Hobbies - Empire State Cannabis Forum

Rats: A Tale of Love and Futility

3V1L9371U5 — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 22:12:42 +0000

*dusts off Hobbies forum*

Maybe this is the place, maybe it isn't, but I really don't have much other in way of an outlet to vent this, so here I am. Ecce homo, and all that. Sensitive readers, please go elsewhere now. This is not a feel good story, and there is no happy ending.

As some of you may know, the Evil Wife and I have quite the soft spot for critters of all varieties. I've had just about every conceivable kind of pet in my life. My friends have described visiting my home as being like visiting the zoo, only that YOU are the new and exotic exhibit for all the animals to gawk at instead of the other way around. Cats and dogs living in harmony, all that shit.

A few years back, the EW suggested we get a pet rat. This was a bit odd to me...I've had just about everything but...rabbits o' plenty, hamsters, guinea pigs, chinchillas, you name it. So, this wasn't anything too far off the map, I said 'go for it'.

To keep things brief, I'll just say that these little critters stole my heart. Tiny, delicate little hands so like our own, huge personalities in contrast to their tiny stature, and lots of love to give overall. The biggest drawback being their so brief life spans - literally if they get 3 years from birth to death they're doing good, so it can be very hard in that respect for anyone with half a heart. So often, their only life is to be born, sold to a pet shop, and be eaten by what is in their view surely a giant terrifying monster, or used by doctors in horrifying ways in the name of science. The odds on any of them living any sort of happy life are unfortunately very slim. Despite any of this, or perhaps more accurately because of it, I take saving these little guys very seriously, just like rescuing cats/dogs/whatever. I can't save every animal in the world much as I'd like to, but I do take great pride in being able to provide a good life for my own little pack.

We've been pretty successful with the ratties, caring for 2-6 rats at any given time, for several generations now. They are very social critters, and as pack members get old and pass on, you have to have younger members coming in in order to have a healthy social dynamic. It is very hard to deal with the older pack members passing on, but that is part of all our lives and I'm happy that I can be there for them throughout their lives, and as they make that last journey I always try to be there with them, making them as comfortable as possible.

Recently we were down to 2 girls, both 'rescues' we were able to save. 'Peanut' has already gotten past cancer once, and is getting old. The other, 'Zola', is my 3 legged wonder that we got to keep Peanut company when her former cage mate passed on last year. She is pretty amazing - the missing leg doesn't slow her down at all. She has been a pretty big inspiration, really. We all get dealt some shitty hands in life, and her determination to rock right the fuck on like nobody's business despite only being 75% quadroped is truly something to behold in action.

As they're both getting on, we thought we'd get a couple of young girls to put in with them. We've done this many times in the past, and it always worked out well. The young ones seem to put a little more life in the older one's step, so to speak. Helps to keep their social dynamic strong when the oldest eventually passes, also.

Rather than rescues, we went to a local independent pet shop who seemed on the up and up. I immediately honed in on a 8-10 week old black and white who was stretched out chillin', and the EW picked out a younger tiny gray hooded who was very energetic, jumping around and trying to get everyone else in the cage to play with her.

Got them home and set them up in their new digs, within sniffing distance of our girls but not together in the same cage until we could make sure they were healthy. 24 hours later, I was going to put them in the big cage with the others pending good health. The black and white seemed fine, and so we put her in. The others gave her their usual sniff test, and within minutes they were bouncing around the cage together with glee. The little girl was overjoyed with her new lot in life, it was apparent. Rather than living out her life in a matter of days, she was somewhere plushly comfortable with friends and all the kibble, treats, and water a rodent could ask for. Mission fucking accomplished!

The other girl, who we had tentatively named Cashew (I believe animals name themselves if you give them the opportunity, but you have to call them something in the meantime), seemed to be wheezing a bit. Not unusual, the stress of being in a pet shop and brought home often brings out a bit of latent sniffles. Took her to the vet, upon which little Cashew made a complete fool of us both (at great expense, I might add) by exhibiting absolutely no abnormal behavior during the exam, and generally presenting as being fit as a fucking fiddle. Vet thought we were nuts, but gave her a quick steroid shot just to ensure her system would rally as she acclimated to her new home.

Got her home and let her chill for a bit, and decided since she was doing OK to introduce her to the others. (Keeping a single rat alone is bad news, as they will physically whither without social interaction.) Peanut and the other new girl were still asleep, but Zola heard new girl checking out her new digs and came up to investigate. I didn't think this was a big problem, they have to meet sometime, and there is usually a bit of pecking order establishment and whatnot. I stood there with the door open as they started to do their thing, keeping an eye on the situation in case I needed to separate them if they got a little too rough.

To my great astonishment, Zola attacked little Cashew viciously. I separated them as soon as I heard the barest hint of a squeak, but with a single bite on the back of her precious little neck, it was too late. Poor little Cashew was mortally wounded, bled out and died within a matter of seconds. This sweet little girl who I had worked so hard to rescue and give a good life, killed in an instant.

Not ashamed to say, as a grown ass man rapidly approaching half a century old, I wept like a baby for this tiny creature. All my pride in being able to rescue her from being eaten by a reptile, outlandish money at the vet to make sure she would be healthy, and improbable potential for a great life, ended in a single bite from the very one she was brought there to comfort.

I'm glad she did not suffer for long. Not sure if maybe the steroid shot made her smell funny, or if Zola thought she was from a competing female's litter because she was so little, or what...obviously, Zola's not going to tell and we'll never know for sure. The black and white who was slightly larger seems to be doing just fine with the other two, so there had to be SOMETHING that set her off about little Cashew.

I feel terrible. For all my efforts, for everything I could do as the supposed higher mammal, I let little Cashew down by my actions, and now she is no more. She would have probably been better off if I had never even stopped by that pet store, despite any amount of good intent I had. I will never be able to look at poor Zola, who had such a rough life before joining our pack, quite the same again either.

I have always operated on the philosophy that when you do good, good comes back to you, but I'm having some major difficulties seeing how this one could possibly work out as such. I simply cannot fathom how a just God could punish such selfless kindness with such unspeakable cruelty, but he seems to have a strong track record of doing precisely that.

Thank you for reading, TGL brothers and sisters. I'm not fishing for condolences or someone to show me a silver lining (not that I think there is one). I am sorry to share such a tale, but as noted, I must share it with someone.

TL;DR It just really, really sucks to try to and save this poor little creature's life with such great effort, only to have mother nature rudely stick her cock in my ear and laugh at me for trying.

If anything, I would ask that you please say a small prayer that little Cashew makes it safely to wherever innocent baby rodent souls go tonight.

Godspeed, little one.

Crypto Trading

DJ-D-Phunk — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 22:49:47 +0000

So 2 favorite pastime of mine (developing web applications & Day trading Crypto Currencies) have crossed paths. I have come across a few scripts that compliment each other nicely and I use them to make 20-40% gains daily on all my trades, did I mention that this is on autopilot? Oh yeah, you don't have to do anything besides set up your trading strategy and paste in and a few API Keys!
If your interested in this pm me and we can work out the details

The scripts have have to be licensed with their developers, but its a one time fee, and its a LIFETIME license, meaning a lifetime of free updates!
What I have done is arranged a deal with the other developer for you to get 10% off his license using my coupon code. its 75.00 (onetime LIFETIME UPDATES) for one exchange and 150.00 (onetime LIFETIME UPDATES) for all four supported by the script
the other license is .08 btc per exchange (onetime LIFETIME UPDATES) I get a .02 btc discount on licenses with this developer, if you went straight to him they are .1 btc per exchange.

I am packaging this script combo up on a VPS and offering 3 months of free hosting if you purchase the combo install from me, after three months its 30 bucks a month, unless you need more resources then we can bump up the server as needed. I run 12-15 pairs in mine with no issues on the same system I am offering and I am making more than 30 bucks a month when I run it regularly.

Keep in mind I have already put in the hours (if not days) of work to configure a server droplet and software to function in an ideal environment, and made it as easy as possible to use for someone with Trading knowledge but no tech knowledge, thus my fee for services. I will not teach you how to trade, but I will show you how the program runs. I am not responsible for any money you lose or gain using this combo.

here are screen shots

This is an semi-automatic crypto coin trading bot that currently runs on 4 different exchanges, Poloniex, Bittrex and Kraken and Cryptopia with more exchanges to come very soon. There are over 1800 users of gunbot and not an egative review yet, outsode of people that dont have the tecj knowledge to set it up or maintain it. Thats where we come in, this is the most cutting edge trading technology you out there with the price that is reasonable for what went into it, what it does and our setup and install service.

For 0.25 btc you get the best bot out there along with a sweet node.js & websockets gui - all packaged up on an affordable VPS droplet ready to roll and yet you only have to pay once for the bot and gui licenses (per exchange), all the future updates for the bot and gui are free of charge for a lifetime.

The bot developer himself takes feedback daily and improves the bot all the time according to what people need, this is what we call RAD development, he keeps on developing all the time according to what customers need and improves the bot daily, lets just say updates are a bunch. All you need to do is just plug in your exchange info and setup your bot then let it do its magic.

.25 btc includes 1 LIFETIME Exchange license for Gunbot and 1 LIFETIME exchange license for the GUI. This also includes Three months FREE VPS Hosting, the server will be installed and configured to run Gunbot and the GUI will be installed and configured- ready for you to enter your API information.
NO ROOT ACCESS TO THE SERVER IS PROVIDED. The server is managed and and mainted by me, as part of the package. Should you choose to keep the setup after three months, it is billed at $30.00 a month to either paypal or credit card - NOT btc (yet) This is a seperate fee for hosting the server and is billed through LiquidNet LTD, the account will already be set up for you and you only need to add billing details at the end of the three months.

About the VPS

OVZ Box 3
Platform: Linux
CPU Cores: 2
RAM: 3 GB
Space: 70 GB
Bandwidth: 3 TB
** - first 3 months hosting FREE. After that period the price is $30.00 per month.

About the gui

GUI Pricing

Life-time license for a single account on any exchange of your choosing.
Supported exchanges: Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex and Cryptopia
$75,-

Life-time license for three accounts on any exchange currently supported by Gunbot.
These include exclusively: Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex and Cryptopia
$150,-

****IMPORTANT****
After your purchase here, I will give you a coupon code for 10% off the GUI and you must purchase this peice seperatly yourself. Once completed, send me the GUI API key you receive when you purchase, be sure to use my 10% off coupon code, as it ties into this package and ensure everything works tegether.

GUI FEATURES

MANAGE YOUR BOTS
Control your setup with ease on any device. Start / stop with the click of a button.

TRACK YOUR BOTS
Follow the output of your bot. Useful information automatically gets extracted.

INTERACTIVE CHARTS
Features candlestick chart and a barchart showing your profit over time.

ONGOING DEVELOPMENT
We have many features planned for the future, and although there are no known current bugs, we thrive to fix any future bugs as quickly as possible.

This application complements the CLI version of this bot setup by adding a GUI (graphical user interface) to it. It was built using NodeJS and some of its widely used modules. It features a built-in socket and web server, which make sure you get updated in near real-time. Your bots are spawned as daemon services, meaning that the processes run in the background. Even if the GUI goes down, your bots will continue running.

WEB SERVER AND SOCKET
Enjoy an out-of-the-box web server that serves your GUI to you. Socket.IO's technology enables updates to the GUI without refreshing the page.

RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Built using Bootstrap and JQuery, the GUI will work on any device. The page automatically adjusts to the screen size of your device.

DAEMONIZED BOTS
Bots are managed by a NodeJS module called PM2. The GUI communicates with it in order to read logs and to spawn or despawn bots in the background.

Life-time license for a single account for any exchange of your choosing. Supported exchanges: Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex and Cryptopia.
included
FOUR EXCHANGES supported
Life-time license for accounts for any exchange supported by the GUI. These include: Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex and Cryptopia.

Bot License per exchange currently supported by the bot.
These include exclusively: Poloniex, Kraken, Bittrex and Cryptopia
Send btc 0.9 btc per additional exchange to my blockchain.info wallet 1EQqcXaEXHs6Jo1BeX1ktZGodgzAVwE9B5 along with the exchanage api PUBLIC (not secret) Keys

Details on the package are below, and it is always evolving

Some cool web animations for you all PXers!

niemandgeist — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 16:56:42 +0000

I started learning and doing programming/web design/development since I was like 14 years old. I'm almost 34 years old now. I stopped doing it for a long time, but just recently got back into it.

I made some fun animations/transitions and shit for you.

You gonna need a web browser that's up-to-date and this shit will probably NOT work on a tablet or your mobile device/smartphone/cellphone.

You gonna need a mouse and shit. If it don't work OKAY whatever.

Even so, check this shit out. You know I love growing mushrooms (got two grows going right now! woot!) and I think fun things are cool, so check out the following link and see if you dig it.

The link is hosted on my DropBox account. You can click it and it'll load the web page fine in your web browser.

Lemme know what you think! I'll be doing more advanced shit soon enough. I started off as a dumbass know-nothing with this CSS animation and transition shit this morning and managed to make cool shit, so give me a month and see what's up?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13029142/animations/animations.html

--- Click dat shizz and let it load. If you have a modern web browser and you're using a computer with a keyboard and mouse it'll probably work A-OK. If not, lemme know. I didn't cover ALL the bases but I probably could.

WOOT mushrooms and colors and fractals and animations for the win!

Oil!

3V1L9371U5 — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 18:23:51 +0000

Thanks to our illustrious server guy, I plucked the nugget of idea for this thread from the shoutbox.

I'm fairly certain that there are a number of individuals who are somewhat mechanically inclined here, although it is open to all. Pretty much everyone has an opinion on this, and some folks get downright reverent about it.

It has nothing to do with our usual topics...what I'm talkin' about is OIL!

That's right...dead dino juice...blood of the earth...blessings from our carboniferous past. Whether natural, synthetic, or goat piss in a radiator, fluids are supremely important to the well being of any mechanical construct.

So, let's hear it, Planeteers! What is your "House Earl"? Why do you like it? What grinds your proverbial (hopefully not literal) gears after you tried something different? What are the things you'd not put in on a bet?

For synthetic oil, I absolutely LOVE Pennzoil Ultra. Shit is god-awful expensive, but I've seen it outperform boutique oils in my apps. Super clean, super slick, and the most advanced add pack I've seen. Some of the fattest amounts of boron anywhere I've found, which is awesome for cylinder walls.

Boutique oils are a subject of much debate...some folks think they're a waste of money, others swear only theirs is the greatest. Lots of folks love AMSoil, some folks can't resist Royal Purpley goodness, I'm a Redline guy.

This is going to sound a bit odd, but I'm more a Redline guy for their product line as opposed to 'just' their oils. Nothing against their oils; I think they're good product too. However, I've done some pretty neat shizz with gearboxes and their D6 tranny fluid. Low viscosity and slick as fuck. Most awesome is that it's pre-sheared; this is what normally breaks a fluid down to ineffectiveness and kills your engine and/or tranny if you let it. This magic and utterly foul-smelling concoction is already broke down about as much as it can be mechanically before it even goes in. The Water Wetter is very cool...literally. Chemical magic that will lower your operating temps noticeably. For standard apps, their gear oil is as good as any I've found also. Good range of viscosities available make it easy to tweak your fluid to your app with maximum benefit.

I *like* the Royal Purple, I think it's good oil...but the purple is gimmicky as hell. It's just a dye. They're supposed to be using some proprietary long-chain molecule, but I'm not totally sold on it's effectiveness. Some of their previous promo testing is highly dubious as well. Within a day, it just looks like really nasty old oil to me, which kind of defeats the purpose. The state of an oil in use should be visually verifiable to those who know how to read it, IMHO, and that kinda defeats the whole purpose in favor of 'it's purple!'. I'll hunt Pennz Ultra before paying for RP, if it's at all a choice. Really, I'm not convinced RP is any better than any run-of-the-mill synthetic.

For quick-and-cheap, Peak ain't bad. It shears quickly, unfortunately, but it's good for regularly changed apps on a shoestring budget.

Once, when I was young and foolish, I was a 'Quaker State guy'. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way about sludge. Waaaaay too waxy. This was not such a bad thing in older engines, as they'd usually crap out before it became a problem from something else, but if you're trying to push that beater for another hundred thou just don't even let QS cross your mind. Even with regular changes, this stuff will sludge up your internals something awful.

Oil getting a little thin, but can't change it just yet? Hit it with some Lucas-love the stuff. Their long-chain molecules are readily apparent in this mix - the stuff will literally stretch for feet from the cap in tiny stringers. It doesn't have everything, it's not a standalone add pack, but it will refresh oil that's sheared out a bit and is a good thing to add to cheaper oils to improve their characteristics.

Firm believer in Seafoam for anything with a carby. Fuel injection, not so much. About any cheapass alcohol-based cleaner will do more or less the same. I have been known to use a little Heet from time to time during cold snaps.

Marvel Mystery Oil...I just don't understand lol Lots of folks swear by it, but I've never looked into it too deeply. Guess that's the 'mystery' part...

*All of these are my fucking opinions, it's not gospel. Royal Purple Planeteers, don't take it personal. :P

Chat rooms

jbmac — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:32:38 +0000

What are some good chat room - IRC or web based I can join on topics like weed, music macs, fun, romance, drugs, life, meditation, etc?

Nifty E-Cig hack I figured out for "looks like a cigarette" batteries.

niemandgeist — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:07:29 +0000

OK. You know about BluCigs and stuff, right?

http://www.blucigs.com/

Those e-cigs that look like a cigarette but use cartomizer tanks with e-juice that are ridiculously expensive that you screw into the "cigarette" battery?

I recently got an eGo battery with some disposable clearomizer tanks so I can just buy cheap e-juice and vape that way. Also, you need this if you want to use the JMX magical e-juice.

So, I recently figured out that if you have some of those old batteries that "look like cigarettes" you can use a clearomizer tank with e-juice, screw it in, and still vape.

I'll let my little video speak for itself here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBg5Wc19-5k

Now I can use some of these old batteries and still get something out of them. :)

Sandwiches

Admin — Sun, 11 May 2014 19:14:29 +0000

cheese steak

Electronic Music is my hobby

DJ-D-Phunk — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 21:20:30 +0000

http://www.justin.tv/bpmsounds1/b/475359810 <- My hobby and how I spent my Halloween

Enjoy if y ou like electric music, ainly house :)

:smoking

What do you drive?

mrwiggles — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:54:36 +0000

We have to have at least a few gear heads in there. What do you drive? Have you done anything aftermarket to it?

I drive a 1994 Ford Ranger XLT 4.0 4x4 with some BF Goodrich AT KOs. She has problems but I love her.

Tobacco

mrwiggles — Tue, 22 Oct 2013 23:58:22 +0000

I would call smoking in general a hobby. Maybe not a healthy hobby, but still a hobby nevertheless. What do you smoke? Brand, flavors, etc. Are you a cigar smoker or cigarettes? I use to smoke Marlboro lights exclusively for many years, but a few summers ago I got on a menthol kick and haven't stopped since. I switch between Camel Menthol Silvers or Marlboro Menthol Golds depending what is on sale or if I have a coupon. I have been looking into rolling my own to cut back costs. Looking into buying some Good Stuff Menthol Light tobacco and a pouch of Criss Cross Original Flavored Pipe Tobacco. Only comes out to $35 shipped where buying cigarettes normally I would hit that amount in just a few days.