Just Webreg Things, and How Far I Am

Webreg always feels like it comes so early… but it really doesn’t.  We’re already halfway through the semester.  Just WOW.  This semester has gone by so fast.

Anyway, the courses for next semester are up so I made my schedule today.  I get to register on the second day so I anticipate actually getting into all of them.  The upcoming semester will not be quite as intense as I am planning for only 4 studio courses, two of which are both 1.5 credits.

Back on the Bike and Stuff

And it is good.

Spring “break” is over as well, and things just keep coming up. Several large long-term projects are coming up, which means I’ll have less assignments, but about the same amount of homework.

Webreg is also soon. Class postings will be up by next Monday at the latest! It feels like I JUST did this, but now its time to think about next semester. Tentatively, I want to take a book-making class, Advanced Printmaking, Natural History Drawing, and catch up on some past requirements I haven’t gotten around to yet. It’d be nice to throw in a liberal arts course or two also, and I’m finding that I should work going to Lesley regularly into my schedule, because otherwise I’m never in Harvard Square or even available during administrative hours. Blah, I don’t want to think about this right now in some ways… but it is fun.

Invincible Little Buggers

Seriously, invincible.

Giger finished molting successfully the other night.  Fortunately we didnt’ damage it, as I worried we might have, and now it demonstrates its extreme gluttony by consuming well over twice its body weight a night in cucumber and some strawberry.   We watched it eat its old exoskeleton, too!

Last night we showed off the little collection to some visitors and I had a chance to try and sex Euler and Giger.  I’m pretty sure Euler is a female, but she really wouldn’t let me look for more than a few seconds.  While Promethea is somewhat laid back, only curling up loosely and just bumbles around leisurely, looking for the darkest place when she is out… Euler is incredibly high strung and energetic, curling her head in tightly at the first sign of danger and running around everywhere as soon as she thinks it is remotely safe.  When she sleeps, she curls up so tightly, there is no space between her coils, while Promethea tends to just make a lazy C-shape and cuddle with the substrate.  So strange…  I’m surprised at how different their personalities are.  I guess I expected all millipedes to have roughly the same temperment.

I suspect Giger is male, but I didn’t want to flip him around too much.  His legs are also very pale, so they were hard to see, but I do think I saw a pair “missing”.  When he gets older, I’ll double check but until then I’m assuming its a “he”.  While he was crawling around on one of my hands, showing no desire to crawl back onto the cork-log we had out, I tried to get Euler to crawl on the same hand so that I could try to get another look.  Adam had her on a piece of paper, and leveled it with my fingers, but she freaked out and curled back, losing grip on the smooth paper at the same time.  I caught her, but at the same time flinging Giger off!  He fell much farther than Euler would have fallen, landing on the hardwood floor.

Damn it!  I worried about him being damaged before, then I go and kill him for real!  I don’t know how hard his exoskeleton is yet, and I’ve read that they’re not supposed to fall that far… or risk death…

Adam scooped him up with the paper, and almost immediately he began crawling around again, just as energetic as always.

I’m not sure its actually possible to kill this thing…

Of Parents and the Interwebs. Rant.

There should be boundaries as to where your parents can follow you on the internet.  It’s not that I’m in trouble (yet… she hasn’t really discovered the ACP), its that I like to have a little breathing room.  So what’s the big deal?  My extended family has discovered Facebook.

Rant follows.  Largely unimportant, may make private or password protected sometime.

(And good news: Little Giger the Jesus-pede has eaten most of its molt and seems not to be damaged.  So far so good…)

Jesus-Pede Update!!

WHEW. I’m really glad to have an update so soon.

It turns out little Jesus-pede was in the midst of molting! Before bed we checked on it, and it was almost completely out of its exoskeleton.

Molting!!

We’re not in the clear yet, the little one might have been damaged during shipping or in our ignorant attempts to “revive” it, depending on how critical its condition was at the time it was handled. The unusual lightness is also explained as you can see, it is much darker now, and one segment larger.

And check out those nice shots Adam got. Great stuff.

Millie-Jesus Adventure! (sort of)

My package from Ken the Bug Guy came in today! Now that it is Spring Break, I could be waiting for the package at the time it would arrive, not at school. Its a bit annoying that he only ships a few inconvenient days a week, but he was the only dealer on the whole interwebs that was currently selling Archispirostreptus Gigas in the States.

Inside was a Brown Striped millipede and thebaby African Giant Black. It has been an interesting afternoon… Both came in separate little test-tube like containers full of substrate inside a small foam ice chest with a heat pack and a bit of packing material. Promethea was packed similarly when I got her, only she was in a plastic dish that looked like one you might buy nightcrawlers in to go fishing, with a moist paper towel and a little substrate. I opened up the Brown Striped while Adam opened up the A. Gigas baby. I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of size for the baby, the site said “tiny” but that could be anywhere from dime to quarter size, or maybe a little larger. Since these millipedes can grow to over a foot, “tiny” might easily be Promethea-size of four inches!

The Brown Striped was incredibly energetic.

Striped Brown Millipede!

It seemed to be ready to get out of its tube and do something else. Adam is thinking of calling it Euler, and it seems to be a little longer than Promethea but not as wide.  It appears light and a bit dull in the photo (not to mention blurry, and with Zombies! in the background), but it has these gorgeous iridescent bands in between each segment. I haven’t had a chance to sex it yet, as we just snapped a quick shot of it before putting it into the terrarium as we had more pressing matters at hand… the baby wasn’t moving.

At first I wasn’t too concerned.  Promethea didn’t move much when I got her out the first time, she was very cold and just needed warming up.  As soon as we placed Euler(?) directly on the heating pad it perked up right away,  uncurling and waving its head high in the air, then racing around, across our hands uncontrollably.  We placed the baby on the heating pad too, since that worked so well for Euler(?)… but it did nothing.  We tried to see if it would curl up or respond to stimuli, but it did not.  At this point Euler(?) was so out of control we HAD to bring it upstairs and put it down so that we could focus on the baby, and while we were up there we set up the rock food dish with some moist substrate.  Euler(?) burrowed immediately, so we didn’t have anything to worry about there.  I wonder if it’s met Promethea yet?

We were in the middle of a Zombies! game so we figured we’d let the baby warm up while we finished.  I took a small piece of strawberry out of the fridge after remembering reading somewhere that someone’s millies went nuts when they put strawberries in the cage, and placed it next to the still millie.  We covered it up with the heating pad and checked on it periodically, but after about a 1/2 hour, there was no change.  I tried moving it around a bit, but it was pretty limp.  I hadn’t even seen a leg move since we’d removed it from the tube, so we sadly took DOA (dead on arrival) photos and sent them to Ken.  I left the little dish covered with the heating pack upstairs and we finished our Zombies! game.

Afterwards, I went back upstairs to see if I had an email back, and it was just a question about the posture, so I figured I’d double check before writing back “yes, it is limp….”

First the little ‘pede seemed a bit more tightly curled up than when I’d left it.  Hmm.  Well.  If it IS dead, than poking it a bit can’t hurt, if not, then I guess we’ll find out… I picked it up and poked its curls apart with the sword on a miniature  sitting on the desk.  It appeared to curl up tighter!  Maybe it wasn’t dead!  I ran down and had Adam check my work, and we concluded that it WAS responding to stimuli, and might not be dead after all!  I fired off an email that it appeared to be responding… but… It still hasn’t uncurled, its legs still haven’t moved…

We placed it in the warm half of the terrarium, above the substrate so we can watch its progress.  Ken said in this case, it might have been VERY stressed from shipping, and might not move for another day or so.  Also I figure that since it was quite cold outside today and this thing IS tiny, it had gotten too cold in shipping and was taking a while to wake up.  He’s given us an extension on the live-guarantee deadline since we reported the issue so fast, and I really hope we don’t need it.

Until then though, it seems to be resurrected from the dead!

I was thinking of naming this one Giger.  Giant African Black Millipedes do look like they come straight from Giger paintings, and are very monochromatic.  This one is quite light but I’m sure it will darken in time.  However, if it doesn’t make it, I guess that name will have to carry to the next one, so until we find out whether or not its going to make it, I’ll refer to this one as the Jesus-pede.

Until it gets better, all I have in terms of photos are the kind of shitty DOA? pictures we took (I enjoy the irony of the “We’re Screwed!” card being on top of the discard pile.  I swear, that was not planned.).  Seriously, when I say this thing IS tiny… I’m not kidding.  I was expecting maybe between one or two inches long minimum, Jesus-pede is LUCKY to hit an inch right now.  It stayed in that half-curled position until I checked on it upstairs nearly an hour later, when it was a tighter ball.  For reference, here is someone holding a near-fully grown A. Gigas.  Their hand looks to be about the same size as mine, too.

I’m pretty annoyed that I have to go in to work tomorrow and Thursday now… I want to stay here and check up on it…

"Tiny"... not kidding.

Not-moving in our food dish setup.

There will be much more to see of Euler(?) sometime soon, since he/she seems to be almost too happy and healthy… I hope I can get a good shot of the iridescent bands.

Thread. Amazon ID Smackdown… Update?!

The creationist came back after over a month, to run away officially this time.

A new person, “Ryan”, entered the discussion.  He had made a silly post before but had a large delay in replying to adam’s resonse to that.  I didn’t respond to him before because my goal was to make All-Access go away.

I expect Ryan to respond at some point so I won’t include his posts here for now.

Dour

That about describes it.  Perhaps I just need to make up my sleep.

Got back from the Watchmen premeire a while ago, was not all that impressed overall.  Maybe its because I haven’t read the comic yet.  The end was nice other aspects were not.  Oh well, I’ll post a full review maybe on Amazon or something after I’ve slept on it.  I’d say number wise its a flat middle of the road movie: 2.5/5 or 5/10 stars depending on the system.  It wasn’t THAT horrible and it really wasn’t that great either.

And I’m pissed about a few things on Spring Break, and there’s nothing I can do about it and I have no interest in whining about petty nonsense here.  Oh well.  Maybe I can enjoy one or two of the days?  Fuck.

I WAS hoping to catch up on sleep too.

I’ll be fine as long as I don’t stab myself with a chisel tomorrow doing wood.  I just need sleep and nutrition.

Busses.

When I was in grade school, I rode the bus to school.  It was a crowded school bus, and often you’d have to share your seat.  It could be a bit crazy sometimes, with so many 1-5th graders in one place.  The poor bus driver tried to maintain order mostly by making examples of the troublemakers and a warning system.  I was generally a pretty good kid, kept to myself and read quietly most of the time, but sometimes I couldn’t resist joining in the action, standing on the seats, yelling, shoving, whatever kids do on busses.

One particularly rowdy day, the bus driver called my name on her radio thing and ordered me to come to the front of the bus with all my stuff (I was notorious for sitting in the back, even fighting for the last row).  We were at the top of my hill, my stop was next.  She chastised me in front of everyone for standing on the bus, even though I certainly wasn’t the only one, and demanded that I stand next to her as she drove down the hill so that I could see how dangerous standing on the bus was (or something?).  I assume she wanted me to be afraid, to discourage me from doing it again by recalling the harrowing experience of standing without support on a moving vehicle.  I worked up my best scared-face during the ride, and when she asked me what I whether I liked it, I quickly shook my head “no” and tried my hardest to appear terrified and sorry.  She bought it and let me go home without a warning card.  Actually the ride down the hill was exhilarating, and quite fun.  I wanted to do it again!

Now, in college, I ride the bus again (though its the T and not a yellow dog), and I have to stand the entire ride almost every single day.  I’m not sure I like it so much anymore.

Uh, Midterms apparently.

So Midterms are apparently next week.

Uh… wtf?  I thought the semester just started?  Though looking at my rolling homework sheet, not really.  I’ve had a lot of projects so far, its not even worth keeping up the project updates like I did last semester.   There are a lot.

In the upcoming few weeks I’ll post a thread in Thread Preservation containing a debate with a self-proclaimed atheist/freethinker who claims that the only rational option for a freethinker… is vegetarianism.  I’m trying to corner him, but he’s proving to be quite slippery and seems to be more interested in running away from debate than actually testing out his argument (“Lets stop arguing and agree to disagree lol”).  A bit of a disappointment since his first responses to another poster were quite intelligent and reasonable, but not unexpected.  I did challenge his “logic” after all.  Vegetarian/vegans can be as closed-minded and resistant with their convictions as the Christians…

(Note: I don’t really care what your dietary choice is.  Just keep it to yourself, I’m not shoving a hamburger down your throat, so let me eat mine in peace, and without your guilt-cloud looming overhead.)

Oh and also I discovered that I really like fixing things, and tools.  I had to go to the hardware store this weekend to pick up some carpenter’s chisels for wood carving which starts soon.  I’m sure those around were highly amused by the role reversal… as an impatient Adam literally had to push me to the checkout area so that I would stop looking at the tools.  They WERE really cool.