The Wild Republic Hits the World Wide Web

Quixley, as previously mentioned, was sent here to force the local chapter into the computer age.  He spent the first month or so of his tenure just fixing up the machines themselves, which were old and slow and riddled with spyware.  After he managed to get everything in place, he started giving the others tutorials.  Some of them were a bit hesitant, and Leprosy still grumbles about everything, but his efforts are starting to see results.  Consequently, Quixley's job is much more laid-back these days.  I thought I should share with you a few of these results.

First of all, Parsley has developed a massive crush on Sandra Day Okapi, one of the justices on the Zoo-preme Court.  Parsley caught on to the whole web-browsing concept pretty easily, and it occurred to him to look up how Day Okapi was doing on the court.  He's never met her, but he has a lot of species pride, and she is his people's hero.  She's also apparently pretty hot, if okapis are your type.

He's taken to doing a lot of soulful pining in front of the computer like this, gazing on the image of his goddess.  At least it's not porn?

Gilly, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, has discovered online shopping.  Here he is at his favourite site.

Since we have remained staunch in our refusal to give him a credit card, Gilly can't do more than look, but he looks a lot.  He even has a wishlist.  He also has a really irritating habit of leaving the site up when he's ended his browsing session; we assume this is a new tactic intended to guilt us into giving him what he wants.

The website that has been the biggest hit around here is LiveJournal, despite LJ's recent issues.  Every last member of the local chapter, including all of the foreigners, has opened an LJ account, friending all of the others.  Here, for instance, you can see Omri writing in his journal; the text reads, 'Hey everyone, my next dancing bear show will be on Wednesday night.  I'm playing the dancing bear!'

This is kind of cool, but also logistically problematic, because there's only one computer between them all (except for Murchison and Magick, who have iPhones).  So someone is always on LJ, and there's always a queue of others waiting for their turn at LJ.  Here is the queue behind Omri while he was taking his turn:

You see the problem, right?  Someone posts something, and then everyone else wants to check their friends-list so that they can read it and leave comments, not to mention posting something of their own; but there's only the one computer, so they're always in the queue, and then sometimes someone spoils the folk still in the queue on what was posted and those who haven't had a chance to read it yet get angry.  It's kind of unfortunate.  Meanwhile, Gilly and Sir Theo are annoyed because they have less time to play Dominion now that everyone else wants computer time.

The juveniles have things a bit better, because they have periods of time when they can be on the computer while the adults are still working - although they do still have to contend with each other.

But this means that the adults boot them off when they're done working, so their computer time is restricted in other ways.  The kittens have complained to Jasper about this, but he hasn't been very sympathetic.

Facebook has been much less successful around here.  About half of the animals have joined it.  They seem to find it overly complicated or something.  Here's Quixley giving Humphrey and Seleucus a Facebook tutorial; Quixley said afterwards that no matter how many times he went over how to "like" things and Facebook walls, they didn't seem to catch on.

Over all, Quixley's done a good job of introducing computers to the local chapter of the Republic.  He's been less successful lobbying for a bigger budget, even with Alfredo's support.  Quixley thinks they need at least five machines, preferably ten, but the bureaucracy won't give him more money for this unless he can show that the computers are being used primarily for work, which he can't, because with only one computer, no single individual can get significant work done.

The Wild Republic Gets Tech-Savvy

So we have a zebra now.  His name is Quixley.  You will note that there are no "z"s in this name.  Zebras get sick of everyone always wanting their names to begin with "z"; it's an old joke and they're over it.  'You're a zebra!  Is your name... Zachary?'  In fact virtually no zebras have names that start with "z".  They much prefer "q" and "x".  Like Quixley.

When we first introduced him to Quixley, Parsley was rather distraught.  He's a very sweet guy, but more than slightly high-strung, and he has a bit of an inferiority complex that pokes its head up at odd moments.  In particular, he has this thing about zebras; he thinks that okapis are disfavoured because they're less stripy than zebras are.  If you look at this picture, you'll see Parsley's initial reaction upon realising that we'd brought home a zebra.

He was a bit taken aback.  You could see him looking at his stripy legs and then at Quixley's all-over stripyness and getting more threatened by the moment.  Then he ran over to AJD and stared up at him as though he'd been betrayed.  It took a while for AJD to sufficiently reassure him that we hadn't acquired a zebra because we thought Parsley was deficient and that we're very fond of Parsley and Quixley will never supplant him in our affections.

To our great relief, this actually worked. Parsley went back over to talk to Quixley, who graciously pretended not to have noticed his temporary panic, and they ended up having a sort of ungulate bonding session with Lazslo.

Fortunately Quixley is pretty chill that way.

Quixley is here because the powers that be in the Wild Republic hierarchy have decided, after months of debate, that it is time they entered the new millennium and got with it.  That is, it's time everyone learned how to use computers.  At the moment, the Wild Republic's technological expertise is sadly lacking.  Some of the animals - Sir Theo and Gilly, for instance - know how to use a computer for gaming purposes, and Rochester caught Mahler and Khamsin trying to get to a cat-porn site a while back, and a few of the others know how to use Word and Excel and check their email.  Tibby's computer skills are actually quite good.  But by and large, they're all pretty useless when it comes to computers, and the systems they've been using are all hopelessly out of date.

And this is where Quixley comes in.  He's a trained IT professional whose mission is to bring our local chapter into the new millennium if it kills him.  Everyone is supposed to be subjected to mandatory tutorials and training classes and this and that.  This should have commenced a week ago, but Quixley's still trying frantically to get the computers updated.  The systems they were using were so out-of-date, and had so many problems, that he's been working overtime.  Sadly, the budget doesn't extend to getting wholly new equipment (the powers that be aren't savvy enough to truly understand the necessity), so poor Quixley has his work cut out for him.

It's a good thing that Quixley appears to be the laid-back sort.  Lesser zebras might have been panicking by this point, but Quixley just drinks more coffee, shrugs, and gets on with things.

Eventually his job will become a pretty easy one, and he'll be able to spend his time doing whatever he feels like while answering the odd call of duty, but those days are still in the future, because many of the community members are less than thrilled about all this new-fangled technology crap.  Leprosy and Humphrey are particularly resistant to the idea, and are making it clear that while they'll comply with the mandatory training, they are doing so under duress.  Some of the others (Alfredo and Stal, for instance) are more willing but don't obviously have the aptitude.  The kittens are the most enthusiastic about the new technology, and will probably take to it more readily than the others, but come with their own set of problems.  Quixley doesn't seem fazed.  He says that he likes a challenge, and that it will all work out in the end.  You have to give the guy credit for his attitude.

Quixley is our resident geek.  It's not just that he's an IT expert, either.  He's watched every single episode of every single Star Trek series at least six times (and all the movies), and every episode of Babylon 5 at least thrice, and he's really into WoW, although he says his guild is about ready to disown him since he's been so busy working lately that he's neglected them sadly.  He likes computer and video games in general, particularly the sort of old-timey classics, although he also really likes Portal.  And Portal II; he's been after AJD to play Portal II so that they can talk about it, but AJD hasn't yet.   He's also a huge fan of George RR Martin, and is really looking forward to discussing the first season of the TV series with Alfredo, who hasn't read the books but liked the show because of the portrayal of wolves.  Quixley, of course, had read the books beforehand, so he's very curious to hear Alfredo's take on it.

Anyway, so Quixley is fun.  He doesn't take anything, including himself, overly seriously, but he's dedicated to his job all the same.  These are both qualities that should serve him well with this bunch.  I'll let you know how the training sessions go once they're underway; there's bound to be some interesting stuff to say about them.  The first thing Quixley means to do is explain to Plouie and the others that the iceberg is just an obsolete desktop, which should be interesting.

Group Hug!

Ungulates are so cute sometimes.  Need I say more?

An Epidemic of Falling Ungulates

For some reason there's been a recent trend of ungulates falling down the stairs.

It started when AJD and I watched Dirty Dancing with Parsley.  Parsley was really taken by the scene where Baby and Johnny are practising dancing on a log, and he wanted to try it too.  Having four legs made this a tricky proposition, so he settled for hanging out on the upstairs railing on his stomach, with his feet on either side, and wiggling around.  He seemed pretty happy there like that, so we let him stay there for a few days.  But Parsley's foray into dancing was cut short when he fell off the railing and tumbled all the way down the stairs.

I have fallen down these stairs myself, twice in fact, and I can attest that it is not a particularly pleasant experience.  Parsley insists that he's fine, and he did return to his usual self quite quickly, despite being banged up.  Pedro agreed that he is essentially fine, but ordered him to rest for a while just in case.  Gilly stayed with him.  His tail is a great boon to an invalid.

Then this morning Nicodemus, who had fainted on the bar (as displayed in my previous post), also took a tumble.  Nicky was luckier, in that he only fell to the ground on the second floor; he didn't really fall down the stairs.  He was very stoic about the whole thing.  Pedro says that Nicodemus is also fine, but he prescribed the same treatment (complete with Gilly and his marvelous tail) just in case.

Parsley has been energetically advocating falling completely down the stairs ever since.  He claims that the inexperience is just not complete if you don't tumble down the stairs and that it's great fun and worth trying.  AJD and I think Pedro should re-evaluate Parsley for a possible head injury.

My Menagerie Gets Media (sort of)

AJD's team has just finished running the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt (very successfully, from what I hear), which means that I can now reveal that several members of my menagerie were involved as well - in pictures, even.  The others who weren't included (particularly Rusty) are very jealous.

The puzzle featuring my darlings was called Soooo Cute!  If you go to the solution page (by clicking "Call in answer"), you'll see at the top that they're all credited:

featuring Parsley, Seleucus, Desmond, Barry, Vim, Winslow, Khamsin, Humphrey, Henri, and others

The others alluded to are not from my menagerie.  Barry was, initially, one of those others, but DS was looking for homes for them (because it would have been hard to transport them, I think?), so we adopted Barry.

Not only can I now reveal that this has happened, but I can also show their pictures, which I wasn't at liberty to do before.  So, here goes.

Barry:

You'll see that one again shortly, because I ought to do "so I have an elephant named Barry" post.

Humphrey:

Desmond:

We did two shots of each of them.  Desmond blinked the first time.

Henri:

Henri is very shy.  I'm not sure if you can tell.  It's something about being a mini-giraffe; it would probably make me shy too.

Winslow:

It's really hard to get a good picture of a beluga whale on a white background.  Try it yourself and you'll see.  The other one we took was sort of blindingly incandescent; it made Winslow look like a whale god, as far as you could make him out.

Seleucus:

Khamsin:

Parsley:

Vim.

You can't see his earring in this picture very well, but he has one.  If there are prizes for cuteness to be given amongst my animals, Vim is a really strong contender. 

Nocturnal Events (sort of)

Sleepyhead has become more lively of late.  I don't mean to suggest he's been awake more than in the past - as far as I can tell, he hasn't - but that he's started sleepwalking.  Yesterday I looked over and saw that he was on the floor, on his feet, about three inches from the mattress, staring blankly at the bookcase.  Totally asleep.

These hijinks, such as they were, were sufficient to alarm Parsley, who, by the time I went to bed, was utterly convinced he'd somehow lost him.  He was hanging off the head of the bed, frantically searching for Sleepyhead.  Since my mattress is actually on the floor, a quick glance must have told him Sleepyhead wasn't there, but Parsley was concerned enough not to notice.  Then he fell off entirely.  He was extremely relieved when I returned Sleepyhead to the bed safe and sound.

Today, Sleepyhead didn't do any sleepwalking.  Parsley is sort of hovering over him; I can't tell whether that's a factor or not.

South Room Duty

AJD and I have different circadian rhythms: he's a night owl and I'm a lark.  We've learned the hard way that we have a tendency to screw up each other's sleep cycles, so during the week I usually end up sleeping in my room rather than his.  Every Sunday, when I migrate back to my room, one or two of the Wild Republicans come with me.

I never choose who is going to be posted for duty in my room for that week, because I'm not capable of choosing between my animals.  Ask me which of them is my favourite, and I will reply that I don't have a favourite, but I have a special soft spot for Sleepyhead and Plouie and Cami and Mahler and Seleucus and... before long I will have produced a litany of the entire populace.  My favourite animal is whichever one I happen to be holding at the time.

The reasons behind the assignments are not entirely clear to me.  Sometimes, AJD asserts, the animal with south room duty volunteers simply because he likes me.  This was the case with Parsley (the okapi), who is on duty this week.  Other times there seems to be more to it than that.  For the young ones, south room duty seems to be a break from study (for them), with an additional bonus in some cases as an opportunity for the adults to have one less rambunctious youngster around.  For the adults, it's sometimes a sort of working vacation, and sometimes a bit more.

Alfredo and Beppe had south room duty together last week, and this was both an opportunity for them to re-bond after their separation and a chance for Alfredo to get a bit of a break before throwing himself into preparations for the arrival of the delegation from the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy; as leader, most of the work falls to him.  Alfredo tends to use south room duty as a chance to confer with Seal about stuff - what, I'm not privy to.  Conferring with Seal, and sometimes even the private citizens, is apparently part of the point at least some of the time.

Sometimes Murchison is posted here, which is particularly intriguing.  He's a secret agent of some sort, and he doesn't believe in time off, so whenever south room duty falls to Murchison, one has to suspect something is up.

Sleepyhead has permanent south room duty.  I don't think this was planned; I think that initially the idea was that he'd be in here until his jet lag wore off.  Since he's been here almost six months and is just as jet-lagged as he was at first, I've taken his presence here as permanent; it's a good thing Seal has a certain fondness for him.  The other animals vary dramatically in their reactions to Sleepyhead.  Khamsin thinks he's really boring; Vim thinks he's confusing; Cami is worried about him; Tibby thinks he's unusually enlightened; Seleucus returned from his last south room duty feeling like his sense of reality had been warped; some of the others just ignore him; and so on.

Parsley hadn't had south room duty in a very long time - long enough that I don't think he'd met Sleepyhead before.  He clearly falls into the "Sleepyhead is good for cuddling" camp, which is good, because Sleepyhead took an immediate shine to him.  I conjecture that south room duty for Parsley - this time, at least - is going to be purely a mission of R&R.