A short Beeper story

This is a short Beeper story that I made up. If you wonder who some of the characters are then you can look back to one of my previous posts as I have descriptions of a few characters in it.
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The Dangerous Flowers

Skeeper Skid, King of the Goodcars, had gone on a drive to visit his friend Bop. He drove along, humming happily to himself and sniffing the flowers that lined the street. As he drove over to sniff a large flower growing in a slightly untidy yard he was horrified when it stuck to his nose and started grinding on his nose. The flower was really both not a flower and made of metal. It was trying to grind a hole in Skeeper's nose!

"Hellkkpp!!" Skeeper shrieked, tugging on the metal stem of the flower and shrieking. He took off down the street, completely forgetting to see whose yard it had been in and trying to pull it off all the while. Cars turned to look as Skeeper careened past, howling and apparently pulling on something stuck to his nose. Several cars made the connection that something had happened to Skeeper and that Skeeper was their King. They shot off down the street after him to try to help him with whatever was stuck to his nose. They eventually caught him, but not until the flower had drilled a nice 3 inch hole in his nose. Skeeper was carted off to the hospital (the repair shop), to have his nose repaired and Bop, upon hearing of what had happened, called the police.

When Bop called the police there was a Badcar hiding behind the police station. He had an old telephone that he had especially for the purpose of eavesdropping and he was busy doing just that. He had taken the phone apart and removed the microphone so that he could listen but not talk. That way nobody would hear him listening in when he was. He had found the phone box where the phone line connected to the phone jacks inside the building and pried it open. He had then connected his modified phone to the main line and sat back to listen.
When Bop called the Badcar heard his detailed description of what had happened to Skeeper. He was very interested, as he thought that was a great idea, especially as Goodcars always seemed to be sniffing at flowers. Picking up his telephone the Badcar drove off down the street towards a certain Goodcar's house where the Badcar had a suspicion he could learn more about these highly dangerous and entertaining flowers.

to be continued . . .

Upgrade

I am going to be upgrading my computer! I finally have enough money to do an upgrade that I have been thinking about for over a year. This upgrade should make my computer at least 5 times as fast as it is right now. Right now I have a 900 MHz AMD Duron processor in my computer. I will be getting a new motherboard and an AMD Athlon64 2800+ CPU. This chip only runs at 1.8 GHz (1800 MHz) but it is supposed to be equivalent to an Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz. It is also a 64 bit chip, while both the Duron that I currently have and almost all of the Intel chips are only 32 bit.
A 64 bit CPU (Central Processing Unit, or Processor) has twice as many registers as a 32 bit chip and an onboard memory controller, which together help to make it much faster than a 32 bit chip of the same clock speed. A 64 bit CPU will run an 32 bit operating system (such as the currant versions of Micropoft Windoze) and 32 bit applications better than a 32 bit chip but it will run a 64 bit operating system (such as several distributions of Linux, including SuSE Linux) much better than a 32 bit OS (Operating System) on the same system.
I will also be getting a 512 mb stick of RAM (Random Access Memory) to go with it. I currently have 384 mb of slower RAM in my computer.
I will be getting an Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0 mouse too, as the mouse that I have now, although wireless, simply does not suit my needs. It is inaccurate, heavy, not overly comfortable, and likes to collect gunk on it's little plastic feet, causing it to stick to the desk and move in little jerks instead of smoothly. The Intellimouse (or Insmellymouse, if you don't like Microsoft) has a cord but is much more accurate, comfortable, and lightweight than the mouse that I am currently using.

Overall this will be a vast improvement over my current system, as I will have a much better computer. Not only that but I will sell my old motherboard, processor, and memory to my sister, who has about one of the crummiest computers that I have ever seen and would greatly benefit from a new one.

The last nester

We have one more nesting goose. Athena, my Brown Chinese goose, has been sitting on her nest for over 3 weeks and her eggs should be hatching soon. She started setting a few days after Comet's eggs hatched. She was very sneaky about her nest and to tell the truth I really didn't know about it until she started setting on it. She covered the eggs with straw when she wasn't there and made very sure that nobody saw her going in or out of the brooder house where she had built her nest until she started incubating her eggs.
One night when I was feeding the geese I could not find Athena anywhere. My sister and I started to look for her as we where afraid that something had eaten her or something. Eventually we thought to look in the brooder house and there she was, sitting on a nest and flattening herself down to the straw like she didn't want to be seen. We now know that she has at least 9 eggs. She must have been laying eggs in that nest for close to 2 weeks and we never found it.
Queen, who is one of our ganders, had often been found sitting about in the same place and acting like he thought he was sitting on a nest. Maybe he was sitting on a nest. He may have thought that he had layed the eggs and was going to hatch them. When Athena started setting she promptly put an end to Queen sitting on her nest. Besides, he wasn't even sitting on it correctly. He was sort of half on and half off the nest.
Athena's eggs should hatch within a week or so and then *hopefully* I won't have any more goslings this year.

Chickens?

For months I have been considering getting a few chickens. Ducks eat a huge ammount more food than chickens do, (that's why you don't want to give ducks medicated chicken food, they overdose themselves) so if I where to get, say, 4 or 5 chickens they really wouldn't eat much more than 1 or 2 ducks. And sometime this year we will probably be chopping about half of our drake population, so it wouldn't really cost me any more money to keep them. The problem is, I think the coop where I would get them is doing their last order in less than a week. I guess that I will have to decide pretty quickly what I want to do. I have a hen house in the goose pen for the geese and I could keep the chickens in that with the geese. The geese don't use it all the time and since there is no water bucket in there it isn't damp inside eather. Chickens aren't very expensive and the goose that has built her nest in my brooder house should have hatched her eggs and be out of there long before the chicks came. I guess I will just have to decide what I want to do. I don't especially need chickens but I would like to have a few.

Glasses

I had to get glasses. I had been noticing that I couldn't see anything further away than 3 feet clearly and Mom set me up for an visit to the optometrist. It turned out that I was nearsighted just like Mom and Dad. I was going to have to get glasses. It was okay with me because it was really annoying not to be able to read any signs in town unless the letters were at least a foot high and simply not being able to see things clearly.
For a while Dad was wanting me to pay for half of the bill but I hated that idea. It would have been $150, all the money that I had saved up to upgrade my computer. Mom had been thinking that she would pay for most of it with her paycheck from the post office and I think that is what is going to happen. I think it will be something like $50 a month or something like that. At least it didn't take all my money. And now I can actually see things again!

Goats Goats and more Goats

Goats goats goats goats goats goats and more goats. Every year it seems that our goat heard doubles, triples, or quadruples. The first year we had 2 goats. The next year we had 5 goats. The year after that we had 9. Last year we had 19. Currently we have 25 and the potential for 38 or so. I don't know what will happen this fall when we have close to 40 goats to feed through the winter. If we don't get rid of some we will go bankrupt! I think that we may be able to comfortably feed 15 to 20 through the winter maximum. And 20 isn't anywhere near 40.

I think that Dad will have to start butchering come fall. We simply can't feed 40 goats through the winter, just like I can't feed 25 or 30 geese through the winter. I will try to sell as many geese as I can but most of the others will have to be chopped and put on the table for Christmas. I can feed around 10 geese through the winter and I simply can't change that fact. I like geese a lot and I like goats too, but the problem is that while they are very good at multiplication they haven't got the faintest idea what subtraction is.

Beeper

Years ago I made up a game that involved the 20 or so matchbox cars that I had at the time. I called it Beeper, which was the name of one of my favorite cars. In the game the cars were all alive and talked and thought and so on and they all lived in a town called Cartown. Cartown was sort of split down the middle, with the Goodcars living on one side and the Badcars living on the other. As their names suggest the Goodcars where nice, good, honest cars, while the Badcars where mean, lying, cheating, stealing, naughty cars. Over the coarse of time I refined the game and added more cars. Often I would play it with my younger sister, who would play with the Goodcars. I would play with the Badcars and we always had a lot of fun. Often I would end up building elaborate towns for the cars. I usually made the houses out of paper but sometimes I would cut up old cardboard boxes and use them to make the houses. Several times I have also made whole castles for the cars, making them similar to Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. I called these castles Boghoarts and they where basically different versions of a Hogwarts for cars. Once I even started on a city for the cars, made out of cardboard and complete with skyscrapers. I ended up only finishing less than half of Badside, as I got tired of building the houses and by that time I had close to 60 Badcars. Now I probably have about 75 to 90 matchbox cars and my sister probably has 40 or 50.
Here are a few of the more important cars in Cartown:


Badcars:

Beeper Badcar: Beeper is the king of Badside, and is just about as bad as they get. He likes to swipe things, even though he could easily buy them, being one of the richest cars in Cartown. He easily has the largest house in Badside, which he often packs with broken pieces of machinery, old and discarded parts, and just general junk. He has an older computer which he likes to play all sorts of games on, especially games such as "Skeeper Stomper", and "Boo Basher". One of Beeper's worst enemies is Skeeper Skid, the King of Goodside.

Klagbag Jug: Klagbag is Beeper's best friend and trusty sidekick. He isn't anywhere near being a genius but is very loyal to Beeper. Klagbag has 3 cars that always go around with him like bodyguards and are generally referred to as '"Klagbag's Gang". They are Baddy Mail, a mail truck, Baddy Trash, a trash truck, and Dog, a silly car who looks somewhat like a wheeled dog. None of these 3 are especially bright, but they will do almost anything that Klagbag askes of them.

Sinder Soot: Sinder is a large, heavy black car who leads Sinder's Band, the local gang, and is about the biggest crook in Cartown. Sinder and his band can see in the dark and they are usually about after dark. Rumor has it that Sinder says that a day has been wasted if he hasn't stolen at least 1 thing that night. Sinder's Band also likes to play mean pranks on other cars, especially Goodcars. One of Sinder's favorite pastimes, other than plotting another heist upon somebody's belongings, is to dream up ways to total Boo Bang.

Boo Bang: Boo is a strange car that tends to hang out by himself and loves to play mean pranks on anybody. He is Sinder's greatest nemesis and often will mess with the wiring in Sinder's house to cause various mishaps. Boo is somewhat like a large wheeled insulated, as he does not conduct electricity for some odd reason and therefore cannot be hurt by it. He especially loves to wire light switches in Goodcar's houses so that when a Goodcar flips the switch he will first be zapped and then the switch will blow up in his face.

Aften: Aften is a Badcar airplane. He is very fat and therefore he usually has a hard time taking off and landing. He is also not very manuverable when he is flying. He has a large number of built in weapons, being a warplane, but he is not known for his ability to aim well.


Goodcars:

Skeeper Skid: Skeeper is the king of Goodside. He is a nice, kind car, but he has a tendency to loose his temper and do rash, ungoodcarish things. Beeper is a major annoyance in Skeeper's life, and sometimes he will do something that Skeeper feels is completely inexcusable, such as planting pressure sensitive explosives inside all of the cookies that Skeeper had prepared for a meeting with his friends. When a thing like this happens a short war with Badside generally ensues, until Skeeper's anger fizzles out or Beeper manages to blow his engine out with a machine gun.

Bop Boop: Bop is Skeeper's best friend and loves to do fun things with Skeeper. Bop is a large pink car who is slightly overweight due to his over fondness for sweets. Bop and Klagbag do not get along, Klagbag generally trying to feed Bop broken glass or smash his windshield with an chair.

Gold Golden: Gold is a long green limousine with white checkers in places and a gold colored underside and trimmings. He loves to paint himself, sometimes doing it as much as a dozen times a week. He is known to have a tantrum if his paint is slightly scratched by something. He is on close terms with Skeeper and often attends meetings with him and some of his other friends. Gold has 3 close friends named Winner, Chrome, and Cylinders. They all love to paint or polish themselves and help Gold run Paint Heaven, the Goodside paint store and salon. Neither Gold or his friends have any great love for Sinder, preferring to run screaming for their homes at the first sight of him after dark.

Imp Impararey: Imp is the main Goodcar petty criminal, often making off with things such as Skeeper's best crown, Beeper's buzz saw, or Bop's sweats. He has been in the Goodcar jail more times than he can count and is known to covet the throne of Goodside. Skeeper greatly dislikes Imp, especially since Imp has hatched several hair-brained schemes to dethrone Skeeper and place himself on the throne of Goodside.


There are many more major cars, both good and bad, but I don't have time to name them all at this time. Check back soon as I will likely be posting more bios of the residents of Cartown soon.

The honking pillows

Early this week I had caught Snowflake, one of my geese, and was holding him when I noticed that he was molting. His wing feathers were not loose yet, but his down was. We had been talking about plucking the geese for their down when they molted for some time, but had never really done anything. As being plucked is at it's worst very annoying for the goose and at the end the gooses pride is hurt more than his body it really is okay to pluck a live goose, especially since you only pluck the down under their wings and on their breast. We caught Mr. Winston Goose and decided to pluck him first. His down came out easily and what he disliked more than having his fluff pulled out was having to lay on his back on my knees for about 15 minutes. We were able to fill a plastic shopping bag about 1/3 full and a small paper bag up to the top with Winston's down. Next we plucked Snowflake, who greatly disliked having to lay on his back while his feathers where pulled out. We ended up putting my sister's coat over his head and after that he quieted down considerably. The last goose we did that day was Mr. Queen, a gander, who had already started molting several weeks ago and was getting new wing feathers. He didn't like being plucked very much either, but he was a lot nicer about it that Snowflake was. At the end of that day we had a small paper bag and one fairly large shopping bag full of white goose down.
The next day we had school, but the day after that we caught King Konk and plucked him. He didn't like it one bit but that was because we were holding on to him and not letting him go over to his goslings like he wanted, not as much because we were removing most of his down. I don't know how many geese it will take to make a pillow, but I figure that if we pluck all of the geese we should have enough down for at least one pillow.

More Goslings

We have more goslings. Late last week another one of our geese hatched her eggs. Sparks had been sitting on 4 eggs for around a month and they finally hatched. All four hatched and although Sparks didn't have a very good idea on how to be a mother at first she learned fast. I had to lift the goslings out of the little house where Sparks had built her nest as the ledge to the door was much too high for them to get out of. Since then she has only gone in there once. A day or two later I came outside to see the 4 goslings sleeping beside Meesa, one of our other geese, and Sparks sitting in the house apparently under the impression that she was sitting on her goslings. After we set Sparks to rights by forcefully removing her from the house and showing her where the goslings where she seemed to loose most of her interest in the house. We put the goslings in the house with her once and they stayed in with her for almost a day before several of them escaped and we helped the others out. Since then I have never seen Sparks in the little house. All of her little goslings seem to be doing fine, especially since both Meesa and her sister Miah have pretty much adopted the goslings too. Meesa had raised a brood of goslings a few years ago so she probably has a better idea what she is doing than Sparks does. Everybody is doing very well now, even going on illegal jonts down to the neighbors whenever I'm not looking.

Murderer

About a week ago something killed the only gosling of one of my geese. Spex had sat on 2 eggs for about a month and somewhere around the 11th or 12th of this month one of the eggs hatched. The other egg did not hatch and she threw it out of the nest so it must have been rotten. She was a first timer so she wasn't extremely good at being a mother but she got better quickly. Then one morning it happened. I had shown the little gander to dad early that morning and he had been just fine. An hour or two later I finished playing my music and went outside to check on Spex. She and her mate, Sondwodzoe, where standing in the little shelter that is by the front door of our house and is where they had made their nest and where acting very agitated. I could not find the gosling in the shelter no matter where I looked. I came out of the shelter for a minute and saw something yellow laying on the ground by a mud puddle about 10 feet away. It was the gosling, laying on his back by the puddle -- dead. About 10 minutes later it started to rain. I did not know what could have killed Spex's only gosling, but I wasn't going to take any chances with the other 5 so I locked Comet, King, and the 5 goslings up in the hen house. I also went and caught Spex, who was still sitting in her shelter just as she had been when she had a gosling to sit on, and put her in the hen house with Comet and the goslings. I figured that since Spex was programmed to take care of goslings at that time then I might as well put her with some goslings to take care of. When I checked on her an hour or so later she had several of her mother Comet's goslings under her wings.
Now, over a week later, Spex seems to have pretty much adopted her mother's goslings. Both Comet and Spex are busy taking care of the 5 goslings now. Spex seems to be pretty content too, as she has goslings to care for and guard. I am very glad that I had more goslings around that she could help with, and that their mother was so receptive to her help. Otherwise I don't know what I would have done with Spex, as she is programmed to care for goslings at this time, even if she does't have one any more.

Goslings

We have goslings! One of my geese, Comet, hatched her eggs about 2 weeks ago. She had been sitting on a nest of 8 eggs for about a month and finaly they hatched! It was about 20 degrees when they hatched. 1 egg didn't quite manage to hatch because she moved off the nest with the other 7 and it froze. A few days later 1 of the little ganders died, probably because he was weaker than the others and maby got hypothermia. We put him in a box in the house but forgot to leave the light on him all night and he didn't make it. 1 more little gander drowned in the water pan about 3 days ago. He evidentaly managed to climb into the pan but couldn't get back out and eventually drowned. Now Comet has 4 girls and 1 gander. They are all doing fine right now, even though it has been raining constantly and now it is snowing. In May too!


2 of my geese and their goslings. The goose Comet is in the back, with King Konk, the gander, in front. 1 of the 5 goslings is behind Comet. The gosling on the far right is a gander, while the others are geese (females).

Extremely Annoying Sister

My little sister is being about as annoying as they can possibly get. She is very bossy and often she likes to act like she thinks she is my mother. For instance when she is washing the dishes it is "Get in hear and get rid of the scraps!" and then 2 minutes later it is "Get in hear and rinse the dishes -- NOW!!" And if she finds that I have uninstalled an application from my computer she is like "Where's such and such." I say that I uninstalled it and she demands to know why. I tell her that I had to remove it and she repeates herself. I tell her that would she please leave me alone and that I would really appriciate it if she could keep her nose out of my screen. Besides, it really isn't any more her business what apps I uninstall off my computer than it is my business what color if underwear she has on. She won't go away and I get mad and yell at her to please just bug off and she spends the next half our leacturing me about why not to yell, especially not to her. I tell her that she is just making me madder and she repeates herself another 200 times. Of course since I don't have my own room there is absolutely no place I can go to get away from her. She also greatly enjoyes hitting me whenever she thinks she can get away with it as she is a girl and can hit the boy, but since the boy is a boy he can't hit the girl. So she hits me and never gets in trouble. You can probably guess what happens if I loose control hit her back. "Mom! Mom! Jason hit me!" and Jason gets it. I really nead some place that I can go to get away from Sneazer (or as she calles herself, Keely). As it is there is absolutely no way that I can escape and so she can content herself with driving me as nuts as possible. What an annoying little girl.

Tree Attempts to Squash Truck

Yesterday when I arrived home from spending a weekend with my cousins I was astonished to find a large pine tree laying accross the toolbox of the pickup truck. I also saw that it had compleatly mashed the shed that I keep my motorcycle in. It turned out that the tree had fallen that morning as it had been very windy. The sides of the truck were slightly crumpled, but if the truck hadn't been there my motorcycle would have been completely squashed. Mom's bicycle wasn't so lucky. It had been leaning up against a small tree that was nocked over when the big one fell and it had it's front wheel completely mashed and one handle bar was very mashed. The small tree had fallen onto the RV but it was barely even dented. I don't know how we will get the tree off the truck as the chain saw is in the tool box, which has at least a ton of Ponderosa Pine on it.


This is the tree that fell onto the truck. It even managed to squash the shed that I keep my motorcycle in.