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KGB ReportObservations by and for the vaguely disenchanted. By Kevin G. Barkes |
ISSN: 1525-898X |
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Instinct works best when your goals are realistic.
Categories: Animals, Photo of the day, WTF?
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... to all the volunteers who give their time, love and compassion to
shelter animals.
(via Melanie Agnello)
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day
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The cat runs a tight ship.
Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, KGB Family
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"I can't hear you. I have a cat on my head."
Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, Photo of the day
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"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the
shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men that who will deal
likewise with their fellow men."
-St Francis of Assisi
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day, Quotes of the day
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"The Department of Education,
the Department of Commerce,
and...
uh... oops."
-Rick Perry
Categories: Animals, Photo of the day
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Back in the halcyon, pre-Internet days of KGB Consulting, my office had a half dozen computer systems, over a dozen telephone lines, the usual collection of office equipment, and a couple hundred feet of various phone and low-voltage control cabling stuffed above the suspended ceiling.
Since the business folded back in 2000, I only need two "work" systems. I disconnected the Verizon phone service five years ago, when I called to report a service outage at 10 am and was told all their representatives were busy and to call back later. So much for the superior reliability of landlines. I switched to Vonage, cut my phone bill in half, and now just have to deal with Comcast for all my telecommunications services. (I complain about Comcast but, truth be told, aside from their crappy DVRs, their performance has been exemplary, at least from a signal standpoint. In the past 16 months I can't remember a single outage.)
But I digress.
Because of the literally hundreds of feet of legacy cabling stuffed in the ceiling above my head, I was never able to reconfigure my office the way I really wanted. So I decided to quit procrastinating, pull everything down, and rewire the entire enchilada.
As the picture above shows, my office now looks like the bridge of the U.S.S. Reliant following the Enterprise's sneak attack in Star Trek II.
I'm about 20% through. Misty, my unofficial liaison to the lower mammals in the household, has stayed with me through the ordeal. The other pups and the cats come down only when nature calls. They nervously glance upward at the ceiling, then hurry through to the safety of the back door or litter box. I keep telling them the sagging lines are low-voltage signal cables and not ac power runs, but I don't think they believe me.
The goal is to get this done by the end of the week, which is probably doable with a couple late nights after work.
Provided I can teach Misty how to wire the mini-PBX.
Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, KGB, Star Trek
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It helps to have a fully-equipped workspace.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day
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(YouTube video: "Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die)
By now you must know there is always a goodbye hovering in the shadow of a dog. We are never here for long, or for long enough. We were never meant to share all of your life, only to mark its passages. We come and we go. We come when we are needed; we leave when it is time. Death is necessary; it defines life. I will see you again. I will watch over you. I hope in your grief and loneliness, that you will consider how sad it would have been, had we not had this time together; not had the chance to give each other so much. I do not mourn or grieve. But I will miss standing beside you, bound together on our walk through life. Even as I know, there is a long line of others waiting to take my place and stand with you. Thank you. It was nothing but a gift.
Remembering Deja, Sasha, Quark, and Beanie.
Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, Video, YouTube
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Déjà
February 15, 1997 - September 18, 2011
She possessed beauty without vanity;
dignity without pretentiousness;
intelligence
without conceit;
strength without insolence;
loyalty without condition;
courage without
ferocity;
love without reservation;
the virtues of humans
without their vices.
(Adapted from Lord Byron's epitaph for his dog)
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family
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Recent late-night political jokes, from Daniel Kurtzman's Political Humor Blog on About.com.
(YouTube video: The Republican debate in 45 seconds.)
The Republican presidential candidates will have a debate at the Reagan
Library. They were going to have it at the George W. Bush Library but
they couldn't fit all eight of them in the bouncy house.
-Conan O'Brien
People are saying that Rick Perry is really tough because he has
executed over 200 people. And that was just while he was on vacation in
Florida.
-Conan O'Brien
The oil industry said if they were allowed to drill more, they could
create over a million new jobs. Of course most of those jobs would be
cleaning oil off ducks.
-Conan O'Brien
To give an idea of how bad the economy is, the NFL had to borrow the
quarter for the coin toss from China. And they want it back.
-Conan O'Brien
In Iowa Sarah Palin ran a half marathon and came in second place. Of
course no one saw her do it, because she refused to tell anyone she was
running.
-Conan O'Brien
Dick Cheney says Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than
Barack Obama. Then he got back in his coffin.
-David Letterman
The Republican debate was on earlier tonight. Side effects may include
nausea, vomiting and sexual dysfunction.
-David Letterman
Michele Bachmann is dropping rapidly in the polls. If she loses three
more points she goes on 'Dancing with the Stars.'
-David Letterman
Homeland Security is saying you may no longer have to remove your shoes
when you fly. Welcome to the golden age of travel. I just hope they
don’t stop wanding my inner thighs.
-David Letterman
During the Republican debate, every time they mentioned Ronald Reagan, I
ate a jelly bean. And now I have type two diabetes.
-Jimmy Kimmel
This is the first debate Rick Perry has participated in since he
announced his candidacy. Perry is a mix between George W. Bush and
Yosemite W. Sam.
-Jimmy Kimmel
Sarah Palin ran an unannounced half marathon in Iowa. Wait, did she run
a half marathon or run half a marathon and quit? Is there anything Sarah
Palin can’t do half of?
-Jimmy Kimmel
The Republican debate got pretty heated. They spent most of their time
arguing over who God called first.
-Jay Leno
Michele Bachmann said that if she is elected president, she would
consider eliminating the Department of Education because "the states
could do a gooder job."
-Jay Leno
Ford is building a new plant that will create 5,000 jobs in India. Or as
Obama put it, "You've got to be kidding me!"
–Jimmy
Fallon
Sunday is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, which means it can only be
another five years before we discover Saddam Hussein’s WMDs.
-Stephen Colbert
Categories: Animals, Craig Ferguson, Political Jokes of the Week, Stephen Colbert, WTF?
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Misty is 12 today. She's the elegant, Lauren Bacall-ish member of our Sheltie pack. Time for a belly rub and a piece of toast...
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family
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Oh noes! We iz out of coffee!!
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day
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Well, really, my granddaughter Leanna and her dog, Bella. The resemblance is striking, though. Next time I see her, I'm going to check for fins.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family, Photo of the day
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Badgers? We don't need no more steenkin' badgers!
Categories: Animals, Photo of the day, WTF?
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(You Tube Video)
Lucy (aka Lady Lucia), our 13-year-old Sheltie, is one tough little broad. Unlike the other lesser mammals in the house, she loves being vacuumed. In fact, you have to vacuum her first, before she'll give you access to the rug. It doesn't appear to be genetic; her offspring all remain terrified of vacuums. So at least one threat to humanity has been thwarted.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family, Video, YouTube
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I have a Sheltie in my pants.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family, Photo of the day
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As allergy sufferers know, this season's been particularly bad. My daughter and I have been dosed by our respective physiscians with enough corticosteroids to dry up the Mississippi basin. Despite these heroic efforts, we're always "on the edge." One tiny challenge to our hair-trigger immune systems can easily bust a hole in our shaky pharmaceutical dykes.
My levee burst at about 4 am when Pumpkin, our evil cat, apparently decided she wanted to fall asleep on her favorite piece of endothermic furniture, namely me. She first sat on my head, providing my eyes, sinuses and upper respiratory system with a more than moderate dose of fur and dander. She then moved on to the only exposed human body part on the bed- my lower right leg. As she settled into place, I apparently startled her by sneezing. She attempted to maintain her stability in the cute way cats do, by extending her quasi-lethal, razor-like claws quite firmly into my calf.
My leg jerked upward in a powerful reflex action, catapulting the accursed feline into the bed's headboard, where her trajectory was modified in such a way that she was deposited into a mass of sleeping shelties Who Were Not Amused.
Somehow the rest of the household remained unconscious during the festivities, which involved nearly a half-dozen small furry mammals cascading down the steps in high dudgeon, accompanied by a greater mammal using the dark, unpleasant part of his vocabulary in an extended, hissed exhalation that thankfully did not involve the larnyx. In the meantime, my calf started erupting in hives and producing an itching sensation reminiscent of the chest-bursting scene in Alien.
So, at 4:10 am, I'm downing prednisone pills like M&Ms, slathering hydrocortisone cream on my leg, giving myself an albuterol treatment and squirting naphazoline in my eyes. The dogs are under my desk, alternately cowering in fear and growling at the cat, who, given the supremely narcissistic tendencies of her species, is lying on the spare office chair, staring at me in dull curiosity through drooping eyelids.
Going to church won't be of any help. I recently joined the Unitarians, so I can no longer invoke the wrath of some supernatural being to rain down flaming justice on those who afflict me.
I'll just have to settle for extreme grumpiness for the balance of the day.
And wheezing.
You've been warned.
Categories: Animals, Cats, Dogs, KGB, KGB Family
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...this would be it.
"Give her all she's got! Woof!!"
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day, Star Trek
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...or does this little fella look like Dick Cheney?
Categories: Animals, KGB Opinion, Photo of the day, WTF?
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It is my goal to retire, move west, and open a sloth dude ranch. The stampedes would be awesome.
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The most obvious situation is the slow transmogrification of western Pennsylvania into a rain forest. My back yard is now almost impenetrable and on the verge of being declared a wildlife refuge. A hike to the storage shed at the back of the property was accompanied by the sounds of wee beasties scurrying through the grass, and I'm not talking about the shelties. Who, by the way, won't venture past the swing set at the partially cleared top half of the yard, probably because the vegetation is now taller than they are. There's stuff back there straight out of a Star Trek episode. And it's adapting to the marsh-like conditions. I think I saw a stink bug wearing scuba gear.
The other problem with the above Weather Channel prediction is that their ten-day forecast contains only nine days. I'm going to attribute that to an HTML/database extraction error. Unless TWC knows something about the Rapture that Harold and his gang have missed.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB, KGB Family
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Pumpkin notices the new aquarium contains more than air bubbles.
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Lady Lucia (aka "Lucy" or "Lulu") is a feisty 13 today, which makes her either 91 or 68 in human years, depending upon whether you use the old or new human-dog years age equivalency tables.
Both are irrelevant to this saucy lady, whose personality is less like a Shetland sheepdog and more like the madame of a bordello. She's mouthy, fearless, and has an aggressive, determined gait, just like Spike the Bulldog in those old Warner Bros cartoons. Forget to let her out or feed her in a timely manner and she'll march right up to you and give you a piece of her mind.
She sleeps a bit more than she used to, but when she's awake, look out... when Lucy's on the move, you know it.
Lucy's big secret... she's a snuggle bunny. When no one else is around, she'll curl up next to you, kiss you senseless, then fall asleep and snore in your ear. The perfect lady, indeed.
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family, Photo of the day
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(via www.ratemyfunnypictures.com)
Categories: Animals, Dogs, Photo of the day, WTF?
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If I hadn't missed the print deadline, this would have been this year's Christmas card.
For our Christian friends, the inside would have read:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
The alternate version would have read:
Squirrels!
Categories: Animals, KGB Family, Photo of the day
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And Misty is dreaming of a white Christmas. Or probably enough snow to put down a couple Sheltie angels...
Categories: Animals, Dogs, KGB Family, Photo of the day
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Granddaughter Leanna, photobombed by a horse at the Highland Games earlier this month.
Categories: Animals, KGB Family
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There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.
-Alfred Hitchcock
One of 15,466 quotations from the KGB Quotations Database, selected at random. Click here to search for words, authors or phrases. Search page design and software contributed by Rafal Sulejman.
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