Cat returns after MIA for 16 years!!
I hope they have some time left together; that cat is old, you can tell by the eyes. 
Happy Easter! And for everyone who ever had a chocolate bunny, you can relate to this.
Making it's annual appearance:
And funny every year! 
Nice story about the cat who was reunited with it's owner after so many years. 
You should put your Easter Egg Hunt story here, from the Weather topic!
Since you insist, from the weather thread:
I remember the worst Easter egg hunt we ever took our kids to. I was visiting my brother down in Miami and the egg hunt was on the real "Miami Beach". A local radio station had buried plastic eggs in the sand, said there was money in them, and blocked that part of the beach off with yellow tape.
Man, was there a lot of people there and I don't think some of them even had kids with them. Right at 11am they "opened the gates" and a stampede of people hit the beach with adults digging in the sand like dogs. Our kids only got a few eggs and the cheapo radio station was only putting like 3 pennies to a nickel in each plastic egg. Terrible scene with a bunch of kids crying and never again!
And to top it off it was hot, about 85 degrees, with the sun beating down and no shade. Not my idea of an Easter egg hunt.
spd2demun wrote:
Cat returns after MIA for 16 years!!
I hope they have some time left together; that cat is old, you can tell by the eyes.
Well......when I clicked on that link I was immediately taken to a screen wanting me to sign in to MSN. No story on the cat. Weird.
It worked for me, and I'm not signed in for anything MSN. Check your email.
Thanks SPD. Interesting story.....yeh amazing story. Poor old cat must have been a good hunter to have survived so long on her own.
I want to take this opportunity to wish all my friends on here a wonderful Easter. It's an absolutely gorgeous day here in Missouri. Not a cloud in the sky. After last night's low temperature of 32.3 degrees we now have 60.6 and rising. Alfie and I have had our morning walk and he has been fed his breakfast. We spotted a fox from a distance this morning. When the fox saw us it wandered off into the deep grass down in the woods by the creek to the north of our home.
Right now mom and I are enjoying, as we often do, the Sunday morning broadcast of beautiful music from the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. It's on channel 1567, the BYU channel, if you would enjoy a half hour of lovely and inspirational music.....every Sunday morning at 10:30 CDT.
A little later we'll head over to the Kansas side of the line to our oldest son's home. He and his wife and family have invited us to share their Easter dinner. It'll be a crowd....probably....with the three kids and, most likely, one boyfriend and one girlfriend.
Best wishes from us all.
Happy Easter to you, too, Phil!
Well, that story was from Germany. I know in the UK, people are chastised for making cats stay indoors! Maybe there's more animal cruelty in our country?
Cats should be kept indoors for their own safety. If you have lots of land away from busy streets, that's another story. Some cats have always lived outdoors and cannot adjust to being indoors.
And if cats are outside in the US, they are blamed for killing birds (not all do), which is their *nature*. Can't win.
oz_1 wrote:
I like how the comment section after the article shammed them for letting their cats outside since all animals long to go outdoors its part of their nature and it would be cruel
to not allow them the opportunity.
The missing cat story is amazing. I heard a story on animal's amazing skills about 20 years ago and the key example was a trucker in Australia who stopped his 18 (36?) wheeler at a rest stop and to let his dog do his business. The dog started chasing a rabbit and he was on a tight schedule and had to leave the dog behind 
18 months later, the dog bounded into his front yard and into the owners arms. 1500 miles away! Wow!
My aunt had a cat that got left behind in a move 
but he mysteriously showed up months later at their new place, about 100 miles away.
HOW dogs and cats do this, I don't know, but they sure have one up on us humans! No maps, signs, or GPS! 
I had a C=64,
On to another story - got this as an email - "free" light:
duhhhhh ~ why didn't I think of this one........?
I have a friend who used her solar lights inside at night when her current was off during the hurricane. She stuck them in a jar or bottle and said they gave off plenty of 'free light'. She put one in each room and would put them back outside in the daytime and bring them in at night as long as the current was off. They are safe to use and cheaper than batteries. Bring in a solar light one night and test it.
Due to a thunderstorm, we lost power for about 5 hours. We were scrambling around in the darkness, looking for matches, candles, flashlights, etc. We looked outside, and noticed our solar lights shining brightly all around our patio, stairs, dock, etc. They were beautiful. My wife walked outside, and brought several of the solar lights inside.
We stuck the solar light pipes into plastic drink bottles containers and they made the nicest, brightest, safest, lighting you could ever imagine.
We put one in the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, etc. There was plenty of light. There are all types of solar lights available. We bought ours at Harbor Freight. We put them all around our yard. They look nice and they do not attract flying bugs like the outdoor lights around our doorway.
The lights we have fit into the small (20 oz) water bottles and they also fit into most of the larger liter bottles. If you need a weight in the plastic bottle to keep them from tipping over, you can put a few of the pretty colorful "flat marbles" that they put in aquariums, and vases. (you can also use sand, aquarium gravel, etc., whatever you have available).
The lights we have were perfect inside our home. They burn all night long if you need them.
The next day, you just take your solar lights back outside and they will instantly recharge and be ready for you to use again any time you need them.
Perfect for power outages, hurricanes, etc.
I never thought of it, and now you don't have to. -----
We figured that out about the yard solar lights when a few activated in the trunk, LOL! LED flashlights in every room here as well (even the bathroom). Nothing worse than taking a shower and the power goes out. Also, battery-operated candles in the living room (about 15!), so we're covered. The antique hurricane lanterns stay filled with clear oil up on the mantle, but haven't used them since the early 1980s. Candles with fire are a no-go here with all the cats.
Now that guy is just an animal hater! And get it right, it's Coke bottles, not pop bottles!
Technically, it's illegal in Houston to tape anything to an existing road sign here. The biggest complaint is people don't remove the signs after a pet has been found, and leaving tape on the sign post. Garage sales are a big offender in that area. I've never seen them go after anyone for it though. But, it's okay for gansta tagging on them because you just can't find who did it.
Yep. My first computer was a Commodore 64....with the little color CRT monitor and a floppy drive. I purchased a Sears dot matrix printer and I was in business. Had a software suite from some Canadian company that included word processor, database and spread sheet. Used to write my Ham Radio Club monthly newsletter on it. Amazing software. It was designed to deal with and work around the limited memory in the computer. That was back in 1986.
Good idea on the solar lights. But....do they have an off switch? We've never owned any. Don't seem to last long. By that I mean.....the ones in our neighbors' yards last a few months and then they wink out one by one. They're constantly having to replace them.
Well.....here we all are.....income tax time again.
Computer-Joe wrote:
Hey Phil, Carbide is used to produce acetylene gas. As the addition of water to carbide creates an exothermic reaction and produces heat and you can actually get burned without even lighting it. We used to use calcium carbide for gophers and moles by putting around a quarter cup down the hole, washing deep in with a hose,wait ten minutes and light.
Hey Dh, although an acetylene lamp is fairly bright, I think what you might be talking about is a carbon light or carbon arc light which is truly brighter than the sun if looking directly at them. I had to work with them when I was a teen working in the projection room at our local movie house. We'd have to remove the rods (about the diameter of a pencil) every other reel and stick them in an aparatus similar to an electric pencil sharpener to re-point them for the brightest burn. The carbon arc is also used in metal production to smelt the metal only their arc rods are 30 feet long and 2 or 3 feet across.
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I got this from Wikipedia. This is the form of Carbide that I'm familiar with that reacts with water to produce methane:
Methanides
Carbides of this class decompose in water producing methane. Two such examples are aluminium carbide Al4C3 and beryllium carbide Be2C.
The reaction of transition metal carbides with water is very slow and is usually neglected. For example, depending on surface porosity, 5–30 atomic layers of titanium carbide are hydrolyzed within 5 minutes at ambient conditions, following by saturation of the reaction.[3]
Methanides in general chemical context refers to any compound that hydrolyzes to methane, which might include also salts with hydrogenated anions such as CH3−, CH2−
2, and CH−
3. However, according to IUPAC systematic naming conventions, only the last is properly called "methanide". In theory one can describe compounds that contain the methyl group, with relatively large bond polarity between the carbon and non-hydrogen atom, as salts of this anion; however in truth most such compounds, if not all, are in fact covalent.
