Save the baby kitty

We rescued a kitten from a tree on Saturday.

Friday night the police were outside checking out a car parked at the park. I was out on the porch watching the fun and I could faintly hear a kitten meowing. By the time the police left the noise had stopped.

The next morning Ayaka and I heard it again from the living room. We went outside and again the noise had stopped. We tried calling and looking but alas...

Still later, we all saw some kind of disturbance in the tree - a bunch of crows were making a commotion and then they flew away.

Finally as I was getting ready to pull the mower out of the garage I spotted something moving. It turned out a kitten had climbed up a tree. It seemed like the kitten couldn't get back down (there were almost no branches).

We pulled out the ladder and I was able to coax the kitten to decend several feet to where I could let her have some food and then bring her the rest of the way down.

Some kids were playing on the basketball court played with kitty for a couple of hours. They ended up taking her home later that day.

Spring is here

It was a perfect day. The weather was 23C and the sky was blue.

A pale moon hung over the birthday party for my eternally smiling niece, Sarah.

We hung out in the back yard and I found how what a great slugger Vinny is.

The only thing that spoilt this day was the absence of the loves of my life.

Music and Lyrics

I went to see this chick flick today. It was pretty good. Emi loves this kind of movie so I hope we can see it together sometime.

I went to see Charlie's girls play soccer today but because of a mixup about the time I ended up getting there right as the game ended. Rats!

South Towpath

We rode the towpath from Akron to Bolivar today. Traveled about 45 miles and it took us 5-6 hours.

We are thinking about riding the north half to Lake Erie. But we aren't sure how far we can go on the path.

Rise to space

I'm in Stuart, Florida - we went outside to watch the shuttle Discovery launch today. It was incredible to see it rise in the sky and know there were people onboard.

In case anybody's interested - from about 90 miles away you can easily spot the smoke trail and you can easily see the flame at certain points during the ascent, especially when then throttle up and then again when the solid fuel boosters separate.

Old legs

Forget what I said about my legs the other day - today I can barely walk.

Time to get on the bike and do another Red Route One. If I don't work these legs tonight they are going to turn to stone.

We had a company picnic out in the fresh air today. Austin Carr was brought in as a ringer for a basketball shooting contest. He can still shoot.

I learned a lot about the game of cornhole today. It's not what you think. 

Lottery math

A lottery is a tax on people who can't do math.

I was bored so I started to look at lottery historical data. I found what anybody with a clue expects to find. The sample size is around 900 out of a possible 175,711,536 combinations over the last 10 years.

There hasn't been a single repeat of the same numbers in 900 attempts. Hardly surprising.

The only interesting item I found was the infrequency that numbers 51-56 are drawn. Here's the data.

Number (occurences)
53 (0)
54 (0)
55 (1)
56 (1)
52 (36)
51 (41)

No other number was drawn less than 65 times. Not sure if this was due to a recent rule change or a flaw in the recorded data. Even if not this is still well within the realm of statistical probability.

The graph for the mega ball looks like well randomized data.

So anyway - I bought a ticket - what the heck?

4th of July

Happy Birthday America! Did a Red Route early in the morning followed by an all day party at Ted's.

Headed out for fireworks now.

War of the Worlds

I went to see War of the Worlds last night. Is there really anybody who doesn't know how the story ends? Ted claims he didn't know but he wanted me to spoil it for him anyway.

I give it a thumbs down. I thought I could forget that I knew the story but it simply wasn't possible. I had serious problems with the casting of pretty much every major role. I like Tom Cruise (Ray), Dakota Fanning, and Tim Robbins but I didn't buy any of it except for the performance by Justin Chatwin (Robbie).

The other major problem was just that I knew the story and had a very hard time with the unsurprising ending. Spielberg and Josh Friedman did a passable job at trying to look at the story from a new angle (father will do anything to save his kids in face of alien invasion) but once you know how this story ends it really takes the climax away. The reunion of the family at the end did little to appease this because of plot problems in the middle of the story.

The major character developments were completely unbelievable. In Cruise's case I think this just wasn't in his acting range which is defnitely limited. In the case of Chatwin I think it was just a bad script - he made a good attempt and it was close to believable.

To make things worse I went to the drive-in alone and paid $15 bucks and I didn't even stay for the second feature.