CozyNet Blog

General Update v22

Abandoned old school building in Techuacana Texas.

If it wasn’t already evident, I had a little break from the WWW, but I’m back to posting again! It was partly due to my attempts in reducing screen time and figuring out where I was spending my time. I believe I found a pretty good balance, but it could be better. I’ve also been quite active with church stuff, house work, work work, and visiting with family too, which leaves me with little time to poke around the computer.

So what all have I been up to!?

Well I went on a little road trip thru Texas to see a neat old ghost town with an abandoned university I’ve only ever read about and finally got to see it in person. Actually I was passing thru and it wasn’t too far off my course. Here are a few photos of it:

This is the Texas Hall Old Trinity University of Techuacana Texas. It’s an impressive building with architectural elements that aren’t very common in this state or the south in general. Notice the nice mansard roof! You can read more on it here if interested.

A piece of interesting history I read about Techuacana was “In 1850, the town came in second in an election held to decide the new Texas state capitol, which Austin ultimately won.” It’s pretty wild to think that in some hypothetical alternate timeline, Techuacana or “Tawakanah Hill” could have been the state capitol! This whole town, which by the way is a ghost town, could have been what Austin is today. It’s also not that far away from the Mexia oil fields which were a big booming business during the 1920’s.

I can imagine in the good timeline, Austin turned out to be the ghost town and Techuacana the big city! :^)

I also took a few other pictures around the town. Surprisingly there are still people living around here too in some quite nice looking old homes.

I’ve been wanting to share my progress on learning how to make windows for my house. It’s been slow going since I don’t have much time to focus on it after work, but what I’ve been doing is learning how to make just a single corner so that I’m not wasting too much wood (aka stock.) I’ve never used power tools like this before, so I’m learning how to use my tools on top of learning the correct methods in making my cuts and stuff.

For the moment I’m just using 2x4’s for now, but the dimensions will need to be changed for when I make the actual window so that it looks proportionally correct with the rest of the house and its existing original windows.

My efforts in reducing the amount of time I spend on my computer have been quite successful. I’ve noticed that when I get bored, I have a tendency to refocus my attention toward my computer. Since I removed a large chunk of distracting low quality feeds from my feed reader, there’s very little for me to actually do on the computer.

Since I don’t play video games anymore, have already seen just about every show and movie I wanted to see to last me a lifetime, and recently switched back to a very default Ubuntu install with nothing to tinker on, there just ain’t nothing to do on the computer anymore!

I’ll sit down at my desk to just stare at the wallpaper for a few minutes, flip thru my email inboxes in Thunderbird, then get up and walk away to do something else – and dare I say, that’s a good thing!

I’m realizing there are plenty of better things to do IRL than on the internet anymore, especially since the web has gone down the can to such a depth that it’s not really usable anymore. It use to be a pretty cool place for niche activities and stuff, but since it’s become a digital common square for everyone strapped to their phones, it’s just not the same anymore.

I was at my parents one weekend and they had the TV on like they always do, and the movie “Piranha” (1978) came on. I made a remark on all the bustling activity in the river as people were zipping around in boats like drunk lunatics and my parents said that’s exactly what life was like back then and how there was a big scene of families and young people that would hang out at camp grounds with lakes and rivers all the time.

It’s an interesting flip in social activity as people today are primarily focused on their phones to socialize while mostly abandoning real interaction. Nobody ever really gets out anymore, and then sit around at home and complain about being depressed, fat, and lonely. Gee I wonder why?

Of course money and time are no doubt a contributing factor, but I think there’s more going on here than merely economics.

Anyhow, I’ll spend quite a few hours writing a blog like this one or tinkering around in FL Studio making a little song, but I’m not always in a creative mood. Fortunately there’s always house work to be done, it’s just a darn shame this place doesn’t look like I do anything with it at all.

Anyone coming to visit me at home.

If you’re an owner of indoor cats, I recently discovered pine pellets for cat litter. It’s an alternative to clay based clumping litter that you can throw out in the back yard unlike clay litter which will remain forever.

There’s a way of doing it right and a way of doing it wrong though. You’ll need a litter box with a sifter designed for pine pellets and a scoop made for pellets too, otherwise if you’re using the same old box and scoop intended for clay litter, you’ll be spending all day long trying to sift thru the pellets.

When the pellets get wet, they turn to saw dust that can fall thru the sifter grates. You can also “sift” the litter box by moving it like a gold pan to allow any additional saw dust to fall thru to the bottom pan. You’ll also want to set a layer of pine pellets in the bottom pan in order to prevent any excess liquid from puddling.

The pellet scoop is designed to allow for pellets to easily fall thru while collecting any solid waste whereas a traditional litter scoop isn’t as effective since the pellets are too large to fall thru the holes. It took me awhile to find a scoop, but typing in “pine pellet litter scoop” on Amazon brought me to what I was looking for. I’ve seen videos of people on YouTube using the wrong scoops and litter boxes, making it into a drawn out ordeal that shouldn’t take anymore than two minutes.

Also, regardless of the type of litter you use, you should be sifting it out daily if not twice a day. I frequently hear stories from people that say they do it once a week, which is down right disgusting! You might as well move into a barn with livestock if that’s how you’re going to live with animals in the house. It’s alright to leave the saw dust in the bottom pan for a couple of days, but don’t let it sit for too long because it piles up quick.

Anyhow, I like this system a whole lot more because I can dump the saw dust and waste out into a hole in the backyard and know that it’ll dissolve into the soil unlike clay litter which lingers around like nuclear waste. Oh and also since these are pine pellets, there’s no more litter scatter all over the floor!

I recommend a litter box with a metal grate and pan instead of plastic simply because plastic is porous and will absorb odors.

I’ll be at the Texas Linux Fest in Austin this October 3’rd - 4’th. In preparation for the event, I bought an automatic cat feeder for the cats which is working well so far. I got it mostly for day to day use so that I don’t have to keep feeding them nor keep a lot of cat food out either (since they get picky over stale food and it can also attract roaches.) I have a water fountain for them too, but plan to set out a few water dishes.

Since my dog eats like a cat, I can set out a lot of dog food inside his house and he’ll munch on it whenever he wants. He’s not as picky about his food and I keep poison down around his house to keep insects away.

Well that's all I have to share for this one. See ya next post!

Thanks for reading my blog!