-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-


 CA> Hello Wayne -

 WC> Sorry about your cat companion.

 CA> I enjoy the company of animals too much for my own good.  They don't
 CA> live as long as we do. :-\

 WC>  Yeah they tend to be more trustworthy and reliable than
 WC> most.

 CA> I appreciate that a pet's only "agenda" is a warm place
to sleep, some
 CA> food, and a bit of companionship and nothing else. :-)

Don't know about that, mine aims to please and has demonstrated a sense 
of humor and trust

 WC>  You could always get a Parrot as they live as long as we
 WC> do.

 CA> I should've specified warm-blooded fur-bearing animals.  I've never
 CA> liked birds a great deal.  Never disliked them just never felt much
 CA> of a bond between myself and any bird.  
 
Feel about the same myself.

RE: older pets and their loss.

 WC>  I know me.
 WC>  I'd be comparing the new animal to Spanky and expecting him
 WC> to
 WC>  live up to the exemplary example he set, it would be unfair
 WC> to the
 WC>  new animal and painful for me to be reminded.

 CA> My recent experiences having the mother and kitten is that the
 CA> younger animal learns by mimicking the behaviour of the older
 CA> animal.  They would become very much alike I think?

 Well if I could find another British Staffordshire (female) 
 to breed Spanky with I'd be sorely tempted.

 WC>  Perhaps one day they'll splice in some Parrot genes into
 WC> canines
 WC>  and we'll have a lifelong talking canine companion ;-)

 CA> A dog with feathers is too terrible a price to pay.

 So give that gene a pass.
 A flying dog raises some airborne issues of concern as well ;-)

 WC> I finally found out why there are few if any British
 WC> Staffordshire Bull Terriers around anymore, they're all
 WC> being bred to the larger American Staffordshire
 WC> characteristic :-(

 CA> I tend to prefer "mutts" in both cats and dogs.
 
 CA> Neither of the cats was mine.  I was just a caretaker of sorts.

 CA> They have fewer
 CA> genetic weaknesses and seem to live longer because of that fact.  The
 CA> cat that I gave to my brother was a "tabby" and the one that died
 CA> recently was also a "tabby" (catspeak for mutt).

 WC>  Well spanky at 14 is going strong and he's not even
 WC> neutered, just lucky I guess.

 CA> Luck is always a factor.

 CA> btw: How are you getting along with your live Linux CD lately?

 WC> It valued, resides near at hand however unfortunately the
 WC> Pentium is currently down so I'm on a DOS - Win 3.1 1993 486
 WC> :-(

 CA> There are worse places to be.  I still have my W31 box and find it
 CA> quite pleasant to use many times.

 I'd be a LOT happier if I had more RAM in it.
 This is the motherboard I found in the trash with high speed UARTS
 so I swapped them out.
 
 Spent several months getting random crashes and blamed it on the 
 16 Meg. SIMM.
 
 On a whim I jumpered off the 4 meg. motherboard surface mount RAM
 and the problem vanished... but that extra RAM really made
 a difference when it didn't drop out leaving me with 
 under 2 Meg. total.
 
 Some weird compatability issue I can't figure out between two P.B.
 motherboards in the 450 series, it's just a revision of the previous
 motherboard.
 Parity jumper set correctly in it's default parity memory setting.
 
 Looking at Ebay some guy had a bunch of 32 Meg parity SIMM's
 for sale. perhaps after I get the Pentium up I'll look for them again,
 max out the 486 machine to 64 M RAM and run Peanut Linux on it.

 I've grown attached to the bugger but would be more attached if it had
 more RAM

 WC> The hard drive's boot sector failed and the drive is no
 WC> longer recognised.

 CA> I can't get KNOPPIX to work on this laptop - I tried though. :-)

That's too bad. Have you tried a later release if your
laptop is cutting edge hardware?

 WC> Oh yeah the PCI I/O card will also upgrade me from
 WC> ATA66 to UltraATA133 as well.
 WC> CompUSA has a Maxtor 20 Gig drive in stock locally and I
 WC> could install it without the new card but not gain the data
 WC> transfer speed advantage.

 WC> Once I install those parts I believe I'll leave the Windows
 WC> O.S. entirely.

 CA> I need too many of the applications for Windows to ever abandon it
 CA> entirely.

 I _may_ give 98 6.4 Gig out of a large hard drive and dual boot.

 It's just that I find Windows so insecure, difficult 
 to secure and a general PITA as compared to the Knoppix Linux
 CD you sent along to me.

 BTW thanks again muchly.
 I REALLY like the KDE desktop (platinum option)
 in 1024 x 768 resolution.

 Think I got those numbers right.
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5a