Pointless Cat Photo

TechCat is doing much better since we've come back. She's freaking out less that we'll leave again or send her off again. She's been doing what cats do. Napping during the midday, sharing the fan air with us and trying to stay cool in this heat.

Fancy Free Friday

I've been off the grid this past week. Okay not really, but I have been sort of unplugged and sort of distracted with vacationing. It all started with some insect much smaller than me that's been feasting on my house for who knows how long. Due to financial uncertainties, this was the summer to get stuff done. The last hoorah to buy toys and fix up the place. So I paid a professional to shoot poison through my entire house and skipped off to a locale even warmer than my own to enjoy some time off from MegaCorp. I'm pretty sure I forgot how to be an engineer in the meantime, but oh well I'll worry about that later.

 

TechCat got to spend the week rooming with three dogs and while she got some love and attention she seems to be pretty happy to be home again. Or, I'm guessing that's why she woke us up multiple times during the night to make sure we were still there and she was still there and we weren't going to ship her off to the doghouse again.

 

In honor of my absent design fridays post today, I wrote about Lockheed's HALE-D unmanned airship over at EngineerBlogs. Hope you are all as well rested and even keeled as I feel today (even having to go back to earning my paycheck again). I raise a toast to you and your weekend so we can focus on alcoholic beverages or tasty non-alcoholic beverages and fondly remember days when insects are our worst enemies and having no financial ruin that lay ahead and politicians who we can't tent out of our house. Oh I ruined it already didn't I. Have another drink.

Conservation Caturday

Western presence in Afghanistan: now good for more things than just war. Conservationists set up camera traps and caught what they believe to be a sizeable population of snow leopards living in Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. All this is thanks to efforts by the Wildlife Conservation Society as they've been working under USAID funding to perform outreach to locals and train rangers in wildlife conservation. They've also been working on establishing Afghanistan's first national park, Band-e-Amir.

Larger photo and another photo over at Wired. I guess I fall prey to the urge to protect animals based on their cuteness factor. And snow leopards have a very high cuteness factor that is scientifically proven*. I love that the one above is rubbing its head against the rock just like my cat does against the furniture. Time to go donate to the Wildlife Conservation Society or the World Wildlife Foundation again.

*Citation needed.

Montag Morgen Katze

My sister's adorable new kitty.

Crazy Cat Lady

The US DoD finally announced a winner for the KC-X tanker contract. The $35 billion contract was hotly contested with two major bids: Boeing and a team of Northrop Grumman and EADS/Airbus. After the USAF initially awarded the contract to the NGC EADS/Airbus team in December 2007 Boeing of course protested this award. This sort of thing is pretty normal in the defense industry. Slightly less normal was the patriotic response initially from Congress but eventually backed up by the Secretary Defense and a reassigning of who would make the final decision. Some stuff about European government support came to light to possibly explain the new award but in the end it was probably congressional pressure and the desire to award an American contract to an American company: Boeing.

In other news, not only do defense contractors manipulate congressmen to get contracts but turns out your cat might be manipulating you.

Turns out the relationship between your cat and you, especially if you are a woman, might be more interesting than you think. Turns out our cats actually form social bonds with us. They control when and how they are fed as do human infants and many cats take the place of a dependent child in families. In other cases, the cats and the humans both exhibit controlling behavior on one another.

Women tend to interact with their cats more meaning cats are more likely to approach women. But the kinds of relationships tend to be the same both with men and women.

Cats could very well be man's -- and woman's -- best friend.

"A relationship between a cat and a human can involve mutual attraction, personality compatibility, ease of interaction, play, affection and social support," co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. "A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other's inclinations and preferences."

As a lady with several kitty friends in her lifetime I can definitely see this. Unfortunately for me, even my own cat came to prefer HerrTech over me so the preference for women doesn't hold true in personal experience, but I probably interact more with TechCat. And I'm sure we manipulate each other all the time. She's manipulating me right now by looking adorable in exchange for being petted. Tricky cats.

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

I've created this handy guide to help people out. Click for full size!

Dangerous Attack Cat

It's not Caturday yet? Life's important questions have finally been answered: do big cats dig the 'nip. I had one cat that was drug free, and one cat that's an absolute catnip addict. Click the linky to see video of adorable tigers and other big, wild cats so cute you'd run up and hug them if they couldn't gnaw your face off. Then stick around to get their opinions on catnip.

Or, watch this delightful video that as a cat owner I'm willing to testify under oath to its accuracy.

Ways your significant other is like your cat

1. Will sit there patiently listening to you but not actually listening to you.
2. Want your attention when you're just falling asleep or just waking up.
3. Need to be coddled every now and then when they've had a rough day.
4. Think most of the bed/couch/chair belong to them.
5. Start to get grumpy and noisy if they are not fed.
6. Love to have new toys, but may spend more time playing with the wrapping.
7. Can entertain themselves for most of the day.
8. Appreciates things about you nobody else does; like your body heat.
9. Perfectly happy just to lay around the house with you.
10. Will sometimes kill bugs for you.