredy cat and hid away in the kitty litter tent for most of the time.

Returning home after several hours involving many prawns, lobster, ham, pork, turkey, and eventual pavlova and coffee, we locked the kitties away in a safe room while we did a lot of cleaning and vacuuming. All the exposed surfaces needed to be wiped down. We worked for a couple of hours with music playing, then I somehow managed to cut my hand in a deeply inconvenient spot – the back of a knuckle. The Other Half finished up the cleaning soon after that.

We were not planning on going anywhere for the next 4 days, however this morning I said I would like to get myself a new laptop lap desk and a mouse, so we went to Officeworks. They only had one lap desk but it was exactly the right colour.. YAY!

Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

Merry Christmas To My Readers

8 Comments Posted on December 25, 2015December 24, 2015 by Snoskred

Merry Christmas To You!
I sincerely hope that your friends and family did not rush out to purchase you some of this motor oil, which apparently Supercheap Auto thinks is such a great present they have been advertising it to me several times a day for the past week. If you find this under your tree, I am deeply sorry!

Every time I have seen it while The Other Half is home, I have asked him if he wants this for Christmas and the answer has always been NO.

Given a choice between socks and jocks, and motor oil, Imma always gonna pick the socks and jocks! Unfortunately I could not find the ad on Youtube for you. I did find a couple – one I dislike, one I deeply love.

I find this ad annoying but I also enjoy the extreme hilariousness of Johnny Depp burying all his elderly gay windchime jewelery.

I could watch this ad over and over forever. I do not know why. Maybe I just like sparkly gold things. :)

Christmas

Simone & Sipowicz #3

1 Comment Posted on December 23, 2015December 23, 2015 by Snoskred

A witness has just insulted Polish people during an interview. Andy is Polish.

Sipowicz – “Protrude the point for me.”

Bobby Simone does as requested. Note which finger he is using.

Sipowicz – “I keep sticking myself in the eye.”

NYPD Blue

The Cup Is Full

8 Comments Posted on December 21, 2015December 20, 2015 by Snoskred

Once I was finally diagnosed a few years ago – in my mid thirties so way too late to be useful in school days! – my psychologist explained a new concept to me.

She explained it like this – Every human being has a cup of human interaction. Many humans rarely fill this cup. They could go out to work all day, and social events every night, and still be happy to go back for more.

For some of us with Aspergers – and some without, this cup is filled on a regular basis. When my cup of human interaction was full, I needed to be in a safe place with only trusted humans around me in order to empty the cup before I could be around the other humans again.

I suddenly had a huge breakthrough. I totally understood why I simply could not go to school sometimes – it also had happened to me with work as well. Dealing with the “normal” people was sometimes so tiring, exhausting even.. and I just needed peace time to recharge my batteries. Renee from About A Bugg explains more about the cup concept here.

I think what I have learned in the years since my diagnosis about how to manage the cup is – it is all about timing for me. When I worked five x8 hour days, that was simply too much for my cup. I can do a nine day fortnight in the right circumstances. Four or five 6 hour days works for me. I can even do six or seven 6 hour days in a row, as long as I get a couple of days off afterwards.

However, if I have a bad interaction on day 1, that is going to limit my cup capacity until my next day off. And usually a bad interaction leads to further bad interactions, plus, even in my downtime I will be turning that bad interaction over and over in my mind, trying to figure out where I went wrong.

So I think a useful point is – anything that can distract me from turning that interaction over in my mind is like gold, and for me that has always been computer games. My cup will empty in half the time if I can spend it playing a game that I love.

Theme Hospital – one of my favourite Good Old Games.

But come bedtime, there it is again.. what I usually do is read until I am too tired to keep reading. Even if it is a book I know back to front (and could totally write out from memory!) it takes my mind off That Thing, which is, again, like gold.

It is completely exhausting to try to be “normal” for 40 hours a week. It is even worse when someone tells you “it is ok to be who you really are, truly, trust me and be yourself” because the actual truth is, it is not ok to be who I am in a workplace. It is not ok to say what I really think. And while I think I have become good at pretending, they can *always* tell that I am holding back, because my poker face pretty much sucks.

So then I do the thing they have asked me to do – be myself – and all of a sudden, my personality is a “problem”. Why anyone thinks that is ok to say to someone.. I do not know. But that has happened to me more than once, sadly. I even got asked to lengthen my probation and the fact that my personality was a problem was put in writing for me to sign!

I will never, ever, be the real me in a workplace again. No matter how many people try to tell me to “be myself” – every past experience has taught me that it is NOT OK TO BE MYSELF. I will never blame myself for keeping my real self 100% hidden away from the “normal” people. They have proven to me that they cannot – or will not – or refuse to – accept the real me.

Previous posts in this series – I was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, then we talked about My Aspie Super Powers and My Aspie Limitations.

Asperger Syndrome

Sunday Selections Week 51

3 Comments Posted on December 20, 2015December 19, 2015 by Snoskred

Just one photo this week – of a group of Portulaca blooms which I found beautiful.

Weekly Wrap Up –

It has been a pretty shit week here thanks to saying goodbye to Red Comb. I’m trying really hard to build a bridge and get over it, and I am making a big effort to super spoil the left behind girls because I know they are feeling this loss too. I bought some cherries so they will receive quite a few of those this next week, pitted, because I am a good chook owner and also a sucker. ;)

All of the girls have gone into a moult – if you look closely at the pic you can see someone is missing *all* her tailfeathers at the top there – compare her to the game hen at the bottom who still has some – I am making sure they get plenty of protein plus it has been hot, so they also are receiving cold lactose free yoghurt and blueberries.

Rosie is out of shot – she has never been great with hand feeding. Usually I throw some stuff her way and let her find it herself. However not long after this shot was taken, she walked right up to me and started taking cherries right from my hand. I suspect this means Rosie has a new favourite food!

Pest Control – Flies

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but chooks poop. There is a creature that loves chook poop more than any other creature and that is the fly. This season has been a particularly fly-full season. I’m not sure why, but so it is.

We’ve been using the Envirosafe fly traps for a few years now. Seriously, these things work like you would not believe. Currently we are cleaning them out once a week, because there are so many flies in there we have no choice! You may catch a whiff of the smell occasionally – it smells to me exactly like chook poop.

The one downside is having to clean them out – it smells really bad once you take the lid off. We usually bury the contents in the small area behind the shed, but on the website it says you can use it for fertiliser. Hmm, I think I will say no thanks to that, anyway!

This time next week, practically all of the green area will be black with dead flies. I won’t post a photo of that here, but if anyone does want to see the end result let me know in the comments and I will put a link to a photo in next weeks post.

There are a lot of flies in general where we live, if I go shopping there is a 99% chance one or more of them will be bothering me on the way back to the car. I wish more people knew about these fly traps and used them – there would be less flies around in general if everyone had a couple of these traps in their yard.

Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

Snoskred Snacks #8

4 Comments Posted on December 18, 2015December 13, 2015 by Snoskred

Thus far on Snoskred Snacks, we have exclusively used rice crackers. I was looking for a lower sodium option to replace bread on some occasions for The Other Half and we have been trying out some different wraps recently. I found one that I really like for myself, and I found a super low sodium one by Mountain Bread which The Other Half quite likes.

Today, I will tell you the story of my ham, egg, cream cheese and tomato wrap with salt and pepper. So first you add cream cheese, then layer on some ham. Here you see I have begun the next step which is adding eggs – yet another double yolker from Manning Valley!

I added in an egg from our girls as well, and salt and pepper.

The final step – layer on the tomato. I like to fold in the sides and then flip up the bottom. These stayed together pretty well, there was no dripping and no splitting. Happy moments! I have also used these wraps for home made tacos – we’re off the store bought packets as they have way too much sodium.

I used the Wattle Valley wholegrain soft wraps which are available at Aldi and Coles for these wraps, here is what the packet looks like. These wholegrain wraps are super delicious and I will be stocking up on them.

The other wraps I mentioned by Mountain Bread are square, so a little bit more convenient for wrapping in some ways. I can make them into a square sandwich, for The Other Half whose one complaint about moving away from bread was inconvenience..

I gave them a try too – here is an egg, ham, avocado and cream cheese snack in the square Wheat mountain bread.

To me, the most important function of any kind of wrap is staying together. So for me this wrap was a bit of an epic fail.

While the splits don’t matter so much with sandwiches for The Other Half who only likes to eat ham, cheese, egg and lettuce, it does matter a lot more when you are putting things that tend to drip – like tomato – into a wrap. I’ll try a few more of the Mountain Bread varieties to see if any of them are a bit more reliable, wrap wise. I do like that they have so few ingredients.

We’ve now had 8 fortnightly installments of Snoskred Snacks – this is the final one for 2015. This feature will return in 2016 though it will be less often, perhaps just once a month. I do still have some snacks which have not yet made an appearance here.

You can view the previous installments here –

Egg & Ham
Strawberries
Ham & Tomato
Tomato & Smoked Salmon
Avocado, Chicken, Egg
Prawns & Tomato
Egg, Tomato, Ham–

Snoskred Snacks

Collect Egg Cartons, She Said

6 Comments Posted on December 16, 2015September 24, 2015 by Snoskred

A few years ago a lady at work sent out an email asking for people to collect egg cartons. For what reason I cannot recall. It might have been for a kids arts and craft thing, or because she had chickens, to build a space craft, for soundproofing.. I have no recollection of the reason now. But the request stuck in my mind, and collect egg cartons I did. Visitors to the house have commented on the large amount of egg cartons residing here.

I remember taking in a stack of them in to the requester a couple of times, then I forgot all about the taking and just kept on with the collecting. Standing there in the kitchen this morning, I realised.. it has been exactly one year and six months since I was last at my place of work. I’m not going back. These egg cartons are never being given to that person again. What the heck am I still collecting them for? Are they just collecting dust up there?

Yes, they were collecting dust up there. I wiped the dust off before stacking them into a pile. I counted. There were 36 of them. 35 of them belong to Manning Valley Eggs. I am a loyal consumer. I have my reasons, they are extremely great eggs, nearly as good as our own girls.

Letting these collected egg cartons go was a brilliant feeling. :) Kthxbai!

country life, moving on, work

Vale Red Comb

15 Comments Posted on December 15, 2015December 15, 2015 by Snoskred

The post yesterday was written on the 13th of November. Red Comb had a whole month of blueberries and happy chook time since then. Late yesterday, about 6pm, I noticed that she was still sitting down after the heat of the day had passed. The sight of me at the back door with blueberries was not enough to raise her. I knew right then something was wrong.

Although her comb was still perfectly red, when I got down to hand feed the blueberries, she did not even try to walk over. Normally she would have run to me and had a blueberry in her beak before you could blink. I threw some over her way, and she did move towards them, but then she wobbled and nearly fell down. After that she seemed to perk up a little and did manage to eat some blueberries, but I knew this was bad news.

She then managed to climb up the chook stairs, and she managed to get onto the roost. We let her settle a little. Because the vet was already closed, we tried the spa treatment. That is when we discovered she either had an egg or some kind of growth in her abdomen. If you pick up a chook at regular times, you can often feel the egg inside – they feel quite soft and not like an egg at all. This felt harder than an egg.

We talked about it – well, The Other Half talked, I sobbed mostly. We agreed she would have to go to the vet first thing this morning. I knew within myself the most likely outcome was that she would be euthanased. Even so, I had a tiny amount of hope that it was just an egg stuck, and that maybe our spa treatment would work and like all the other times before, she would get another chicken life. That maybe this morning I would find her egg in the nesting box and she would be out roaming with the other girls.

You see, Red Comb was not just a normal chook. She was my favourite chook. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her, because the first moment I saw her, she was sticking her head and neck out of her enclosure at the chook auction, trying to see her sisters who were in the pen below her. Rows of pens with chooks in them, she was the only one sticking her head out.

There she is. That photo gives you an idea of her personality however I could post every photo I ever took of her and you would still not quite understand, because her true awesomeness could never be photographed.

I went to take a closer look, and the look she gave me, I will never forget it. If I were to try and put it into words, it would be HI!!!!!!! Her personality shone through like a bright light right in your face. I hoped I would be able to afford her. I can’t remember how much I paid for her, but I managed to buy both her and her two sisters in the pen below, plus White Sussex. My budget for the day was $120 and I think all four together cost me somewhere between $100-120. Here was the first post I wrote about them.

While waiting to bid on them, I met the man who bred her and her sisters the next day at the chook auction. He breeds them to show them, and these girls were not show chicken quality, so he was hoping they would find a great home. We had a good long chat. I showed him photos of the place they would live if I won the bidding for them. He was very happy to see the three girls reunited into the carrying case and going to a good home.

So she and her sisters made my backyard their home and in the process they made my backyard something I never expected – a place I wanted to hang out and spend time just watching them *be*. The life of Red Comb and her sisters was treat filled and happy. She got all kinds of treats, from mealworms to yoghurt. She had broody times occasionally, not as often as the other chooks.

Being my favourite was not good news for her, it just meant if something was going to happen to a chook, it was going to happen to her. I remember one time after we first began to allow them to free range, she disappeared overnight. She could not be found anywhere. But the next day, she returned.

Then there was the hawk incident in 2013. I wrote about that here, and I officially un-favourited her at that time. After the hawk incident she was never the same chook physically, but she survived and went on to eat many more treats.

I knew this terrible day would arrive eventually. No matter how well I knew that or how much I tried to prepare for it, that does not change the fact that the past 17 hours or so have been awful. I had a lot of trouble going to sleep last night because every time I closed my eyes, I could see that happy chook running towards me for her blueberry medals and I knew it was very unlikely I would ever see that happen again.

When I got up this morning I went right to the back door and I saw her standing on the roost. Girls are never on the roost at that time of day – everyone else was under the chook pen dust bathing. We had our showers and went out to put her in the carrier. I took some blueberries and though I had them in my hand and she was the only chook there, she would not get down off the roost for them.

Eventually after a lot of convincing by me, she did get down, and wandered over to eat her last blueberries. I called the other half over and he put her in the carrier. I went inside and called the vet, keeping it together for the time it took to book an appointment in 15 minutes and telling them it was likely for euthanasia, then I lost it. The whole way there, as much as I tried not to cry, salt water ran from my eyes.

Luckily our normal vet was working today, after a short wait she took us in, and told us what I already knew to be true. It was a mass, not an egg. I asked her if The Other Half could go with her while she did the euthanasia – he is a farm boy plus he is amazing with the animals, they are so calm around him. She gave Red Comb some anesthetic gas and she went off to sleep, she never even knew about the needle.

In the photo above she was mid-moult – each moult brought her closer to show chicken quality and she was in such beautiful condition, even today her feathers were stunningly gorgeous. We brought her home and trimmed off some of those beautiful feathers as a keep sake, and now she rests under the lemon tree, with Mary. Her two sisters are behaving very strangely this morning – they know.

As I always post when this happens – there are 5 other chickens in the yard for whom life continues. They live minute by minute, sucking the most joy out of each and every moment, whether it is a dirt bath, finding a bug, eating a treat from the humans.. all we can do is love them while they’re here, protect them the best we can from predators, know when it is time to let them go, and remember them when they are gone.

It will be a very long time before I can go into the yard without expecting Red Comb to run up to me, looking for her blueberries. I take huge comfort in the fact that she who was so concerned for her sisters at the chook auction got to arrive here with them and live many happy and treat-filled days with her two most favourite chooks in the world.

I am officially favourite-ing her again. There will never be another favourite. We loved you, Red Comb. May there be as many blueberries as you can eat at the Rainbow Bridge where you now rejoin White Sussex, Ancona, Mary, Twiggy and Big Kitty. You will be greatly missed here.

I’ll be taking a few days off, you might not see me in your comments sections this week. Posts are scheduled as always, so the blog will continue as usual.

Chickens, Vale Pets