Black Dog Blog

My weekend was spent:

• Making music (fun)
• Taking cat to a Sunday surgery on account of a sudden rush of blood to the urine (cystitis; he's had it before. Not fun, but interesting)
• De-virusing computers and memory sticks (Slen is the prime suspect for this. Not fun, but I don't mind doing things like this with computers)

From the music, I learned that I am awesome, and the three of us (Slen, me and our mother, who helped with the later stages of the lyrics) are capable of unbelievable heights of awesomeness. (Perhaps mostly me and my mother on the lyrics; it might have been a quicker process if I wasn't determinedly trying to keep Slen's attention on it so he'd have a chance to contribute. Noodling his guitar and canoodling someone else were both vying for his attention.)

From the vet palaver, we learned of a place that has reasonable prices and a Sunday surgery, and found out a few more interesting things about cat innards from the vet, who made the time to chat to my mother in some detail. (Probably because there weren't any other patients there; that and she's good at getting medicos to talk to her in a non-patronising way, which I can't make them do, even though I'm intelligent and interested too.)

I also put a pill in the cat and held him for ritual emasculation (claw-clipping and eye drops for his cohnjuhntuhvituhs). And fed the neighbouring cats.

From the virus kerfuffle, I learned that ClamAV does not find the particular autorun.inf virus we had. On the advice of some pages I googled up (having identified the virus by myself from behaviour and a little investigation), I installed Avast!, which is spelled with an exclamation mark, and which found and removed the thing.

Avast! demands an internet connection to download its libraries, which means my mother's laptop (which is never connected to the internet as a matter of practice, but was infected by Slen's memory stick) is a little stuck — ClamAV Portable, as I mentioned, not being able to deal with this virus. I asked her to take the laptop into work and have their technicians look at it, because in any case they should be made aware of the threat, but I don't know if she'll do as I advise. Meanwhile, any USB drive connected to it is of course immediately reinfected.

Happy Australia Day and Invasion Day to those who mark one or both.

A programme called Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimer's is coming to BBC Two "soon"! At last, I've got some use out of the annoying TV on the wall that's turned on all the time with the sound down. (It seems his face is the same as his voice, in that I always recognise the man if I catch him out of the corner of my eye/ear, for example on a television trailer. Weird. Even my immediate relatives can't boast that level of recognisability to me.)

I keep watching Demons even though it's crap and Glenister's accent is beyond self-parody. There's one character called "Mina Harker", which annoys me almost as much as if someone were to make a character called "Irene Adler". (Which they have. Not long ago, I saw some kiddies' series to do with Sherlock Holmes and the Irregulars, and there was a murderous jewel thief character who was meant to be Adler. NO. JUST NO.)

There are some things that are guaranteed to be rubbish if done by pretty much anyone, and portrayals of supposed Mina Harkers most assuredly qualify. Don't mention That Film based on That Comic Book, either…

Oh, there has been one good thing about Demons: at the beginning of the series, the Monster of the Week was a demon named Gladiolus Thripp, which is quite possibly one of the best names ever. He was killed off in the first episode. BOO.

Oh, and I saw on Amazon that All Cats Have Asperger's Syndrome, while All Dogs Have ADHD. What is this popery! My brother gets a better genetic deal than me in EVERYTHING! (I'll have you know I'm an alpha dog, morally if nothing else. I think too much about food and too little about sex to be a tomcat.)

Current music: Power Quest, Into The Light, of which there are no words to describe the wonderful uplifting cheesiness.